Soldering connects

From August 15 to 19, the Chaos Communication Camp took place in Mildenberg in Brandenburg. Every four years, the Chaos Computer Club e.V. (CCC) organizes this meeting, where over 6,000 hackers, technology enthusiasts, tinkerers, artists from all over the world come together over five days to exchange ideas, learn from each other and celebrate together.

Lab engineers Benjamin Stähle and Joachim Feßler traveled from RWU's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science to attend the CCC Camp. Countless lectures and panel discussions dealt with open source software, sustainability, hacking, artificial intelligence, freifunk, critical infrastructure protection, IT security, digital payment, anonymized networking and many other topics. In practical workshops, people soldered, screwed, milled, programmed and 3D-printed.

After two days, all the circuit boards we had brought with us were used up.

The camp itself was organized in villages. These are, in the simplest case, large tents with a few tables, up to complex and creative buildings with a complete infrastructure from kitchen to workshop to dance floor. Stähle and Feßler were invited to the Frubar Village. This was organized by former RWU students who now live and work in Berlin.

In their luggage, the two engineers had boxes of equipment and components for robot workshops. These were very well attended and so after two days all the boards they had brought with them were used up and the participants, aged between 12 and 63, were able to take home a small RWU robot. Once again it became clear: soldering connects - in both senses.