Thomas_Rother launched a new initiative to organize a European meetup for Discourse operators and developers around the Chaos Computer Club Congress (40C3) in Hamburg, scheduled for December 2026. The move follows a previous attempt during 39C3 which saw limited engagement. The new venue, Hamburg Messe, offers more space than the previous location, potentially facilitating easier room bookings for community gatherings.
A significant discussion point arose regarding accessibility and cost. terraboss raised concerns that CCC tickets are expensive (€190–€300) and often sell out immediately, creating a barrier for volunteer and open-source budget operators. In response, the group pivoted to a counter-proposal: holding an informal, ticket-free meetup in a local café or restaurant in Hamburg, independent of the official congress venue. Thomas_Rother supported this idea, offering to help find a suitable location and highlighting the need for more community feedback to gauge interest.
Ethsim2 expressed strong interest in attending and suggested ways to improve visibility among self-hosters, such as creating an “Event” entry on Meta or temporarily displaying a notice in the discourse_docker launcher for those rebuilding their instances. This aims to reach operators who may not regularly follow Meta discussions.
Regarding support from Discourse Core (CDCK), Thomas_Rother asked if the company could offer promotion for such community-led initiatives. mae clarified that CDCK requires confirmed attendee numbers before committing any resources or formal planning, though they remain interested in supporting meetups where participation is evident. Falco noted that CDCK team members have been actively engaging with the community at other events like the FairTech Summit and Open Source Summit, meeting various Discourse operators directly.
To facilitate organization, Thomas_Rother created a poll for interested participants to select potential dates (December 27–30, 2026) for the meetup. A reminder was later posted to encourage users to fill out the poll to help determine if there is sufficient interest to proceed with logistics.
Unfortunately responses were limited. Maybe my request was a bit too late then, but let’s try again: the call for the 2026 congress “40C3” is out now and the location will have more space as they are moving from the CCH congress center to the Hamburg Messe at https://www.hamburg.de/freizeit/maerkte-und-messen/messen/messehallen-323044
Would be nice if we could create an “Event” entry at meta, seems that I am not allowed to do so. Then we could collect possible participants …
As the new location at the Hamburg fair has much more space than last year, there is also a better chance to get a room for a personal meeting of people from the Discourse community.
I’m now seriously considering coming to 40C3 from the UK this year. The December dates work much better for me than something during the university year, and I’d definitely be interested in a Discourse operators/community meetup if one can be organised.
As I mentioned in the earlier thread, I previously ran Physics with Ethan, a small self-hosted Discourse instance in the UK. That server has since been repurposed as a Speedify server, but I remain particularly interested in self-hosting, integrations/plugins, smaller community-run sites, education, and the longer-term operation of Discourse communities.
I also think having an Event entry or some other simple way of recording likely attendees would be useful. Even a rough indication of numbers would make it easier to see whether there is enough interest to request a room.
Another possible way of reaching self-hosted operators, if the Discourse team considered it appropriate, might be a temporary text-only notice in the discourse_docker launcher during rebuilds, linking to this topic. Something very unobtrusive such as:
Discourse community: European operators/supporters are discussing a possible meetup at 40C3 in Hamburg, 27–30 December 2026. See: https://meta.discourse.org/t/chaos-computer-club-congress-in-hamburg-40c3-december-2026-call-for-participation/412300
That would reach people actively maintaining self-hosted instances who may not regularly follow Meta, and it could simply be removed or expire after the event. I’m not sure whether using the launcher for a community notice like this would be considered appropriate, but it might be worth considering as a very low-cost way of making the idea more visible.
For reference, the earlier discussion and poll are here:
Thanks for pushing this, Thomas, and for the update on the venue.
I’d like to raise one concern: the cost. For 39C3 the standard ticket was €190, supporter tickets went up to €300, and tickets sold out very quickly (usually within minutes). If 40C3 prices stay in that range, add travel and a hotel stay between Christmas and New Year’s, and attending easily costs well over €200. Many of us run Discourse communities as volunteers or on open-source budgets, and I doubt most operators have that to spare, especially these days. The ticket shortage alone could keep people out.
So here is a counter-proposal: an open, informal meetup in a nice café or restaurant in Hamburg, ideally on 27 or 28 December. Anyone attending the Congress can drop by, and everyone else can join without a ticket. The cost would be just a coffee or a meal. If the group prefers, a date outside the holiday week would work too.
Very good idea! I will be at 40C3. I could help finding a (cheap or free) location elsewhere in Hamburg, aside from the official 40C3 site. We have 219 views for this thread today and only 7 likes. Some more feedback for this idea from the community would be nice.
And, unfortunately, there was no statement from CDCK side yet - @mae@hawk- what do you think?
I am just curious about your opinions. A “real life gathering” of people working with Discourse at the largest hacker event in Europe can be useful for the whole Discourse project. Can we expect some kind of promotion from CDCK if we organize a meeting of Discourse operators at or “around” the 40C3?
Not sure I can attend, but I second that Discourse should have some kind of presence around CCC. Outside of Germany it doesn’t have such a large footprint, but within Germany it’s very well known by engineers. In particular those who love to tinker with stuff, and have a community around the things they build - some of whom also have related jobs and decision power at enterprise companies and startups here.
Videos for all talks of the current and the previous CCC events are available at
The main talks on the various main stages at CCC always have an english translation and international speakers use english already. Here in Europe the CCC is the most important hackers meeting, comparable to DEFCON in the US. A good overview is available at
Here is a poll to collect possible participants for a meeting of Discourse self hosters, operators and developers at the 40C3 Chaos Communication Congress in Hamburg, Germany. Location will be somewhere in Hamburg and outside of the official CCC location at the “Hamburg Messe und Congress”. Thus people would not need CCC tickets to participate. If we can collect enough people, we can further discuss the organisation of the meeting.
Friendly reminder, as the 40C3 time slot after christmas is coming nearer …
I would offer to organize a meeting somewhere outside of the 40C3 location (Hamburg Messe), so that people would not necessarily need a 40C3 ticket to attend.
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