Over the last week of 2024, I attended a four-day conference in Hamburg, Germany. The conference was called the 38th Chaos Communication Congress, 38C3 for short. It is considered one of the largest hacker conferences in the world and is organized by the Chaos Computer Club.

The conference was attended by all sorts of people, or creatures as they were referred to at the conference. There were thousands of hackers (primarily IT, but also from other fields), activists, political dissidents and just people interested in learning. It was an safe space for marginalized people and groups.

Naturally, taking pictures of other people was frowned upon. It was okay to take pictures of the venue without including anyone, so here are some of the only pictures I took during the four days.

Very pretty, eh?

Starting from day 1, the talks in the main rooms ran all the way until midnight, and sometimes even way past that. I remember attending a 1am talk on Net Neutrality and thinking to myself, this is what a nerd paradise feels like! Oh, and they also have a music club where I went and danced after that DRM talk.

Due to the countless tracks, it was impossible to make it for all the talks that I was interested in. Fortunately, most of the talks in the main rooms get streamed and uploaded for later viewing. For the live audience, there’s real time translation of talks, primarily from English to German and vice-versa.

The conference was highly political and isn’t shy about it, and I absolutely loved it. The theme of the congress for 2024 was “Illegal Instructions”, and it was a hint at what needs to be done in the face of rising fascism around the world.

While roughly half of the talks are in German, there was plenty for non-German speakers, and as a buddying German speaker, I didn’t feel excluded at all.

I was with some friends there, and going to conferences with friends is always super pleasant. It feels like university; checking up on each other, meeting for food or hanging out, but also doing things independently when we felt like. I’d recommend finding some people to take along to such events.

The topics covered in the conference weren’t limited to tech, but covered politics, social justice, climate and more. One of the more unexpected talks was around the philosophical aspects of AI.

Another interesting talk that I didn’t attend, but later discovered was titled “Sacrificing chickens correctly”.

Overall, one of the best conferences and events I’ve attended in my life and without a doubt be a regular in the future events. Highly recommend you give it a try if you have the option.

Thank you for reading!