Sunday, April 1, 2007

Back from ShmooCon

Wow. Has it already been a week since I last posted? While attending an out-of-town conference does save on your vacation days, it does eat up your weekend. I am just now getting a chance to put my feet up and blog a little bit (it's been one of those weeks).

ShmooCon was "okay" this year. The content was a bit of a let down from the previous two years (then again, there's only so much "new" topics that your can talk about).

Having the nose count double yet again (for the third year) isn't all that attractive but it does allow for more of your friends/acquaintances to catch up. Shouts to: Mr. Watts (you're our hero), Squidly1, Renderman, Telmnstr, Remad, Syn Ack, Count, Hurdboy, Dave S. (who went with me), Josh Wright, Rob (Goon!), Johnny Long, current/former members of various Red Teams, and the SploitCast crew.

No shows this year: Syngress Publishing (boo!), Hamachi (you missed out on a coin!), Derez (where were you?), and the team of Doug & Howard.

Complaints: the ticket scheme sucked, the door prize session sucked (Rock-Paper-Scissors, while quicker, is lazy), the hotel discount sucked (it was screwed up from the start and disappeared too quickly), the hotel sucked (it was under construction), the subway was under construction, the WarDrive guys only brought Wi-Fi stuff (I brought cash for Bluetooth and Zigbee equipment), attendance was too large (too many people looking for what was experienced during the first two cons), Nate had too much to drink (again) and two of the three best talks didn't make it onto DVD (I believe there's a bounty out for the audio). All that and I was still able to have a good time.

Cheers to Josh Wright, Johnny Long, and Dan Kaminsky for the usual extremely good quality talks (though Dan K. was definitely off on a tangent). I think Josh and Mike Kershaw now hold the record for having the most Shmoo balls thrown at them during a talk (not for what you think though).

Points go to Renderman for applying Johnny Long's talk during the Con. Bonus comedy points for involving the Core Security crew.

If you're interested in actually reading about what went on at the Con, visit Bloglines.com and type shmoocon into the search function. Use both the "Search for Posts" and "Search for Citations" options (you'll get different sets of responses). Note: a login is not needed to do this. There's tons of info in there.

I'm looking forward to next year and hope that Bruce, Heidi, and crew learned enough this year to improve next year's Con. Note: next year's Con will probably occur somewhere else other than DC. Word is that there's only four weekends that aren't already booked for the Wardman Park Marriot (it being an election year and all). I hereby volunteer Virginia Beach. The January/March time frame is the off season and hotel space on the waterfront is dirt cheap. That and it's only a few miles from my house.

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