schedule... breakouts, etc

[Deviant Ollam]

so, the schedule as posted on the web site seems a tiny bit unclear. maybe it's just how my browser is rendering it. at first it looked like i was interrupting Paget's talk, but i was certain that couldn't be right.

essentially... the room that Paget and others in Track One would be using for a post-talk breakout* is where i and other "turbo talk" speakers will be? i must say, it's very rewarding (as always) to be a speaker... but i get the sense that we're really packing in the talks.

lots of thursday sessions now? DC101 was understandable, but now i'm seeing a whole string of talks then. an FBI fellow at a BBQ yesterday said he heard a rumor that DEFCON was considering extending through to monday. (gratefully, the Fed's scoop on that count was as off-the-mark as some of their other intelligence)

i can't imagine the strain and difficulty of combing through all the submissions that come in... but am i the only one with concerns about how much DEFCON is growing? these aren't major concerns at present in the least, just musings about the future.


* which is going to be empty, given that Adam Savage is up after Paget

[theprez98]

Re: schedule... breakouts, etc

so, the schedule as posted on the web site seems a tiny bit unclear. maybe it's just how my browser is rendering it. at first it looked like i was interrupting Paget's talk, but i was certain that couldn't be right.

essentially... the room that Paget and others in Track One would be using for a post-talk breakout* is where i and other "turbo talk" speakers will be? i must say, it's very rewarding (as always) to be a speaker... but i get the sense that we're really packing in the talks.

lots of thursday sessions now? DC101 was understandable, but now i'm seeing a whole string of talks then. an FBI fellow at a BBQ yesterday said he heard a rumor that DEFCON was considering extending through to monday. (gratefully, the Fed's scoop on that count was as off-the-mark as some of their other intelligence)

i can't imagine the strain and difficulty of combing through all the submissions that come in... but am i the only one with concerns about how much DEFCON is growing? these aren't major concerns at present in the least, just musings about the future.


* which is going to be empty, given that Adam Savage is up after Paget

I think your browser is just pushing the "fifth" talk down to the next line. I see all five talks in the same horizontal column. See here*

Yes, its geocities. :P

[TheCotMan]

Re: schedule... breakouts, etc

so, the schedule as posted on the web site seems a tiny bit unclear. maybe it's just how my browser is rendering it. at first it looked like i was interrupting Paget's talk, but i was certain that couldn't be right.

essentially... the room that Paget and others in Track One would be using for a post-talk breakout* is where i and other "turbo talk" speakers will be? i must say, it's very rewarding (as always) to be a speaker... but i get the sense that we're really packing in the talks.

lots of thursday sessions now? DC101 was understandable, but now i'm seeing a whole string of talks then. an FBI fellow at a BBQ yesterday said he heard a rumor that DEFCON was considering extending through to monday. (gratefully, the Fed's scoop on that count was as off-the-mark as some of their other intelligence)

i can't imagine the strain and difficulty of combing through all the submissions that come in... but am i the only one with concerns about how much DEFCON is growing? these aren't major concerns at present in the least, just musings about the future.


* which is going to be empty, given that Adam Savage is up after Paget

It looks to me like the title of the track is at the top of each presentation name. Re-size your font smaller, or make the width of your browser wider, and watch the presentations conform to one row per time-slot (row).

There is an advantage to the present layout, as it would probably be more friendly to portable devices, and people with lower resolution screens, so they can avoid horizontal panning.

[Deviant Ollam]

Re: schedule... breakouts, etc

Re-size your font smaller, or make the width of your browser wider

no amount of font shrinking makes the columns shift. and i'm running at 1024x768... not the most remarkable resolution but it's what's native on my LCD panel. even if i F11 maximize Firefox i still don't get the proper display.

it would probably be more friendly to portable devices, and people with lower resolution screens

heh... i see that it doesn't cause horizontal scrolling, but i am not so sure that people with smaller screens are going to be all that better off.

[TheCotMan]

Re: schedule... breakouts, etc

no amount of font shrinking makes the columns shift. and i'm running at 1024x768... not the most remarkable resolution but it's what's native on my LCD panel. even if i F11 maximize Firefox i still don't get the proper display.

heh... i see that it doesn't cause horizontal scrolling, but i am not so sure that people with smaller screens are going to be all that better off.

That is where opinion comes to play, and there is no best answer. For my money, having to go down a page, scroll right, then scroll left, then down a page, scroll right, then scroll left, all the way down to the end of a document is quite user unfriendly. Of course, Your mileage may vary. [ I guess some people might like scrolling both directions if that is their only source of exercise in a day. (heh heh.) They'd have fingers the size of sausages, but only their index fingers, or their horiztontal scroll-wheel mouse button finger.] If it was set to always conform to one row, and you didn't mind the horizontal shifting all the way down the page at lower resolution, then it could be better.

What is being described is the effect of a *markup* language, not a *layouot* language. And this is also a difference between HTML and PDF. I'm one of those old-timers that really likes it when I can re-size my browser window and take advantage of a large resolution when I have it, and not be seriously hindered when running at a lower resolution by having to scroll left and right to read each line.

Being able to read an entire page with *only* vertical scrolling is far more favorable than having to deal with both vertical and horizontal scrolling, and I despise sites that force users to only view content at one resolution. If you buy a display that runs at 1800x1200 and you go visit http://www.wsj.com/ you see nice gray bars on either side of the content, and if you shrink to 640x480 you are in the suck-land of both horizontal and vertical scrolling. In this way, they are dictating to you how you should view their content. They are trying to convert a markup language into a layout language and take away your control. They believe they know what the best resolution is for you to view their content.

You ever use large terminals and check out man pages? Imagine if they were stuck at 80colx24rows, and how much that would suck.

Though having only one cell wrap does make it initially more difficult to understand the context, and perhaps the addition of a prefix "Room:" before each room location at the top of each cell might help, what has been provided is a clever solution to the problem of trying to make something work for both high resolution screens and low resolutions screens without forcing users to scroll their screens both horizontally and vertically.

But that is just my opinion, and everyone is entitled to their own likes and dislikes. :-)

[Nikita]

Re: schedule... breakouts, etc

so, the schedule as posted on the web site seems a tiny bit unclear. maybe it's just how my browser is rendering it.]

It's your browser, It looks fine to me, in ie, firefox, safari and iphone. Really well done. it does shrink down to be readable on a mobile phone, it is by time which is really helpful, it also shows what room your talk is in and when it ends. Mobile friendly schedule was the request from our fearless leader as well as everyone else out there asking for something more mobile friendly.. and it works fine on my screen at that resolution, and looks perfect on my netbook as well.

i must say, it's very rewarding (as always) to be a speaker... but i get the sense that we're really packing in the talks. ]

There really are not *that* many more talks this year than last. The con is still running essentially the same hours. The break out room is actually smaller than track 5 was last year.

lots of thursday sessions now? DC101 was understandable, but now i'm seeing a whole string of talks then.
]

As Dark Tangent decided when we opened the CFP months ago, we would be accepting new training sessions and a few interesting and perhaps more intimate talks this year on beginner and refresher courses.

This was a goal for some time, perhaps there was too much focus on 101 and what they were doing that you did not take note in Dark Tangents goal to have more things available on Thursday. These are not mandatory events, you don't have to go. Not everyone whats to go to the bbq,shoot, sushi con, etc, some people may find use and interest in at the site events and that is what they are there for.

Here is the thing, the content that was accepted on Thursday was submitted specifically for Thursday, with the intent of the content geared toward enjoying the con, and learning how to do things. Thursday content is outside of the normal content presented Friday through Sunday. So it doesn't take away from your "pre con" day, it gives other attendees something to enjoy pre con. Thursday is Pre Con for new attendees and old farts who want to take in a quick learn how to solder or lock pick session before running off to do other things. If it goes well we may look into doing trainings again on Thursday in the future. We are also trying to ramp up the night life scene at the con on Thursday night too.

I understand that Thursday may seem unnecessary or weird to some here, and that it might not provide a use for the people here on the forums, but the forums and people who are veterans and go to the toxic bbq make up I'm guessing between 1 to 5% of the entire attendee population?


What is wrong with variety? Having more things to choose from never hurt anyone. Having a Lock picking session on Thursday isn't going to keep people from going to the village Friday- Sun, in fact, It might provide more educated visitors.

an FBI fellow at a BBQ yesterday said he heard a rumor that DEFCON was considering extending through to monday. (gratefully, the Fed's scoop on that count was as off-the-mark as some of their other intelligence)]

In the future you can tell this FED he has no idea what he is talking about, courtesy of Nikita and feel free to tap my lines if you don't believe me. Pretty much you can keep that quote on standby anytime you want.

The moment we decide to extend the con a day, we announce it on the website, like Dark Tangent did several times over the past few months. Once I realized people were not catching on to this, I did post in an attempt to clear things up, but by that time I think people were already under their own impressions.

i can't imagine the strain and difficulty of combing through all the submissions that come in... but am i the only one with concerns about how much DEFCON is growing? these aren't major concerns at present in the least, just musings about the future.
]

Some people can not stand change, and I understand that, but the fact of the matter is we get good content. We want to share it. It's incredibly hard to look over someones submission, think to yourself wow this person has something cool to say, and then dismiss it because " we don't want to get too big, we don't have the room, they aren't headliners". If we can make the space for it, we certainly try to. I understand that it can get hard for the people who want to see *everything* but we don't have the venue to hold the whole con in one room at a time. We are currently providing more variety and trying to give as much diversity in the content as possible, meaning we have to get a little bigger to accommodate that. When I look back at the day's of the AP I would say the choices are better, the rooms are better, the speakers are more diverse, and we can accept more speakers and give everyone a shot at speaking. Things are far better in comparison, and the selection process is a little less "elitest" giving the chance for new speakers to make their mark.

The breakout track is exceptional and I am glad that Dark Tangent wanted to see it put to more use this year. We could except more speakers in the same time frame as Track 5 last year, and lots of excellent 20 minute content gets to be shown, yours included. Without that track, we wouldn't have been able to accept you or the many others who have cool things to share.

[neil]

Re: schedule... breakouts, etc

This new layout is an attempt, as CotMan surmised, to achieve a more mobile friendly format for the schedule, One of the biggest complaints about the online schedule I hear every year is that it doesn't work on phones. Table based layouts, as we have used in the past, scale only to a certain point, and work best at static widths. The cells in the new layout are meant to wrap to the next line if there is not enough room horizontally, and the rows signify start times, with end times listed in each cell. Believe me when I say this way was significantly more time consuming, but ultimately more user friendly.

Someone always wants an iCal based solution so they can add it to their calendar apps. The iCal solution is less than ideal just because things tend to change on the fly sometimes, and and online schedule can be updated up to and during con without having to distribute a file multiple times.

So the solution I present this time around, seeks to kill three birds with one stone:

1.To be best read at full resolution on regular browsers on desk or laptop screens, while keeping a table-like feel.
2.To scale gracefully down to smaller screen sizes without having to scroll horizontally.
3.To avoid the need to download updates if things change.

Admittedly, it may need a bit of tweaking, because it should look fine at 1024px wide (works fine for Nikita and I at 1024), but that shouldn't be too hard. In reality, there is no one size fits all solution when coding for the web, you can only attempt to please as many browsers and screens sizes as possible, and hope that if something doesn't render quite right, it will degrade gracefully. I think it does.

[renderman]

Re: schedule... breakouts, etc

Just my $0.02 about the Thursday stuff:

As a participant in the original thread I think it's great idea, but I think that some of the idea was to keep it small and purely refresher/cram sessions utilizing one room rather than whole tracks and alot more space. Also the scope was not well advertised as had I know that there was this breadth of topics and space, I would have put in some quick bits from my 10+ years knowledge, scars, and contest entries.

Work in progress, I'm sure next year will work out better for everyone.

Also, due to the coolness factor of the presenters on the DC101 panel, I just have to show up to heckle now, thus ruining a perfectly good opportunity to cram more drinks down my gullet

[Deviant Ollam]

Re: schedule... breakouts, etc

i agree that it surely must be my browser, since other folk (including those on mobile devices) have stated that things render fine. Neil... tremendous work as always when it comes to putting things together. Hehe, and going to all the events that i do, i have seen my share of less than ideal con web sites which are not as easy to navigate and find info about the talks, etc.

Kita, i'm hoping that you didn't take my comments as indicating displeasure with how things are at present... just a concern about where things may grow in the future. For instance, there was a time (when most cons were young) that "tracks" would have themes to them in some way. ShmooCon still tries to do that a bit, but most events have dispensed with that... it's just too hard to manage when things grow in size. I worry that many such lines blur over time.

I love that Thursday is a separate category of "intro" events. I think that it's a good solution, i just don't want to see pressure come down on you and others in the future... forcing you folk to squeeze "traditional" talks into Thursday slots, effectively making DEFCON one day longer. i realize it's a far-fetched scenario... but all things happen in little steps.

Meh, maybe i'm just too much of a worrier.

[Nikita]

Re: schedule... breakouts, etc

Kita, i'm hoping that you didn't take my comments as indicating displeasure with how things are at present... just a concern about where things may grow in the future.

Nah, just my way of clarifying all points. You post was totally valid, and I felt deserved a response, aside from my two cents on the website issue, which was Neils issue to address. Had I known he was writing a post at the same time, I would have skipped it.

For instance, there was a time (when most cons were young) that "tracks" would have themes to them in some way. ShmooCon still tries to do that a bit, but most events have dispensed with that... it's just too hard to manage when things grow in size. I worry that many such lines blur over time.

I tried very hard to group similar subjects this year, but you are right especially in the breakout room, there came a point when we had to give up on grouping that track. Too many different subjects, and too many different "schedules" to accommodate to have proper themes going in that track, something I regret and wish it could have been a little better. Oh well, next year it will be better, now knowing how hard it was to get the breakout track organized to everyone's schedule, I'll have a leg up. With the other tracks, I did a little better grouping talks, but its not perfect. I really like the themes too, always my goal to see the tracks built that way too! It pleases me greatly to hear that people like you still like that format. I see it this way, If I want to see one talk on X subject, I want to see them all (and don't want to move rooms), to get a balanced perspective or see what the other guy/gal has to say.

I love that Thursday is a separate category of "intro" events. I think that it's a good solution, i just don't want to see pressure come down on you and others in the future... forcing you folk to squeeze "traditional" talks into Thursday slots, effectively making DEFCON one day longer. i realize it's a far-fetched scenario... but all things happen in little steps.

So help me Goram, that won't happen. We don't want to steal content from Fri-Sun, it would not be fair to say have "insert big name here" speak on Thursday on X greatest 0-day in the world, etc. I was asked a few times because we did not have the room Friday-Sunday for a cool talk if we could put it on Thursday, Both DT and I firmly had to say no, traditional content doesn't belong on Thursday. I totally get what you are saying and I speak for DT when I say he doesn't want to see that happen.

As renderman said perhaps there wasn't enough good advertising this year, DT put the message out there a few times, but perhaps we did not rally the troops enough on his behalf. Like I said, if it works well this year, next year we may continue with the intro courses and short training sessions (with better advertising of it).

Meh, maybe i'm just too much of a worrier.

Nah, the saying goes "Defcon is your con"

[makumozo]

Re: schedule... breakouts, etc

Ah man, had I known about all the activity on Thursday and Monday, I would be arriving earlier and leaving later. I already bought my plane ticket. Oh well.

[Nikita]

Re: schedule... breakouts, etc

Ah man, had I known about all the activity on Thursday and Monday, I would be arriving earlier and leaving later. I already bought my plane ticket. Oh well.

There is nothing going on Monday, that I am aware of. Again, Thursday was advertised, next year we will advertise better so people can plan accordingly.

[nerdgir1]

Re: schedule... breakouts, etc

Last year was my first time at Defcon and I realized it is totally worthwhile to show up on Thursday. This year, I was already planning to show up on Thursday and am pleasantly surprised at the amount of content on Thursday! While I may spend more time by the pool working on my Vitamin D levels, I plan to at least check out one or two things before the Con officially starts and it gets crowded :) I think having "intro" sessions on Thursday is a great idea. Thanks!!

[astcell]

Re: schedule... breakouts, etc

Last year I got there early and stayed late. Sure enough I was not the first to arrive or the last to leave. I left Tuesday morning last year expecting to have a nice quiet Monday. Nope! The place was as busy as ever! The trouble is that there is so much to do and limited time in which to do it. I am driving this year, not flying, so I'll be a little more mobile for the Toxic BBQ and other fun runs.

[Rover]

Re: schedule... breakouts, etc

Yeah, I've moved my travel day to Wednesday for the last few Cons. There is always something going on as BH winds down and folks make their way to the Riv. I'm glad to see badge going on sale at 8am, but afraid of what that means for wake-up time to get a spot in line.