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

[Tribalsoul]

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

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.

Scott may have more to say on this, Deviant, but I think the rest of the A&E staff would agree with me that we felt things were a bit too spread out, both for the Con and for our staff.

Pub Crawls were offered this year in response to people trying to take over areas like chillout to do their own music, or requests for smaller events. However, what occurred at a high level (as I understand it) is that the pub crawls didn't generate the response that was expected. But, we had too many applicants for 1 space. Fast forward to time-crunch and scrambling (I'll get to these more in a minute) and things ended up like what you saw. This is an area we *will* get better at for 22.

Every year we learn more about what to do, what works, and what doesn't... but it isn't formulaic or always predicable as there are variables thrown in the A&E team can't control (# of unofficial (non-DC) parties, location of unofficial parties, performers are unofficial parties, etc.). But, these variables make for a really challenging position of booking an artist that should have a) name recognition (preferably cross-genre) and b) reasonable expenses. I love the fact that there are tons of entertainment options, but at last count I'd heard Thursday evening had 14 unofficial events over multiple locations, plus The Summit. That's 14 other draws against an evening of entertainment funded by DC, often times with a more extensive budget.

So, how are we going to address this? It goes back to the time-crunch and scramble. I've already published a survey for the community about what acts people want to see (gratuitous self-promotion link: https://forum.defcon.org/showthread....13624&p=129896). We'll crunch the data at the end of a month and see how it lines up with our notes about the various turnouts, then go from there. We'll begin soliciting acts earlier to allow inclusion of artists that might be touring. We'll have proposals for the appropriate Senior Staff earlier, allowing us to reduce some costs and use more for promotion and other items (possibly even alcohol?)

Oh, and we'll make sure the bar is open when the Goon Band plays next time ;) (that's a whole other story...)

[kallahar]

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

OPEN BAR DUDE!

Seriously, the biggest reason people don't want to go to the defcon parties, and do want to go to the "private" ones is the open bar. I realize the Rio is the problem on this, and it's probably something that we can't solve. Is there any way to throw a defcon sponsored party, with an open bar, that doesn't fall under convention services?

Or alternatively just provide a fund for a "private" party to throw an unofficial official party.

What if we rented every top floor suite and the club and made a multi-area party? (open bar of course)

Kallahar

[Nikita]

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

OPEN BAR DUDE!

Seriously, the biggest reason people don't want to go to the defcon parties, and do want to go to the "private" ones is the open bar.

I don't even know how to address this without the typical Nikita Snarky Response.™

You think DEF CON Proper should also pay for everyone to drink every night? So 4 days 3 nights of massive parties, events, contests, speaking tracks, Headlining Music acts, and multiple bonus level fun ALL for $180 is not enough? We need to shower people with Beer & Whiskey too? If you want free booze, you don't have to look far to find it at DEF CON. Like you said multiple parties offer it, and if you make some friends the likelihood they will share a bottle with you is pretty high.
Also, I've been to SEVERAL private parties over the years that have bars in them but they are not free so I think it's just a matter of diversity not alcohol. If you recall the Ninja Parties, it was impossible to GET a free drink and people STILL packed the crap out of their venues. Skyboxes that did have OPEN bars, the same thing. No one wants to wait 8 hrs for a lightly poured tonic, its the rest of the entertainment or people IN the room that keep people there. Another example, is I think in all the times I've been in a 303 party, I've only gotten ONE free drink, not because I wasn't offered, I just didn't want to bother standing in the line. I'd rather sit there and listen or participate in the shenanigans. My time is precious, I'd be more inclined to leave the open bar and go to the bar with a short line and pay for the speed and convince of getting back in the game. Also, for several years in the past I have carried a mobile bar or at minimum a flask.

Did you know we had free kegs for the Documentary premiere? It wasn't bum rushed by people with their solo cups.
In the past for the Thurs & Sun parties we have had free beer, attendance levels did not increase.
There's always at least ONE Event every year that DT buys booze for, no noticeable change in attendance because of it.
DEF CON Forum meet this year had free booze too.

I handed out a free drink tickets ( or several) To everyone just about, that walked in the door for the Forum Meet, which is an official DC Party, DT paid for those drinks as a thank you to new and old forum & groups members who showed up. I even handed some to the off duty goons who showed up to say hi, and offered them to the ON duty goons ( who I'm proud to say, they said they were on duty and couldn't drink) to which I informed them they could get a coke or juice if they wanted, but they were cool and didn't want one.

Even still, not like I advertised the open bar, but I handed out massive swag from my personal stock, free prizes, Official DEF CON stickers, booze tickets, etc and we were not packed to the brim. Most of which I did advertise. Also, I did not play techno, fwiw. We had a ball pit, which was fun, an excellent novelty, but even still we had a moderately filled room and a rotation of attendance. People are social creatures and want to rotate and see EVERYTHING. I'd attribute that as a reason rooms are not packed to the brim, not free booze. Gone are the days we stayed in ONE room all night, there is SO MUCH to see that people keep moving, keep wanting to find their friends, or stop in the hallways to have that conversation about the state of affairs.

Free Booze is flashy bs, you can't throw a good party or keep good attendance based on alcohol alone. Otherwise, people will get their drink and go find another place to actually enjoy it. For example, if the chill out lounge had an open bar but no interesting content/music for me to enjoy I'm not going to sit there wasting my night bored off my ass just for the sake of some whiskey & coke. Peace out boring people, I'll go find something else to do.

Maybe it's your biggest reason, but I really doubt it's the biggest reason for the majority of attendees. I think they just want to float, there is a lot to compete for their attention. To address if it's the Rio's fault or the restriction of convention services as to why free booze is an "issue" it's not. They don't restrict us, aside from bringing in outside food and drink which is reasonable, since their union bartenders need to get paid. Also, those of you who don't tip the bartenders are complete douchebags for the record. It's not THEIR FAULT The Rio will charge you $5- $8 a drink.

[Nikita]

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

Pub Crawls were offered this year in response to people trying to take over areas like chillout to do their own music, or requests for smaller events. However, what occurred at a high level (as I understand it) is that the pub crawls didn't generate the response that was expected. But, we had too many applicants for 1 space. Fast forward to time-crunch and scrambling (I'll get to these more in a minute) and things ended up like what you saw. This is an area we *will* get better at for 22.
)

You're absolutely correct. I don't think we will stretch A&E that thin again and I doubt we will have a pub crawl again. It's more likely we will try to bring back "skybox" level parties from private groups. In all actuality, we didn't have that many applicants, so we just gave everyone double the space we were intending. Which worked honestly, because judging on the parties people DID throw for pub crawl, if we had kept them in the smaller rooms that we had originally planned, it would have been like putting people in a broom closet.

Above all else, we need to work better not to throw you guys under the bus. Just a thought. :-) I think A&E did an EXCELLENT Job this year, especially considering the inclusion of being involved with Pub Crawls and several other un-named fiasco's at the last minute.

I'm very excited to see the possibility of some more diverse music. As one goon told me this year:

"I like peas, they are tasty. BUT I'm not going to want to eat Peas for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The same with Techno/Electronic. I enjoy it, but not for EVERY party" <- I paraphrase but that's basically what he said. I won't direct quote him incase I mucked it up or he didn't want to share that opinion.

A&E is well aware of my opinion internally of my extreme dislike for MOST ( not all ) Untz Untz. Shit is annoying as all fuck. I prefer music that you can scream to, dance to, mosh to, sing along with, and just feel nostalgic and energized to. I'm mainstream in that sense, but I'll never stop the rest of you from having a good time.

[LDE]

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

This was my first Defcon and I enjoyed it a lot. Thank You. I have a couple of suggestions though:

a) Is it possible to have the villages start on Thursday instead of Friday? I couldn't get a seat for most of Friday at the hardware village and had to turn up at 9:45am on Saturday to get a seat. One more day might make things a bit more flexible :). I'd be happy to pay a little more too ..if that is doable.

b) Defcon TV is a great idea. However as others have probably already mentioned, it'd be super cool to have the slides on there too if that's possible. A lot of people (like me) didn't get their laptops with them.

c) Oh and and.. please please let the booklet of information (red thing which we got with the badge) have talks ordered by day and time instead of the presenter's last name. Please. I beg you :)

Thanks
LDE

[Nikita]

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

This was my first Defcon and I enjoyed it a lot. Thank You. I have a couple of suggestions though:



c) Oh and and.. please please let the booklet of information (red thing which we got with the badge) have talks ordered by day and time instead of the presenter's last name. Please. I beg you :)

Thanks
LDE

Hmmmm. That's not a bad idea, and if we are lucky MAYBE we can pull it off. The problem in doing it in the past is we use the website as "vetted" data to pull the info from. Since the speakers look at it to "proof" what we print, they know what's on the site is what we print and when the deadline comes we use that as the data, and it's ordered alphabetically to avoid putting someone on top and imply any form of favoritism. In the past, we've only had a few days due to production issues & other various mucky muck deadlines to pull off putting the program together. That should be changed this year, and although no promises, it is a really good idea.

This year, we are making a few changes to our process and we may be lucky enough to have the time to pull off organizing the speaker data better. Not to mention a few other improvements to the show itself and especially in the data that goes in the program, we are hoping to be able to implement a lot of the really good ideas we get as feedback from people like you.

[lexxmac]

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

I didn't mind any of the kids attending the con. None of them were a bother that I saw. There was a goon child, had to be under 10, that asked me loudly "Where's your badge?". The voice of a child questioning me kinda threw me ("WTF? Tiny Goon?"). My badge was hanging out of a cargo pocket, so I held up my badge and moved on. What I can only assume was a parent was goon-ing with him, which is cool, just surprised me a little.

Also, the series of events surrounding the Goon paddling Ang Cui on stage was awesome. Which reminds me - the consistency for making new speakers drink was odd. I had a friend speak for his first time and he got away without downing anything, seemingly omitted. Again, strange, since it seemed like most of the talks I went to had a mandatory shot-taking interruption, which was fine. Not sure if he felt left out, forgot to ask. Any insight anyone?

[TheCotMan]

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

I had a friend speak for his first time and he got away without downing anything, seemingly omitted. Again, strange, since it seemed like most of the talks I went to had a mandatory shot-taking interruption, which was fine. Not sure if he felt left out, forgot to ask. Any insight anyone?

If under 21, then this may have been omitted for that reason. If 21 or older, and religious reservations, that may have been handled OOB. It is also possible it may have happened off-stage. Last, we all make mistakes. Make sure the speaker notifies the speaker-track goons that this is their first time speaking at DEF CON, or remind them of this the next time they speak and let them know they didn't get the shot the first time around.

Hope this helps,
-Cot

[GuloGuloDesu]

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

I apologize in advance for the long post. I am just long winded, so deal with it.

This year was one of the best Defcon's that I have ever attended. Thank you everyone for all of your hard work.
I feel that this year was the perfect balance of learning, socializing and partying. Normally I tend to go heavy on one area or another.

The Closed Captioning for the talks was an awesome idea. I think this was hugely beneficial. Also for the closing ceremonies would it be possible to use one of the 3 large screens at the back of the room as a live video feed? I ended up sitting in the back and my blind ass couldn't see anything up front, but there were these 3 giant screens which one of them *cough* center would have been perfect for a live video feed.

I am bummed that I think that I missed the Forum Meet. It was originally supposed to be in Amazon F (if I remember right) but the ball pit was in Amazon E. I was in there when the Goon Band was in there, and I stayed until the fire alarm, but it did not really appear to be a forum meet. I guess I should have come back a bit later. The ball pit was freaking awesome, a real stroke of brilliance.

While I thought that the pub crawl would be a great idea, I have to agree that it didn't pan out all that well. Most of the rooms were sub 5 people, with the same music and light shows. Once again there were a couple of popular parties that most people gravitated towards. One small suggestion would be having a chill out area at night. Sometimes it is nice to take a break from the thumping and have a conversation without clogging up the hall.

The HHV was awesome this year. Even though it was semi packed I thought it was pretty close to spot on. Although they need more POWER. There was a severe lack of power in the HHV.
Also in the Chill Out room, it would be nice if the floor outlets were left open. And what I mean by open is that you don't have to pull out your screw driver to turn the screw. Not a big deal just something that I noticed.

I agree with Deviant on the water and trash stuff.

Also Pyr0 mentioned that DCDark.net should be a Black Badge event. While I have not said anything to Smitty about this, I kind of disagree with it. The DCDark.net is an AWESOME contest, that I think needs to grow. But it isn't really a competition, and I would be concerned that giving it a Black Badge would turn it into a competition. I spent 3.5 hours soldering my badge, and then I spent another 3 hours teaching others how to solder. I then spent several more hours showing people how they communicate and what the codes mean. I taught a handful of people how to pick locks so that they could work on the Rook. I then showed a handful of guys how to crack WEP (we failed, but that was because it was already owned before we got there). While I don't really want to admit to this, I probably wouldn't have spent so much time helping others if this was a competition. I would have probably spent my time solving more of the puzzles that I decided I could do at home after the con. This is just my meager opinion though.
I strongly believe that the Darknet needs to grow and get more people involved. Smitty if you read this, you and your group are freaking super heroes.

There was a comment earlier on having the Skytalks in the program with the other talks. I second this, and would love to see the TEV, HHV, LPV, and SEV talks in there as well. Or at least add them on the website in one spot. I spent a couple of hours planning out what talks to go to and had to look in a half dozen different locations and then compile my list, which I did not adhere to, at all.

I think the Chill Out room food needs to be stocked better. There were several times that I went in there and they were out of almost all food (I don't consider salad food).

Jenga was an awesome idea.

I really don't know if I should complain about this or not, but I will at least say something. I went to a couple of the DC101 talks, just because I thought that one or two of them might have been cool or informative. I will say that I was really disappointed with the ones that I attended. They were at such a beginner level that I actually left (never done that before). I know they were 101 talks, but I thought there would be slightly more info. Could have just been the talks that I went to though.

While the vendor area was really big this year, and had a lot of cool stuff in it. I am a little bummed because a ton of crap sold out the first day or the first half day. So what ever money I had ear marked for cool new shiny objects, just went to alcohol instead.

For the whole kid thing, I understand where Nikita is coming from, and I agree. But I have to side with Kallahar. While Nikita you may be a good parent and understand the risks, and take care of your kid, there are others out there who may not. My concern would be if I were to moon Flea, and a kid was standing there, that could open me up to jail time / law suits / a bunch of crap that I wouldn't want to deal with. I'm not saying kids shouldn't go to Defcon, I think that they should. I am just voicing a concern that a parent that isn't as alturistic as Nikita could put me in a world of hurt because a kid happened to be standing there when I did something dumb / entertaining. It literally would just take one ignorant parent that could ruin a lot of things for a lot of people.
I don't have any ideas to prevent this, other than to keep my ass in my pants. But I think it is something that needs to be brought up and looked at.

In theory that is all I have to say. Most likely I will be back with more though.

[Chris]

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

I really don't know if I should complain about this or not, but I will at least say something. I went to a couple of the DC101 talks, just because I thought that one or two of them might have been cool or informative. I will say that I was really disappointed with the ones that I attended. They were at such a beginner level that I actually left (never done that before). I know they were 101 talks, but I thought there would be slightly more info. Could have just been the talks that I went to though.

While the vendor area was really big this year, and had a lot of cool stuff in it. I am a little bummed because a ton of crap sold out the first day or the first half day. So what ever money I had ear marked for cool new shiny objects, just went to alcohol instead.

On these two. Just out of curiosity which 101 talks did you go to? As a speaker on both the main panel and one of the talks I am interested in the feedback. It's a tough line to figure out how to walk and I'd like to make sure that we do better with this next year if it isn't hitting the mark where it's supposed to. (On a side note, from what you said about helping out with the Darknet I am not sure that you were really the target audience of the 101 talks but either way the feedback will help us improve).

As for the vendor area. We had a LOT of new vendors this year. It is tough for us to really help new vendors gauge how much stock to bring. It's expensive for them to ship stuff. The Rio charges them to store it and what they don't sell they have to pay to ship back so new vendors really do tend to err on the side of caution.

We are always clear with them on the number of attendees we expect to be there each year but if it's a "new" product for the vendor area we really have no way to know what the reaction will be. I've picked some vendors that I was sure would be big hits and were total duds and I've picked some that I was concerned about that sold out immediately. It's not an exact science but we do try to get vendors in that will be popular and sell lots of stuff. If they are selling out quickly it sounds like we are doing a good job of that but need to figure out a way to better prepare them for demand. I'm honestly open to any suggestions on how to do that better.

Thanks for the feedback.

Roamer

[HighWiz]

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

I really don't know if I should complain about this or not, but I will at least say something. I went to a couple of the DC101 talks, just because I thought that one or two of them might have been cool or informative. I will say that I was really disappointed with the ones that I attended. They were at such a beginner level that I actually left (never done that before). I know they were 101 talks, but I thought there would be slightly more info. Could have just been the talks that I went to though.

If you're not at an "intro level"... If you're the type of person who goes to most of the main track talks throughout the weekend, and understands what's being said. Then you're not the target auidence for 101. If you're looking for more advanced topics, go to the main track talks. 101 is for n00bs and it's not something I see changing. That being said, if you have specifics that you liked to share, I'd love to hear them.

Ideally speaking, 101 would be it's own track. Not a "Thursday thing", but a track that runs concurrently with the other talks/tracks. Then Thursday could be used for other things and it wouldn't just be "n00b day".

[astcell]

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

I miss the way talks were broken into different haxxor levels like: n00b, I Can Code, and L33t. You know, beginner, intermediate, advanced. The program seemed a jumble. I know it gets bigger every year and the font gets smaller, but having the calendar order of talks side by side was convenient. Now I just rely on someone on the forums to put it into google calendar then I copy it from them.

[TheCotMan]

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

I miss the way talks were broken into different haxxor levels like: n00b, I Can Code, and L33t. You know, beginner, intermediate, advanced. The program seemed a jumble. I know it gets bigger every year and the font gets smaller, but having the calendar order of talks side by side was convenient. Now I just rely on someone on the forums to put it into google calendar then I copy it from them.

Problems with this kind of classification have been mentioned before, but here is a summary:
* There were audience members and speakers that didn't like being called "newbies"
* What do you do when there is going to be a popular newbie talk, or "uber-leet-super-fly-technique" talk which is popular, and there is need for a larger room? Tracks are assigned labels to rooms, which vary in size. Room assignments are often decided based on popularity of talk. Revert to estimates of difficulty or skill per room, and the advantage of assigning big rooms to popular talks is diminished.
* How do you decide what is "newbie" or "k-rad-ultra-leet-advanced-persistent-talk"? What is "newbie" to one person could easily be advanced to another, and an evaluation of disciplines with an increasing level of diversity means it is possible for someone to be very skilled in one area but lacking knowledge in another.
* Who decides level of skill required? Speakers may consider their content an intro talk to a topic, but their idea of target audience may be electrical engineers, or software engineers... Scope and estimation would play a big part in evaluating the complexity of a talk.

For those of you that share astcell's view on tracks based on skill, please help out with suggestions on how to address some of the above known issues. The above is not a complete list, but it is a start.

Call them "101" instead of "newbie" ?
Have only 1 "101" track and don't estimate skills required for other talks?
what are your* ideas? ("your" in the general sense, not just asking ASTCell, but any of you that would like to see talks in tracks by skill/complexity)

Thanks!
-Cot

[tecknicaltom]

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

More potential improvements:

* as mentioned by several others, finding info on a talk in the booklet was a bit of a pain with the way it was organized. Organization of speaker/talk info by day might make it easier

* I didn't realize there was a separate closing ceremonies for contests until afterwards, even though I participated in contests. Was this a last minute thing, or was it omitted from the program for some other reason?

* speaking of contests and closing ceremonies, I think the contest results are a very important part of closing ceremonies, so they should not be cut/shortened in an effort to shorten closing ceremonies. The people who do awesome in the contests (especially ctf) should get their congrats in front of everybody. If the shortening of closing ceremonies is of that much importance, aren't there other things that can be reduced?

* it might make more sense to put the talk schedule (matrix view) in the center fold of the program rather than the map. Most people refer to the schedule far more frequently than the map, so it should be the most easily accessible thing in there.

* The contest area could use more open tables for contest participants. IIRC, there were a lot more last year than this year. This year, there were only 4 or 5 tables, which were obviously almost always full

* The back center of the contest area had a big booth (made up of four rectangular tables) that appeared to be staffed by some company or group using almost none of the space. Having huge areas underutilized right beside the space where you can't get any open table space just adds insult to injury. I understand that defcon is crazy hectic for all volunteers, but some kind of "use it or lose it" policy with that space and tables would have been nice

* speaker monitors on the contest area stage- the contest I was in took place on the contest area stage and the people running the contest kept trying to address us via the microphone and speaker setup, but there were no monitor speakers and so nobody on stage could understand anything they were saying

A noticable improvement over past years though was the larger space for Hacker Jeopardy. It worked out awesome and big props to whomever made that happen.

[astcell]

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

If someone takes offense at being called a n00b if they are one they better toughen up. What next, feds not being able to go to events labeled as hacker events? The original names kept it fun. I have my DC8 program somewhere.

I recall reading the program and seeing in some events I was a newb and in some I was l33t. What if you have a MSCE who has never touched Linux? There you go, vastly different skill levels in one. Personally I try to always learn new stuff so the newb label does not offend me. It simply tells me that I have miles to go, and that's a good thing. To be boring we can have 100/300/500 level names like in college classes. or use monikers suck as Domo/Shipley/Marlinspike. If they let us. Then again we have more associations there wanted and unwanted.

And even if labeling becomes easy, how do you indeed know where the demand will be? Will the room be a sellout or a ghost town? We do not always see the winning talk before hand. if we could do that I'd invent the next Furby.

Regardless, even calendar entry styles would be a help. Make an open calendar online and put a QR code in the program so we can save it to our phones. That way you can even adjust for last minute talk or room changes.