How would you make Defcon 21 better?

[Legion303]

Re: How would you make Defcon 21 better?

Deviant: there are talks at con?

But seriously, my first couple of presentations sucked. It's hard to get better without practice, especially for people who are already twitchy around crowds. My talks this year were a lot better, I learned not to present solid walls of 8-point text on my slides, and audience engagement went great. If I hadn't already had the first couple of mis-steps under my belt I wouldn't have learned what not to do. I do like Roamer's "newbie track" idea. Something else that might appeal to newbie speakers is to be part of a panel in their field of expertise, since that will theoretically let them get used to speaking in front of people without having all the focus.

[ButterSnatcher]

Re: How would you make Defcon 21 better?

One last question: Is there something or someone specific that we are supposed to do or contact about black out drunks at the parties? I had a couple of idiots that became so drunk that they were unable to take care of themselves or behave in public. For some stupid reason I took pity upon them and spent several hours making sure they didn't get arrested and or drown in their own vomit. After which, I helped to carry their dumbasses back to their hotels so they may live for another day.

Yea if you recall i was one of your helpers in getting them there. I ran into a few on the floors when dropping off my friends and convinced them to go to sleep rather then go down hallways we will say talking loudly. Someone mentioned it i think but possibly staggering the exit times so that everyone wont be in the exact same hallway at once. The security goons did a great job at one point i swear it was a stand still, either that or maybe have it where the talks don't have there exits so close together, not even sure if that's possible.

Edit: lastly im not sure who it was but i would like to thank the security goon who helped me keep my drunk friends i was trying to get back to the hotel from going back inside the ninja party

[TheCotMan]

Re: How would you make Defcon 21 better?

Have you got awesome new research but can't put words together or show even the slightest bit of stage presence? Good for you, i'm proud of your work... go publish it in a blog post or some shit.

Disagree.

An advantage to in-person communication, and direct questions and answers with others, is the speed at which questions are asked, and answers provided. People hear one question and the question being asked may spawn a related question. Some early Defcon presentations were a bit rough, too. Not sure about others, but when I see a quality topic with good information, but a rough presentation, I feel a little nostalgic.

Pushing an idea that the quality of how a presentation is presented as more important than (or as important as) topic and information encourages people to trade substance for entertainment and showmanship or pageantry.


I would prefer if people could work on their delivery more when they are nervous. One of the best examples of a poor presentation that I saw at Defcon was back at the Alexis Park, on the topic of "Quantum Crypto." The person talking about it seemed to be drunk or not understand the topic they were talking about. They made a few mistakes in describing things, and were corrected by the audience several times, until they stumbled to a finish of sorts on the explanation of something. After this, people applauded, but it was not because the delivery was good; the applause was because an answer was finally provided after several mistakes, audience corrections, and stumbling. This was one of the few presentations that I stood up and left, after less than 15 minutes. It was painful to watch.

I don't think making showmanship a primary requirement for selection as a good idea. I do like the idea of putting people that fail to appear on-time, or are unprepared to be "banned from presenting" for one to several years; this creates a penalty for failure, but does not force an evaluation of showmanship before selection. (Even this would be difficult to implement. People could just manufacture a new alias, and maybe get a fake ID if/when they are asked to give their real name.)

[Chris]

Re: How would you make Defcon 21 better?

I'd love to see DEFCON with two tracks. Each track would have talks start at 10:00 and end at 18:00 or 19:00 at the latest.

I don't hate this idea. But I think it should be three. But one of the tracks should be (like it was up through DC9 (i think)) a Newbie track. I think a case can be made that we are missing the boat on TEACHING new people things. Not the latest and greatest, but the things that "everybody knows" except they don't.

I'd support a three track DC with two "regular" or even tiered tracks and one Newbie track. BTW, I think the newbie track would be perfect for those speakers you mentioned that command a room. Folks that are genuinely good speakers and would be interesting even though they aren't presenting the latest and greatest, but were actually sharing information to new folks that want to learn how to get started.

There is no shame in being new. We all were once.

[Deviant Ollam]

Re: How would you make Defcon 21 better?

i fully acknowledge that this may be a very unpopular suggestion... but my feelings are that DEFCON should have fewer talks. And i mean like WAY FEWER TALKS contained in FEWER TRACKS.

I'd love to see DEFCON with two tracks. Each track would have talks start at 10:00 and end at 18:00 or 19:00 at the latest.

That makes life a lot harder on the selection committee, but another one of the dreams i wish for would be vetting talks not simply based on submitted content but also on speakers' presenting ability

Have you got awesome new research but can't put words together or show even the slightest bit of stage presence? Good for you, i'm proud of your work... go publish it in a blog post or some shit.

The best speakers are the ones that command a room. Jason Scott, Johnny Long, Chris Nickerson, Josh Marpet, Joe McCray, Major Malfunction... even when they are not presenting the most cutting-edge brand new research everyone still loves their talks. They are just a few examples. Honestly, i would love it if the speaker submission process included submitting a link to a video of yourself presenting... and if you say "uhm" more than 5 times in the video then you get a "Thanks for submitting, please try again next year" response.

FEWER talks means BIGGER talk rooms which, in turn, might hopefully lead to SHORTER lines (because not everyone would want to sit in these presentations... many folk would go do OTHER things at DEFCON, hopefully)


Also, while it's amazing that we've gotten some really big names for "keynote" type talks in the past, i'd love it if we were proud of that bit of history and then let the whole "invited speaker" notion die off.

But i'm far less passionate about that than i am about the fewer talks, two tracks. Also... 60 minute time slots for all speakers would be nice. You've got amazing new work that will change the world and you want 2 or 3 hours to present it? That's great, and i'm happy for you... now learn to fucking edit yourself so that you can shoehorn it down into a 60 minute presentation that shows us the most important parts and then leaves us wanting to learn more from you in the Q&A room or in a Village or something elsewhere.

If the goddamn President can fit the entire State of the Union into a single hour, you can figure out how to tell the story of your new exploit and show the code and give a demo in under 50 minutes. If you can't fit it into an hour then you're not a very good speaker and under the above-mentioned rules you shouldn't be presenting at DEFCON.

(And yes, i recognize that my very first DEFCON presentation was in excess of two hours... but that was partly due to people cancelling and me just being told to "keep going" on stage on the fly. hah)

[Nikita]

Re: How would you make Defcon 21 better?

It hasn't been something that has happened a lot in the past, but I think that could be on us. I think this is a good idea and will discuss the viability of having a "Presentation Discussion" sub-forum created. We'll have to get the word out through the main DEF CON site if we do it so that people know there is a place they can discuss the talks. Let us look into it and see if this isn't something we can do.

Thanks for the suggestion.

You mean like this? https://forum.defcon.org/forumdisplay.php?f=124

[arclight]

Re: How would you make Defcon 21 better?

People don't often see it, but a lot of what we do is intercept problems before the hotel and/or police get involved. Helping an intoxicated person calm down and get back to their room or buddies who will take care of them is one of those tasks.

Arclight

Try to find a redshirt goon. If you can't leave them for fear that they may injure themselves, send someone else to find one of us. We'll ensure they remain alive and MOSTLY in one piece . Myself and another goon actually had to escort someone back to their room due to such an incident so it isn't uncommon to us.

[Legion303]

Re: How would you make Defcon 21 better?

TOOOL pays for a second vendor table, actually... so there's no ill will. Most folk would not deny, however, that there may be too many folk selling picks now overall. In the past Roamer tried to limit things so that there wasn't too much crossover between vendors but there have been some more shifts in recent times. I heard someone say there were picks for sale in the Contest area this year, even, but i didn't see that. They may have just seen the College of Lockpicking table advertising.

Actually, that was me. But as mine are handmade and expensive, I don't think there's much crossover in sales. Hell, I was even Twitter-vertising for Eric's and TOOOL's sets at the time. The reason mine were in the contest area was that they were at Eddie's art table, as art. I don't recommend it (selling in contest vs. vendor). Sales blew. :)

[AlxRogan]

Re: How would you make Defcon 21 better?

Hmmm, maybe if we just setup predefined Twitter hash tags and list them in the forum. To me the forum is more of a static slow paced way for information to travel, while Twitter is more instantaneous. But having things predefined would make it easier to track something rather than trying to guess.

I like the idea around this. I've used twitter like this in the past, just using the #defcon hashtag to get some info. Again, we can do things in the forums, but as so few attendees actually use the forums, I think too much effort wouldn't really pay off. Getting the word out to use Twitter/FB/G+ to communicate, and listed in the program, would probably help out.

[b0n3z]

Re: How would you make Defcon 21 better?

One last question: Is there something or someone specific that we are supposed to do or contact about black out drunks at the parties? I had a couple of idiots that became so drunk that they were unable to take care of themselves or behave in public. For some stupid reason I took pity upon them and spent several hours making sure they didn't get arrested and or drown in their own vomit. After which, I helped to carry their dumbasses back to their hotels so they may live for another day.

Try to find a redshirt goon. If you can't leave them for fear that they may injure themselves, send someone else to find one of us. We'll ensure they remain alive and MOSTLY in one piece . Myself and another goon actually had to escort someone back to their room due to such an incident so it isn't uncommon to us.

[GuloGuloDesu]

Re: How would you make Defcon 21 better?

Q&A is a good idea for finding interested people, especially meatspace.

What I really want is a bulletin board at Defcon for things like. "I want to talk about X presentation, I will be in place X at Y time" "Did anyone catch Z?" "Does anyone want to go to tourist attraction Q?"

DC101 went on about how important it is to be social. With in excess of 13,000 people I need some way to filter. Having a place to post and retrieve info would be one way to find people to talk to.

Any other suggestions?

For now, where would I post a thread asking if anyone caught the social engineering skytalk?

Hmmm, maybe if we just setup predefined Twitter hash tags and list them in the forum. To me the forum is more of a static slow paced way for information to travel, while Twitter is more instantaneous. But having things predefined would make it easier to track something rather than trying to guess.

[TheCotMan]

Re: How would you make Defcon 21 better?

For now, where would I post a thread asking if anyone caught the social engineering skytalk?

One place on the defcon forums would be the [forum=633]Defcon 20 Skytalks forum[/forum].

[RivkaS]

Re: How would you make Defcon 21 better?

I do like the idea of having a forum to discuss talks after the fact. One possible way to mitigate creating a bunch of forums that no ones uses, is generating the forums during the Q&A session after the talk. My reasoning is, if no one goes to the Q&A then no one would would use the forum. For example the goons that notify the Q&A that their time is almost up, could ask if a forum needs to be created to keep the conversation going. For any others that would like to continue the discussions that did not attend the Q&A, they could always just request on here to have a forum generated.

Q&A is a good idea for finding interested people, especially meatspace.

What I really want is a bulletin board at Defcon for things like. "I want to talk about X presentation, I will be in place X at Y time" "Did anyone catch Z?" "Does anyone want to go to tourist attraction Q?"

DC101 went on about how important it is to be social. With in excess of 13,000 people I need some way to filter. Having a place to post and retrieve info would be one way to find people to talk to.

Any other suggestions?

For now, where would I post a thread asking if anyone caught the social engineering skytalk?

[Quiet]

Re: How would you make Defcon 21 better?

Does anyone know why we were unable to take food or drinks into the Penn and Teller talks? I don't remember this being the case last year. Luckily I had just ran out of alcohol before the talk so I didn't have to throw anything out.

In order to use the Penn & Teller theater, must abide by their policies.

No outside food or drink (water in a sealed/resealable container is exempt & allowed) in the Penn & Teller theater is a Penn & Teller theater policy. This restriction was enforced last year by the security Goons working that venue and by the Penn & Teller theater security/ushers.

I know last year, since I worked it...
The security Goons would inform attendees "no outside food or drink" and if you had any to toss it or to drink/eat it before you got to the Penn & Teller theater security/ushers. If the Penn & Teller theater security/ushers saw you with food/drinks, they would tell you to toss it or prevent you from entering. If the Penn & Teller theater security/ushers caught you within the theater with food/drink, they would escort you out of the theater.

New this year was the bag checks for the Penn & Teller theater.
This was also policy set by the Penn & Teller theater.

[theprez98]

Re: How would you make Defcon 21 better?

frankly, i haven't understood for AGES why the speaker/presenter is EVER the focus of videos. it should be a HUGE image showing just their slides... either a tiny P-in-P with the speaker or no speaker at all.

i HATE when i am watching a video of a talk and it cuts to the speaker. i don't give a damn about seeing them. i want to see their content.

+1

Video of the speakers is almost always unnecessary. Given the choice, I'd choose speaker audio + video of slides all the time.

This seems to be a perennial complaint. Has anyone ever explained why no change?