DEF CON Music

[MahPiyaAte]

From what I've been told, DJ's are hired to play at DEF CON, and they play for an hour at a time, and cannot have two time slots at the same event, is this correct? Approximately what time do they start? Or is it a 24 hour thing? Is there DJ's playing every time slot, or are there certain blocks of no music?

What events have the music? Or is it at just one location? I'm very curious about how the music works at DEF CON. Thanks!

[Dark Tangent]

Re: DEF CON Music

DJ Great Scott! Will be setting up the DJ Action this year, and we are finalizing the budget and locations. I'll defer lineup decisions to him, but some DJs have played for hours in the past, others not. Just depends.

[MahPiyaAte]

Re: DEF CON Music

Oh so there's not a specified time slot for each DJ? Any idea of about how much of a budget you guys are lookin at? Or budgets in past years?

[TheCotMan]

Re: DEF CON Music

Oh so there's not a specified time slot for each DJ?

I don't see how you came to this conclusions with the answer you were provided.

Any idea of about how much of a budget you guys are lookin at? Or budgets in past years?

That was answered by stating it was being finalized.

Now to address your first non sequitur conclusion:

In the past, there have been schedules for DJ which were one hour long, and other schedules when they were longer. Usually, the schedule of DJ is known well in advance of Defcon, and published in the program. Here is an example of what a schedule looked like LAST YEAR:

https://www.defcon.org/html/defcon-17/dc-17-djs.html

Of course, past performance schedules provide no guarantees for future planning.

Last year, the organizer of the DJ scheduling for the venues at Defcon (GreatScott!) stepped-in to organize the B&W Ball after the previous organizers stepped down. Many of the decisions were made before the present organizer took over. This will be a whole new year, and GreatScott! is not inheriting a collection of decisions already made for him.

So, now we are back to the same suggestion provided above:

DJ Great Scott! Will be setting up the DJ Action this year, and we are finalizing the budget and locations. I'll defer lineup decisions to him, but some DJs have played for hours in the past, others not. Just depends.

What does this mean? It means that you will really need to get information from Great Scott! on how he plans to run the DJ Events at Defcon 18, which includes scheduling.

Great Scott! has posted a few things about planning in his blog, and in the forums: Booking Open -- Direction on the process of application to be a DJ.

If you want an authoritative answer to your questions on details of planning with respect to DJ action, wait for GreatScott! to provide an answer, and while you wait, review the content he has posted about planning for last year and this year.

[greatscott]

Re: DEF CON Music

Thanks for covering that TheCotMan. :)

MahPiyaAte - to address your questions about how the slots work - I can't actually answer them until we have the following figured out first:
1) the budget
2) available locations
3) times we have access to the available locations
4) the total number of talent who apply to perform that we'd like to book

The slot assignments really will come down to a balancing act between the total number of hours that need to be filled, and the number of acts I think I can manage without being driven clinically insane ;)

I can tell you that DJs aren't exactly "hired." If you check out our application, you'll see that we only offer each act 2 passes to the conference.

[DJ Jackalope]

Re: DEF CON Music

Also-
yeah- there are only 2 dj passes that are general admission for Defcon.

We djs aren't here for the money (someone please stop me if i am speaking out of turn). We are here to have a freaking blast in Vegas for a weekend, do an epic ton of networking, make a lot of new friends, and trade a ton of new mixes, tunes, skills, and all that.

.02