How would you make Defcon 21 better?

[OM5]

Re: How would you make Defcon 21 better?

This is a joke right? The was never a line for registration after 1130 - 1200 Thursday morning. The registration team and the Security goons did an outstanding job of managing the registration line this year and I believe they registered the vast majority of attendee's the first three hours of the con.

Agreed totally. This was my third DEFCON. The last Riviera year was a nightmare. Last year, I was in line for 2.5 hours (9:15 to 11:45). This year, 1.5 hours. When I was told that there was no lineup at 1 pm, I was shocked (but happy for those who didn't have to wait). If it keeps going along this way, I would say that registration is no longer an issue that has to be dealt with.

[hinge]

Re: How would you make Defcon 21 better?

I didn't have a problem getting in with my RC pass. Someone from DC left a stack of invites on our reg desk for us to come over. I invited some DC guys to our B&B Ball but I admit if we had had any sizable percentage of DC people show up we would have run out of space. Next year - lets organize the mixing a bit better! Let me know if I can help.

-Andrea (O.M.Ref.G.)

Yes.

Two years ago, I made it to your Black & Blue Ball. Super fun time. I wanted to come this year too (ah, nostalgia, back at the Riv!), but I couldn't pull myself away from Defcon Saturday night (Hacker Jeopardy, Crystal Method, HackerPimps, Jackalope, etc., -- all off the same hallway!).

Hopefully the Defcon planners are paying attention to the fact that you guys have already published your dates for next year (RollerCon US 2013: Las Vegas, July 31st – Aug 4th).

And to stick to the topic of this thread: my biggest way to make DC21 better would be to make DCTV more reliable, but I already posted about that in the DCTV thread.

Thanks to all for a great con.

- hinge

[syrel]

Re: How would you make Defcon 21 better?

keep trying but no, i didnt make any scenes nor did i get into any arguments. the goons i talked to were very nice, but i witnessed less than 5 feet away other goons going wild. but the behavior i described did occur as my friends witnessed it at the same time. and i didnt say all of you were the same, just a select few. Want to know who they are, then tell us who we go to complain to during the con and you might see a few more complaints than those willing to post them here.

This line negates that rest of your idea's, since it goes from "constructive criticism" to you just being a dick.

hardly negates, you just choose to ignore which i understand. i do apologize for taking the opportunity to vent some frustrations but this forums is a far better a place to do so than letting loose an irate mindset onto the rest of the crowd and goons alike.

[CWB]

Re: How would you make Defcon 21 better?

Any point that you made is invalid because I find it hard to believe that any of our staff was as rude or offensive to you as you just were to one of us.

Was this the douche that got his ass kicked out of the Anon panel discussion??? It's pretty bad when Priest comes after you personally to remove your sorry ass (not you Chris, the douche that had some strange obsession with penises...)

I must say, every goon I met was awesome! You guys did such a great job. It was my first time, I didn't know anyone and yet everyone from attendees to speakers to goons made sure I felt welcome and at home. Despite being a n00b, I felt like I was a welcomed addition to the community. I was sad that it was over, but it gives me something to look forward to next year! I can't wait to see my new family again!

[Chris]

Re: How would you make Defcon 21 better?

Here is what I noticed with my friends at defcon 20. I am hoping you can take this and use it for next year.

snipped out a bunch of stuff...

ps....for the wasted blonde red shirt goon playing dubstep in the hallway on sunday using nothing but pandora.... were you TRYING to be like paris hilton or just seeing how many beers it took before you could no longer use an apple computer? cuz until I saw that... I actually thought you were cute.

Any point that you made is invalid because I find it hard to believe that any of our staff was as rude or offensive to you as you just were to one of us.

[CWB]

Re: How would you make Defcon 21 better?

This was my very first DEFCON and I found one main flaw:

It wasn't LONG ENOUGH!!! I did NOT want to go home! I loved it so much!

The other flaw:

Next year can't get here soon enough!!!!

[HighWiz]

Re: How would you make Defcon 21 better?

My suggestion:

Don't open a thread like this till a week (7 days) after DefCon. That way, you give all the people who actually were involved in DefCon and care about DefCon some time to get back into the swing of real life before all the whiner babies come out.

[HighWiz]

Re: How would you make Defcon 21 better?

- WIRELESS: Maybe let us register for wireless ahead of time. I didnt see that offered in the forums so I apologize if I missed it.

Look harder next time: https://twitter.com/TheLockheed/stat...90298434412544 - AND it was re-tweeted by the DefCon account. The Network team gets in on Sunday, Wifi Reg was open by Monday.

We all have shitty jobs (at least at some point in our lives), but you are the asshole that volunteered for it, so STFU.

This line negates that rest of your idea's, since it goes from "constructive criticism" to you just being a dick.

[DaKahuna]

Re: How would you make Defcon 21 better?

- <..... snip snip snip ..... >

- Consider opening the line to get DC21 badges early with a skeleton crew during the afternoon/evening before the con officially starts to get some people through the line early; maybe even have someone distributing badges in the hotel check-in line the afternoon/evening before?

This is a joke right? The was never a line for registration after 1130 - 1200 Thursday morning. The registration team and the Security goons did an outstanding job of managing the registration line this year and I believe they registered the vast majority of attendee's the first three hours of the con.

Distributing badges/collecting cash in the hotel check-in line -- RIGHT!!

[Echo]

Re: How would you make Defcon 21 better?

Please make the Wifi Village room bigger! I missed several lectures beacuse the room was filled to the brim and people were stacked up at the doorway.
Need to have the Defcon program available for tablets/smart phones.

Loved the many parties this year! Keep it up!

[syrel]

Re: How would you make Defcon 21 better?

Here is what I noticed with my friends at defcon 20. I am hoping you can take this and use it for next year.

PROBLEMS:
- OVERCROWDING: The only people that didn't notice were those that didn't show up. DC19 was crowded, but you could get from track to track with no major problems. This year, ALL of my friends told me the same thing over the course of 3 days: "You had to leave the track you were in about 10-20 minutes early to go get in a very long line for the next track you wanted to see and hope there was an available seat. And if you wanted to see track 4, you had to wait in line for the previous talk just to get a spot for the talk you actually wanted to see." Honestly, if I wanted to wait in line all day, I'd have gone to Disneyland. At least there the goons as ugly as goofy won't yell at everyone.

-CTF: I constantly checked in on CTF to see how the teams were doing. Sadly I only saw the scoreboard towards the end of each day. I appreciate the efforts to show the scores with fancy graphs and plot lines, but all I need is a running total and you could have done that with a piece of paper and pen. The CTF room ended up being a louder chillout room with no seats that played funny videos all day. Whatever they were trying to do didnt work, or didnt work well.

- LOCKPICK VILLAGE: Sadly was WAY too small. I didnt much like the arrangement of the seats either. There were only 3 round tables that sat about 10 people each. The room had a lot more space available to fit more people. I had already been introduced to lockpicking so I was using that time to introduce a friend because I knew they would have tools on the table to use before advising my friend to just go out and buy a set. We couldnt get a seat at any of the picking tables so we tried back multiple times, but had no better luck.

- GOONS: There were certainly some professional and uber nice goons this year as there are every year. There were also some very unfriendly goons, some total fucking dickhead goons, and even one or two goons that could easily be called grandpa goon that were likely around for DC01 if not the birth of Christ. There was simply a lack of uniform enforcement. We know goons have the black shirt and (this year) the red badges. Some goons felt they only had to wear the shirt, no badge...which makes me suspect I may be confirming the previous comment regarding the shirts on page 1 of this thread. Maybe they were off duty, but they sure didnt act like it.

The security goons (red shirts) were a lot more sarcastic and mean this year. I know this is defcon and we tend to get away with a lot of curse words and other odd behavior, but unless these clowns are ON STAGE, they should be acting at a minimum level of "professional" regardless of their volunteer status. The people put in charge of keeping order and safety in line do not need to be making constant cracks and jokes at others' personal expense. We all have shitty jobs (at least at some point in our lives), but you are the asshole that volunteered for it, so STFU.

- WIRELESS: To get on the secure wireless network, you have to download the certificate from the defcon website. To do that, you have to either use the insecure network or your mobile phone. Either way, it's asking too much. Given the universal motto of the convention is "turn everything off, even disable it in the BIOS", asking us to go insecure doesn't seem fair. Then, to install the cert, the instructions advised to use the windows cert wizard. Well, I sure as hell dont want to use windows in general let alone at Defcon of all places. So once again, I had to jump on the insecure network just to find decent instructions on installing the certificate to my linux OS. And once that was all said and done, I couldnt even get an IP address, and if I did, the signal was lost after 1 minute. I suspect somoene was doing something like sending deauth requests, but whatever. I tried tethering to my phone, but transfer speed was about 100kB/minute (while outside of the Rio was 18kbs)...possibly a sign of bad kiddies doing bad things and just another reason not to use my phone.


SUGGESTIONS -

OVERCROWDING: While I WISH you could limit the number of badges each year, I know from a capitalistic perspective, that will never happen. But not everyone that is there actually wants to be there and deal with the headaches. I would pay the same $ if I could just tune into the talks live via my computer while sitting comfortably at home, starbucks, or at the buffet down the hall. I know broadcasting would take away from DVD sales, but in return you could actually GAIN back many of the people that have gave up returning to defcon long ago. Plus, you would clear out more room for all the people that actually do want to be there. And even more so, it would make attending cheaper for those that cant afford a hotel, time off work, or have other financial or personal obligations (such as the lady that brought her infant child, stroller, and mother in-law). I would look into live broadcasting and selling virtual seats. But in that, make sure it's the same broadcast you would get if you were to buy the DVDs (ie. speaker AND slides). A friend informed me the live broadcast to the Rio hotel rooms was speaker only which really takes away from the talks, so that I would not pay for.

CTF: some folks didnt speak English. perfectly understandable, but maybe the team banners could be color-coded so the rest of us know who speaks English and who doesn't. on that note, i found it hard to ask teams questions because they were all very busy and very paranoid i was a spy. maybe each team should have a designated PR rep to handle the public and even wear an obvious colored shirt or something to let us know he/she's the guy to poke for info. the scoreboard was working fine last year so whatever they tried this year did not work nearly as well. if you cant broadcast the scores in the CTF room, maybe post them hourly on the DC website or something.

- LOCKPICK VILLAGE: The TOOOL guys at the merch desk said to get a seat and the folks in the TOOOL shirts would be there to answer questions. It was hard enough to do that because the TOOOL shirts were not all the same color and one table didnt even have a TOOOL shirt. I would like to see a donations box to pay for replacement tools that go missing during these events. I planned on making such a donation, but changed my mind after arrival. I would have preferred a few long tables to increase the # of seats and allow the TOOOL crew to walk between ends to assist as needed. the style this year was more of a round-about campfire situation where everyone was supposed to listen to Chief Runs with Beer for a friendly how-to session, but instead everyone just tuned it out and did their own thing. It would have made more efficient use of space to let people practice picking locks while they waited in the mile-long line for track 4 which just so happened to be right outside the door.

- WIRELESS: Maybe let us register for wireless ahead of time. I didnt see that offered in the forums so I apologize if I missed it. How bout linux cert instructions (were there Apple OS instructions as well...I can't remember). Maybe get a real GOON to go around with a signal scanner to find people that are killing wireless sessions and give them their own deauth. It felt like there weren't enough IP addresses, but I have no way to confirm that, so all I can ask is you look into that just in case. I do know that I was trying to do the forensics contest and that REQUIRED the internet so I was very frustrated by that whole situation.

thats all I got for the con. hope it helps someone.

ps....for the wasted blonde red shirt goon playing dubstep in the hallway on sunday using nothing but pandora.... were you TRYING to be like paris hilton or just seeing how many beers it took before you could no longer use an apple computer? cuz until I saw that... I actually thought you were cute.

[noid]

Re: How would you make Defcon 21 better?

Another good idea, but the counter to this has often been:
"Many people that would organize Badge Sales are at BlackHat and need to to train, prep and organize the areas for sales. Additionally, with money changing hands, security Goons would need to be present, and many Security Goons are the the PreDefcon party and/or BlackHat."

Also, please remember we're volunteers. If you think we should now start work on Wednesday, please find me at con next year with something large and awkward shaped as I would like to jam it inside of you.

Honestly the longest anyone had to wait this year was a few hours and those were the die-hard 'I'm *GETTING A BADGE*' people. Most folks just walked right up to the counter or had to only wait a few minutes. As we get better about delivering on badges, I expect less and less of that manic Thursday AM rush once people know that they can take their time getting a badge.

Having DEFCON badge pick up at BlackHat for BlackHat attendees is also a good thing.

[noid]

Re: How would you make Defcon 21 better?

THIS. I will try to start a discussion on this for next year's planning.

Feel free to engage my team on that. For whatever odd reason, DEFCON Security has a really good relationship with the Roller Derby girls. We've been bringing them to the con for a while now and have wondered if we could get their badges on the 'allowed' list for parties. Would be cool if B&W was open to anyone with a DC or RollerCon badge.

[Ziptie]

Re: How would you make Defcon 21 better?

I didn't have a problem getting in with my RC pass. Someone from DC left a stack of invites on our reg desk for us to come over. I invited some DC guys to our B&B Ball but I admit if we had had any sizable percentage of DC people show up we would have run out of space. Next year - lets organize the mixing a bit better! Let me know if I can help.

-Andrea (O.M.Ref.G.)

O.M were you one of the ones that made it to the Hacker Pimps party? If so it was good meeting you, and I second ( or third, fourth what ever were up to) a mixed party. That has the making of awesome all over it.

[astcell]

Re: How would you make Defcon 21 better?

Number 3. With a trailing rolling cooker making fajitas for us.