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Comment by throwa356262 | Hacker News Reader

    "27 to 30 December 2026"

I have always wanted to attend CCC in person, but these dates for the main conference only work if you are 20 and single...

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21th/24th -> celebrating with family the winter solstice 25th -> visiting the extended family 26th -> visiting friends

27-30th -> congress \o/

31th -> celebrating a new year either close to the congress or with family again

Works very well for very long time. Plenty of families with kids on the congress too and you always have holidays at that time.

Im not single and i'm not 20...

A lot of people spend more than 1 or 2 days visiting family during Christmas time, and travel long distances to do so.

Perhaps and thats wonderful for these people but stating that only 20 and single can go to the congress is as generic as my response.

The congress was always booked out, its not that the congress has any attendance issues and its not that OP never had the chance to visit and never will have the chance to visit when his/her kids get older.

Btw. i travel too to my family

Yeah, works if you're 2h away from the venue.

Im away 6h from the venue and 3h from my family.

Come on...

That's already hectic and stressfull without the congress part, especially if any of the preparatinon for those meetups falls to you.

I know people who are vacationing who have more stressful schedules.

Oh yeah? And I know people who do extreme sports with an extreme schedule whilst simultaneously breastfeeding. None of this invalidates the people who find any of the above to be too stressful.

I’ve been to congress, will probably attend more too. Some people find the schedule to suck, some don’t. I do not believe it will ever change. I think it is reasonable to find the schedule hectic. My pet theory that this one soft way of keeping the congress more about the chaos communications club rather than it becoming a tech/hacker conference with a strictly international audience. And that is fine.

I do enjoy this tbh.

Driving to my family -> i know the route very well, its not much stress;

The travel to the congress is through ICE and i always kinda looking forward to these hours in the ICE too.

And weirdly enough, not that many people are on the road at that time. Its like everyone else is traveling before, then doing nothing after silvester.

Marry a hacker, and have hacker kids, problem solved :3

I actually know several people who regularly visit the 3C with their families and children. There are a lot of cool activities for kids from a certain age (10-ish). Even without all the social programm, there are plenty of talks which are interesting to non-IT people.

Go to the camp, that's in the summer time every .. 4? years.

I agree that the timing is suboptimal in a family context, or at least it was when the kids were younger. Now that they are tech-savvy teenagers, I took them with me last year, and they enjoyed exploring the congress both with me and on their own. My wife is fine with it and enjoys some me-time after Christmas.

I take the whole family. There is something for everyone there and Christmas in Germany is next level. Even kids. Every parent should want kids to see that kind of creative energy to model as they mature. My wife will not go to Defcon but she loves CCC.

Lots of families there every year and older folks too, it’s actually a great date for a lot of IT folks as there aren’t many weeks when companies are effectively shut down, maybe even only this one week.

45, married and traveling from America to go to my first CCC

Assuming you get a ticket.

Many people who go enjoy the opportunity to get away from family

I'm 43 and married and hoping to go, from the US

...or 40 and divorced

Its the perfect date for people who see all of their "real" family once per year, at CCC. Lots of couples attending obv.

Yeah, would be feasible if tickets wouldn't be so hard to get for externals. Ain't no way my partner would hang out for a year every week with me in a hackerspace

Yeah, CCC is only accessible for people who are already part of CCC for decades.

There are some token newcomers, but overall it is a very closed community.

I have absolutely no connection to CCC whatsoever and yet whenever I wanted to go to a CCC event (3 Camps and 2 Congresses so far, the first time in 2015), I could and when I wanted to take my partner with me, I could do that too. You just have to be fast to get the tickets before they're sold out, that's pretty much all there is to it.

Depends on when it was. Congress was less popular in the past so you could get a ticket.

Nowadays, most tickets go to hackerspaces and volunteers but the open sale sells out in seconds.

Camps are much easier to get to.

I did get my tickets volunteering for like a decade but last year I gave up - volunteering the whole event so I get a chance to go to the next event ... where I would volunteer the while event. That's not a good time.

Especially when there's more and more volunteers competing for work so they get a voucher - while the oldschoolers have no need for any of that because they can always get a ticket through backchannels.

Funny how CCC managed to recreate the worst aspects of capitalism as part of their leftist conference.

> Depends on when it was. (...) Nowadays, most tickets go to hackerspaces and volunteers but the open sale sells out in seconds.

2016 and 2019. That's how it was back then as well and that's what I meant by "you have to be fast" - fortunately the ordering system is reasonable and you don't have to type your data in within seconds, all you need is to be there in time. Back then there were three open sale rounds (but I see there were just two last year), I got my tickets in the second round for 33C3 and in the first one for 36C3.

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