@james Congress and camp are run by a loose collective of their members primarily for their members, so naturally it is mostly Germans. A bunch of other people from around the world (including me) tag along, but really we make up a small percentage. Camp is reasonably diverse as way more people travel for it due to the quadrennial nature. Congress a bit less so because of the time of year and cost.
@james It isn't bad at all, but it certainly has problems - a lot of them stem from it being run by volunteers for fun in an extremely distributed way. The interesting thing is that the online portrayal of the events is far worse than the reality - partially because not a lot actually gets written up about them and photos are few and far between due to the "no photos" policy (which has started being violated a lot more in recent years).
@james The important thing to note is that CCC (the organisation), CCC (congress), and CCC (camp) are run by mostly separate groups with some teams being shared. They don't even all agree with one another, so you can't talk about them collectively in a coherent way.
@james But re: congress in terms of diversity. The fairest comparison I can give to an event I am not directly involved in is FOSDEM, which is honestly the largest concentration of white dudes anywhere on the planet. Congress is worlds away from that, and camp is in the next galaxy.
@erincandescent@james There's a joke that "only people who haven't been to CCC events buy a ticket, everyone else just walks in" which holds some truth.
All their security is done by volunteers (a team which is exclusively women and non-binary folk, and you *do not fuck with*), but there are not enough of them and the escalation sometimes goes wrong - I've witnessed it in person.
@erincandescent@james I think acknowledging that they expect there to be COVID instances is reasonable - it would be absolutely ludicrous to suggest otherwise.
As for the masking recommendation, yeah, I agree, I think this does say a lot about the team. I don't think enforcement is practical (or reasonable given current practises in Germany) but I do think they should be advising that you bring masks and use them in the halls, as well as providing free ones.
@james Running camp earlier this year and congress now was incredibly divisive amongst the volunteers that organise it. People quit, entire teams refused to be involved, people outright quit CCC (the organisation). Arguably the people who ran camp and congress this year are mostly a new set of people, and I am *very* curious to see how it goes given I was at an off-site in Berlin last month and every single person other than me and one other caught COVID.
@james@erincandescent It's very common in Germany - we can't do that in the UK even if we wanted to, they wouldn't grant us a license. (Which we don't, good lord)
Oh yeah, I had a great weekend! Saw a load of bands you wouldn't have heard of, and explored this amazing new area that only just opened after six years of building.