It’s surprising that despite of the enormous size of the Leipzig exhibition center it still gets crowded at times at 34c3 which is not necessarily a bad thing. Here are a couple of pictures that show the enormity and different facets of the Congress this year.
The picture above shows one of the 4 main lecture halls of the Congress this year. This is Hall ‘Adams’ which seats more than 3000 people. It is usually well filled and for some talks people even had to be turned away. The other three halls are smaller but not by much.
The other face of the Congress are the Assemblies where people come together to hack, have fun and learn something new. The picture above shows about half of the assembly space in all its glory. In addition to this place there are a number of additional ‘smaller’ assembly spaces that are also packed. Wonderful bars, sofa booths and a huge ‘shoeless’ corner with low tables and pillows with a great bookshelf that any library must be envious of are there to be enjoyed as well.
A space that is a bit less crowded at the front is the glass hall in the middle of the the Congress area which houses catering facilities in the back and lots of tables, chairs and beer benches. A great setup and a nice atmosphere for eating.
If you are like Mark Watney and need a tin foil hat, the congress offers the latest innovation in tin foil hat hacking, Ikea style.
Another innovation ripe to be picked up in companies is to have backup coffee available!
And since this is blog also occasionally deals with wireless topics I’ve also taken a picture of an in-house antenna for cellular network coverage, which, by the way was excellent, at least from my network operator of choice.
Before I close for the day here is my single suggestion for day 3 talks that you should watch: ‘Antipatters und Missverständnisse in der Softwareentwicklung‘ (Anti-patterns and misundersandings in software development) by fefe (English translation available, choose the appropriate audio stream for the video). The video should become mandatory for viewing once a quarter for all software teams and the management layer above.
I leave it at this as there were so many other great talks that it’s hard to choose which ones to write about. Have a look at the recording website and be prepared to spend some serious quality time there!