Welcome to DEF CON 33!
This is our second “all in one” conference in the LVCC, being able to see everyone at once was amazing and I expect no less this year!
DC 33 was complicated to plan for, with ever shifting tariffs, and uncertainty for many of our foreign speakers and content creators. Some didn’t apply, some cancelled, and we had to adapt. Even with that stress and uncertainty I sense the pent up energy, with almost 700 submissions to speak this year, a post COVID record. This is the fourth and final year of the Nautilus Institute hosting the DEF CON Capture The Flag contest, I wish all the best to them and the teams competing this year! It is also the final year of the DARPA AIxCC competition, check it out as it has evolved from last year.
In chaotic times flexibility and community are critical and so we are planning to launch more distributed services to support the community building on the success of defcon.social, we are in the middle of a network migration to make everything more portable, shop.defcon.org is getting revamped, and if you use Meshtastic we are testing https://mqtt.defcon.org. We have decided to review all our 3rd party apps and services to try and move to more OSS and less privacy invasive companies.
If we are going to pay for an office suite I’d rather support LibreOffice than Microsoft Office. It will be many small steps toward strengthening and diversifying, and by next year I’ll share what we have accomplished!
Reflecting that the global hacking community is stateless by design we are launching new DEF CONs! This November we will hold a mini DEF CON in Bahrain to see what the Middle East community is like, and a DEF CON Singapore Beta next April to meet some South East Asia hackers!
Finally, DEF CON 33 would not be possible without the commitment and community of our HQ staff, over 700 Goons, 1,600 speakers, creators, artists, and the organizers of all cool con experiences. Thank you! What makes DEF CON unique is that it is a reflection of the community, and I greatly enjoy seeing what people have been up to. This con would be impossible without you, almost a year of planning happens now!
The Dark Tangent