tl;dr register your assembly asap

We’ll have a huge chunk of an exhibition hall for the Assemblies with nearly three times the space as there was in Hamburg. To transform a faceless and boring exhibition hall into a cosy, hacky, welcoming and inspirational place, we need you!

Over the last years the concept of Assemblies was constantly evolving and changing. With our move to Leipzig, there are new challenges and opportunities. In this huge space, Assemblies, people and groups will gather around different subjects, interests and competences. These will be represented by “Chaos Competence Centers.”

A Chaos Competence Center is a structure very much like a village at Chaos Communication Camps: The usual Chaos where Assemblies blend into each other and everyone cares.

Chaos Competence Centers can provide stages, workshop spaces, shared areas and cosy places to talk, discuss or chill, and much more – only your imagination is the limit! For a start, some bigger groups went ahead to form Chaos Competence Centers. They evolve around a subject, but are by no means limited to it:

“The Hive” will gather machines that fabricate anything out of digital bits and real materials; “Chaos West” will gather all objects that move over the floor, they even have a huge test track for your motorized couch; Freifunk will be bigger than ever – expect many more Chaos Competence Centers!

If your assembly covers similar topics and interests as one of the existing Chaos Competence Centers, please attach and join! Also, please feel free to create your own Chaos Competence Center and let gravity do its work to catch more assemblies, we’re curious!

Besides these Chaos Competence Centers, there will be a lot of space for your very own ideas and projects; have fun and let others participate in what you’re doing!



The exhibition hall is an empty field where we’d love to see areas growing, spaces and places for things and people – we want to see rooms spawning where you place furniture and tools, host workshops and even provide stages next to them. As long as you meet the technical regulations of the Messe Leipzig (PDF) you can bring and build literally everything in there. (tl;dr tech specs: Max. 30qm² continuous ceiling, everything “B1 flame resistant”, maximum height 4.5m, no two-story buildings with both floors accessible by people, if in doubt: ask!!)

Certainly we’ll provide some tables and chairs “as usual” for all Assemblies who don’t want or can’t build big infrastructures and focus more on meet-up and work together on projects.

Due to the fact that this year all the assemblies will be sharing one big hall, there will be some challenges: light and noise. So if you plan to bring very bright or very noisy stuff, please keep in mind that there will be a couple of thousand people in the same room with you!

Leave the floodlights and Disco PAs at home, think about low ambient light design or table-spot-lights for hardware-hacking and be creative about noise pollution – you might also try concepts such as “silent disco”, DECT, rad1o or FM transmitted talks/workshops. Be prepared not to run your loud machines while your neighbors wanna run a workshop or host a talk. Dampening noise and blocking light pollution can also be accomplished by creating walls – from fabric or other materials; be creative! Transforming this huge hall into a maze of cozy corners is our quest for this year’s congress!

We can’t wait to see the huge space busy and full – also we’re curious to see your living room, workshop and hackspace on this empty field.

So now it’s up to you: Register your Assembly now, tell us what you want to bring, build and do!