This year's HCPP (the last one in a sense) was pretty special for me. As probably the only conference fully dedicated to cryptoanarchy it was always my favorite.
This year it was mostly about personal connections for me. I feel that over past few years, people have been running around the world and trying things and they came to tell us about their experience and results. In the hallways, but also talks. First few years were visions, last few were experiences and lessons learnt.
But it also gave me something more. I used to get this at CCC. This knowledge of what is important, what is going on and what we are doing. I became disconnected with the main CCC ideology, which is also very political, not very cypherpunk. It turned from "we write code and hack" more "we have to speak up and lobby the european commission".
I've just realized that I got the same feeling from hcpp that I used to get from CCC.
I love CCC for other things.