As we are approaching the final day of this congress there is a little looking back and summarizing to do for me. Since there is still one day left this isnt final, ill probably do another examination later on. To begin with, i wanna point out this blog-entry where some crucial things that went wrong this year are mentioned. The author talks about missing “spirit” and i can only agree, although im not completely sure about what caused it yet. Ill try to give reasons i think led to this:

  1. What The Music??? There was no music from the Lounge anywhere in the building. I remember listening to the cool electronic music in the Hackcenter, walking up the stairs and still grooving to the very same music while taking a dump. This killed most of the atmosphere for me and a lof of people. Thats why this is at position 1.
  2. Fewer congress participants, which is thanks to the increased entrance fee. This meant less stress during rush-hour, but also less party during the nights.
  3. A new way of assigning hackcenter space, combined with point 1. and 2. led to a much less crowded (almost empty) hackcenter this year, and especially at night you felt pretty much lost there.
  4. The shift from real-world events to the internet layer. What i mean that one is much less likely to run around and scream “free beer” or “hack the planet” or whatever but will instead create a neat and tidy wiki entry, link it and wait for something to happen. Of course I myself as an active blogger am part of this problem, and i would trade it all in if i could
  5. Some more conservative opinions on certain matters. Now, this point can really be argued about forever, but in the end i sometimes miss stupid stuff like defacements, people being bonded with eth cable, frequent network failures which result in people actually talking to each other, and other stuff that one can only experience while attending. (Think humppa)

I know the congress grows, and also grows up, so do the people organizing it. Maybe everything i mentioned will only lead to a shift in the average visitors mentality, maybe it was just this year, maybe its just me and everyone else thinks this congress was exactly the same like every year. But maybe, and thats something i want to avoid, the congress might lose popularity although everything done wasnt meant to come out that way. I really dont know, you give the answers.