Re: How would you make DEF CON 23 better than DEF CON 22?
+1 on disappointment with the Nerfified HJ. If someone wants equality, add a Brock Beef Thief to complement Vanna Vinyl. I'll avert my eyes as needed.
DC101 was definitely too small - I horse traded going to BH this year in exchange for the company sending two noobs to DEF CON. They learned a ton, but they missed out on that track. Kudos to the person who decided to run that on DC TV instead of track 1 though. All the additional space at the new location should make that easy to fix.
I love the idea of the DIY badge. I'd be happy to volunteer my time and soldering skills on Thursday to help people build their badges. I agree it should be through-hole parts. The point of the DIY badge (in my mind at least) is to get people to learn a new skill, and through hole components are a whole lot more forgiving and easier to learn on. Last year, we had a non-electronic badge made out of a PCB. Something similar for next year wouldn't be a bad starting point for a DIY badge. It might also be an opportunity to sneak an ATmega328 onto one (no offense to our friends at Parallax, but it seems weird to ignore Arduinos).
I didn't know until closing ceremonies that there were scheduled talks in some of the villages - it would be great to get that added to the official schedule next time.
For the vendor area, I'd like to see more electronic kits and gadgets. Not the garden variety stuff, mind you - we as a community produce all kinds of unusual stuff and it would be awesome to see some of it for sale. For example, speakers sometimes produce a small run of boards related to their talks (like the BishopFox board that caused a mini-stampede last year), and a lot of us make cool projects that others might find interesting. It doesn't make sense for any one of us to try to get a vendor table to sell one cool item, but if we could get a table set up for sales of community-sourced items (some or even all profits could go to the EFF to "pay" for this service), I bet we could collectively stock it with all kinds of neat crap.
I hope that qualifies as constructive.
+1 on disappointment with the Nerfified HJ. If someone wants equality, add a Brock Beef Thief to complement Vanna Vinyl. I'll avert my eyes as needed.
DC101 was definitely too small - I horse traded going to BH this year in exchange for the company sending two noobs to DEF CON. They learned a ton, but they missed out on that track. Kudos to the person who decided to run that on DC TV instead of track 1 though. All the additional space at the new location should make that easy to fix.
I love the idea of the DIY badge. I'd be happy to volunteer my time and soldering skills on Thursday to help people build their badges. I agree it should be through-hole parts. The point of the DIY badge (in my mind at least) is to get people to learn a new skill, and through hole components are a whole lot more forgiving and easier to learn on. Last year, we had a non-electronic badge made out of a PCB. Something similar for next year wouldn't be a bad starting point for a DIY badge. It might also be an opportunity to sneak an ATmega328 onto one (no offense to our friends at Parallax, but it seems weird to ignore Arduinos).
I didn't know until closing ceremonies that there were scheduled talks in some of the villages - it would be great to get that added to the official schedule next time.
For the vendor area, I'd like to see more electronic kits and gadgets. Not the garden variety stuff, mind you - we as a community produce all kinds of unusual stuff and it would be awesome to see some of it for sale. For example, speakers sometimes produce a small run of boards related to their talks (like the BishopFox board that caused a mini-stampede last year), and a lot of us make cool projects that others might find interesting. It doesn't make sense for any one of us to try to get a vendor table to sell one cool item, but if we could get a table set up for sales of community-sourced items (some or even all profits could go to the EFF to "pay" for this service), I bet we could collectively stock it with all kinds of neat crap.
I hope that qualifies as constructive.
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