I’ll admit my experience with DEF CON 26 was less than stellar. The tracks really didn’t resonate with my interests. Still, even during what I consider “off years”, keeping your finger on the pulse of the hacking community always has value to me. All in all, I’m glad I still attended.
On the heels of Linecon, I was fortunate enough to dive into the badge challenge for a short while before I started planning my itinerary and chasing tracks; it was fun collaborating with random attendees: dumping what we learned on /r/defcon and twitter then watching how people built off that knowledge.
I manged to get another implant (RFID this time), thanks to the exhaustive efforts of the Bio Hacking Village and c00p3r (Check out his podcast: http://www.dangerousminds.io/). I enjoyed hanging around the implant party area chatting with potential soon-to-be cyborgs about the “Why”s, “What”s, and “How”s of implants.
But that’s largely where DEF CON’s official appeal ended this year, at least with me. Going over my notes, I apparently focused more on the philosophies and policies surrounding technology rather than exploits or technical demos. I still enjoyed chatting with fellow attendees, which you can argue can be more valuable than the scheduled events.
I trust next year will bring new ideas into the space. As far as Bio Hacking, I look forward to talks about Nootropics and new consumer-level implants that continue to push the boundaries of the human body. The Blockchain & Cryptocurrency Open Security (BCOS) Village was a new entry this year. As technologies begin to use this decentralized “Trust No One” model, I expect to see this village grow. That being said, I own the whole blockchain now.