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38th Chaos Communication Congress

events.ccc.de

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Re: 38th Chaos Communication Congress

#11

Post by sneak »

Y_Y wrote: post #9

I love watching CCC every years though I rarely catch it live. Since we have a couple of days to wait for this year's talk, I'll ask. Does it bother anyone else that some talks are in German, or does it bother anyone else that they find themselves bothered that the talks are in German? I love all languages great and small, natural and formal and so I'm conflicted on subjects like this. I find young German speakers to…

Just because people are good at English doesn't mean their English skills are up to giving a permanently-archived talk to tens of thousands of people at the 1st or 2nd most important hacker con on the planet.

I'm all for giving a presentation in the language you're best at. Let machine translation (or manual translation) pick up the slack, not one person's possibly-mediocre ESL skills.

I also can speak German but I avoid doing so when technical accuracy is paramount, because sometimes, small details really matter.

Re: 38th Chaos Communication Congress

#12

Post by phlo »

Y_Y wrote: post #9

I love watching CCC every years though I rarely catch it live. Since we have a couple of days to wait for this year's talk, I'll ask. Does it bother anyone else that some talks are in German, or does it bother anyone else that they find themselves bothered that the talks are in German? I love all languages great and small, natural and formal and so I'm conflicted on subjects like this. I find young German speakers to…

> AFAIR they don't do multilingual restreams (automated or otherwise) like some other online events.

They do. There's a team of interpreters at CCC who translate most talks between English and German, and to some other languages. As with most things CCC, it's all volunteer-driven and done on a best-effort basis, but it's there.

When interpretation is available, I prefer talks that are given in whichever language the presenter is most comfortable in. Presenting in front of a large audience is stressful enough as it is, so IMO it makes a ton of sense _not_ to worry about doing that in a second/third language, and delegating that part of the presentation to someone else instead.

Re: 38th Chaos Communication Congress

#13

Post by namibj »

Y_Y wrote: post #9

I love watching CCC every years though I rarely catch it live. Since we have a couple of days to wait for this year's talk, I'll ask. Does it bother anyone else that some talks are in German, or does it bother anyone else that they find themselves bothered that the talks are in German? I love all languages great and small, natural and formal and so I'm conflicted on subjects like this. I find young German speakers to…

I just checked; they do in fact upload the live dub audio streams, see this talk from last year which was given in English but this is the German dub: https://media.ccc.de/v/37c3-12340-37c3_infrastructure_review...

Re: 38th Chaos Communication Congress

#14

Post by dewey »

Zolomon wrote: post #5

The ticketing system was horrible, it really was not fair this year around.

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.

Re: 38th Chaos Communication Congress

#15

Post by dewey »

Y_Y wrote: post #9

I love watching CCC every years though I rarely catch it live. Since we have a couple of days to wait for this year's talk, I'll ask. Does it bother anyone else that some talks are in German, or does it bother anyone else that they find themselves bothered that the talks are in German? I love all languages great and small, natural and formal and so I'm conflicted on subjects like this. I find young German speakers to…

When I was there where was always a group of people sitting in the first row live-translating the talks. That was many years ago so this is probably even better now.

Re: 38th Chaos Communication Congress

#17

Post by Scarblac »

Y_Y wrote: post #9

I love watching CCC every years though I rarely catch it live. Since we have a couple of days to wait for this year's talk, I'll ask. Does it bother anyone else that some talks are in German, or does it bother anyone else that they find themselves bothered that the talks are in German? I love all languages great and small, natural and formal and so I'm conflicted on subjects like this. I find young German speakers to…

On the one hand, communication is easiest if everybody uses the same language. On the other, the dominance of English is one thing that gives US too much cultural power.

I think I'm happy that there is still content in other languages out there.

Re: 38th Chaos Communication Congress

#20

Post by hengheng »

sneak wrote: post #11
Y_Y wrote: post #9

I love watching CCC every years though I rarely catch it live. Since we have a couple of days to wait for this year's talk, I'll ask. Does it bother anyone else that some talks are in German, or does it bother anyone else that they find themselves bothered that the talks are in German? I love all languages great and small, natural and formal and so I'm conflicted on subjects like this. I find young German speakers to…

Just because people are good at English doesn't mean their English skills are up to giving a permanently-archived talk to tens of thousands of people at the 1st or 2nd most important hacker con on the planet. I'm all for giving a presentation in the language you're best at. Let machine translation (or manual translation) pick up the slack, not one person's possibly-mediocre ESL skills. I also can speak German but I a…

I'm a native speaker and I hate how people have been stumbling through their presentations, lacking basic vocabulary, being dragged along by their bullet points. It wasn't even the accent, it was that the language occupied their minds so much that they couldn't think about what they had to say or how they were saying it. Lots of talks felt like watching a ninth grader in front of the classroom.

Now some of these guys weren't amazing presenters in German either, but my point is that they should not have to be. Some people simply are dry explainers and they don't naturally entertain. Nothing wrong with that at all, especially with such nerdy topics. But in those cases, I'd much prefer a lengthy blog article, or maybe a podcast interview with a capable host. Please, CCC, don't send these people on a stage that they don't enjoy when you could also work with them to get their stuff across.

And with how much is consumed as VOD, I don't think the live talk brings a lot to the table anymore. There could be live Q&A sessions for those who read article or heard the podcast interview.

(I'd argue the same for an academic context by the way - anything above seminar size is either a celebration or a sermon, but not a discussion.)

My best experience at CCC was to literally stumble over bunnie on the side of a hallway where he was sitting against the wall, introducing his own ARM laptop to a dozen of people or two.

And don't tell me this doesn't scale - he has also gotten his message across in ways that scale. But there was finally a natural way of asking questions in a back and forth manner that wasn't in front of a 500 people audience.

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