Chaos Communication Camp 2023 recap

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Quick blog post to recap Chaos Communication Camp 2023, so I have something to remember later, beyond my #CCCamp23 posts on Wikis World (Mastodon) and few photos on Wikimedia Commons. This won’t be very structured, but hopefully it’s better than nothing :)

General camp experience

Overall, I had a quite relaxed time at camp. I sat around, talked to some people, enjoyed myself. I didn’t do as many “activities” as many others (and in particular, I didn’t stay up late at all, actually going to bed earlier than I normally do :D), and I’m fine with that. 😌

Last camp, I think I didn’t attend any talks at all, never even entering the big talk tents. This year, I attended a few (I think it helped that they spread out the talks and didn’t have the central tents anymore – this meant smaller crowds and more open air, both of which was good for covid reasons), mostly as an angel (video mixing, camera, or translation). I enjoyed angeling and would like to do it again. The sessions I watched without angeling were Lilith Wittmann’s, the coffeebots, and Hacken, dass…?, all of which were cool.

My only real “project” at camp was writing the m3api 1.0.0 release announcement blog post. (This is actually the biggest blocker left for the 1.0.0 release, I think.) I made good progress there; stay tuned on this blog ^^

I also went to the nearby lakes about once per day on average, and would fully recommend that. (Although, if you’re not there by bike, your range is going to be a bit more limited. But some are still reachable.)

Travel

I went to the Ziegeleipark Mildenberg and back by bike; my tent, sleeping bag and sleeping mat were transported with the rest of the WMDE stuff, so I only carried the rest of my stuff (clothes, laptop, etc.) by bike. Having the bike at camp was definitely useful and I’d like to have it again next time. If I want to carry everything by bike, I’ll need to look into some additional options to attach things to it, and might also want to look into a lighter sleeping bag (my current one was also rather warm anyways).

I wrote Mastodon threads on the way there and back again, though it wasn’t as many posts as during the way to CCCamp17 four years ago.

DECT

This was my first chaos event where I brought a DECT phone. I didn’t use it very much, but it was still useful a few times, and I’m planning to bring it to future chaos events too (since I bought it anyways ^^).

I left the phone’s base station at home, instead bringing a rechargeable battery charger, so I could charge the phone’s AAA batteries as well as others (some other things I brought also had AAA). In the end, I didn’t end up charging anything else using that charger, so it was a wash. (Curiously enough, although several other people brought other phone models from the same company, my phone wasn’t able to charge from any of their base stations as far as I could tell. I don’t know if Gigaset do anything weird with their phones where each model charges slightly differently and incompatibly or what.)

Packing / Inventory

A few months before camp, I started a google doc to list things I might want to bring. I eventually turned this into a comprehensive list of all the things I brought (and some that I couldn’t fit after all, such as my blåhaj 😔), and where I marked things that I had packed already. Later, during and after camp, I added notes to my future self about which things turned out to be useful and which things I should change or leave home next time. I think this mode works pretty well for me (I’ve used it for a few other things too), and I look forward to going over this list in four years ^^

Some things I brought that turned out to be quite useful:

And some things that I needn’t have brought after all, or otherwise have some qualifying notes for next time:

Conclusion

I don’t have one, I just didn’t want to end the blog post on a bulleted list that doesn’t even end with a full stop. Looking forward to the next Chaos Communication Camp in four years!