#Defcon schedule how to
#Defcon schedule series

He is as nice a guy in person as he is over email or on the phone.īill has been after me to write a book on ham radio-tentatively titled Ham Radio for Hackers-for a while now. We’ve swapped a lot of emails over the past couple of years, but never met in person, so I wanted to shake his hand. One of the things that I did Monday afternoon was visit the No Starch Press booth in the vendor area, where I got to meet Bill Pollock, the head honcho of No Starch.

#Defcon schedule how to

In this village, folks are given a small kit that they can build to learn how to solder. The HHV also sponsors the Soldering Skills Village.

#Defcon schedule series

– HHV Rube Goldberg Machine Event, which encourages entrants to create a series of devices that combine to form an end-to-end Rube Goldberg machine for transmitting messages.

The Hardware Hacking Village sponsored a couple of interesting challenges, including: – Make Your Own Use, in which entrants are encouraged to take a device and make it do something completely different from the application it was originally designed for. That’s when I decided to go find the Hardware Hacking Village (HHV) and the Soldering Skills Village, which were located away from the conference center in the Flamingo Hotel. There must have been more than a hundred people in line! I wasn’t willing to wait that long and went to find something else to do. A goon immediately jumped on me and informed me that the line started down the hall. When I got to the Merch Store, I noticed a small line outside the room and dutifully got in line. Sales of “merch,” as they call it is a big revenue source for DEFCON. I attended a couple of talks, then thought I might go purchase a t-shirt. They took this latter responsibility very seriously.įor a newbie like me, the first day of DEFCON was really overwhelming. These lines were monitored by the “goons,” who were not only responsible for keeping attendees in order, but also for ensuring that everyone wore a mask. The conference hall was packed, and to get into any of the sessions, one had to line up. I was amazed at how many people were there. I found some place to eat and then headed back to my hotel room, where I promptly crashed.įriday was my first real taste of DEFCON. I had intended to take part in a little Las Vegas nightlife that evening-maybe even play a little blackjack-but I’d had some minor surgery the week before that I was still recovering from, and I don’t sleep very well in hotels, so I was pretty beat by the time the class was over. The test sessions resulted in 113 new hams and 24 upgrades. Over the weekend, the HRV VE team administered 381 exams, resulting in 147 passes. I’m going to guess that the 2 who didn’t pass on Thursday, and those that didn’t take the test then, eventually did pass. The HRV had test sessions on both Friday and Saturday, so some decided to get in a little more study before attempting the test. Fortunately, the volunteer examiners (VEs) were very forgiving and hung around while I finished up.ġ7 people decided to take the test that day. There were so many questions that the class ran about 45 minutes long. This class asked a lot of good questions.

One way that I can tell that the class is paying attention and is engaged by the questions they asked. There’s more give and take, and because I can see the students’ faces, I can better tell if they’re really understanding the material. This was my first in-person class since the pandemic was declared. The class itself went smoothly enough, and it was really nice to be teaching an in-person class again. My first one-day Tech class in DEFCON 30’s Ham Radio Village was definitely a success. At least they were able to accommodate a couple of people that were on the waiting list. That’s what happens when there’s no charge for the class. 40 people signed up for the class, but only about half that number showed up. I flew in Wednesday, so that I could teach a one-day Tech class on Thursday in the Ham Radio Village (HRV). The trip was interesting, exhilarating, and exhausting all at the same time.

Why anyone would want to spend any time in Las Vegas in the middle of August is beyond me, but that’s exactly what I did.