Joe Freeman

DEFCON is the   hoodie conference that follows the BlackHat  suit  conference.  It has a very different feel from other security conferences with no corporate sponsors, no advertising, no marketing mailing list and an aggressive inclusion policy.  Normally I can go to a conference, sit in some sessions and do a little lab work and feel like a success.   DEFCON is all about participation and inclusion.  There is an entire wall of competitions often called Capture the Flag (CTF)  that originate in the various villages.   It has 20+ semi-structured lab tracks.  Attendees literally wear the results of their conference activities. DEFCON 26 was my first visit to the Las Vegas hacker conference.  I was completely unprepared for the almost any of the lab / village sessions that I worked on.  It was still awesome but I would have gotten so much more out of it with some serious preparation. Prepare There is a good chance  you will be a complete poser  at DEFCON if you are not al

The CON is what you make of it . I arrived in Las Vegas at my first DEFCON the night before registration.  We finally got to bed around 1:30 in the morning.  The registration line had already started... DEFCON 26 Registration The main part of the conference starts on Friday.  Workshops start on Thursday. Registration starts Thursday morning at Caesars. Most of the activities start on Friday. I got in line Thursday at 5:30 AM along with several thousand of my closest friends.  Some folks spent the night in order to make sure they got the electronic badges.  Another few thousand joined the line behind me. You basically show up at Caesars with $280 in registration cash for plus whatever cash you need to purchase shirts and other SWAG.  I'd recommend having access to other cash in case you run into other swag you want from the villages or vendor area. Registration opened at 6:00 AM.  They register approximately 20,000 people on Thursday. Registration is a cash only, no rece