The 37C3 halfnarp FAQ
Q: What is halfnarp?

A: halfnarp is a service by Chaos Communication Congress’ content crew. It shows a live preview of our conference lecture planning tool and allows conference attendees to store and share a list of events they plan to attend. When users submit their favorites to the halfnarp server, the numbers allow adjusting the conference’s Fahrplan.

Remember when some of the talks you most desperately wanted to see were scheduled at the same time? If we know about your preferences, the time table can be optimized for a minimal global amount of collisions. Remember when the lecture you wanted to get into was overcrowded because it was put into the smallest hall? Your numbers help to estimate demand and finding the right place for a talk.

Q: How does it work?

A: 37C3 Fahrplan is curated by six teams each responsible for one track. By default, lectures are sorted by these tracks.

Your choices will be stored locally in your browser for future visits. If you are done selecting and feel like helping to make the Fahrplan better, hit „Submit“. This will also reveal a download button for your personalized calendar in ical format and present a qrcode with a JSON dictionary of your preferences to import by mobile clients.

Once there is a preliminary timetable set, you can browse lectures by day using the day-view buttons.

The „Filter event“ text field allows you to filter events list by a type ahead search.

Q: How can I share my preferences?

A: Once you hit „Submit“, your address bar reveals your public calendar URL. Share this URL with your friends, so they can get inspired by your preferences.

If you click on your friends’ public calendar URL, their favorited events appear purple, alongside yours in green.

Q: Can the halfnarp be used to hack the Fahrplan?

A: The most important result is a conflict map showing how much all users do not want two certain lectures to happen at the same time. Absolute number are mostly ignored, making it hard to manipulate our Fahrplan. Also, results are being processed by actual humans, using their brains and halfnarps numbers as hints.

Q: How can I help?

A: Submitting your preferences to the halfnarp servers helps a lot. You can find and create pull requests for halfnarp on its github home.