Defcon-By-Phone

[Strom Carlson]

Hello everyone,

I'm planning on doing Defcon-By-Phone again this year, and I'd like to get some feedback from those of you who used the system during DC13. If you've got any suggestions for features or improvements, I'd be glad to hear them.

If you can come up with a really snazzy name, that'd be awesome too. :)

[TheCotMan]

Hello everyone,

I'm planning on doing Defcon-By-Phone again this year, and I'd like to get some feedback from those of you who used the system during DC13. If you've got any suggestions for features or improvements, I'd be glad to hear them.

If you can come up with a really snazzy name, that'd be awesome too. :)

I remember two threads from the past related to this:

We should learn from the defcon setup

Organization (Complaint about changes in schedule not being updated or available. Mention of DefCon by phone.) [Comments about it start at post 16, complaint about lack of update in post 22, ]

Good to hear this will be back. There was high praise on this service from people. Great to see you taking a proactive approach on this to make it even better.

[Strom Carlson]

Organization (Complaint about changes in schedule not being updated or available. Mention of DefCon by phone.) [Comments about it start at post 16, complaint about lack of update in post 22, ]

Oh god, the schedule updates were a major pain in the ass. We had a system ready for us to easily and quickly be able to make any changes to the schedule, which wasn't at all prepared to handle an entire track being pushed back an hour (running around and trying to deal with that ate up the majority of the morning on Friday for me). Even worse was the fact that I went to the info booth, asked them to please please please please please please contact me with any and all schedule changes so that they could be entered into the system correctly, and then didn't hear a peep out of them for the rest of the convention. I even went back several times and asked why we hadn't received any updates, and each time I received a lamer excuse than before.
</rant>

The one major improvement that already occurred to me would be to have a common schedule platform that's updated by the powers that be and accessed by both the infobooth and defcon-by-phone. Having that would certainly make things go more smoothly.

In response to the comment about needing your PIN code to access the upcoming events list, it was never a requirement. However, in retrospect, not having the list as the first menu item probably confused a number of users. Next year I'll probaby have a menu tree diagram available in the official program and a "how to use defcon-by-phone" recording off the main menu.

[Strom Carlson]

Bumping this topic back to the top...any more feedback from you guys? any suggestion as to who I should talk to regarding the automatic schedule synchronization?

[converge]

I know this is probably not feasible.. and well outside of the scope of this project, but wanted to throw it out there because it would be fucking krad+1:

Each talk room and contest area.. or <insert cool audio-driven location here>, mic'd and live on a call bridge. I could be running around the con and/or vegas and be dialed into the call bridge through my cellphone and headpiece to listen to the talk/event as its going down..

Its too bad the entire operation couldn't be orchestrated through RSS .. schedule feed changes from AgentX or anywhere else in the chain and changes are translated into updated call menus.. *shrug*.. as well as coordinated with what the infobooth displays, etc.. last I knew they were still doing RSS, but kept it pretty tight on goonnet.

[Strom Carlson]

I know this is probably not feasible.. and well outside of the scope of this project, but wanted to throw it out there because it would be fucking krad+1:

Each talk room and contest area.. or <insert cool audio-driven location here>, mic'd and live on a call bridge. I could be running around the con and/or vegas and be dialed into the call bridge through my cellphone and headpiece to listen to the talk/event as its going down..

I doubt that's going to happen for three reasons:

• Defcon prohibits anyone from recording or retransmitting the talks as far as I'm aware
• The toll charges from having hundreds of people dialed into my 800 number for hours on end would make my wallet burst into flames. I can handle the cost of thousands using the system a few minutes each day, but not for having people dialed in for one or two hours at a time.
• Mobile phone audio quality sucks balls anyway and you're a madman if you want to listen to an entire talk over a mobile phone

Its too bad the entire operation couldn't be orchestrated through RSS .. schedule feed changes from AgentX or anywhere else in the chain and changes are translated into updated call menus.. *shrug*.. as well as coordinated with what the infobooth displays, etc.. last I knew they were still doing RSS, but kept it pretty tight on goonnet.

Well, if I can integrate my server with that somehow (vpn maybe?), that would work...

[TheCotMan]

What is your present plan for getting event scheduling data? Manual entry? Web-page change control? What formats can you import?

[Strom Carlson]

What is your present plan for getting event scheduling data? Manual entry? Web-page change control? What formats can you import?

Last year we had a webpage for making changes, but just so long as there's a data format where each event has a unique ID and a time associated with it, I can import it.

[converge]

[*]The toll charges from having hundreds of people dialed into my 800 number for hours

... trying to think of a cost-effective way around this.. DIDs?

[*]Mobile phone audio quality sucks balls anyway and you're a madman if you want to listen to an entire talk over a mobile phone

.. aahh, you need a better service provider :p The only thing that bunked up my participation in the 1-2 hour meeting I attended cell->cell was the busy Asian market food court that my other meeting was taking place at. Two conversations and 150 echoing people in the backdrop caused my attention span to suffer.

That would border on re-broadcast though, and DT would probably nix it for obvious reasons...

[Strom Carlson]

.. aahh, you need a better service provider :p.

No, seriously, the problem is inherent in the technology. If you don't understand the difference between pulse code modulation and linear predictive coding, you should probably go learn about that before you do any more talking on your mobile phone. If you can show me a mobile phone provider who gives me a full 64kbps of talk bandwidth, I am so there. :)

[converge]

I understand it's inferior by far.. no matter which service. Saying its beyond use and simply setting the thought aside is a little extreme though, considering I do it, quite successfully. That's like saying establishing a 56k 24/7 dedicated ppp/slip in your hotel room is just impossible because it limits your bandwidth... something that was quite handy before the advent of the Aruba guru WAPs

[erehwon]

Would it be possible to get the MovieFone guy?

Press one for info on StripperCon
Press two for info on the ToxicBBQ
Press three for info on the DC-Shoot
Press four to hear a duck quack

[Strom Carlson]

Would it be possible to get the MovieFone guy?

Press one for info on StripperCon
Press two for info on the ToxicBBQ
Press three for info on the DC-Shoot
Press four to hear a duck quack

I can do a mean impression of the moviefone guy, but I think my delivery was too moviefone-esque last year; this year I want to try for a natural, conversational tone.

[TheCotMan]

Last year we had a webpage for making changes, but just so long as there's a data format where each event has a unique ID and a time associated with it, I can import it.

ical (rfc2445) support Unique ID (UID:) and is something I've been trying to have work with a live export of forum created events. It is built to allow edits to existing events (time/location/whatever) by forum "leaders/organizers" or mods to be immediately available from the export tool.

So far, I have the exports working as imports to Outlook (manual), subscriptions with Apple iCal, Mozilla Sunbird (only tested on Linux but should work on Apple OS X and Windows), korganizer, and PHP iCalendar (very cool tool that can aggregate multiple local-store or remote-web-store ical sources into a single calendar, and then re-export them as RSS feed for "day" "week" "month" or "year" limits on upcoming events.)

For "grassroot" events organized on the forums, this would make it possible for any event "owner" who is listed as a forum Contest/Event "Leader/Organizer" to update forum event information on their own, and allow any subscribers to the live feeds to get access to changes when they refresh ical exports from the online export script.. (And forum event change control limits help restrict access to change events to mods or the original creator of an event.)

Very Cool. No need for forum leaders/organizers to contact the right person, and get the event moved and updated-- just so long as all electronic schedule listings snarf the lastest live feed, the latest information could be automatically made available. (Distributed scheduling control to help manage the chaos of ever-changing event information may be possible. :-)

Forum Event/Contest leaders/organizers would only need a web browser to update events, and many cell phones include this.

I've been providing various flat-file exports (not live data) in this thread. As of this post, I am up to "beta 9." Would access to a script that produced live event data like that found in the beta9 file make it possible for your phone menu to auto-update from live forum event data periodically?