Ideas for Defcon 15

[sammo]

Re: Ideas for Defcon 15

How about having receipts printed for people to take back home with them like in previous years. When I picked up my badge I was told that a receipt would be put up on defcon.org immediately following the convention...

Well, if it's there I can't find it. I've looked through the faq, forums and Google searched the site and still no luck.

Anyone have any ideas as I have to turn in my trip expenses today in order to get reimbursed.

Thanks!

-Brand

Yeah, this would be really nice.

[TheCotMan]

Re: Ideas for Defcon 15

how about using washable markers or crayons to write on the walls. and the losers of the contests have to do washing duty, or clean up. and/or just tape up card board signs to the walls, or get the poster cardboard which sells for like 1$ for abundle of like 5, and just tape up the thing with masking or even funner the gray tape. whatever its called. sorry insomnia is starting to set in, and i havent even gone a full night :(

A few problems with these ideas:
1) Nothing adhesive was allowed on the wallpapered walls (risks to peeling off wallpaper once removed.)
2) Once con attendees saw people writing on the walls with pens (knowing they are washable or not) out come the indellible sharpies people use to tag hapless victims that manage to fall asleep in public places at Defcon.

It is good that you are trying to come up with ideas to solve this problem, but these have costs that are too high.

Anyone have any ideas as I have to turn in my trip expenses today in order to get reimbursed.

Yep. See my suggestion here. You can also try photocopying the back of your badge with the printout of the page showing and highlighting the cost of the con.

1. I think a designated area for post-talk questions and answers would be fantastic. Of course after most talks the presenter gets mobbed with a few questions, but crowd control becomes an issue and having to stand around makes the answers of lower quality.

(Good idea)
Ahh, but a Q/A breakout session for post-talk discussion might help clear out the room for the next speaker. :-)

[nous]

Re: Ideas for Defcon 15

A few problems with these ideas:
1) Nothing adhesive was allowed on the wallpapered walls (risks to peeling off wallpaper once removed.)

why not see if they'll try those 3M command adhesive thingies? they work exactly as advertised and would do the job.


nous.

[renderman]

Re: Ideas for Defcon 15

Much discussion was had on Sunday/Monday about things to fill that space:

As mentioned, a specific breakout area for speakers to handle the questions that people have (each track would have a specific post-talk room) for questions, breakout, demo's, whatever. This also removes the glut of people from just outside the doors in the hallways.

The LP village needs more room! A couple skyboxes would rock. One for seminars and teaching, the other for general picking and contests.

Breakout and hands on sessions would be ideal for the smaller rooms. Not nessecarily hardware, but just small training seminars would be cool (i.e. have a stack of backtrack CD's and a wireless net setup and allow people to try cracking it in a lab like setup). Topics I can see being good seminars are software tool howto's and hands on (teach about using metasploit and have a box there to be activly attacked on a seperate (read: safe) lan).

[dYn4mic]

Re: Ideas for Defcon 15

Maybe just leave the whole area open (except maybe vendor) and put contest, ctf, chill, break out, etc. there.

That would be a pretty cool sight. One huge room would have obvious advantages such as ease of movement, lots of things to look at, lots of people, lots of room.
But also its harder to keep things centralized, harder to do security, maybe noise issues... It would be cool though. Maybe try it out pre-con and see...

[sammo]

Re: Ideas for Defcon 15

That would be a pretty cool sight. One huge room would have obvious advantages such as ease of movement, lots of things to look at, lots of people, lots of room.
But also its harder to keep things centralized, harder to do security, maybe noise issues... It would be cool though. Maybe try it out pre-con and see...

I think having Kenshoto share a room would really make it suck for the people associated with the whole CTF business, mainly due to all the audio/video in the room and how things are usually pretty dark...

[dYn4mic]

Re: Ideas for Defcon 15

I think having Kenshoto share a room would really make it suck for the people associated with the whole CTF business, mainly due to all the audio/video in the room and how things are usually pretty dark...

Yeah.. the CTF is the only thing that may not be "compatible".
But, if I was on the CTF (and I plan on it someday soon) I'd want it to be fairly dark.
Helps me focus at least...

[mfreeck]

Re: Ideas for Defcon 15

That would be a pretty cool sight. One huge room would have obvious advantages such as ease of movement, lots of things to look at, lots of people, lots of room.
But also its harder to keep things centralized, harder to do security, maybe noise issues... It would be cool though. Maybe try it out pre-con and see...

Actually, I like the enclosed "village" idea. There are some disadvantages, such as fixed space, but the advantages are they can maximize their space usage without worrying about encroaching on others and a crowd from another area won't spill out and obstruct an unrelated area. Perhaps if you found a way to partition areas, so it still had a "village" feel but was still visible, that would work.

[DJ Jackalope]

Re: Ideas for Defcon 15

How about base jumping off of famous casinos?

[Grendel]

Re: Ideas for Defcon 15

How about base jumping off of famous casinos?

Pass. I choose life.

I would like to chime in a bit, since this was my first time to defcon (which was awesome, btw... thanks for a great time!!). One thing that I expected more of was breakout rooms covering different topics, or at least areas where I could meet people with the same interest. Some topics that come to mind would be pentest tools/techniques, OS-specific issues, network-related issues (VPN, VOIP, etc.), and probably rooms designated for local DC groups (I know, there was one such time slot for this, but I missed it, unfortunately). I could add more to this list, but I hope I've provided a general idea of what I was looking for.

I mention this because even though there were many thousands of people there, I had no idea what I had in common with these people, other than speaker topics. I would have liked to been able to find a place to meet with others that had similar interests in a convenient manner. Even if there had been tables in the common area for this, that would have helped. As it was, I had a great time, but ended up meeting only single-serving friends. Had there been a designated place for the varied specific interests, I probably would have enjoyed it that much more.

[Kai]

Re: Ideas for Defcon 15

They had pre-printed receipts on Thursday, maybe they just ran out?

[dYn4mic]

Re: Ideas for Defcon 15

[...snip...]
As it was, I had a great time, but ended up meeting only single-serving friends. Had there been a designated place for the varied specific interests, I probably would have enjoyed it that much more.

Thanks for the good reply, and clever fight club quote usage. I'd encorage other defcon first timers to respond to this thread especially because of its nature.
Your perspective on things is something that many of us may have trouble thinking of. We can all work to improve the con experiance, but first we must know what should be fixed or improved (if much).

[remad]

Re: Ideas for Defcon 15

This was also my first defcon. If I didn't have friends who had been to a few before I would have been lost when it can to the parties at night. One idea I had was to announce that the hangout areas inside and out would be open at night. This would give a big area to hang out and have a few drinks. They didn't seem to have a problem serving alcohol with <21s in the room during the day so I don't see why it would be diff at night. You could even have the filler videos running on the wall in the room. This would even give more entertainment to the private parties in the skyboxes being able to watch the crowd below. Maybe some mardi gras style action would even start up. Maybe market it as a defcon mardi gras party and encourage costumes?

Just a randumb thought.

Remad

[octalpus]

Re: Ideas for Defcon 15

How about having receipts printed for people to take back home with them like in previous years. When I picked up my badge I was told that a receipt would be put up on defcon.org immediately following the convention...

Well, if it's there I can't find it. I've looked through the faq, forums and Google searched the site and still no luck.

Anyone have any ideas as I have to turn in my trip expenses today in order to get reimbursed.

Thanks!

-Brand

If you can't find it on the MAIN PAGE of defcon.org, in a HIGHLITED section, you probably don't deserve to be reimbursed.

[Voltage Spike]

Re: Ideas for Defcon 15

They didn't seem to have a problem serving alcohol with <21s in the room during the day so I don't see why it would be diff at night.

This is an excellent question, and perhaps one that should be brought up in discussion next year (with regards to the B&W). It is a more sensitive issue for the random parties, but it should be obvious why the hotel relaxes the rules when they are the ones selling the booze.

If you can't find it on the MAIN PAGE of defcon.org, in a HIGHLITED section, you probably don't deserve to be reimbursed.

To be fair to the guy, I believe he posted well before the link was up. Heck, the timestamp on the PDF is 16:19 while that of the post is 10:29 which, even considering likely time zones, is quite a difference.