#31C3 –>

Great congress, great (12.000!!) people, great talks, great atmosphere. And the german term: “endlich normale Leute” became reality, again.
UPDATE: more talk suggestions added (Jan. 15th)

I love the thing I call: mingeln. Whilst walking around, people come and go, high quality conversations here and there, grouping up to see a talk together or check out some assemblies. Drifting away on a new mission just to mingle again in another place. And this is happening all over the 4 days. Even I don’t have a clue about many things there, I never felt like an outsider. Everyone is here to make it as nice as possible for everyone:

“Be Excellent To Each Other”

Yeah! #31C3 pic.twitter.com/7Qg6jhHm4Q

— chaospatinnen (@chaospatinnen) December 27, 2014

And again there are some things I didn’t do, even it was on my personal list:  Lockpicking and a proper Arduino Workshop. Apart from all stuff I didn’t know about as its just a hell of things going on there. Its a world in itself.  I spend some time playing SNAKE at this huge LED wall but that’s it. Next year than. Here is a list with all the 230+ assemblies, you could literally live inside this space.. [note to self: next time read the assemblie-wiki]

Like last year I had the pleasure to play some music at the Anti-Error-Lounge, later called: After-Error-Lounge and on the last day a little Footwork/Jungle set in the “Club”. Thank you @gregoa  and DJ Spock for making it all possible!
MUSIC –> was fun to play again on the same day/floor  (28th of december 2014) with  @_tasmo and Ronny.

Here is Gregoa‘s wonderful eclectic set from the lounge:

 

Right after I returned home and right in time for the new year I got the “congress sickness thingi”, so I had a lot of time to watch the videos of the talks I’ve missed. The quality of the life-streaming during the event was fantastic and most of the talks where uploaded immediately afterwards, including a DL link and relevant information. Big Up to everyone who made this possible.
Jung & Naiv, the german youtube mag did also some quite interesting interviews during the congress.  It’s highly recommended to watch this in addition to the talks. (German language only) (YouTube Channel)

Here is the first round of tips:

Musik & Politik  (German) m. Alec Empire (Jung & Naiv) Instead of his keynote, I’d recommend to watch his interview with Jung & Naiv

Wir beteiligen uns aktiv an den Diskussionen (German) Die digitale „Agenda“ der Bundesregierung aus inhaltlicher, philologischer und linguistischer Perspektive

Staatsbürgerkunde: (German) Martin Fischer, Martin Haase, Constanze Kurz

Mit Kunst die Gesellschaft hacken: (German) Das Zentrum für politische Schönheit

Ich sehe, also bin ich … Du (German) Gefahren von Kameras für (biometrische) Authentifizierungsverfahren

Reconstructing narratives (English) Laura Portias and Jacob Appelbaum about Surveillance, cryptography, terrorism, malware, economic espionage, assassination, interventions, intelligence services, political prisoners, policing, transparency, justice and you. Also a good read (german) about this topic at Der Spiegel: Snowden-Dokumente: Was die NSA knacken kann – und was nicht

The Art of Creating Fear (English) (Jung & Naiv) James Bamford, author & leading expert when it comes to American intelligence agencies.  Why are we afraid of terror and terrorism? Is that a rational fear? What should we be scared about? Cancer? Is the NSA a good or a great spy agency? What’s the reason behind terror mongering? Why does the US president not change anything about that? Whose interests are served in the age of fear? How do we get out of it? And here is his talk “Tell No One”

Inside Field Station Berlin Teufelsberg (English)- The story of the NSA listening post – told by an ex-SIGINT analyst who worked there
Dazu UNBEDINGT noch den Blog-Post bei Fefe lesen, der sich mit Bill Scannel danach noch ausführlich unterhalten hat. Dann wird auch klar, warum der Talk wie von einem ausgebufften Marketing Menschen aussah. Der Mann hat einfach mal geübt!)

Aram Bartol – Harddrive Punch (English) Art&Culture
where he referred to this great documentary –>  Digital Amnesia (Bregtje van der Haak, VPRO)

GIFs: Tod eines Mediums. Und sein Leben nach dem Tod. (German) Wie es kommt, dass technischer Fortschritt den Nutzern gänzlich egal sein kann.

And last not least a really great explanation of the European copyright reform by Julia Reder aka @senficon – the “only” hurdle we have here is our german! digital minister Öttinger who seems to stick together too much with the publishing multies…
Correcting copywrongs (English)  – European copyright reform is finally on the horizon

Missed as live talk but a MUST-WATCH for me, as I want to publish all my mixes on Hearthis.at as a podcast soon:
Podcast Publishing mit Podlove (German) Die Software und die Spezifikationen des Podlove-Projekts

All videos from this and former events are all available on the congress media website

2nd round of talks:

Deine Rechte sind in diesen Freihandelsabkommen nicht verfügbar
Der Protest gegen TTIP und CETA
Katharina Nocun und Maritta Strasser​ von Campact über TTIP, sind mir manchmal etwas zu aggressiv aber das muss wohl so, als Campaigner*in.

IFG – Mit freundlichen Grüßen
Neue Energie für die Informationsfreiheit von Stefan Wehrmeyer
Die interessantesten IFG-Geschichten des Jahres mit Anfragen und Ablehnungen, Klagen und Kampagnen.
“Crypto ist Abwehr – IFG ist Angriff” = schöner Slogan.

Es gibt viel zu tun – hauen wir ab von Robert Verch and Eva Olivin 
Eine Mietwohnung in Chemnitz  ist seit circa 20 Jahren verlassen, ihr Bewohner nicht auffindbar. Unveränderte Möblierung, Ausstattung und persönliche Hinterlassenschaften sind jedoch noch vorhanden und unberührt.

Next: Chaos Camp in August, this time I want to participate a bit more than just a guest and DJ.