How would you make Defcon 21 better?

[Deviant Ollam]

Re: How would you make Defcon 21 better?

Does that mean you volunteer for the review board next year? Just 300-400 or so submissions to review! We would love to have you.

I will absolutely do this. =)

... heh, if we are moving to a two-track or maximum three-track model, that is. That's a system i would get behind and gladly support the increased effort it would take to really cull through all the submissions and select only the most deserving.

Of course, in a perfect world, a mandatory part of the submission process would be including a link to a YouTube video (unpublished vids would be ok, too) of the submitter speaking to a room full of people. if we hear "uhm" in the video then they get bumped.

[wick2o]

Re: How would you make Defcon 21 better?

A couple of issues to consider:
- A lot of speakers submit to multiple conferences. If their CFP or materials become public sometimes they are not considered for other conferences, their "secret sauce" is now known and if they don't get selected it might be a waste of their energy.
- Some speakers have confidential info in their talks, like the name of vendors they have found bugs in. Even if they are doing responsible disclosure if the bugs arn't fixed yet it wouldn't be cool to expose their CFP.
- How do you prevent a popularity contest or robo-voting?
- Do you let people pick if they want their CFP to be public? Then do yo ugive preference to those that do and distort the submission process but some people not bothering to submit?
- Someone has to load all the CFPs online. Now maybe we could start with them that way next year, and it is something we have looked at in the past.

All of this leads to manual redaction of the sensitive parts of the CFPs. Remove names to prevent popularity contests, but you then also loose the ability for people to provide insight on the submitters past work and if it was quality.

I have looked for commercial CFP systems to use, but have not found any yet. If you guys come accross one please let me know! We plan to have a selection committee for DC 21 and it would be great if there was an easy way for them to work.

Good points, most of which I didn't think of/consider.

What kind of things are you looking for in a CFP system? why does it have to be commercial? I'm not one to call myself an expert, but it doesn't seem like it would be too difficult to put a custom form for on Bugzilla type submissions...or even roll your own with a simple web interface/database to keep track of info, assign reviewers, keep track of the reviews, and automate the "yes your in", "sorry, maybe next year" email processes

I've got time/energy I could donate to such a project. Something like this could become a nice opensource project for use at other cons if done properly.

perhaps something along the lines of : http://www.openconf.com would suite your needs
WiK

[kallahar]

Re: How would you make Defcon 21 better?

Put a webcam on every speaker, throw them all on justin.tv, let people stream it to their laptop/phones from con (just put an hourly/daily access code inside the con area to prevent "piracy"). Less lines, lots of people who can't fit in the room can still hear.

The DVD guy probably wouldn't be happy though... but 10,000 attendees would be.

[sintax_error]

Re: How would you make Defcon 21 better?

i personally plan to keep on shouting the "Two Tracks Only!" mantra from the mountaintops forever and ever. there are TOO MANY talks overall at DEFCON. period.

I'm going to second this with a couple of caveats. I think it was astcell earlier in this thread who brought up the older three track model. Combined with SkyTalks, I think it would more than cover enough content to make the most out of the talks side of con and bring back that community feeling of knowing there's a 25% chance that the random person you start a conversation with saw the same talk. I personally like the idea of two larger rooms for two major tracks, and perhaps a slightly smaller room dedicated to lightning talks and/or new speakers, as well as a good sized room for SkyTalks. You'd first of all cut down the number of talks, and with one track being lightning talks, you inherently stagger the release of at least every other quickie talk which I'd imagine would somewhat cut down on congestion in the hallways. Just my 2¢ on talks, I'm sure I'll come up with more later on.

[Dark Tangent]

Re: How would you make Defcon 21 better?

DT,

why not leave some of the talks up for public voting? Honestly, vet them first but then let the attendees pick a few. Might limit a little stress on the review board.

WiK

A couple of issues to consider:
- A lot of speakers submit to multiple conferences. If their CFP or materials become public sometimes they are not considered for other conferences, their "secret sauce" is now known and if they don't get selected it might be a waste of their energy.
- Some speakers have confidential info in their talks, like the name of vendors they have found bugs in. Even if they are doing responsible disclosure if the bugs arn't fixed yet it wouldn't be cool to expose their CFP.
- How do you prevent a popularity contest or robo-voting?
- Do you let people pick if they want their CFP to be public? Then do yo ugive preference to those that do and distort the submission process but some people not bothering to submit?
- Someone has to load all the CFPs online. Now maybe we could start with them that way next year, and it is something we have looked at in the past.

All of this leads to manual redaction of the sensitive parts of the CFPs. Remove names to prevent popularity contests, but you then also loose the ability for people to provide insight on the submitters past work and if it was quality.

I have looked for commercial CFP systems to use, but have not found any yet. If you guys come accross one please let me know! We plan to have a selection committee for DC 21 and it would be great if there was an easy way for them to work.

[wick2o]

Re: How would you make Defcon 21 better?

Does that mean you volunteer for the review board next year? Just 300-400 or so submissions to review! We would love to have you.

DT,

why not leave some of the talks up for public voting? Honestly, vet them first but then let the attendees pick a few. Might limit a little stress on the review board.

WiK

[Dark Tangent]

Re: How would you make Defcon 21 better?

i would really love to see more review or discussion of the talks that are being proposed... that would make the biggest difference in DEFCON, in my view.

Does that mean you volunteer for the review board next year? Just 300-400 or so submissions to review! We would love to have you.

[astcell]

Re: How would you make Defcon 21 better?

Maybe we can get an I <3 Radio station.

[wick2o]

Re: How would you make Defcon 21 better?

Make the entire screen the slide and put the presenter in a little "2nd channel" type of box.

No one really needs to see the speakers, just the audio and slides would be awesome.

What would be REALLY cool is if the talks were broadcast via FM/AM radio live. Perhaps not everyone, but so you could listen while in the chillout room perhaps with speakers out for the smokers.... Maybe some other quieter areas of the CON like the bloodkode room.

Just a random idea...

[astcell]

Re: How would you make Defcon 21 better?

Make the entire screen the slide and put the presenter in a little "2nd channel" type of box.

[Deviant Ollam]

Re: How would you make Defcon 21 better?

i personally plan to keep on shouting the "Two Tracks Only!" mantra from the mountaintops forever and ever. there are TOO MANY talks overall at DEFCON. period.

this isn't even a commentary about speaker and topic selection, which is a whole other point of contention every year (but this year especially) but rather simply a statement that fragmenting out the energy of the group so much is hurting DEFCON, in my opinion.

it's awesome to be in the hangout area or at a party or even just on Twitter and saying "wow, did anyone see blah blah blah's talk at noon today?!" and have a dozen people around you all respond with a hearty, "yeah, it was awesome!" or "i can't wait to try that!"

you don't get that anymore at DEFCON. you are lucky if even your closest friends have seen the talks that you saw, let alone other people whom you meet at parties.

this, plus the fact that i would really love to see more review or discussion of the talks that are being proposed... that would make the biggest difference in DEFCON, in my view.

[jax]

Re: How would you make Defcon 21 better?

Some sort of split screen on DEFCON tv where we can see the slides/demo along with the presenter would be awesome.

I second this. I was unable to get into some presentations and watched them in my room at the Rio instead. Unfortunately, defcon TV only showed the speakers, and some presentations really lost a lot by not including the slides.

To add my own suggestion, how about discounted tickets for children attending defcon kids when their accompanying adult buys a regular human ticket? It's great to see how much defcon kids has grown and developed, but with such a full schedule in the defcon kids program, it seems a little unfair to charge the same price for kids who are only participating in a subset of the con. Plus, people with younger kids probably are not taking them to the after-hours events that are part of "general-admission" defcon. The kids' badges could be visually different from the human badges to deter adults from trying to cheap out, and could be restricted to the intended age range for defcon kids.

[theprez98]

Re: How would you make Defcon 21 better?

Yeah, we tried this a few years ago and it turns out that it's extremely hard to predict. The greatest thing about most of the Rio rooms is that they're plenty big for people to just hang out in. Only a handful of the biggest talks were full.

Now Track 4 is another issue. CTF and Track 4 should have been swapped. There are NO talks that fit in a small room any more.

Kallahar

When was it tried? What were the results? I'm fairly active on the forums and I recall talking about it on several occasions, but never seeing it put into place.

[kallahar]

Re: How would you make Defcon 21 better?

Yeah, we tried this a few years ago and it turns out that it's extremely hard to predict. The greatest thing about most of the Rio rooms is that they're plenty big for people to just hang out in. Only a handful of the biggest talks were full.

Now Track 4 is another issue. CTF and Track 4 should have been swapped. There are NO talks that fit in a small room any more.

Kallahar

[theprez98]

Re: How would you make Defcon 21 better?

The problem with the convention area itself is that we have capacity to seat everyone, but it's basically a guess as to which talks will be the most popular. For instance, Track 4 was the smallest area but ended up attracting some of the largest audiences for a couple of talks. I know this was not anticipated.
Arclight

This has been suggested before, but maybe it's worth trying, at least on a trial basis: let people "vote" on the talks they want to see ahead of time, and compare the data to turnout. Sure, people will try to break the voting system or otherwise screw with it. Certainly don't rely on this data for critical decisions, but *maybe* it will give the sense of what talks will be popular.