Geek Alarm at Campus Party Berlin - is this us? | Hacker News Reader

Geek Alarm at Campus Party Berlin - is this us?

salon.io

37 pointslrock54 comments

It seems to me that this event wants to be something it isn't. I think they want to get all the "cool nerdy people" and got marketing/twitter people and gamers that thought it was a big LAN Party.

I heared about a guy who wanted to leave and the security kept his laptop, because they couldn't verify if it was his or not. nightmare!

If you want a real "hacker" event, participate the 29c3 (now in Hamburg) shortly after christmas.

Or Euskal Encounter (euskal.org) in Basque Country (Spain). Quite good for scene, hacking (very good security contests), programming but also good if you want to play games, dance or whatever.

A few creepy pictures of the female gender there. Do they want even less of those participants?

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/08/sexual_harassm...

My first observation was that, of all the pictures containing women, pretty much most of them were focussed on their arses.

I don't like the feeling that women are an attraction at these types of event. It's like, "OMG there are women here! Make the most of it, because this hardly ever happens!" Then everyone whips out the camera because the sight of another gender doing things is somehow surprising.

A second look through the images and I agree, almost every picture of a woman is focused on her bottom, with the exception of one at the bottom which is focused instead on the bosom.

And of all the pictures containing standing men, pretty much most of them are focused on their breasts or backsides. On the nerdomat photo the photograph clearly took a position where the pixel man points his fingers to the crotch of the guys standing there.

The photos in the bottom 1/3 of the page reverse the trend. Guys from the back, women from the front and side. I think it balances out actually.

Dear white knight fuzzy dunlop,

You might be reading too much into these photos. There are some photos of women from the front and some from the back. In those cases you have decided that the photos are of their breasts or butt. I think this says more about you than the photos. From what angle should the photos be taken?

Thank you latj for pointing this out, so i didn't had to :)) like you were reading my mind!

It was an observation, not a detailed analysis. This would suggest that I quickly scanned the page, came to a similarly quick conclusion, and posted about it. We might call this 'reactionary'.

It would not suggest examining the minutiae of every picture to determine whether or not they were more concerned with the female form than the event itself.

It would then stand to reason that my observation could be inaccurate. My mini-rant is still free to stand though, since I've noticed that personally, even if it's not sexually oriented.

That picture of the Facebook recruiter is also on the main page of http://salon.io/ as the most representative (?!) image of the event.

yeah! think about it!

What exactly is your agenda here? Spamming your site? Questioning the event? Promoting your photos?

My "agenda" is to give you an impression of a big "hacker" event in Berlin and let you decide, what you take out of it. The event is questionable, but what isn't?

BTW: Are you pro or anti fb?

What is the problem with this picture? Am I missing something?

I guess some clarification is needed here. The submitted page is a collection of photos by Stefan Landrock. Stefan Landrock runs salon.io. The submitter "lrock" would be Stefan Landrock (his e-mail address is lrock@...) unless someone is faking. While the account is old, this is the first submission and the first comments.

So I really do not get what this is about. The title sounds like some armchair hostility against ... whom? And people are reading some sexual harassment into the photos and blame the event instead of the photographer?

You unlocked the sherlock badge!

But who's "they"? Were these pictures taken by some official member of the party?

they were taken by a regular visitor who got a free VIP ticket and had to provide all his personal data including macbook serial number and biometrical photograph

What is the difference between VIPs and regular guests?

Not sure. I got a nice badge and were allowed to enter the camping area even if you don't camp!

The focus of the one taking the pictures hasn't to be the same as the viewers one.

Site looks like it's struggling now, but when I looked there didn't seem to be many so maybe someone was paying attention and pulled them.

Were pictures removed? Because I don't see any creepy pictures.

No, nothing was removed.

This seems to be a masterpiece of "how not to organize a technical event"

yeah ... all talks take place in the same giant room ... you can hardly hear the speaker, projections are almost invisible because the light is too bright.

Even so, when I attend these events I go more for the people than the speakers etc, I would bet the people who went still enjoyed themselves.

absolutely .. atmosphere there is nice though ..

It looks it, I'm a self confessed nerd who lives things like this, any upcoming events?

29c3 in Hamburg (previous years in Berlin) http://events.ccc.de/

I was speaking yesterday, and I agree that the setup seems less than ideal when walking past the speaker areas.

That being said, if you're taking a seat, you're entering the audio zone, and while not perfect, you could understand the speakers pretty well.

The projections were unreadable I agree, but there were also big televisions that were readable when you were in one of the seats (given decent sized font, but it's the presenters fault if they use small fonts).

Anyway, having dedicated rooms for talks would have been much nicer, no question about it.

Also, it doesn't quite look like a crowd of 10.000 people to me

Its quite telling that I know almost no one that got his ticket through "regular" channels.

Indeed. This is a commercial event with too much security - quite the opposite from the usual hacker events in Germany. You need to give lots of info on registration including a passport style photo, your laptop serial number (because equipment is required to be tagged) and apparently bags are searched on entry and exit. It's ridiculous. That's why the usual hacker crowd in Germany totally ignores this event.

Wasn’t this originally supposed to be in Barcelona and only moved to Berlin very late?

You can’t just organize events like that in Berlin. There are already many other (broadly) similar events in Berlin, with more focus and better organization.

It just doesn’t seem very attractive to me and it’s a total culture clash. Paranoid security theater? No alcohol? I’m sorry, but not in Berlin.

How would you handle security at a 10,000 people event where laptops are likely to be left unattended ?

It seems given that scenario tagging laptops and checking them on entry/exit is probably the most effective solution.

These procedures trade my freedom and privacy for security. I always have someone keep an eye on my stuff, but I've also been at similar events (Chaos Communication Camp 2011) where keeping something unattended was not a problem at all.

Treating all you attendees like potential thieves is simply a bad premise for a hacker event.

According to the CCC FAQ Laptops have been stolen in the past

Yes. Of course. And there have been or will be stolen laptops at this event. The "security system" is easy to circumvent, if you do a little planning and want to steal something. The stickers are removable and re-attachable. You can register whatever, whenever you want. It is not done at the door. On my MacBook the serial number was taken from a screen, that I prepared.

But even the CCC had several years of congress with this kind of "security". So I am not mad at the organizers. We even had one congress where every participant had his/her photo taken. This actually had a major uproar and wasn't done ever again. I think maybe the organizers will learn and do things differently next time. At least I hope if they do this again in Berlin.

The most ridiculous things like not bringing lighters or no smoking outside the Hanger was removed from the Term & Conditions.

I'm getting a 502 bad gateway, has being on the front page crashed the site?

Same here. Google doesn't have it in it's cache. Anyone with a mirror out there?

The page is just photos, so a text cache like Google's won't help here.

maybe, they're in beta. great service btw, I recommend checking it out when it's up again :)

Thanks for the recommendation, mind telling me what the site is all about?

EDIT: Can't reply to you so I +1'd you instead, thanks for a great answer :)

a new way to quickly build beautiful photo/artwork galleries. you drag and drop your pics, set how you want them organized (with some customizing of size, spacing, etc) and awesomeness happens. great for portfolios but not only, I used it as my travel pics gallery.

all powered by html/js and technically it's build as a single page app http://blog.salon.io/2011/08/27/salonhazbackbone.html

//edit: it's back, you can browse the galleries on the main page http://salon.io/

I figured it's from Salon, ie. the magazine. It's not.

Looks exactly like a common recruitment event.

i'm trying to find a ticket, does anyone have an extra one to sell/giveaway/rent/etc.? -> d@wehack.it thx

I don't think the tickets are transferable, as mentioned in another comment, they require you to upload a picture when buying/claiming the ticket...

that says enough about the organization. if there is a campus party 2013, i guess they'll require you to give them fingerprints, iris scans and your shoe size.

You can print this:

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/61624465/daypass_cpeu.png

and get a daypass.

BTW: Are there quotas on Dropbox traffic?

Hope your geek alarms are going off for all the 502 bad gateway status codes your static servers are rendering...

greetz lrock, hope you'll be able to handle the load! ;) maybe give varnish a try.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com