Welcome to DEF CON 21! How would you make DEF CON 22 even better?

[TheCotMan]

Hello,

Welcome to the yearly thread, "How can DEF CON be made better?"

For some goons, DEF CON started last week. Several more arrived on Sunday and today to prepare for what comes next.

Soon, I will be away from the forums. I am not sure if any other admins or mods will be staying home this year, but I have no plans to shut down the forums during DEF CON this year... in fact, I don't plan to do much on the forums except maybe one or two check-ins on Tuesday, and Wednesday. Beyond that, I'll probably not visit these forum unless Jeff asks me to.

What is going to happen:
1) I am going to alter the waiting period for new accounts to give them immediate promotion from "Member" (with no access to post) to "L3" a user that can make new thread and reply to existing threads. (This should now take 1 hour or less. You may need to navigate around on the forums once or twice in that hour-period as your logged-in self to trigger the process that does the promotion.)
2) I'll be doing another backup and off-site store of the DB in case the server dies.
3) If spammers or lamers find the forums and trash them with junk, the mods can deal with that silliness when we get back. (Again, please do not reply to spam. I state in the rules that I remove all spam and replies from public view, so please don't reply to spam so I don't have to move your post with it.)
4) Forum use in other ways will be more restrictive, and you may notice limits in place that were not there before... some will include timers that allow you to try your action a little bit later after taking other actions.


Now that DEF CON has started, what do you see that you think sucks, and what would you do to make it better?

Is there something missing? Is there something that seemed out of place? If you were DT, is there some decision you would have made different, and if so, how? Any comments for speakers, or speaker tracks? Security goons? Help/Info Desk? Those jerks that run the forums? ;-)

There are several ways to make DEF CON better:
1) Volunteer and contribute to add what you see is missing (best)
2) Volunteer and join with other people that are looking to contribute what you think would be a great addition to DEF CON next year
3) Provide advice on how to improve DEF CON next year
4) Provide constructive criticism on what was broken and how it could be fixed.
5) Something else.

Let it begin!

The rules for "flaming" that is (complaint about specific people without constructive criticism) is still against the rules...if you want to whine, you can use "/dev/random" or whine and say HOW it sucked and WHAT could be done to address the issue.

Good luck!

[lexxmac]

Re: Welcome to DEF CON 21! How would you make DEF CON 22 even better?

Edit: Nevermind, problem solved

[Smag]

Re: Welcome to DEF CON 21! How would you make DEF CON 22 even better?

Edit: Moved to proper location

[adh4wk]

Re: Welcome to DEF CON 21! How would you make DEF CON 22 even better?

I was allowed the honor of working as a Security Goon during the last couple days of the con. I am proud that they allowed me into their tight group to help and experience a part of DefCon few get to.

I would love next year to help out on a contest or event. I think I am going to be helping someone will a possible lite CTF style contest next year. I would also love to work with the Wall of Sheep to make their event even better for next year.

Also, it would be nice to be introduced to the NOC. I am a network admin. I definitely know the NOC does a ton of work to make sure the network ways are clear, DOS monkeys are kept at bay, and the defcon media server is available.

Oh. And we need more cow bell. Defcon needs more cow bell for next year. I do know that was a popular request.

[Fullpint]

Re: Welcome to DEF CON 21! How would you make DEF CON 22 even better?

Script fonts in the program for speakers - bad choice...especially since the talks were sorted by Speaker, not Talk name, as you'd expect. It's bad enough the fonts are microscopic in the program. It really shouldn't be an obfuscation contest.

Suggestion to fix it: Make fonts readable to normal humans and sort talks by name of talk in the program.

[tecknicaltom]

Re: Welcome to DEF CON 21! How would you make DEF CON 22 even better?

While I'm amazed at how all aspects of Defcon seem to run smoother every year, the one place that still needs optimization is the swag booth. It seems to be the slowest moving line at the entire con. Even when it's a relatively short line, the wait times mean that you're missing other events. Those who know more about its inner workings than I should look to figure out where the bottlenecks are and optimize them. From an outsider's point of view, it seems that most people aren't able to get a good look at the products and availability until at the front of the line, which holds everything up. Waiting around for somebody to take your order once up there makes the process slower for those who already know what they want. Perhaps some way to allow customers to see the products (closer than from behind the rope), prices, and what's currently available while still in line could allow the front of the line to move faster. This could be a display case, or a TV with rotating images of the products. Also, allowing people to fill out the order slips themselves while in line could speed things up, if we can trust people to not be stupid when filling out the order form. Again, these are just observations by an outsider and I'm sure those who organize the booth can better identify the problem areas.

[astcell]

Re: Welcome to DEF CON 21! How would you make DEF CON 22 even better?

I would demand a coffee machine in the hotel rooms. I don't care about the weight room and other amenities they insist I pay for. I NEED COFFEE!

[lanrofls]

Re: Welcome to DEF CON 21! How would you make DEF CON 22 even better?

This was my third defcon and it was another great one!!

Mad props to registration was even faster than last year.

A couple notes on talks. This years talks seemed cover a lot of entry level stuff and explain syntax rather than concepts. Personally as IT professional I can figure out syntax its the concepts and theory that I find fascinating useful.

Also DCTV awesome job the only thing I would suggest is lets stream the slides on DCTV and not the speaker that way we can have as much content as possible.

Can't Wait for 22.

[tecknicaltom]

Re: Welcome to DEF CON 21! How would you make DEF CON 22 even better?

With the skytalks pre-scheduled (as it looks like they were in the program that I barely got around to looking at during the con), why not put the skytalks in the main schedule matrix of talks? If the scheduled events were all presented in the program in one place, it'd be that much easier to figure out what you want to do at any given time. As it was presented in this year's schedule, you'd have to look at the schedule at the back of the progrm, then find the separate page with skytalks schedule, just to make a decision about which to attend.

Also, registration, as smooth as it was this year, would be a lot less crazy and packed if more than one year could go by without running out of real badges. People wouldn't feel the need to camp out to get badges if there was less uncertainty that they'd get a real badge.

[Chris]

Re: Welcome to DEF CON 21! How would you make DEF CON 22 even better?

With the skytalks pre-scheduled (as it looks like they were in the program that I barely got around to looking at during the con), why not put the skytalks in the main schedule matrix of talks? If the scheduled events were all presented in the program in one place, it'd be that much easier to figure out what you want to do at any given time. As it was presented in this year's schedule, you'd have to look at the schedule at the back of the progrm, then find the separate page with skytalks schedule, just to make a decision about which to attend.

Good point. I'll pass it on to Neil.

Also, registration, as smooth as it was this year, would be a lot less crazy and packed if more than one year could go by without running out of real badges. People wouldn't feel the need to camp out to get badges if there was less uncertainty that they'd get a real badge.

We didn't run out of badges last year. In fact I think you can still buy last year's leftover badges from Hacker Stickers. For years we told DT that if he made enough badges and then sold them at cost after closing ceremonies he'd sell out. We were wrong and I'd imagine that made him a little conservative when deciding how many to print up.

[DaKahuna]

Re: Welcome to DEF CON 21! How would you make DEF CON 22 even better?

Good point. I'll pass it on to Neil.

I'd like to get in on that as well. I submitted the Speaker & Contest schedule for the Wireless Village in what I was told was sufficient time to get it included in the main program but it did not make it. We ended up printing out 10 copies of the schedule and letting people look at them. Half had disappeared by Sunday morning, which was better than the two years before when the five I had printed disappeared the first day.

If there is no intent to publish Skytalks and Wireless Village talk schedules I am okay with that as long as we know up front so that we can make appropriate arrangements, like brining copies of the schedule instead of paying the hotel to print them.

[blueAlien]

Re: Welcome to DEF CON 21! How would you make DEF CON 22 even better?

I submitted the Speaker & Contest schedule for the Wireless Village in what I was told was sufficient time to get it included in the main program but it did not make it.

I didn't even know there were going to be talks in any of the villages. Probably would have liked to see some of the ones in the Wireless Village...

[Deviant Ollam]

Re: Welcome to DEF CON 21! How would you make DEF CON 22 even better?

the DEFCON staff and management already knows this, but i'll mention it here just because others who felt the same way deserve to know that their concerns are already reaching the right people. there were utterly only two major problem areas for improvement that i could see for next year:

1. Water
2. Trash

... yes, we're a big damn con now. But we're not the biggest thing to hit Vegas. I don't even know if we're the outright biggest thing to hit the Rio in a given year (there's a chance we are, however... dunno what the WSOP crowds are like)

Still, if a venue knows that around 15,000 people are coming to their conference center, it's got to be a pretty safe bet that (1) they are going to need to drink water and (2) they will generate waste. The hotel staff was utterly ABYSMAL this year when it came to handling these two services.

The fact that come the evenings (when people's drinking is getting seriously intense) there was ZERO fucking water in most of the rooms was appalling to me. (And it was to DEFCON, as well. They know all about this.)

Also, getting the hotel laborers to push harder on trash collection detail wouldn't have been a bad thing, either. But for me, really, the lack of water was borderline negligent for the hotel. There are no fountains. There was nothing, short of paying $4 or more for a hand-grenade-sized bottle at the cash bars.

OK, mini rant over. Again, please know that DEFCON is already aware of this and (i would hope) is giving the Rio loads of shit over the matter on our behalf. If it happens again next year, hopefully there will be real ramifications.



Beyond those two things? Well, I always think there is "too much" going on and that it spreads out the energy of the crowd. Friday and especially Saturday evening it seems that every damn room was being used for DJ action. The same beats all being played by a bunch of nobodies who between them couldn't assemble a crowd of more than 10 people sort of dancing and sort of wandering around. Honestly, if there were only a handful of party areas they would all be packed with more bodies and the vibe of the night would be a lot cooler for all involved.

I think people love their evening a whole lot more if they had to spend half of it waiting to get into the hot party rather than spending all of it meandering between empty rooms with pulsing lights and no one inside.

[Shatter]

Re: Welcome to DEF CON 21! How would you make DEF CON 22 even better?

One big problem I saw and experienced was that the cafe in the chill room closed WAY too early. We were hanging in contests, and realized we needed some food and wanted to grab something and run back. Sorry sucker, it was 6:30. All the other places to eat were booked for the next two hours with no room either unless you had a reservation.

So, the hotel missed out on a prime time to get a lot of hungry hackers some fast grub. Keep the cafe open as long as contests are running on Friday and Saturday.

[Penni-piper]

Re: Welcome to DEF CON 21! How would you make DEF CON 22 even better?

I saw a lot of children in sketchy situations. I didnt like the idea of children running around in the contest area during some of the more adult contests.