DEFCON: The Documentary Page #3

that's awesome that you came out.

DEF CON is truly an event and a

conference where you get out

what you put into it.

DEF CON is the one time a year where

everything that we do year-round

actually becomes physical.

All these people that you've met in IRC,

All these people you've been chatting to,

All these people you've been reading

their research, following their work,

looking at the different things

they're publishing... They're here.

Walk up to them, tell them that you

like their work, and buy them a beer.

They'll probably be your best friend.

That's one of the biggest things about

this crowd you've got to really swallow

is the fact we're all

super, super approachable.

You can be a wallflower here and still get

a lot out of it, but you're not gonna

get your 200 bucks worth, frankly.

You're gonna have to interact, work

with people, get to know people,

go party with people.

If you don't know something, be proud of that.

Be like "I don't know this."

Can you please teach me? Can you

please educate me and train me?"

This crowd loves spinning people up.

Take the time to go in and learn

from these people. They're geniuses,

truly geniuses, and some of the

best in the world in whatever it is

that they're presenting or working with.

So, take advantage of it, you guys, OK?

Alright, the next rule is

one that basically says

"The media is not your friend.

Don't trust them."

What do you think is the number

1 thing people misunderstand

when they show up to DEF CON?

That it's a den of illegal activity and

you're gonna come learn how to do really

neat, illegal, black hat, gonna get in

trouble if the FBI shows up at your door

and you should show up with your ski mask

on just so no one can know your identity.

What is it actually then?

It's a publicly funded, private party

for a bunch of really cool people.

Yeah, our reputation is... it's out

there, but people are proud of it

and I'm probably the only one who tries to go

around and go "It wasn't quite like that",

it was sorta like this."

I don't think people understand how much

goes into creating a show of this size.

DEF CON looks like this big amorphous jellyfish

of people everywhere, but what I hadn't

realized is that there is really a lot

of stuff that goes on on the back end

to keep it running like clockwork.

That's what makes DEF CON so exciting.

It's super organic, is the way I see it.

If you're inflexible, it doesn't work

with DEF CON because there's too many

people and you'll just break, and

that's just the reality of it.

I always joke for me it's an opportunity

to spend 4 days out of the year

not caring about computers

or computer security.

Everybody's Christmas, New Year's, Birthday,

Anniversary, wrapped up into one, for hackers.

It's an experience that's not like anything

that anybody has described because it's

kind of something you can

make what you want out of it.

You can show up and you can just go to

talks and you can sit there and get that

out of the conference or you can show up

and just party. You can show up and hang

out in your hotel room with a bunch of friends.

When it comes down to it,

you're the driver of the experience. It's not

a pony show where you can just, you know,

sit down in a seat and let it unfold before you.

The more active you become

inside the con the

more fun you can have.

For me, I think it's more social.

Mainly, for me, it's just a lot of close

friends that I get to meet once a year

because of the diversity of where

they all live in the United States.

So this is kind of like a meeting point.

Go out there, be social, just run into

people and say "hi" and just strike up a

conversation because you will

meet interesting people here.

It's fantastic, everybody is friendly. I

can sit down and talk to anybody and I

just ask them "what do you do" and they're

happy to tell me about what kind of

employment they do or the hobbies that they're in.

It's just striking up

conversations. That's

my personal favorite.

It's a combination of the people who I run into

at DEF CON and just sort of the atmosphere.

It's like a giant party that doesn't

want to end but there is a lot of

really smart people in one place and it's

just, there is really no other place like it.

The first qualification, if you will, to

be a vendor at DEF CON is "how are you"

"providing back to the hacker community

at large." A lot of money goes through

there. It's kind of staggering. One thing

that we try and do is most of these

guys, most of the vendors if you walk

around that room, this isn't their primary

business. These are people that are in the community.

Take a look at these guys.

They're only doing this this time of year

and it's only to provide something to the

community that they think is neat.

Those are the kind of folks that

definitely get a priority when I'm

looking through applications.

It looks like you're doing things right.

Ok, is this on? Oh, Boy! Ok...

What I've tried to do with the whole

hacking community is raise the level

of discourse, that's the thing is,

to bring information, to make it

accessible and widely dispersed at a

reasonable price and make people happy.

And if I put a smile on their face it's like

"Wow, really, that's a great price and"

"I get that too?" That's good. I don't need

every last dollar. What are you gonna do

with dollars anyway?

They're just numbers.

Our main job actually is to create mayhem.

That's actually what we've been asked by

the management. Make sure we create a lot of mayhem.

We actually have official

DEF CON 8 posters from years ago that

we found, so, we're not selling them,

we're giving them away, but you have to

convince us to give you one, and that

requires mayhem in the dealer's room of

some sort that we don't officially support

but for some reason they end up with a poster.

Who knew, right?

We are simplewifi.com. We are long range

wireless made easy. We custom make all of

our antennas in Miami, Florida, so if you

want to go creating a hotspot around your

whole neighborhood or you have that guy with

an unfortunately has an open signal and

you don't want to pay for Wi-Fi you can

set your antenna pointing right at it,

grab that signal and you

have Internet for free.

The people that want something one year

that you didn't bring, invariably won't

want it next year. It's like everyone wanted network cables.

Everyone wanted PIN card readers,

or prox card readers or mag stripe

readers, encoders, decoders, you know,

it varies every year. And then everyone

that leaves something behind, like

"We need a hub" It's like, OK...

I only have 53 tables in total that can be sold.

Some vendors are getting 2,

some vendors are getting 3 so you have to

decide what's going to actually provide

the most benefit to the attendees, what

are they actually gonna want to buy and

we certainly have made mistakes in the past.

For one thing...

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