> It's certainly not the social scene Defcon is (indeed, it replaces that social scene with an enterprise sales hookup scene), but it's definitely not a "totally boring business conference".
It's the enterprise sales hookup thing that attracts most visitors though. The people from our company that go there go mainly for that. They're all VPs and other suits that have no interest in specific vulnerabilities. They just want the free wine and dine and to feel important.
I couldn't imagine going to that kind of thing. I'd only put up with it if it would give me a chance to go to Def Con :)
And it's really the Def Con social scene I'd be interested in. I'm not a vulnerability researcher either, I'm just very informal, I'm not comfortable socialising with business people even though I work in enterprise security. So I think for me black hat would be pretty boring.
What I love about the grassroots hacker conferences is the free sharing of information without commercial strings attached (in fact here in Europe people get booed off stage when they pull out the sales pitch) The presentations not vetted by PR departments. The tongue in cheek remarks against big tech. The activism. Drunkenly running into other makers and making good friends. Exchanging business cards and finding a new vendor is definitely not on the list. I don't normally go to too many of the talks either, especially not the huge ones.
If you're not a practitioner and you're looking for a social scene, you want Defcon, not Black Hat. But if you are a practitioner, the lobby conference at Black Hat is better than the Defcon scene. The talks are much better at Black Hat, but the guts of the important ones are public immediately and all of them are published eventually. Nobody should have FOMO about Black Hat, but to dismiss it as a commercial event (like RSA is) is to misunderstand it.
It's the enterprise sales hookup thing that attracts most visitors though. The people from our company that go there go mainly for that. They're all VPs and other suits that have no interest in specific vulnerabilities. They just want the free wine and dine and to feel important.
I couldn't imagine going to that kind of thing. I'd only put up with it if it would give me a chance to go to Def Con :)
And it's really the Def Con social scene I'd be interested in. I'm not a vulnerability researcher either, I'm just very informal, I'm not comfortable socialising with business people even though I work in enterprise security. So I think for me black hat would be pretty boring.
What I love about the grassroots hacker conferences is the free sharing of information without commercial strings attached (in fact here in Europe people get booed off stage when they pull out the sales pitch) The presentations not vetted by PR departments. The tongue in cheek remarks against big tech. The activism. Drunkenly running into other makers and making good friends. Exchanging business cards and finding a new vendor is definitely not on the list. I don't normally go to too many of the talks either, especially not the huge ones.