The second Chaos Communication Camp has been officially set for August 7-10, 2003. It's being described as an "International Hacker Open Air Gathering" and will take place near Berlin, Germany.

The first Chaos Communication Camp took place in the summer of 1999 and was attended by around 1500 hackers from all around the globe. This year there will be an extra day added to the event - it will run from Thursday until Sunday.

Although the conference is taking place in Germany, a number of panels will be conducted in English. Attendees were advised in 1999 that "obviously most people will be native German speakers, but almost everybody around here speaks the Internet language as well. So you shouldn't be worried if you do not understand German at all."

Participants will be encouraged to bring computers and tents. For those who don't feel like camping out, various towns (not to mention the city of Berlin) aren't very far away from the campground.

In 1999, "villages" were set up in the field with names like "hackcenter," "crypto village," "reengineering village," "lockpicking village," and "art & beauty village." In addition, an FM radio station was operated from the camp. This year is expected to have even more activities along those lines.

The Chaos Communication Camp is the official hacker event of the year that 2600 is affiliated with. In odd-numbered years when there isn't a HOPE conference in New York, we suggest that attendees try something different and become inspired by meeting hackers from other parts of the world. Two years ago we helped to sponsor HAL2001 in the Netherlands. Next year we're planning on holding our fifth HOPE conference.

For more information on this year's event in Germany, visit the Chaos Communication Camp site. More specific information will be announced in the weeks ahead.