I attended my first Chaos Communication Congress (CCC) in 2023! I first learned about this when I went to a Berlin Hack ‘n Tell meetup, and my friend that I went to the meetup with told me he attended a few years ago before Covid and he would like to attend again, although tickets must have been sold out at this point because usually they sell the tickets a year in advance.
To our surprise, CCC changed its ticket sales system this year, so the tickets were first sold just a month before the conference, which means we still had a chance. Apparently tickets are known to be difficult to get. Having learned my lessons from my ticket wars for Mitski, Primavera BCN Ciudad shows, and most recently Glastonbury, I made sure to be on the queue for the tickets half an hour before it was open. I failed on the first try (boo!), but was successful on the second one.
I had to miss the first day because I had work, so I arrived early on the second day. A list of my impressions:
- Lines were quick, at least on the second day. Probably about 10-15 mins for food and coffee which is not bad.
- Speaking of food, my friend and another person he knows got food poisoning and they had to miss an entire day; I’m not sure which food stall is the culprit, because we ate at the same stalls (albeit different times) and I didn’t experience anything weird.
- Being a non-German speaker, I was worried about not having anything to do if all of the talks that were happening were in German. My worry was unfounded:
- Some talks were subtitled into English (live translation).
- As far as my observation goes, 99% of the time, there is always a talk in English happening at a given time.
- Even in the rare occasion that there is not, it will be a good opportunity to check out all the hackerspaces, communities, and workshops downstairs!
- CCC has a lot of hackerspaces, workshops, fireside chats happening. My favorite space is probably the postcards space. I sent quite a few postcards to friends and they also have an uber cool typewriter too. :-)
Some things I wish I knew before I attended:
- Sign up for workshops early, they fill up fast. Also if there is any kit that you would like to buy, buy them fast too. I spent 2 days thinking whether I want to get the satellite kit or not; to my disappointment they were sold out by the third day.
- There is a Fahrplan on the website which was my main point of reference. However, I learned when I got to the venue from my friend that there is apparently a mobile app with a more complete schedule that includes all the fireside chats and side events happening. I couldn’t download the app because apparently it’s not compatible with my OS (??) and I detest mobile apps anyway, so I had to rely on my friend for all the non-main conference talks events. I’m not sure why these are not included in the website’s Fahrplan.
- CCC gave away ticket vouchers to organizations and volunteers, and if you’re in one of these organizations, or know volunteers, you can get vouchers from them too if they still have vouchers left. This means you can get a ticket in advance, and don’t have to spend time virtually lining up for tickets and having a meltdown when you were kicked out of the line. It turns out my friend knows someone who has vouchers we can use, but it was too late and we couldn’t redeem it. Lesson learned: tap into your network next time. ;)
- It’s an English friendly conference, but a lot of the community stuff were understandably in German. Yet another sign for me to improve my German stat.
- I wish I knew about this very neat Congress Checklist before.