I've just finished preparing my video and photos from Chaos Communication Camp 2007 in Finowfurt near Berlin. The event took place between 8 and 12 of August.
I had few days off booked for summer vacation so I packed my stuff and arrived at place at the first day morning. I've met there my friends and camped near their tents at nice shaded place under forest trees.
It was real open air event, not counting aircraft shelters adapted for hackcenter, art&beauty place, 2 lecture halls and other buildings used by organizers.
The location was really awesome- an old eastern Germany air base full of migs, yaks and ils aircrafts. Even Lenin statue was still watching over the place.
There were people from over whole of the world, with strongest representation of Europeans. Most of the people at CCC were young Germans (surprising huh? we were in Germany). People came there mainly for fun or just to camp with a laptop. Not all of them were just browsing the web or coding next pac-man clone. Yes, it was place for hackers and people interested in computers and tech world. You could met there interesting people making or promoting their projects on site, specialists from various IT fields and friendly folks ready to share their point of view and knowledge with you.
Almost all people were kind and helpful, respected all other privacy and right to rest and camping without disturbance. With a just a new met friendly stranger you could talk about operating systems, software architecture, databases, security issues, political an social issues, theories of beginning of the universe all that while drinking your favourite beverages.
I've seen cool tech projects, talks, soldering, vehicles like electric bikes and carts, quadrocopter drones, people chatting in various languages. And of course people with computers everywhere. Laptops, desktops, networking gear, electric and patch cables all over the ground between tents. There were computers in tents, in the shadow of airplane wings, under trees, on hammocks, in shelters and at lectures.
It was really mind stimulating environment. Open minded crowd around constantly kept me opened for any innovative idea (even crazy ones :) ).
Organizers weren't too obtrusive - just kept order needed for safety and to run event smoothly.
There were few places where you could hear music almost all the time, eat something and buy cold beverage.
Talks schedule was really tight and started every day at about 11 am and finished sometimes after midnight. I'm waiting for publication of recorded material I couldn't attend.
Nights were full of light effects and partying people. Guys from visual effects (Visual Berlin and other) and DJs made really good job. So nights were very loooong, and I had a problem to catch up good sleep after coming back home.
I really enjoyed that event, and hope to keep contact with all interesting people I met there.
Here is video I assembled from my recordings and pictures taken at the place. It wasn't my main goal to take really good pictures, so quality isn't as good as I expected.
IT Pro Life
