25th Chaos Communication Congress
Nothing to Hide
Chaos Communication Congress visitors were probably more interested in their digital civil rights, as reflected in the congress motto "Nothing to hide," but first they had to cope with closed ticket counters and overflowing rooms.
According to a hand-written sign, visitors arriving too late or briefly vacating their seats had to wait outside the door (Figure 1). With more than 4000 visitors at the 25th Chaos Communication, the record attendance forced organizers to cancel sales of multiple-day tickets on day two.
Between the Scenes
Some 260 helpers – Chaos Angels – supported the organizers, as did various teams of volunteers, including the Network Operation Center (NOC), the Chaos CERT network police, the POC switchboard, and the video crew. A delegation of 11 helpers arrived from the Forschungsgemeinschaft elektronischer Medien (Research Community Electronic Media – FeM), a society connected with the Technical University of Ilmenau and also responsible for streaming the 100 or so talks on the network and recording about 130 hours of video [1]. Considering the care that volunteers put into this event each year, it stands to reason that the atmosphere on all three floors of the building on Berlin's Alexander Square is friendly (Figure 2).
Typically, anybody who has anything to show just sets up a stall in the hack center at Chaos Communication Congress and explains their work. Mitch Altman, who held a workshop in a separate room to demonstrate his TV-B-Gone TV sabotage device, invited attendees to join in a tinkering session between the lecture theaters, giving guests a decidedly non-rocket science explanation of what all the diodes and wire cutters were for.
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