The Datenspuren 2025 in retrospect

For me the Datenspuren this year started on Friday afternoon. I arrived in the middle of Reboot Politics' and Akronymisierbar's live podcast and stayed for Schlüsseltechnologiepodcast as well. The rest of the evening ran smoothly and preparations for the coming days continued.

On Saturday morning I arrived early and procured some ingredients for the Küfa (Küche für alle - Kitchen for everyone) and when the other Solarpunks arrived we started to set up the Youth Hacking Space.

After the first guests started to arrive it became clear that we were lacking volunteers. The Engelsystem that many Chaos events use enables anyone to sign up and volunteer for anything from bar duties to herolding (announcing) the talks. This way it is very easy to track who is doing what and where help is needed. So to contribute my part I took a shift as hall coordinator for a talk and a shift baking waffles at the WOC.

I'd like to highlight some sessions here which I found interesting. Lowlights aus dem Überwachungssommer 2025 by Ückück highlighted some of the more extreme advances in surveillance in Europe that took place during the summer. GPT-dash by KI-lian and Benny was a fun game in which players have to answer a question as an LLM would and then guess which answer was actually generated by an LLM. I got to play the first version of this last year and it was just as fun this time around. Einführung in den Diskordianismus by kalipso was a chaotic and crazy introduction into the basics of discordianism filled with humor and randomness. I also enjoyed the guest DEATH METAL band no matches found a lot and they brought a bit of musical life into my last evening at the Datenspuren.

I didn't go on Sunday as external obligations had priority but the time that I spent there was magical. All of these interesting people with interesting ideas helping each other to make the event work was truly inspiring. Even though we didn't have enough Angels people still held everything together but the organizers really have enough to do as it is. So if you visit the Datenspuren in the coming years maybe do a shift as an Angel.

Careful: Volunteering may bring joy!