C4

From HackerspaceWiki

C4
Country	Germany
State or District	Nordrhein-Westfalen
City	Cologne
Date of founding	1998/07/29
Website	https://koeln.ccc.de/
Wiki	https://wiki.koeln.ccc.de/
IRC	irc://irc.freenode.net/#cccc
E-mail	mailto:mail@koeln.ccc.de
Snail mail	Vogelsanger Straße 286 NRW-50825 Cologne Germany
Number of members	59
Membership fee	17 / 23 EUR per month
Size of rooms	111 m²
Members	Fukami, Jens Ohlig, Pylon, SkyTee, and ~towo
Location	50.9519° N, 6.9032° ELatitude: 50°57′6.84″N Longitude: 6°54′11.52″E
Latitude: 50°57′6.84″N Longitude: 6°54′11.52″E
Status	active

The Chaos Computer Club Cologne, or C4 in short, is a hackerspace located at the western end of Germany. The current incarnation of the C4-Labor, which is the correct designation for the space, begun its life in 1999, although it only expanded to the current, full size in 2003.

Funding of the C4 is mostly obtained through the monthly member fees; 55 members (50 active, 5 passive) do their part in paying the rent and service bills. Occasionally, donations or income from hosted events floods into the coffers of C4, and since there is always something that needs fixing or improving, is greatly appreciated.

The C4-Labor is located in the cellar of the former 'Kartonagenfabrik' (cardboard packaging factory) in Cologne-Ehrenfeld, which doesn't help against warm air in summer as much as you'd like. A total of 111m² provides ample space for a couple dozen regulars (members and non-members); but bigger events like a popular OpenChaos (explained later) strain the capacities.

[edit] Rooms

Plenarsaal

The 'main' room of the club, featuring a big (splittable) conference table with space, power and connectivity for laptops, as well as some couches, also houses the club's whiteboard and projector.

Labor

After July 2008's rearrangement due to sanitation measures, the Labor has become the main workspace of the C4. Four big tables have been joined together to form a large communal working table (complete with white fluorescent lighting for our hardware hackers). Also features all kinds of public terminals, stationary (Linux, Windows, MS-DOS, IRIX and Solaris) as well as mobile (OpenEmbedded), miscellaneous hardware (mostly working), all our stored beverages and a single old couch.

Illuminatencenter

Since 2008-07, the Illuminatencenter next to the entrance has succeeded from being a beverage storeroom to become the console gaming centre of the C4. (Motions to call it "console operations centre" have been superseded.)

Fnordcenter

The Fnordcenter is the lounge area of the C4, consisting mostly of couches and subtle lighting. It is also one of the two rooms where smoking is allowed in C4.

NOC

Houses the club's servers, connectivity, library, member's inboxes and copious amount of spare hardware, except the one part you're looking for.

Kitchen

Refrigerators, dishwasher, oven, stove, microwave, toaster, the lot. You get the drift. Also the other room that's free for smoking.

Bathroom

Toilet, shower, washing machine.

[edit] Events

OpenChaos

Monthly lecture on changing topics like Multithreading, socialogical studies on the nerd stereotype, ham radio, botnets or securing your UNIXoid box.

Chaos Computer Club Cologne Café (C5)

An irregular event, the C5 is a more social and comfy kind of workshop day. Usually scheduled on saturdays, there's coffee and cake for participants, the afternoon taking up with lecture and presentation which goes over to a practical session in the course of the evening. Past topics included managing large LaTeX documents, modular origami and Go (the game).

U23

The U23 is a rather popular yearly event aimed at educating young hackers or hopefuls looking to become hackers. Only youths of 23 years or younger can enter the course, keeping the age low and, also, a moderate distribution of age, easing bonding with others. Originally, it alternated between hardware and software topics, and has now focused on being a mostly hardware-oriented show.

[edit] Pictures

Random Images of the C4

Our lab contains a lot of screens, computers and quite all kinds of ethernet cables	The large table in our main meeting room (“Plenarsaal”)	There is another table in the back
The Plenarsaal prepared for our monthly public lecture, the “OpenChaos”	This is our kitchen with two fridges for Club-Mate, an electric cooker, a dishwasher, the sink, a table for our famous “kitchen-talks” and a lot of utilities	There are a couple of couches in the “Fnordcenter”
TV with a couple of video game consoles in the so called “Illuminatencenter”