It was the end of the year, and my resources were pretty much depleted. After what seems to me like it was the most demanding year in my life, on early December 27th I headed of to Leipzig to attend the 36th Chaos Communication Congress. My father had brought me there, thankfully, especially as his resources are likely more depleted than mine.
Beforehand I hadn’t been sure whether I would attend «Congress» for a fifth consecutive year, as I really felt kind of burned out. But I went, mainly to record an episode of a podcast that ironically then never aired due to a noisy recording environment negatively affective audio quality.
Having learned from all these years, I had carefully checked the official program for interesting talks, focusing on the topic of climate crisis and related environmentalist themes, being fully aware that I would not attend most of them. The use of Congress is to meet people in sessions, that are not being recorded and generally enjoy the atmosphere and survive all the input while sourcing great food is surprisingly difficult (or not so surprisingly if you are familiar with the food at german trade fairs).
After last year, I had had high hopes for a couple of sessions like the «Hackers Against Climate Change» of yesteryear. That did not really pan out.
I attended the one session on day 2 that had the same title this year, and while it was nicely moderated, it did not spring following sessions as far as I am aware of – and it was way less crowded. Then, there was a session called «Planet A», which was even less populated and had a way different target than I would have thought and at least let to me learning about two more platforms that are out there (just links, not endorsements):
With regards to talks, I linked some before. I did not manage to watch all of them at congress, and I haven’t managed to catch up since by watching the recordings.
I wrote the upper part until January 6th, 2020 (today is January 30th). As I still did not manage to finish it (i moved and there has been other stuff), let me just finish this post with what I remember as my objective when I started out to write it: 36C3 felt less like a point to start acting on climate change than 35c3 did, which was disappointing to me (I am thinking of sessions, not talks). Also, I felt less of the “be excellent to each other” vibe than on previous congresses.
That said, I look forward to 37c3. Let’s have a great 2020 till then!