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Posted to: cons@se2600.org
Subject: @LANta.con review
Three words:
@LANta.con kicked ass.
Certain people (you know who you are) have been
doing rather juvenile
things, like changing the #se2600 topic to
"atlanta.con sucks".
Please stop this behaviour, it's counterproductive
and an insult to
people who really helped out a lot with PhreakNIC
v3.0.
Certain people (you know who you are) have claimed
that Rattle and I
have been saying "@LANta.con sucked". This is not
true. Stop lying.
We had a blast, & those of you who didn't attend
missed out.
As the primary organizer for PhreakNIC I'd like to
state that for the
record, in terms of scale and organization,
@LANta.con v1.0 blows away
any of the PhreakNICs. If @LANta.con grows like
PhreakNIC has, they
will become the DefCon of the east and I'll retire
PhreakNIC at v5.0.
Before anyone objects, please keep in mind the
whole reason for
PhreakNIC was to have a cool con in the south that
we could be involved
with. The @LANta.con organizers have access to
many more resources
and a larger, less-intolerant population base than
we do in NashVegas.
Why "compete" when I can contribute to something
bigger and better?
Oh yeah, this isn't a SummerCon slam, but
SummerCon isn't the same
type of con as PhreakNIC/@LANta.con.
Enough of this, on to the review. Random thoughts
to start things off...
The venue:
The main con room was huge. There were smaller con
rooms for the panels.
Cable was run across the outside roof to the
sleeper rooms. The layout
was great, there was a small (but too expensive)
restaurant onsite. I
think all in all, the con space was at least an
order of magnitude larger
than PhreakNIC's.
The panels:
- The particle/quantum physics geekchick was cute
& she REALLY needs
to put up some webpages based on her talk. That
was the clearest
explanation for some of this stuff I've ever
heard.
- The MSNBC reporter was cool & listened to a lot
of our gripes.
We need to sent her lists of reliable and
unreliable sources.
- Hugme's brief talk (sans Rattle) on non-network
(ie - physical)
intrusions was educational.
- I didn't make it to Optyx's talk, but he had
some handouts that covered
the same stuff, with pointers to his code.
- Sir Dystic's talk/demo of all the info you can
ream from the M$
netbios & associated .dlls was scary. Source &
.exes available.
- The Hacking 101 panel went pretty much as it did
at DragonCon. This
may become a new con tradition - ask good
questions, get good booze.
I'll post email & URLs re: panels later.
Attendees:
About 200 people showed up, many of them se2600
list subscribers,
people we met at DragonCon, ALE folks, GA tech
folks, etc. The vibe
was mostly teach & learn, not uber-l33t. Someone
was running a pirate
radio station, which prompted a visit from the
FCC, but no one was
busted - I think the station went offline before
the FCC guys showed.
Gripes:
- Not enough handouts for the individual panels.
Handouts mean less time
scribbling notes & more time focusing on the
talk, plus if you can't
make it to a panel, you still get something
useful out of it.
- No con t-shirts; not @LANta.con's fault, the
printer screwed them over.
They may print a run anyway if enough people
are interested & will
pay in advance (to cover printing costs).
- Spotty internet access; still better than
anything PhreakNIC has done.
- The idiot weekend manager was an asshole &
assured this venue will
not be the site of @LANta.con 2001; their loss
(and they are damn
lucky we showed restraint and didn't
SummerCon95 them).
- The pirate station was stomping on WREK's signal
(both used 91.1fm),
which is probably why the FCC showed.
Guys/gals, if you are reading
this, you want to use a frequency that ISN'T in
use next time.
- The satellite hacking panelist didn't show;
still, the panels went over
better than PhreakNIC's have.
Suggestion:
- If the con space is going to be as big next
year, invite more vendors
& have "Bazaar of the Bizzare" for folks to set
up & sell/swap stuff.
- Maybe get the local ham radio folks more
involved? Play with wireless
networking too? Invite vendors of such products
to show them off & let
them be torture tested?
Conclusion:
Can't wait for the next one, which should be
great. My experience is
that you make your worst mistakes on the first con
& things go much
more smoothly the next time around.
See y'all at SummerCon/DragonCon, DefCon and
PhreakNIC v4.0.
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