This will be my 10th year attending DEFCON. I came in pretty late into actually attending hacker conferences, but I’ve tried to make up for lost time – I’ve attended something like 50 or thereabouts in the ensuing time. DEFCON continues to be the largest in most terms, with HOPE being a very close second.

Something about DEFCON makes it a much different experience with regard to meeting people who’ve heard of me in other quarters. It’s probably a combination of the incredible flow-through of folks (if you stand still you’ll have thousands go by you) and the huge variance of people who attend, because it’s in Las Vegas and folks from all over make a week of it. Either way, it comes down to I’m near a lot of people, some of who have heard of me through my projects or this site.

The thing I want to make clear is that I attend these cons for various reasons, but one of them is not to avoid pe0ple. If I wanted to avoid people, I wouldn’t go. I specifically and directly want to meet people, especially people who enjoy my work and want to talk to me.

Way too many times I have found out that someone attended a convention, saw me there, but was too nervous to walk up, or thought they read my face as “don’t approach me”. Let me assure you this is simply not the case.  I spend a lot of time, a lot of time behind a screen doing my various projects, and I only get a few days a year where I meet people who interact with those projects. I’m happy to talk as much as reality permits.

At this year’s conference, besides the aforementioned DENCON that I am assisting with, I am speaking about Archive Team as part of “Skytalks” (11am Sunday) and That Awesome Time I Was Sued for Two Billion Dollars at 3pm on Friday. Other than that, the schedule is pretty free. I’m up for hanging out.

See you there.

Categorised as: jason his own self | textfiles.com

Comments are disabled on this post