> You want to know how I think the Germans would do it? An annual conference first, and then incorporate an organization to handle the coordination: you’ll be surprised how much focus and teamwork pulling off a large annual conference will build. An annual event gives groups a deadline to work toward, and I don’t need to tell you how important that is. And an annual conference gets people physically together and having fun, and that absolutely shouldn’t be underrated.
What about Maker Faire, HOPE, DEF CON, etc.? I haven't been to those (or to a CCC Congress), so I don't know if there's a difference or what that difference is. Maybe someone who has can comment?
I haven't been to any of the other conferences mentioned above but I attended CCC four times so far (twice as a speaker).
For me, one the most striking and pleasant things of the CCC is that it's organized ENTIRELY by volunteers and financed by entrance/membership fees (as far as I know) so there is NOT ONE commercial sponsor to be found. I really really value this highly because today there are almost no places left that commerce/business hasn't invaded yet (most IT conferences feel like marketing events of FB/Google/Microsoft/...)
I haven't seen many (any?) conferences / congresses of this scale that are organized like this (the Burning man might be an example of a similar event, not sure how they finance it though).
And of course the people are amazing and very friendly, and it's a safe space to really be yourself. Also, they really try everything they can to make everyone feel at home, there's even an entire floor dedicated to children (with projects, games, workshops, theather, ...) and one day dedicated especially to young hackers. Where else can you find this kind of stuff?
I was pretty much living on German time during the conference, despite watching it from Australia. Even on a fairly pathetic connection I was able to stream the SD streams during the day, and the HD streams during the night. I was even able to fall back to audio-only via Skype for about an hour when they had technical issues at the start of the streaming.
There are commercial sponsors for the Congress, e.g. for some of the network equipment, because it would be uneconomical to buy network equipment and using it only once a year. Nevertheless, sponsorship doesn't play such a big role, there is no advertisement on the venue.
The team/cooperation part I think he's referring to is that CCC will have a large area dedicated different hackerspaces/assemblies. So c-base gets a corner that they decorate, as does Metalab, while many smaller hackerspaces will have a ~12-seat table dedicated to their group, where they can put up any cool projects they want to show off.
Maker Faire has something similar, where local groups will get an area to show off. HOPE has had some more topic-based assemblies like TOOOL. DEFCON has workshop tracks and more thematic "events" that happen, like DEFCON Shoot or the bike ride, but not as much of groups of real-life co-conspirators making things happen, with the notable exception of 303.
HOPE do have a "hackerspace" area and iirc there is a timetable for projects, but what I think is unique in the c3 is that your space is for the whole event.
In uni I participated in a 20+ person hackerspace in Australia. It was great, you had tons of space to set up your project, event nights were a group of loosely allied friends, and there were never more than 5 people using the space at any time.
When I came back to the states I joined the local 100+ member space and absolutely hated it. Met some really cool people but the majority were a bunch of jerks who either couldn't give you the time of day or just wanted to do things the hard way.
Maybe the idea of a hackerspace should be like 3.2 bars were in 20th century midwest. One in every neighborhood that served the values and needs of a small core group.
That's being a bit ableist towards people with social anxiety disorder and people on the autism spectrum.
These tend to be common around hackerspaces, and are mostly a result of society rejecting them (bullying at school, being stigmatized as 'nerdy', etc). You have to accept it as being part of the technology scene in general.
What do you mean by "too much image cultivation."?
I've experienced the awkward males part, and the difficulty for newbies to feel welcome. But there's also a kind of social club factor to it with unwritten rules, for example, don't expect to turn up with your windows xp laptop to get a hacker to fix the keyboard.
Ahh! Yes, I see what you mean - interesting. In my limited experience with a hackspace I'd say it would be kind of true amongst themselves, but there is not much evidence of them wanting to show what they are doing to the outside, no blogs, no tweets, videos, conferences etc. It appears that all showing off is done within the group.
Its not that surprising to see mostly men since all technical fields consist mostly of them. And the social part is pretty common among tech-enthusiasts.
The bits that stand out for me is "If you had your own big club and I was standing outside of it you'd never fucking let me in," --- "We are all eating a giant shit sandwich out here, nobody cares, I don't care".
i followed HaD religiously until they went big. Nowadays all you see is article after article on how to flash leds with arduinos :(
they should really slow down content churning. Before i would check it twice a day and often find no new content. just closed the tab and moved on, to come back tomorrow. Now every time i load the page there is new content, but often i just find ridiculous and shallow. At the time i removed them from my reading list it was mostly kickstarter projects.
I'm moving to NYC February 1st with forty bucks and ruby (not rails) know-how. I'm 21 and ready to start sculpting my life with my own hands so i figured I'd just go.
Does anybody know if there are hackerspaces that are looking for industrious people like me? As long as i can code for a few hours a day i could help cook and clean and stuff and once i get a job i could contribute back to the space with money.
I know this isn't the best place to ask but it's on topic and i don't really know where else to ask and find out.
This was a cool article, i had no idea how much history there is behind these groups and its especially encouraging knowing that with enough willpower, these groups can be self sufficient and autonomous.
After seeing this it is quite clear to me, that this was not so much a computer hack but more of a media hack where the CCC made use of the german media very well. Don't get me wrong I appreciate what the CCC has done the last 33 years, but hearing about this first hand from people that were there was a bit of a dent in my glorified picture of the events.
Since the logo is not explained (properly). It is a pun on the the "Kabelfernsehen" (cable tv) logo of the time. It looked like this: http://www.bilder-hochladen.net/files/bbmo-2n.gif This is not the original. I could not find a better picture. As I remember it the cables were running down straight on the right side. Instead of having the knot.
> You want to know how I think the Germans would do it? An annual conference first, and then incorporate an organization to handle the coordination: you’ll be surprised how much focus and teamwork pulling off a large annual conference will build. An annual event gives groups a deadline to work toward, and I don’t need to tell you how important that is. And an annual conference gets people physically together and having fun, and that absolutely shouldn’t be underrated.
What about Maker Faire, HOPE, DEF CON, etc.? I haven't been to those (or to a CCC Congress), so I don't know if there's a difference or what that difference is. Maybe someone who has can comment?