How different is today’s con?

[h3adrush]

I attended DEFCON from 2001 to 2012. How different is the con now? Is the experience a totally different thing now? Thanks!

[number6]

I attended DEFCON from 2001 to 2012. How different is the con now? Is the experience a totally different thing now? Thanks!

At really early DEF CON it was possible to see most of the stuff, but once DEF CON moved to no longer be a single track, and contests starting becoming popular , seeing "most" of the official stuff became impossible. That trend has continued through the creation of Villages, Workshops, official parties in addition to unofficial parties. This "specialization" has been a double-edged sword, as it cuts both ways... there is more to do, but there is more you miss: the opportunity cost of choosing one thing is all the things you do not get to do.

DEF CON is now split up across several properties and hotels/casinos. A great deal of effort is put in to try to have related things be in the same property, so if your thing was villages, then most of the villages would be relatively close to each other. Similar for contests, or speaker tracks. However, this has increased the time it takes to get from one thing that might be on one property then move yourself to another thing on another property. (Check out lists of contests/villages for consideration or acceptance: https://forum.defcon.org/node/244775 https://forum.defcon.org/node/244774 )

Have comfortable shoes, or whatever you use to transport yourself around DEF CON.

This expansion and explosion in opportunities to have more options has made use of things like schedule aggregators even more important. Before you go, build a flexible plan of things you want to see, so for every hour of the day, you have something to do, but like old DEF CON, be ready to abandon it if something better appears. One aggregator is https://info.defcon.org/ which uses data that the DEF CON Info Booths use. If you are willing to trust an app in google play, or apple store, there is the "Hacker Tracker" for more interactive access. Last, one goon who has been part of infobooth has provided text-based aggregated info as TEXT files for people that are more paranoid about "running some app" or more paranoid "visiting some web page". These aggregators often include official and unofficial content.

At early DEF CON, most people just "unplugged" : unless they were in a contest and they needed tech (laptop, cell phone, etc.) they did not frequently use their tech. Now, we have DEF CON WiFi which uses per-user auth and certs with some limited isolation, to let people use their devices and preferred apps to communicate with each other and use aggregators. (Like with any large Las Vegas events, running without support for some kind of WiFi exceeds capacity of 3G, 4G, 5G etc. telco data services, even with their mobile access points to temporarily add capacity.)

At early DEF CON, you had a fair chance of running into most of the people you have known over several years, but as the size has grown, accidental or opportunistic encounters with people you know has become less common. Planning to meet up with people you know is the better choice now, if you want to meet-up with several people. Accidental encounters still happen, just not as common.

Since the pandemic and the first in-person DEF CON being canceled made online purchase of a badge for use at home, there has been continued demand for online purchase of badge. Early DEF CON had a huge majority of people wanting to only pay with cash, in-person. There is an increasing percent of people that want to pay for a badge "token" online with a credit card, then redeem their token, in-person. This can add complexity if there are different lines for "pay cash" vs. "redeem token" to get your badge. (There is still no "buy a badge and we ship it to you" : that happened one year -- the year in-person DEF CON was canceled and there was no in-person option. Now, if you buy online, you buy a *token* that you redeem in-person.)

Ages ago, there were unofficial channels on various IRC II server networks for DEF CON people to to hang out between DEF CON. Now, we have an official DEF CON Discord Server with its own channels and bots to help manage it. We have our own mastodon server. Reddit space for DEF CON seems more popular with more activity than the DEF CON forums. The big thing the forums offers has been a persistent history of DEF CON which is controlled by DEF CON, while content with reddit or other places expires, and can be removed.

Even with the explosion in complexity, and choices, modern DEF CON run way more smoothly than early DEF CON. At early DEF CON, some speakers would not show up to present. Things would run long. A speaker that would speak later is found and speaks earlier than their scheduled time. All things that made the printed program 40% useless. That is much rarer than it was. Weird or random rescheduling was broadcast at early DEF CON verbally with announcements, or on dry erase boards attached to "A" frames which could and would be defaced by other attendees. Now, online updates are available and schedule changes are easier to find in the rare case something has changed. Now we have a department that arranges for would-be speakers to be in a prep room some time before they present, allowing them to test their tech, like AV connections and more. That team has helped reduce the problems of no-shows, and speakers struggling with tech.

Ever since "DEF CON Kids" (then "DEF CON R00tz", then DEF CON R00tz Asylum") became a thing, there are more younger people (with parents) at DEF CON. Additionally, some people from early DEF CON who are now parents have brought their kids to *participate* in DEF CON. The people that ran DEF CON Kid (or other names for same thing) decided to not return, but parents have expressed a desire to see it return. It is possible something for kids may materialize as a result of the demand for it, and the interest in volunteers to provide it, but whatever might happen will be announced by the people that may support it, if it happens.

At early DEF CON, social interactions were often in the style of people who grew up in the 70's, 80's when is was a common social interaction for people to casually harass each other. Unflattering nicknames, criticism about appearance, lack of knowledge, etc. There was a great deal of cross-over between people into various technology and these kinds of social interactions as a result of when they grew up in the 70s and 80s, and their interests. Over time, this became more aggressive while much of society and newer generations had moved away from this. The older system of interactions included "friendly" chiding along with repulsive accusations or derision, and the later was criticized as a source of keeping demographics at DEF CON limited. This happened while there were informal carve-outs in this, like QueerCon, where there is and was strong support for LGBTQ* people and strong support of not tolerating abuse directed at those in these groups. Constructive criticism about groups without a carve-out were brought up and discussed online and Internally. Eventually, this lead to the creations of policies including a DEF CON Code of Conduct (CoC: https://defcon.org/html/links/dc-policy.html ) and a transparency report and more. Over years, this has been credited by some as expanding the demographics of DEF CON making it more welcoming to a more diverse group of people. This has also made much of DEF CON more friendly to kids, though we still discourage people under the age of 18 attending without a parent or guardian.

In the same spirit, this has also expanded support in HDA / ADA with a section on the forums and one or more people driving discussions related to DEF CON access by people with disabilities:
https://forum.defcon.org/node/242670

TL;DR: Summary:
So, larger, more inviting to more people, more diversity in demographics, more choices and opportunities, more policies, better organized though larger size and increased complexity has made that more difficult, more specialization, more choices in social media, More kids actively participating in DEF CON, often with parents participating. There are more choices, but an ever-increasing pool of things to tickle some people's FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out.)

Thoughts? Feedback? Need more details? Please let us know.
Good luck!

[h3adrush]

Awesome! Thank you so much for the response.