Hacker Summer Camp: What First-Timers Actually Need to Know | Huntress

Every August, the cybersecurity community packs up and heads to Las Vegas for what we lovingly call Hacker Summer Camp. It's not one conference. It's a stretch of back-to-back events that includes Black Hat USA (August 1-6 at Mandalay Bay), BSides Las Vegas (August 3-5 at Tuscany Suites), DEF CON 34 (August 6-9 at the Las Vegas Convention Center), and a whole ecosystem of villages, parties, meetups, and hallway conversations in between.

If this is your first year, congratulations! You're about to spend a week surrounded by tens of thousands of people who get it. This post isn't a comprehensive survival guide. There are plenty of those out there. This is the short list of things I tell every first-timer, especially my students, before they get on the plane.

If you only take one thing from this post, make it this. Hacker Tracker is a free, open source app built by the community that pulls the schedules for DEF CON, BSides events, and more into one place. Talks, workshops, villages, contests, and even the parties happening around town all live in the app.

The real power move is favoriting. Before the week starts, scroll through and star anything that looks interesting. Don't commit to anything, just star it. Then when you find yourself randomly free at 2pm on Thursday, open the app and see what's starred near you. That's how the app is meant to be used, and it pairs perfectly with my next point.

Don't build a schedule. Build a direction.

At most conferences, the playbook is to stack your calendar with six back-to-back talks and sprint between rooms all day. Resist that urge here.