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I'm at the Chaos Communication Congress (C3) organized by the Chaos Computer Club (CCC). It's their 35th iteration of the Congress, so it is 35C3. And it is my first Congress.
It's a huge community event. Really huge. There are roughly 16.000 people. Very interesting, weird, polite, caring, colorful individuals.
There is expensive and very rare hardware everywhere and everybody seems to behave so that nothing needs to be secured or guarded to prevent theft. What an amazing crowd to be in.
The organization is really good. When thousands of people came to the entrance to get their wristband, the queue was processed very fast so that there was no significant delay at all. There is an indoor navigation (including an app), a schedule app (unfortunately without a search feature), ultra high-speed internet with a working WiFi, and so forth.
The distances are large so that a scooter is recommended. Some people even use bicycles.
The previous years, I only have watched the really good video recordings of the main talks. I studied the main talks upfront and came up a plan.
On site, the situation was quite different from my expectations. There are not only the main talks but also approximately twenty additional slots from the Self-organized Sessions. Hundreds of assemblies and small community groups offer many things to see, experience, talk about.
Therefore, I ditched my plan and concentrated on the stuff which is not being recorded instead of sitting in the main talks.
I joined a "How to be Loud" workshop to improve my breathing technique when I do give workshops. I learned about the LessWrong community, joined their discussions. Some guys talked about their activism to make public transport systems free to use. A talk about Galina Balashova turned my attention to the beautiful space architecture of the Russians.
I'm looking forward for the next days to come and afterwards to watching the videos of the recorded talks.
If you want to meet me, contact me through mastodon or join my talk on Emacs Org mode on 2018-12-29 at 22:30 in Komona Thunderdome.