Speaking Schedule for DEFCON24

[jacket18]

How long before DEFCON is the speaking schedule usually posted?

I'm headed to DEFCON for the first time this year, and I'm trying to plan out my trip. It would be helpful to know what the talks will be and what the schedule is, but there's still nothing on the website.

Thanks.

[TheCotMan]

Historically, it is done in stages. This year, first notices to accept talks were sent out around June 6. Acceptance letters are sent in batches. Acceptance letter may include a request for confirmation that the person that submitted the paper will actually be at DEF CON. After enough talks are accepted, lists of talks accepted get posted online in batches. These are refined as some speakers cancel or let DEF CON speaker/paper goons know travel authorizations were not possible, and talks held-back as not-accepted, but not-declined are considered as replacements for talks that won't happen. Historically, the next stage is when enough talks are posted online, tentative schedules for talks starts to appear online. The early schedule is most chaotic, with greatest risk for changes to times or talks.

Best guesses for times for these this year? By end of June, we will probably see several talks mentioned on the main site, but probably not much of a schedule. By the first or second week of July, we will probably see schedules for talks forming online. Once the schedule online appears to be complete with all time-slots filled, the risk for revisions still exists but grows smaller as we get closer to con.

I am not part of the speaker-track, or review board. None of the above is authoritative; it is based on past experience.

HTH,
-Cot

[sainate]

jacket18 , for what it's worth, last year was my first trip to DEF CON and I spent the time between about February (when I found out I was going to get to go) until around mid-July obsessing about the talk schedules. I created a spreadsheet and listed the talks, times, speakers and where the talk would be held and began planning what talks I would be able to attend with a primary and secondary (and, in some cases, tertiary) options for each timeslot. When I actually got there, I was completely overwhelmed and ended up missing most of the ones that I thought that I wanted to see. This year, my game plan has changed a bit and rather than scheduling around the talks, I'm planning on spending the majority of my time in the villages and attending any talks where a) tools that seem interesting will be released, b) the talk is about something that I specifically want to know about (I'm trying to get more familiar with offensive PowerShell, so anything related offensive or defensive PowerShell will be on the list) or c) nothing is going on in the villages that I'm interested in (unlikely, but possible I guess). I'm also going to try to catch as much as the SE CTF as possible (the lines were HUGE last year), since that won't be recorded. I believe that I've seen most all of the talks from DC23 on YouTube and was able to see and hear better on the videos than I could see / hear them live but I likely missed a lot of cool stuff that happened in the villages that won't (can't) be reproduced on YouTube.

Just my two cents worth (adjusted for inflation and taxed) but I was obsessed with the talks last year and think I missed out on a lot of what makes DC awesome (meeting other like minded folks and either learning something or helping someone else learn something). The talks will be on YouTube later (I think around December was when the DC23 talks started showing up).

[jacket18]

Thanks! That's great info. I was hoping to see a schedule sooner, but at least now I have a realistic expectation.

I was definitely planning on attending as many talks as possible, but that's good advice!

This is maybe a dumb question, but what exactly is the Village? It wasn't quite clear from the web, but how do those talks differ from the ones on the speaking tracks?

Any other advice on the talks/Village for a n00b?

[sainate]

No dumb questions (ok, asking how to hack your ex-girlfriends Facebook or similar are dumb questions). I suspect that there are a LOT of folks here that could give much better explanations of the villages than me but the best way that I can think of is that the talks are primarily one direction, from speaker to audience. The villages are full duplex in many cases (lockpick village, tamper resistant, etc.) where you get to touch and play with stuff and interact.

• Explore. DEF CON is HUGE and I kept finding stuff the whole time that I was there. Get familiar with the floorplan (https://forum.defcon.org/forum/defco...n-24-floorplan) before you get there. Paris and Bally's are connected and the CON spans both of them.
• Read these forums and interact with the folks here. There are some AWESOME folks that tend to do a really good job of hiding the fact that they're awesome.
• When you get to the CON, meet folks. I tend to be an introvert and don't do well in social situations, so this was a challenge until I started doing it. Everyone that I met at DC23 was awesome.
• Make mental notes on what worked, what didn't and what you would do differently and then write about it after the CON. I did it last year (https://forum.defcon.org/forum/defco...r-future-n00bs) and have gotten a lot of positive feedback from folks that found it helpful. Some of them have offered free beer at DC24 (not sure if they're talking free as in speech or free as in, well, beer :), but not interested in splitting hairs either way).

[qumqats]

Keep in mind that the 'talks' are only a small part of DC

• talks
• workshops
• demo labs
• villages ( how many different villages are there? )
• sky talks
• contests
• vendors
• parties on and off site
• etc.

Many of these have their own schedule page. You can't go to one official page and find out everything that's going on. You have have to just read the forum here, follow the twitter feeds, Facebook, redit, etc and follow the leads to the various pages.

In years past I've attempted to do a combined or consolidated page as the various schedule pages were posted and I find them. I hope to do it again this year, so check back here as things progress.

It may be a problem finding out everything that's going on, but it's an even bigger problem, once you know, deciding what you're going to see and not see!

Have Fun

[Nikita]

How long before DEFCON is the speaking schedule usually posted?

I'm headed to DEFCON for the first time this year, and I'm trying to plan out my trip. It would be helpful to know what the talks will be and what the schedule is, but there's still nothing on the website.

Thanks.

It's up now. It *should* be relatively close to it's final form as it is now. I hope I don't have to change anything.

All the talk abstracts should be up and online by Monday EOB.