Yesterday afternoon the final third of my Vegas adventures officially began. Around 5pm I checked in at the Defcon registration desk and received my badge and a handful of show-related materials. Most everyone’s badges are white with LEDs on the front of them; speaker badges are blue, and quite noticeable. I caught quite a few people staring at mine, wondering if I was someone important or not.
After registering for the con I drove over to the 4th annual Toxic BBQ, a pre-Defcon cookout. At the cookout I met Kemikal and Smack, both fellow cDc Ninja Strike Force members. We didn’t bring anything to the BBQ and when we got there we discovered an ice shortage. I immediately hopped back in the truck, drove down to Circle K and bought 10 bags of ice. Everybody there was super nice and we all shared burgers and beers for a couple of hours. Unsurprisingly, the large (200 people, give or take) congregation of guys in black t-shirts and baseball caps did not go unnoticed by the local authorities. Local police showed up around 8pm and gave us half an hour to disperse.
Friday morning at 10am, Defcon officially kicked off. The conference itself is overwhelming. The main hall reminded me of the club from the movie Hackers. The walls were lined with projected images of computer screens and video mixes. Every room is filled with loud, thumping music. And then there are the hackers of all shapes and sizes. I’ve seen more Mohawks here at the conference than I’ve seen in a decade back home, and for each one of those I’ve seen guys in suits, shirts … you name it, they’re here. Today (Friday) is the slowest day of the con and there were already thousands of people here.
At 3pm Myles Long (cDc), Rad Man (ACiD) and myself gave our presentation on self-publishing. The panel went very well, considering the lack of prep work on all of our parts. I met Myles for the first time around noon today, and Rad Man shortly after that. We filled the entire 50 minute time slot and then moved to the Question and Answer room, where several people from the crowd came and asked more detailed questions. I would guess there were somewhere around a hundred or so people in the audience and several of them came up to me throughout the day to ask questions or simply compliment the job we did, so it appeared to be well accepted.
Around 6pm I split from the show to go have dinner with some friends. After dinner I hooked up with some of the other cDc and NSF guys who had rented a crazy condo for their stay here in Vegas. After hanging there for a bit we all piled into cars and made our way to the Krave Bar off the strip. One of the cDc guys (Delchi) is a DJ there and they were hosting an official cDc party at the club tonight. I’m not exactly sure what happened but we were there from 10pm until well past midnight and Delchi never showed up. Still, $2 drinks made the time fly by and there were a lot of great conversations and laughs going on. I met so many people that my head is still reeling — it was like a who’s who of the underground in that place.
As people began splitting from the Krave to head to the next party I slipping out and back to the hotel. Five or six hours sleep has become the norm, and I’m looking forward to it tonight.