How would you make Defcon 21 better?

[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.

[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?

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.

[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.

[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.

[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

[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.

[kallahar]

Re: How would you make Defcon 21 better?

I support the "must have demo video without ums" initiative.

Also maybe a public vote would just cover 80% of the talks. I'm sure that the 20% with truely "secret" talks could be manually selected by the super-secret-all-powerfull-oversight-committee.

Kallahar

[Neural]

Re: How would you make Defcon 21 better?

Well....my answer to this question would first to start attending again. :) Yes...I'm still alive and kicking. Just been wrapped up in that whole messy life thing.

[TheCotMan]

Re: How would you make Defcon 21 better?

This thread has been copied from the old thread in the Defcon 20 forum, which is now closed.

Feel free to continue your ideas on making Defcon 21 better than Defcon 20, here.

[astcell]

Re: How would you make Defcon 21 better?

Some places are just hard to find. This may be a stretch, but...

Have you ever been to a building so big (hospital, warehouse) that directions to get somewhere sound as bad as traffic directions? I recall places that put stripes on the ground. Military hospitals are good for this. Oh you need your appendix out? Follow the yellow line. So you do, just like the little bot on Wall-E. Then at the end of the line they say, "Oh I guess you want your appendix out!"

We can use painter's tape on the walls. High up. One stripe for speaker rooms, one for lobby, one for vendors room, etc. How often do goons get asked directions? How easy is it to get misdirected?

Just my three cents.

[bluknight]

Re: How would you make Defcon 21 better?

We can use painter's tape on the walls. High up. One stripe for speaker rooms, one for lobby, one for vendors room, etc. How often do goons get asked directions? How easy is it to get misdirected?

And I can see that a) Las Vegas will run out of painters tape quickly, and b) all taped lines will end up leading to the strip show, the bar.. or both.

Of course, Siviak's Secondhand Scavhunt Emporium and Sister Sarah's Empire of Flesh look a *LOT* alike.

[TheCotMan]

Re: How would you make Defcon 21 better?

And I can see that a) Las Vegas will run out of painters tape quickly, and b) all taped lines will end up leading to the strip show, the bar.. or both.

Of course, Siviak's Secondhand Scavhunt Emporium and Sister Sarah's Empire of Flesh look a *LOT* alike.

Use of tape could also include "forking" with decisions at various points, and loops. We could make attendees into part of a program and convert them all into instruction pointers of sorts.

One example for forking could be for tape to bathrooms and a question of gender.
Another could be for Info-Desk with a question "I want to complain" which leads outside and a loop or dead-state, and, "I have a question" which leads to the desk. Maybe the loop outside could be visited on a regular basis and introduce a new fork, "I no longer wish to complain" which then takes people back into the convention.

One thing is certain: whoever puts down such tape, creating loops and forks can add to their CV:
"I programmed Humans at Defcon."

[AlxRogan]

Re: How would you make Defcon 21 better?

Use of tape could also include "forking" with decisions at various points, and loops. We could make attendees into part of a program and convert them all into instruction pointers of sorts.

One example for forking could be for tape to bathrooms and a question of gender.
Another could be for Info-Desk with a question "I want to complain" which leads outside and a loop or dead-state, and, "I have a question" which leads to the desk. Maybe the loop outside could be visited on a regular basis and introduce a new fork, "I no longer wish to complain" which then takes people back into the convention.

One thing is certain: whoever puts down such tape, creating loops and forks can add to their CV:
"I programmed Humans at Defcon."

Just make sure you don't put anything on Column 7...it'll get ignored.

[kallahar]

Re: How would you make Defcon 21 better?

Let's crowdsource this, everyone can contribute a section of the route. What could go wrong?