It's really a pretty strong web of trust system, if you know anyone who's volunteered previous years there are vouchers floating around by word of mouth.
If you don't know anyone in the community, purchasing a ticket online is a crapshoot. IMO this is a feature not a bug.
1) Volunteers (who worked 15+ hrs on last congress for free) get two tickets with priority.
2) Hackerspaces get a number of tickets with priority, thru replicating tickets (you can only buy one per day). The amount of replicating tickets given depends on size of area (a hackerspace can be tasked with giving vouchers to relevant people in their city). There's a limited quantity of these tickets, separate from amount of vouchers.
The main point of the congress is primarily to bring the chaos crowd together, then the rest of interested parties. That model may not fit your vision, but chaos events year after year succeed at not leaving out the core crowd.
Also, this year I have bought 2 tickets on public sale for friends without issues (best way to get tickets is to group up with your friends).
It's always taken high effort to buy tickets for c3, needing to be exactly on time (not 30 seconds late) to each sale round.
37c3 was an exception due to low sales, caused by skepticism in the event returning after years of not happening. This year that trust was regained and buying tickets became hard again.
For me the price of accommodation is pretty prohibitive. It's one of the most expensive times of the year and Germany is also one of the most expensive countries in Europe. I've looked at it once but the hotels were too expensive for me (I think it was in Hamburg then).
But it's ok, I can watch it online. I don't like travelling during this busy period anyway.
It's an option for those on a tight budget aka "beggars can't be choosers". Hotels are a lot cheaper if you book a (fully) refundable stay months in advance instead of waiting until you have a ticket.
True but I'm in Spain. Last time I looked a hotel or guesthouse was around 200€ a night which is really a lot for me. Of course this is a time when lots of people travel.
But I didn't mean to complain, just to say it's not only the ticket availability that's a factor.
And this is not something the organisation can help of course. It's a German event so of course it's in Germany. And the tickets themselves are well priced.
And like I said, I really appreciate them making everything available online.
I do tend to go to the Dutch hacker camps that are being held once every 4 years.
Other way around: Easier tickets is an incentive for volunteers, as a bit of a payment in kind. It helps people known to volunteer come back, and it encourages them to keep volunteering year after year. You need to work, honestly, ridiculous amounts of hours to get a voucher (15-20 hours), and so it'd not be a very good incentive for average person.
You can absolutely get tickets on public sales by knowing when sales start, refreshing on the dot and doing the captcha as fast as you can. Reducing your latency (ethernet, fresh browser profile without extensions) helps. Add some friends into the mix and you'll get all the tickets you need.
Tickets are not that hard to get and you are not required to do anything once you have one.
I believe some core orga members (aka The people contracting the venue, getting permissions and renting equipment etc) are guaranteed a ticket but almost everybody else has to buy their own.
The fact that the "hacker space community" gets preferential treatment is very much intended.
From what I have heard it used to be quite easy to get tickets in the previous post-pandemic years. Before the pandemic and especially before Leipzig it used to be very hard sometimes.
Now is the first year that seems to me where demand picked up it was not a given to get a ticket. This might have contributed to find the system unfair.
I think it was a number of reasons, covid was one of them.
- Congress on years where there's cccamp tends to be planned by people who are understandably more exhausted. 37c3 and cccamp23 were on same year and 37c3 slogan was appropriately "resource extension".
- The venue was back from Leipzig to Hamburg (CCH was doing renovations for a while, so it was moved to CCL for a few years).
- 4 years between events lead to both changes in the orga people, and general concern that the older set of people had been at this point less familiar with running an event of this scale ("can they still do it and make it feel the same?").
- Covid precautions were a divisive topic. Some didn't want precautions, some wanted more precautions. Ultimately some measures were taken, but none were mandatory. We have distributed free tests and masks last year, we'll do it again this year, though mainly aimed at volunteers, so you should bring your own mask and test if you can, see the info page^1 for full recommendations :)
All this lead to people being unsure if 37c3 would be good and not coming. But I think that trust has since been regained, seeing as this year sold out really fast (same as past years).
I think one other issue was that chaos community is getting older and many are having families, which makes going to congress between christmas and NYE difficult. We did, imo, really good outreach since then and now there's more young people joining chaos communities again. Still, coming to congress is costlier for younger people that earn less (175eur for ticket but cheaper options are available on request, plus 400-600eur in hotels, plus trains/flights/visas etc).
(I was/am part of the infection protection team at 37c3 and 38c3 but am speaking on personal capacity.)
Also curios, since I got 3 trickets for me and friends. It's as always, go somewhere with a good ping, refresh at the specific time. Worked in every sale..
If you are part of a hacker space you could always get tickets through that quite easily. I think it’s great that they are supporting their original core audience like that.
Those hacker spaces only get a limited contingent too, and the hacker space will expect you to help set up their assembly if you get the ticket through them.
I can't help but read your "will expect you to help" part as trying to say something negative. But if they helped you get a ticket, helping them for an hour or two to setup their space feels like the least you could do.
Yes, limited contingent, but that's also expected with a limited number of seats at the congress. I'm part of two hacker spaces and none of them expected any help with setting up their assembly.
Have you checked if they have an open day? Many have a dedicated public day every week where you can just drop by and if you are interested someone will probably happily assist you with becoming a member.
Otherwise joining their IRC and asking there could also be an option.
The only way accommodate more attendees and grow would have been to move permanently to a fairground like Leipzig. Unfortunately, there seems to be no willingness to do so. I found the Leipzig events phenomenal and would like to understand the reasons behind this decision, but can only find speculation.. maybe fairgrounds are simply too expensive?
Leipzig’s hotel situation is worse due to having to connect to the fairground outside town. However, due to Leipzigs location at the intersection of two major historic European trade routes (fyi: via imperii and via regia, still has the largest head railway station in Europe), it has much better connections than Hamburg to the rest of Germany and Europe, including Berlin. Also Leipzig (and the fairground itself) have train connections to three airports including BER..
