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

[panadero]

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.

Let's remember that before there was KidCon, there was DEF CON. Alcohol abuse, smoking, half nakedness has been around a looonnnnnggggg time...and that's what makes DEF CON, well, DEF CON. It's up to the parents to keep their kids out of that situation.

I'm not saying it's right...well, yes, I'm saying it's right. It's DEF CON. There are no qualms are false pretenses on what it is...if you show up the first year with your kid, thinking everyone is going to shield themselves because you have your kid with you, then you probably shouldn't be there.

I do agree with having KidCon, RootzCon, whatever it is now, way up next to the Masquerade tower, so parents have the opportunity to shield their kids from it. Just don't think that people are going to change for the better just because you have your kid there. The opposite may actually happen more often...

I'd never bring any of my kids, <18 years old, to DEF CON. :D

[Deviant Ollam]

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.

which were the adult contests? i'm not being snarky, i just genuinely wasn't aware of anything that was X-rated outright.

[mauvehed]

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

I'd like it to be longer.

I never feel more ADD than those few days. SO much to do. I want to do EVERYBODY^H^H^H^HTHING.
But 3 and a half days isn't enough.

Land on Monday/Tuesday, do BH/Bsides and hit parties every night. By Saturday, you'll wish you were dead or home.

[mauvehed]

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

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.)

This may not apply to Vegas/Rio but I know that in Austin when we do SXSW Interactive, all water/services/food/drink is charged a shit load by the convention center. At SXSW it's common to actually turn away water refills UNLESS approved by someone high up because that shit gets insanely expensive. Again, I don't know who handles this w/ Rio but it could be an intentional and unfortunate decision. Honestly, in my experience Rio had more available water than I've seen at SXSW Interactive.

[DISINGENUOUS]

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.

HAND CHECK...........


............

...................................CLEAR

[jackassplus]

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

I'd like it to be longer.

I never feel more ADD than those few days. SO much to do. I want to do EVERYBODY^H^H^H^HTHING.
But 3 and a half days isn't enough.

[thule]

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.

I agree, most of the time I would rather be looking at the slides, not the speaker. It would be great if they would send it to the TV's like it appears on the video downloads that are released after the con (slides & speaker).

One problem with transmitting the slides is that they may not be readable. It appeared to me that the video feeds were NTSC, not ATSC. Fine for the speaks, terrible for graphics.

The component to mux MPEG streams into a single QAM channel is not terribly expensive (around $1,500-$2,000). All the DC channels would fit into a single QAM channel (4-5 channels per QAM channel). It starts to add up once you account for a box to convert DVI/HDMI/VGA to ASI. It could be done. I wonder if a friend of mine would lend out his QAM box for DEF CON to try out. It would be a fun project.

(Thule)

[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.

[DISINGENUOUS]

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.

[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.

[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...

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.