Can someone point me in the right direction?

[JessK]

I’m new and I’m a woman. I wanna join some groups and help plan some events! Where do I find my peeps?

[number6]

I’m new and I’m a woman. I wanna join some groups and help plan some events! Where do I find my peeps?

Many contests, Events and Villages grow through a natural process where people that know each other and are happy to work with each other, team up and volunteer. A great deal of reputation and goodwill encourages organizers to maintain these by making wise decisions on who to recruit to help them with their contests, villages, events, etc. so many are cautious to know the people or evaluate their actions before recruiting them.

Start with contests, villages, events, etc. which are run by people that you know, and people that know you. If you do not know anyone, then maybe there is a DEF CON Group near you, where you can get to know other people attending DEF CON before they visit. Maybe one of them knows about a volunteering opportunity.

A great deal of DEF CON is distributed, with reliance on organizers for Contests, Events, Villages, etc. to manage their own services with few restrictions like CoC and casino/hotel/conference center rules, but resources allocated (like space for a thing.) As a result, there is generally not a top-down process for people to apply in one place to work "somewhere." If none of the other items above work, you can try choosing something that interests you and then asking that group about opportunities to volunteer. It makes more sense for a person to volunteer to help in a space where their skills can improve the thing they want to volunteer to support.

Volunteering can be demanding of your time. Be sure you really want to spend you whole DEF CON time volunteering at the cost of missing out on everything else.

Good luck in your search!

If you planned to run your own events, contest, village, etc. the call for these I think have expired with resources allocated for these official things. (Check out the page for DEF CON 30 and "Call for ..." dates and what is still open: https://defcon.org/html/defcon-30/dc-30-cfp.html : as of June 7, 2022, the only things still open according to this page is "Call for Music" and "Press Registration")

There is often opportunity for *unofficial* things, but you have to get your own resources for those (space at some hotel, a bar if you want one, transportation service if you want that.) It can easily get very expensive to run large, unofficial events at a casino. Many unofficial things are not promoted by DEF CON. Few people can afford large unofficial events. Most unofficial events run by individuals are run off-site, or with small numbers in places like their own hotel room like parties or chat sessions about "stuff."