[CryptoParty] proposal: a big press party

[Hauke Laging]

Hello,

I (and in one case the society where I give my courses) have been contacted by 
four TV channels just today... And that though it clearly says on the Berlin 
page that what we do are not even "real" Cryptoparties (not by that name).

We can learn one thing from that: 

Do not just give a mailinglist's URL as "contact". Journalists don't like 
mailinglists (like most other people for this purpose).


And during one of the talks I had an idea:

We could try to set up a big event for the press. Or several such events in 
cities where a lot of press is located. Every channel / newspaper / magazine 
is invited to send ten people, each of them joined by two friends. So in the 
end that would be several hundred people.

These people would get taught crypto and privacy technology. Like on a regular 
Cryptoparty but

1) obviously better
2) being allowed to shoot for their news

The big crowd would get a rather short general lecture and I think all of them 
should get OpenPGP keys. Good ones. After that there should be several 
lectures in parallel so that the participants can choose what they want to 
learn more about.


I think such an event (or series of events) would have several advantages over 
the usual Cryptoparties:

1) Within a short time many journalists would get familiar with the subject.
2) With such a big number of colleagues and friends involved it seems very 
probable to me that they will get used to it and that they will make their 
other colleagues attend to normal events over time.
3) The big amount of both attending people and investigation manpower and the 
long preparation time would allow getting insights we usually do not get, even 
after the event. It could be professionally checked how much which people have 
learnt e.g.
4) The event itself would draw a lot of attention. It should be easy to make 
the press increase this effect. What is going to happen if the majority of the 
German press asks the schools and universities what the possibilities for 
their students are? If they don't consider this a relevant education 
subject... 8-)
5) Due to the amount of available money it would be possible to get expert 
instructors (travel and hotel costs).
6) I would love to hear something about M$ being asked why their cr*ppy mail 
client does not support OpenPGP...
7) Money again: Every participant could get his own smartcard. The companies 
could even get it with their logo printed on it.
8) From then on we would see fingerprints in the imprints of all magazines and 
newspapers (not just c't).
9) I can imagine that several companies / organizations would use such an 
event for announcing better OpenPGP (or whatever) support. Like these:
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=318005
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=321970
10) Everyone would know the OpenPGP mascot afterwards. ;-)

Usually the press does not like to share the same event with competing 
journalists but I guess in this case they would easily understand that not 
every media company can get its own event (or rather: If they did so then it 
would not get a lot of attention).

Of course, I suggest to not allow any well known politicians to enter that 
area. They had their chance.


CU

Hauke
-- 
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