26 ms·

Call for Participation to Chaos Computer Club’s 37C3

197 points by hacka22 4y ago

larodi 4y ago
All the we-pay-noone to participate is very weird in 2022 when information technology industries are potentially among the wealthiest. And particularly when the events are non-free-admission.
- lima 4y ago
  Agreed in principle, but 37C3 is a volunteer-run event. Admission fees are low and (barely) cover expenses.
  - larodi 4y ago
    Volunteering is a very tricky and shady business. If it was not - we’d all be volunteering and getting paid without tax. There’s a reason for some limits in volunteering laws whenever they exist in a country. I bet the same people running this whole thing are also very well paid techies. Not sure about the volunteers though. And third, not last, the fact something is run by volunteers does not change it’s nature - it is still a business thing. Some expenses are paid for and eventually all the subcontractors are paid while the volunteers are not. Not fair at all.
    - hypfer 4y ago
      You're missing the point. The whole thing is purposefully built like that. There is 0 interest in having people on stage that do it for the money. Instead it is about people that deeply care about a topic and want to share knowledge, ideas etc with others. It is not a regular IT conference. It is not a business thing.
    - TEP_Kim_Il_Sung 4y ago
      I have it on government authority that taxes are voluntary.
    - tgsovlerkhgsel 4y ago
      The volunteers range from well paid techies to couchsurfing students. I'm not convinced of your last line. A business is typically maximizing profit, which isn't what's happening here to my knowledge.
    - farhaven 4y ago
      Actually, there aren't really subcontractors. There _is_ a registered company called CCC Veranstaltungs Gmbh (CCC Events Inc.) which more-or-less owns a lot of the equipment (sound stages, lighting, ...) and nominally rents the venues and such, so that if the conference goes bust, there's a legal entity that can go bankrupt instead of individuals, but that's about it. Food stalls are not hired by the CCCV GmbH, they pay to be there (and in turn get to dictate their prices), video streaming and such is handled by FEM e.V. (a non-profit that specializes in this kinda stuff) and is not paid (except for expenses, I think, but I don't have insights into that part of the finances) and truck drivers and such are actually volunteers. "The people running this thing" are also volunteers. They do get a bit of money as an exchange for having to take unpaid vacations way in advance of the event for organizing stuff, but it's a far cry from "well paid". It's more of a "here's enough to not go broke on rent and food".
    - jon-wood 4y ago
      I can see how from the outside you’d think that way. Hacker events are very different to big corporate conferences, and don’t intuitively make sense in a world where almost everything that happens is being done so someone can make a buck. Everyone involved is a volunteer, or at the very most making significantly less money than they could running events of a similar scale in the real world, and they’re all doing it because there’s not really anything quite like these events outside of them. There’s a distinctly anarchic feeling to them, with a great many things that just organically happen because someone thought it would be fun, and then it got totally out of hand because other people latched on to it as well. The Chaos Post is a prime example of this, a postal service which is effectively a bunch of nerds cosplaying a worldwide postal service - I’ve known of people who addressed postcards to themselves, but at a future event on another continent, and they got delivered intact.
      - larodi 4y ago
        I know very well what a hacker event is and how it unfolds. Been on stage on few, helped as volunteer on some. IMHO - Generally this all manifest in a very similar manner to some communist movement. I’m not saying that it is bad to contribute to some idea, not even saying communism is bad. I’m just saying that there’s certain amount of hypocrisy in this scenario, you can downvote me as much as u want, doesn’t change the fact. It is one thing to throw a party for 20friends and another to have FOSDEM sized gig. Such events are not presented in open ground in some forest by people shouting loud (been to such also, although for music). So they have cost - for venue, internet, electricity, screens, typically some food, drinks etc. As a presenter I have a cost for flight, accommodation, food, etc. Someone pays the bill. Not for profit still has bills to pay. If you don’t pay deeds with cash, there’s some other value exchanged. So why not support these people who contribute? What’s wrong with that, sorry I’m not getting it. Besides students very often participate by moving boxes between rooms, because for jobs that require responsible actions one needs an expert. Being a student I’d rather want to participate in something that actually teaches me something, but at the end the best I can hope for is to get to know some famous folks. But I can also do it as a visitor, right?
  - patcon 4y ago
    Disclaimer: runs free events, where organizers are volunteers, in which we're still trying to find sponsorship money for small speaker honorariums. While I'm grateful to ccc organizers and understand that things are sometimes clearer and easier without the distorting effects of money... I think defaulting to offering an honorarium to speakers is really healthy. The cultural baseline can easily be set to that any "financially comfortable" speakers donate it straight back without collecting, while only those who need it, keep it. Why? Because speakers with many areas of expertise cannot afford to spend time speaking for free. Some really rad people can, but just saying that many cannot. And while it's maybe not a big deal if there's narrow representation of ppl volunteering at the ticket booth, there is a larger loss of possibility when cash-poor types of speakers can't afford to show up. Speakers are the bringers of ideas, and who speaks affects the intellectual space that an event creates. And it might be said that creating that intellectual space is the main point of an event. The other motivation is maybe creating a new relational space, new relationships between people that tend to be fostered and grown around the feeding trough of presentation content. So the "intellectual" is about "what gets broadcast" and "relational" is more about "who gets enticed to attend", and "which ideas fuck and make new ideas in the conversations between those attendees". All of the above flows from the speakers, and so I'd argue that it's more important to use the powerful magic of money to help certain speakers show up. I think the sweet spot for starting to experiment with honoraria is: low enough to be a bit insulting to those who would be driven by the money, but high enough to meaningfully cover some costs for someone just trying to get by :)
    - em-bee 4y ago
      as far as i can tell, the ccc does offer support for travel expenses and accommodation if needed
    - makeva 4y ago
      I understand your point but the Congress is not really a typical conference where ideas flow from speakers to attendees. Instead everyone is expected to contribute ideas (and even physically as a volunteers) The talks are actually only a part of the whole things and the main track talks (for which this CFP is for I assume) are only a part of the talks (the rest are organized by assemblies) It's very different to usual IT conf, even compared to FOSDEM. (Not part of the orga, this is only my understanding as an attendee)
- tgsovlerkhgsel 4y ago
  This is not an industry conference. This is a hacker conference, by the community, for the community. Many people involved are students, who really benefit from the admission prices being as low as they are, and the cool projects you see around the assembly area are so cool because they are from tinkerers, people with time (which is often mutually exclusive with money), people who do cool stuff. Paying the speakers would increase ticket prices (though not by much), create a "why do they get paid when everybody volunteers" effect that would discourage volunteers, and ultimately likely lower the quality of the conference. They make pretty clear that if travel costs are really an issue, they'll find a solution.
  - thesaint 4y ago
m00dy 4y ago
I wonder in what category the concept of decentralisation fall into.
- abudabi123 4y ago
  Two categories I can think of are the quantum field or the totality.
- TEP_Kim_Il_Sung 4y ago
  Decentralized is nice, but Distributed is better.
  - m00dy 4y ago
    Distributed is nice, but still can be centralized.
- fit2rule 4y ago
- k__ 4y ago
  Maybe, Security? I mean, cryptography is at the core of it.
Kenji 4y ago
sprash 4y ago
[flagged]
- atoav 4y ago
  > a state sponsored left wing terrorist organization [citation needed] I live next to a gathering point of leftist/antifa groups in Germany, and given the fact they are "state sponsered" they happen to get a lot of needlessly violent police response. I'd imagine a state which "sponsored" a group would protect them from the state's executive. Also the CCC publishes consistently statements that oppose the current German governments plans regarding internet and surveilance. What is the purpose of a state sponsoring a group that ridicules their badly thought out policies on a regular basis? If I were a state I would not sponsor people that constantly show my policies to be of farcially bad quality, but hey, maybe this makes sense in your world. Next we could go for the term "terrorist organization". In Germany we have a Verfassungsschutzbericht ("Report of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution") which lists all the violent or terrorist acts on a yearly basis. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution is and has been known to be overyly critical of left wing organizations (so much for "state sponsored" antifa) while being blind to right wing violence like a literal murder series (NSU complex), also because the early officers working at that organization had Nazi roots. STILL the report of that organization shows that right wing terrorism is magnitudes more common and deadly than any left wing violence. So if Antifa is a terrorist group, they are not very good at terrorism, because they don't seem to have a lot of impact in the real physical world that anybody can measure. Leftist violence is mostly against property or rightwing opponents. Right wing violence is against intellectuals, writers, journalists, migrants, politicians and of course leftists. Or you know, maybe the whole terrorism label is a bit far fetched for what I perceived as a more or less disorganized mess of leftist splintergroups full of edgy teens. So we have a wrong claim of state sponsorship and a wrong claim of "terrorism", which mean I would not be too confident in the third point you are making there. The CCC certainly leans left. So what? A lot of educational elite groups in Central Europe do. That is quite normal. If you were to ask the CCC they'd probably argue that in the US hackers are surprisingly comfy to be that close to the intelligence community and the state (which is precisely what you accuse the CCC of by being "state sponsored").
O__________O 4y ago
Anyone have links to prior examples of submission that resulted in presentation with a link to the presentation too? Here are two blog post on suggestions for researching and submitting security conference proposals: https://medium.com/katies-five-cents/writing-infosec-conference-proposals-a-step-by-step-guide-c2552a194991 https://medium.com/katies-five-cents/writing-infosec-confere... https://sroberts.medium.com/building-better-security-presentations-f20b0f89282c https://sroberts.medium.com/building-better-security-present...
- q3k 4y ago
  https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2019/Fahrplan/ https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2019/Fahrplan/ https://media.ccc.de/b/congress/2019 https://media.ccc.de/b/congress/2019
  - O__________O 4y ago
    Thanks, just to make sure I am not missing anything, those are examples of presentations, but the proposals that were submitted for them are not provided, right? Looking for them myself, found to guides to research and submitting proposals which I added to the original request for examples; neither though appear to provide actual submission examples.
    - q3k 4y ago
      The most important elements of the submission (abstract and description) are there. There's no reason to try to 'game' this, just submit a good talk proposal on a topic that aligns with the focus tracks of the conference. The CfP is handled by people who are able to tell apart a bullshit talk with a well-written proposal from a good talk with a proposal written by someone inexperienced. :)
      - O__________O 4y ago
        Mainly just curious what gets submitted as is, since guessing a lot of people have no idea what to expect and seeing prior examples would significantly reduce that gap. (Also swear I have seen something like blog post that showed this before, but unable to find it.)
glogla 4y ago
Leipzig again or back to Hamburg?
- farhaven 4y ago
  Hamburg, they finally finished renovating the CCH.
  - O__________O 4y ago
    Links for CCH: https://www.cch.de/en/ https://www.cch.de/en/ https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Congress_Center_Hamburg https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Congress_Center_Hamburg
    - aintmeit 4y ago
      But the chaos created is for whom?
  - glogla 4y ago
    Wonderfull, looking forward to seeing all the nooks, crannies and secret passages again.
- oger 4y ago
  Hamburg afaik
- raimue 4y ago
  Hamburg, as announced in an earlier blog post. https://www.ccc.de/en/updates/2022/37-chaos-communication-congress-in-hamburg https://www.ccc.de/en/updates/2022/37-chaos-communication-co...
6stringmerc 4y ago
>We also welcome submissions that present a theoretical reflection on the impact of new technologies on artistic practices and forms of expression. Finally, the perfect forum to deliver my perspective of ML and AI current state of music and the outlook for the next 1, 3, and 5 years. There will be a lot of hurt feelings. It will be very constructive however and show the roadmap between artists and engineers that is yet to develop in earnest and can potentially be the next largest US cultural export. To use a simile, the current level of ML/AI music is about on par with a precocious elementary student with a basic understanding of an Akai MPC. That’s why you can listen to 1,000 of them and maybe one resembles a not-bad song. Not bad is not good mind you. It just means it’s not physically offensive / unlistenable to humans. One of the hardest lessons for non-creative people to learn about the how of what I do need to understand creativity is inherently rule breaking. Derivative art - like that hack warhol’s Prince portrait- have a limited impact overall. Coming back from crazy town with a handful of cool images nobody has seen before like Dali? Now we’re talking! There is hope in the sector, but unfortunately for the tech realm, you’re doomed unless you reconfigure your development approach to have 60% of the brain pathways look like spaghetti designed by a coked up ambitious chimp with Visio. I’ll have to dig it up but I heard guitar sales in the US increased during the pandemic…same basic design since the log.
- Barrin92 4y ago
  >the current level of ML/AI music is about on par with a precocious elementary student with a basic understanding of an Akai MPC. not really true. As far as seven(!) years back people have done experiments where AI reproduction was good enough to fool even experienced listeners (https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/innovation/computer-generates-music-rival-bachs-n414066 https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/innovation/computer-generates-m...) The biggest issue with AI art isn't the quality, we can already make generative art that is faithful enough to not be distinguishable. It's that authorship is an inherent part of art, and nobody is really interested in art that has no human creator in the same way nobody watches bots play chess, despite higher quality of play. Authenticity is central to art, what Walter Benjamin called the 'aura' of a work. (it's unique place in space and time, which automated art does not have). Keeping this in mind the NFT craze over seemingly random pictures makes more sense, because it was essentially a mechanism to give a replaceable, fungible, mechanic work an aura of sorts, anchoring it. Rather than fidelity, this will be the central question of the tech/art intersection.
UltimateEdge 4y ago
I wonder why the Congress takes place during the last few days of December. There aren't many travel options if you want to get back to your country before the new year.
- black_puppydog 4y ago
  It's traditionally and still a very DACH dominated event, for better or worse. Travel by regional/interregional trains around this time is perfectly fine, and it's a time where it's quite easy for a whole big community to synchronize for taking vacation. Remember that this is not the type of Congress where people go on paid time. There are no sponsorships and generally no commercial interest behind this event, so I think (my guess, I have no data to back that up) that most people take vacation days and pay their own ticket.
  - ciex 4y ago
    It’s a good chance to use your Bildungsurlaub allowance (education vacation?) where for 5 days a year you are being paid by your employer for educating yourself in a way of your choosing. C3 is recognized for that program almost everywhere in Germany.
  - lucb1e 4y ago
    ("DACH" meaning Deutschland, Austria, Chwitzerland, if I'm not mistaken; i.e. the main German-speaking region. Not sure this is common knowledge outside of people that are in / regularly deal with DACH; I only learned of it 2 years after moving to Germany, being from the Netherlands.)
    - ttepasse 4y ago
      Confoederatio Helvetica – hence the ISO 3166-1 code CH.
    - black_puppydog 4y ago
      Really cool people call it CHAD though. :P
black_puppydog 4y ago
Funny to see a bunch of (quickly flagged) comments that show a clear misunderstanding of what the German hacker scene is and wants. Besides not being a monolith and this being amenable to labeling as such, it's still in many parts different from many other hacker scenes. The CCC has always had the ambition (and backing credentials/skills) to be a political movement as much as a technological one. In fact that's the origin story of the Congress; Wau Holland inviting others to "do something" with these machines that were set to change the world. This political attitude always had a left and anti-fascist bent, IMHO something that Germany in the 80s, and nowadays, desperately needs. The US scene in comparison (seen from far, just to be clear) looks much more comfortable with closeness to corporate and state actors. Having worked with the intelligence community seems to be more of a badge of honor over there? In France in comparison the scene as I see it focuses much more on making things, while organisations like La Quadrature du Net are well known but small and not at all organized/supported in the grass roots way that the CCC is. Which is why they seem to enjoy the CCC events, it's always great to have them there. :) I might be getting this very wrong, like I said I'm only seeing the US scene from "over here" and I only have shallow interaction with the French scene. I'd also love to hear from other places and how your local nerd communities do in terms of taking political agency.
- aestetix 4y ago
  I agree completely. There are many things I like about CCC. For example, corporate sponsorship is forbidden, and many speakers use handles rather than their legal name. This distancing from $dayjob helps to prevent government/military and corporations from undue influence, and also frees the speakers to say what they actually think about a technology, not fearing that they will lose their job over it. Regarding the political bent, one big difference from the US is that people at CCC will openly express their disagreements, and are generally respectful about it. The only limitations are that Nazis are not allowed, which is partly because they are forbidden by law.
- j3s 4y ago
  > The US scene in comparison (seen from far, just to be clear) looks much more comfortable with closeness to corporate and state actors. this is true, and it's one of the reasons I helped start cyberia.club and layerze.ro - US tech is deeply entwined with megacorps and it sucks the joy out of hacking, at least imho.
3l3ktr4 4y ago
Does anyone know how can I join the org team?
- lucb1e 4y ago
  Probably start by volunteering as angel and get to know people, being proactive, organize, and roll into such a function?
- farhaven 4y ago
  The sibling already answered in broad strokes. For the current congress, you're probably too late. Organizing the thing started, if I remember that correctly, somewhere around May/June this year. There's multiple levels of organization, grouped under the various *OCs (Foo Operations Center), the best place to get to know them and get involved is at the congress through angel shifts. The second best place is probably to hang out in the various German/Swiss/Austrian hackerspaces during the year and getting to know people who are part of the orga.
anthk 4y ago
>Social sciences No.
- atoav 4y ago
  There have been quite some interesting social science talks at the last iterations of the congress. E.g. regarding the interaction between technology and society, quantitative analysis on bots on social media and such. So whatever weird prejudice you seem to showcase here, maybe it is worth considering to get over yourself for something that interests... hackers. It is a hacker conference after all, and believe it or not technology also intersects with social sciences in interesting ways.
Longlius 4y ago
No thanks. If you don't want someone at your event, then that's one thing. But letting your attendees harass random people who've shown up otherwise in good faith is completely unacceptable.

197 points by hacka22 4y ago

All the we-pay-noone to participate is very weird in 2022 when information technology industries are potentially among the wealthiest. And particularly when the events are non-free-admission.

lima 4y ago
Agreed in principle, but 37C3 is a volunteer-run event. Admission fees are low and (barely) cover expenses.
- larodi 4y ago
  Volunteering is a very tricky and shady business. If it was not - we’d all be volunteering and getting paid without tax. There’s a reason for some limits in volunteering laws whenever they exist in a country. I bet the same people running this whole thing are also very well paid techies. Not sure about the volunteers though. And third, not last, the fact something is run by volunteers does not change it’s nature - it is still a business thing. Some expenses are paid for and eventually all the subcontractors are paid while the volunteers are not. Not fair at all.
  - hypfer 4y ago
    You're missing the point. The whole thing is purposefully built like that. There is 0 interest in having people on stage that do it for the money. Instead it is about people that deeply care about a topic and want to share knowledge, ideas etc with others. It is not a regular IT conference. It is not a business thing.
  - TEP_Kim_Il_Sung 4y ago
    I have it on government authority that taxes are voluntary.
  - tgsovlerkhgsel 4y ago
    The volunteers range from well paid techies to couchsurfing students. I'm not convinced of your last line. A business is typically maximizing profit, which isn't what's happening here to my knowledge.
  - farhaven 4y ago
    Actually, there aren't really subcontractors. There _is_ a registered company called CCC Veranstaltungs Gmbh (CCC Events Inc.) which more-or-less owns a lot of the equipment (sound stages, lighting, ...) and nominally rents the venues and such, so that if the conference goes bust, there's a legal entity that can go bankrupt instead of individuals, but that's about it. Food stalls are not hired by the CCCV GmbH, they pay to be there (and in turn get to dictate their prices), video streaming and such is handled by FEM e.V. (a non-profit that specializes in this kinda stuff) and is not paid (except for expenses, I think, but I don't have insights into that part of the finances) and truck drivers and such are actually volunteers. "The people running this thing" are also volunteers. They do get a bit of money as an exchange for having to take unpaid vacations way in advance of the event for organizing stuff, but it's a far cry from "well paid". It's more of a "here's enough to not go broke on rent and food".
  - jon-wood 4y ago
    I can see how from the outside you’d think that way. Hacker events are very different to big corporate conferences, and don’t intuitively make sense in a world where almost everything that happens is being done so someone can make a buck. Everyone involved is a volunteer, or at the very most making significantly less money than they could running events of a similar scale in the real world, and they’re all doing it because there’s not really anything quite like these events outside of them. There’s a distinctly anarchic feeling to them, with a great many things that just organically happen because someone thought it would be fun, and then it got totally out of hand because other people latched on to it as well. The Chaos Post is a prime example of this, a postal service which is effectively a bunch of nerds cosplaying a worldwide postal service - I’ve known of people who addressed postcards to themselves, but at a future event on another continent, and they got delivered intact.
    - larodi 4y ago
      I know very well what a hacker event is and how it unfolds. Been on stage on few, helped as volunteer on some. IMHO - Generally this all manifest in a very similar manner to some communist movement. I’m not saying that it is bad to contribute to some idea, not even saying communism is bad. I’m just saying that there’s certain amount of hypocrisy in this scenario, you can downvote me as much as u want, doesn’t change the fact. It is one thing to throw a party for 20friends and another to have FOSDEM sized gig. Such events are not presented in open ground in some forest by people shouting loud (been to such also, although for music). So they have cost - for venue, internet, electricity, screens, typically some food, drinks etc. As a presenter I have a cost for flight, accommodation, food, etc. Someone pays the bill. Not for profit still has bills to pay. If you don’t pay deeds with cash, there’s some other value exchanged. So why not support these people who contribute? What’s wrong with that, sorry I’m not getting it. Besides students very often participate by moving boxes between rooms, because for jobs that require responsible actions one needs an expert. Being a student I’d rather want to participate in something that actually teaches me something, but at the end the best I can hope for is to get to know some famous folks. But I can also do it as a visitor, right?
- patcon 4y ago
  Disclaimer: runs free events, where organizers are volunteers, in which we're still trying to find sponsorship money for small speaker honorariums. While I'm grateful to ccc organizers and understand that things are sometimes clearer and easier without the distorting effects of money... I think defaulting to offering an honorarium to speakers is really healthy. The cultural baseline can easily be set to that any "financially comfortable" speakers donate it straight back without collecting, while only those who need it, keep it. Why? Because speakers with many areas of expertise cannot afford to spend time speaking for free. Some really rad people can, but just saying that many cannot. And while it's maybe not a big deal if there's narrow representation of ppl volunteering at the ticket booth, there is a larger loss of possibility when cash-poor types of speakers can't afford to show up. Speakers are the bringers of ideas, and who speaks affects the intellectual space that an event creates. And it might be said that creating that intellectual space is the main point of an event. The other motivation is maybe creating a new relational space, new relationships between people that tend to be fostered and grown around the feeding trough of presentation content. So the "intellectual" is about "what gets broadcast" and "relational" is more about "who gets enticed to attend", and "which ideas fuck and make new ideas in the conversations between those attendees". All of the above flows from the speakers, and so I'd argue that it's more important to use the powerful magic of money to help certain speakers show up. I think the sweet spot for starting to experiment with honoraria is: low enough to be a bit insulting to those who would be driven by the money, but high enough to meaningfully cover some costs for someone just trying to get by :)
  - em-bee 4y ago
    as far as i can tell, the ccc does offer support for travel expenses and accommodation if needed
  - makeva 4y ago
    I understand your point but the Congress is not really a typical conference where ideas flow from speakers to attendees. Instead everyone is expected to contribute ideas (and even physically as a volunteers) The talks are actually only a part of the whole things and the main track talks (for which this CFP is for I assume) are only a part of the talks (the rest are organized by assemblies) It's very different to usual IT conf, even compared to FOSDEM. (Not part of the orga, this is only my understanding as an attendee)
tgsovlerkhgsel 4y ago
This is not an industry conference. This is a hacker conference, by the community, for the community. Many people involved are students, who really benefit from the admission prices being as low as they are, and the cool projects you see around the assembly area are so cool because they are from tinkerers, people with time (which is often mutually exclusive with money), people who do cool stuff. Paying the speakers would increase ticket prices (though not by much), create a "why do they get paid when everybody volunteers" effect that would discourage volunteers, and ultimately likely lower the quality of the conference. They make pretty clear that if travel costs are really an issue, they'll find a solution.
- thesaint 4y ago

m00dy 4y ago

I wonder in what category the concept of decentralisation fall into.

abudabi123 4y ago
Two categories I can think of are the quantum field or the totality.
TEP_Kim_Il_Sung 4y ago
Decentralized is nice, but Distributed is better.
- m00dy 4y ago
  Distributed is nice, but still can be centralized.
fit2rule 4y ago
k__ 4y ago
Maybe, Security? I mean, cryptography is at the core of it.

Kenji 4y ago

sprash 4y ago

[flagged]

atoav 4y ago
> a state sponsored left wing terrorist organization [citation needed] I live next to a gathering point of leftist/antifa groups in Germany, and given the fact they are "state sponsered" they happen to get a lot of needlessly violent police response. I'd imagine a state which "sponsored" a group would protect them from the state's executive. Also the CCC publishes consistently statements that oppose the current German governments plans regarding internet and surveilance. What is the purpose of a state sponsoring a group that ridicules their badly thought out policies on a regular basis? If I were a state I would not sponsor people that constantly show my policies to be of farcially bad quality, but hey, maybe this makes sense in your world. Next we could go for the term "terrorist organization". In Germany we have a Verfassungsschutzbericht ("Report of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution") which lists all the violent or terrorist acts on a yearly basis. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution is and has been known to be overyly critical of left wing organizations (so much for "state sponsored" antifa) while being blind to right wing violence like a literal murder series (NSU complex), also because the early officers working at that organization had Nazi roots. STILL the report of that organization shows that right wing terrorism is magnitudes more common and deadly than any left wing violence. So if Antifa is a terrorist group, they are not very good at terrorism, because they don't seem to have a lot of impact in the real physical world that anybody can measure. Leftist violence is mostly against property or rightwing opponents. Right wing violence is against intellectuals, writers, journalists, migrants, politicians and of course leftists. Or you know, maybe the whole terrorism label is a bit far fetched for what I perceived as a more or less disorganized mess of leftist splintergroups full of edgy teens. So we have a wrong claim of state sponsorship and a wrong claim of "terrorism", which mean I would not be too confident in the third point you are making there. The CCC certainly leans left. So what? A lot of educational elite groups in Central Europe do. That is quite normal. If you were to ask the CCC they'd probably argue that in the US hackers are surprisingly comfy to be that close to the intelligence community and the state (which is precisely what you accuse the CCC of by being "state sponsored").

O__________O 4y ago

Anyone have links to prior examples of submission that resulted in presentation with a link to the presentation too? Here are two blog post on suggestions for researching and submitting security conference proposals: https://medium.com/katies-five-cents/writing-infosec-conference-proposals-a-step-by-step-guide-c2552a194991 https://medium.com/katies-five-cents/writing-infosec-confere... https://sroberts.medium.com/building-better-security-presentations-f20b0f89282c https://sroberts.medium.com/building-better-security-present...

q3k 4y ago
https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2019/Fahrplan/ https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2019/Fahrplan/ https://media.ccc.de/b/congress/2019 https://media.ccc.de/b/congress/2019
- O__________O 4y ago
  Thanks, just to make sure I am not missing anything, those are examples of presentations, but the proposals that were submitted for them are not provided, right? Looking for them myself, found to guides to research and submitting proposals which I added to the original request for examples; neither though appear to provide actual submission examples.
  - q3k 4y ago
    The most important elements of the submission (abstract and description) are there. There's no reason to try to 'game' this, just submit a good talk proposal on a topic that aligns with the focus tracks of the conference. The CfP is handled by people who are able to tell apart a bullshit talk with a well-written proposal from a good talk with a proposal written by someone inexperienced. :)
    - O__________O 4y ago
      Mainly just curious what gets submitted as is, since guessing a lot of people have no idea what to expect and seeing prior examples would significantly reduce that gap. (Also swear I have seen something like blog post that showed this before, but unable to find it.)

glogla 4y ago

Leipzig again or back to Hamburg?

farhaven 4y ago
Hamburg, they finally finished renovating the CCH.
- O__________O 4y ago
  Links for CCH: https://www.cch.de/en/ https://www.cch.de/en/ https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Congress_Center_Hamburg https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Congress_Center_Hamburg
  - aintmeit 4y ago
    But the chaos created is for whom?
- glogla 4y ago
  Wonderfull, looking forward to seeing all the nooks, crannies and secret passages again.
oger 4y ago
Hamburg afaik
raimue 4y ago
Hamburg, as announced in an earlier blog post. https://www.ccc.de/en/updates/2022/37-chaos-communication-congress-in-hamburg https://www.ccc.de/en/updates/2022/37-chaos-communication-co...

6stringmerc 4y ago

>We also welcome submissions that present a theoretical reflection on the impact of new technologies on artistic practices and forms of expression. Finally, the perfect forum to deliver my perspective of ML and AI current state of music and the outlook for the next 1, 3, and 5 years. There will be a lot of hurt feelings. It will be very constructive however and show the roadmap between artists and engineers that is yet to develop in earnest and can potentially be the next largest US cultural export. To use a simile, the current level of ML/AI music is about on par with a precocious elementary student with a basic understanding of an Akai MPC. That’s why you can listen to 1,000 of them and maybe one resembles a not-bad song. Not bad is not good mind you. It just means it’s not physically offensive / unlistenable to humans. One of the hardest lessons for non-creative people to learn about the how of what I do need to understand creativity is inherently rule breaking. Derivative art - like that hack warhol’s Prince portrait- have a limited impact overall. Coming back from crazy town with a handful of cool images nobody has seen before like Dali? Now we’re talking! There is hope in the sector, but unfortunately for the tech realm, you’re doomed unless you reconfigure your development approach to have 60% of the brain pathways look like spaghetti designed by a coked up ambitious chimp with Visio. I’ll have to dig it up but I heard guitar sales in the US increased during the pandemic…same basic design since the log.

Barrin92 4y ago
>the current level of ML/AI music is about on par with a precocious elementary student with a basic understanding of an Akai MPC. not really true. As far as seven(!) years back people have done experiments where AI reproduction was good enough to fool even experienced listeners (https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/innovation/computer-generates-music-rival-bachs-n414066 https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/innovation/computer-generates-m...) The biggest issue with AI art isn't the quality, we can already make generative art that is faithful enough to not be distinguishable. It's that authorship is an inherent part of art, and nobody is really interested in art that has no human creator in the same way nobody watches bots play chess, despite higher quality of play. Authenticity is central to art, what Walter Benjamin called the 'aura' of a work. (it's unique place in space and time, which automated art does not have). Keeping this in mind the NFT craze over seemingly random pictures makes more sense, because it was essentially a mechanism to give a replaceable, fungible, mechanic work an aura of sorts, anchoring it. Rather than fidelity, this will be the central question of the tech/art intersection.

UltimateEdge 4y ago

I wonder why the Congress takes place during the last few days of December. There aren't many travel options if you want to get back to your country before the new year.

black_puppydog 4y ago
It's traditionally and still a very DACH dominated event, for better or worse. Travel by regional/interregional trains around this time is perfectly fine, and it's a time where it's quite easy for a whole big community to synchronize for taking vacation. Remember that this is not the type of Congress where people go on paid time. There are no sponsorships and generally no commercial interest behind this event, so I think (my guess, I have no data to back that up) that most people take vacation days and pay their own ticket.
- ciex 4y ago
  It’s a good chance to use your Bildungsurlaub allowance (education vacation?) where for 5 days a year you are being paid by your employer for educating yourself in a way of your choosing. C3 is recognized for that program almost everywhere in Germany.
- lucb1e 4y ago
  ("DACH" meaning Deutschland, Austria, Chwitzerland, if I'm not mistaken; i.e. the main German-speaking region. Not sure this is common knowledge outside of people that are in / regularly deal with DACH; I only learned of it 2 years after moving to Germany, being from the Netherlands.)
  - ttepasse 4y ago
    Confoederatio Helvetica – hence the ISO 3166-1 code CH.
  - black_puppydog 4y ago
    Really cool people call it CHAD though. :P

black_puppydog 4y ago

Funny to see a bunch of (quickly flagged) comments that show a clear misunderstanding of what the German hacker scene is and wants. Besides not being a monolith and this being amenable to labeling as such, it's still in many parts different from many other hacker scenes. The CCC has always had the ambition (and backing credentials/skills) to be a political movement as much as a technological one. In fact that's the origin story of the Congress; Wau Holland inviting others to "do something" with these machines that were set to change the world. This political attitude always had a left and anti-fascist bent, IMHO something that Germany in the 80s, and nowadays, desperately needs. The US scene in comparison (seen from far, just to be clear) looks much more comfortable with closeness to corporate and state actors. Having worked with the intelligence community seems to be more of a badge of honor over there? In France in comparison the scene as I see it focuses much more on making things, while organisations like La Quadrature du Net are well known but small and not at all organized/supported in the grass roots way that the CCC is. Which is why they seem to enjoy the CCC events, it's always great to have them there. :) I might be getting this very wrong, like I said I'm only seeing the US scene from "over here" and I only have shallow interaction with the French scene. I'd also love to hear from other places and how your local nerd communities do in terms of taking political agency.

aestetix 4y ago
I agree completely. There are many things I like about CCC. For example, corporate sponsorship is forbidden, and many speakers use handles rather than their legal name. This distancing from $dayjob helps to prevent government/military and corporations from undue influence, and also frees the speakers to say what they actually think about a technology, not fearing that they will lose their job over it. Regarding the political bent, one big difference from the US is that people at CCC will openly express their disagreements, and are generally respectful about it. The only limitations are that Nazis are not allowed, which is partly because they are forbidden by law.
j3s 4y ago
> The US scene in comparison (seen from far, just to be clear) looks much more comfortable with closeness to corporate and state actors. this is true, and it's one of the reasons I helped start cyberia.club and layerze.ro - US tech is deeply entwined with megacorps and it sucks the joy out of hacking, at least imho.

3l3ktr4 4y ago

Does anyone know how can I join the org team?

lucb1e 4y ago
Probably start by volunteering as angel and get to know people, being proactive, organize, and roll into such a function?
farhaven 4y ago
The sibling already answered in broad strokes. For the current congress, you're probably too late. Organizing the thing started, if I remember that correctly, somewhere around May/June this year. There's multiple levels of organization, grouped under the various *OCs (Foo Operations Center), the best place to get to know them and get involved is at the congress through angel shifts. The second best place is probably to hang out in the various German/Swiss/Austrian hackerspaces during the year and getting to know people who are part of the orga.

anthk 4y ago

>Social sciences No.

atoav 4y ago
There have been quite some interesting social science talks at the last iterations of the congress. E.g. regarding the interaction between technology and society, quantitative analysis on bots on social media and such. So whatever weird prejudice you seem to showcase here, maybe it is worth considering to get over yourself for something that interests... hackers. It is a hacker conference after all, and believe it or not technology also intersects with social sciences in interesting ways.

Longlius 4y ago

No thanks. If you don't want someone at your event, then that's one thing. But letting your attendees harass random people who've shown up otherwise in good faith is completely unacceptable.