Last year during the end of year holiday period, I went to a demo-party, this year, I went to the Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin. While this is a conference, with speakers and demonstrations, it is still far from regular academic conferences: more people, beer, kids, people sleeping in a gymnastic hall, one corner with go players, another with lego. In short more life. I could not help thinking I was somewhere between the demo-party and the conference I was used to attend during my academic career.
In general the presentations were good and interesting, there was an interesting overview of new stream cyphers, and a review of the debian open-ssl debacle. The short attention span gave interesting insights in cross-site scripting problems. There were hacking workshops, but also lock-picking and building cool flying engines. I really look forward to reading the proceedings.
Finally, despite the cold, Berlin is really a nice city, so I could also enjoy nice restaurants and do some shopping, there is even 無印muji store.
A few hacks presented in this conference: