Who the hell asked you?! (The "floorplan discussion" thread)

Re: Who the hell asked you?! (The "floorplan discussion" thread)

TOOOL pays for our Pipe and Drape setup every summer and the overall cost is only about $500 (actually $550.46 this past con) and it's SOOO worth it. That is for a two-section bit. We use it like a square shape to create a "back room" area for logistics, management, and staff to hang out and eat lunch.

(It didn't hurt to have a private area when TOOOL brought back lunch for the staff each day from off-site.)




yes, the only way it becomes feasible is if the two shared Villages have the same operating hours and the staff are friendly with one another. That's why i suggested a dual super-village for Tamper and Lockpicking, because there's so much cross-over between those two worlds anyway.

As far as noise, that's just totally one of those things that we'll have to see when it happens. Right now, we definitely are in need of a separate pseudo-closed-off area for teaching simply due to crowd noise. Add in the occasional use of the key cutting machines, etc... you've got a real noise level in the Locpick Village.

Maybe we should eat the cost of getting longer sections of Pipe and Drape in order to almost totally wall off the middle teaching area? I think that's extreme, really... but I can't be sure. I don't think we'll know until we try.

I do feel that, given the choice between (1) teaching room might get too loud sometimes but is a part of the Village and (2) teaching room that's always quiet because it's totally a separate room... almost everyone would rather the first option. We want to be a part of the action and the atmosphere always.


nice, nice. then i REALLY want to get a Bally's room in the North Tower. :-D

here's the full list of properties and their detailed PDFs if people want to see them...

http://deviating.net/stuff/Vegas-Ballys.pdf
http://deviating.net/stuff/Vegas-Paris.pdf
http://deviating.net/stuff/Vegas-Rio.pdf
http://deviating.net/stuff/Vegas-Caesars.pdf

(i included the Caesar's because it was the home of Black Hat for so many years and many of us have been there for ages and it's a good comparison as a "big" venue)

While at the Rio, the DEFCON speaking tracks were...

Track One
Rio Pavillion 8-11
18,530 sq ft
2053 seats

Track Two
Amazon A-F
18,608 sq ft
2068 seats

Track Three
Amazon G-T
20,503 sq ft
2274 seats

DC101
Tropical A-D
2,256 sq ft
250 seats


Current estimated sketches for Paris speaking tracks (the latest diagrams in this thread) are...

Track One
Concorde A-C
24,514 sq ft
2451 seats

Track Two
Rivoli A-B
18792 sq ft
1879 seats

Track Three
Vendôme A-C
24,514 sq ft
2451 seats

Track Four
Rivoli C
9,792 sq ft
979 seats

DC101
Versailles Ballroom
7,569 sq ft
756 seats

... so Track One is increasing by just about 1/3rd, Track Two stays essentially the same, Track Three increases nearly 20%, and DC101 would essentially triple. Wild stuff! :-D

Re: Who the hell asked you?! (The "floorplan discussion" thread)

Sharing or being adjacent to LPV would be great. Tamper-Evident Village has shared a room with HHV for the past two years and it has gone relatively well. As Deviant has pointed out, we're better suited to be paired with Lockpicking. Most importantly, we are both hands-on physical security villages; people interested in one are almost certainly going to be interested in the other. The same is not true of TEV+HHV. We had many people walk up and ask us HHV questions only to walk out when we told them we weren't HHV.

As far as LPV+TEV being cohesive, I don't think this would be a problem. Most of the TEV staff used to staff LPV, and some still try to do both. To CotMan's point, we even share storage space already : )

If given the choice, I would prefer a speaking area that's inside the village. Regardless of noise, I like that people are able to continue working with their locks, seals, etc while watching & listening in on the talk.

dg
[mfp]

Re: Who the hell asked you?! (The "floorplan discussion" thread)

i'm very pleased that we're starting to discuss the combined village idea more and more and especially happy that the notion of combining Lockpick and Tamper is getting traction.

they are absolutely the two most related villages to one another and having them reunited again (because we used to feature some of the tamper stuff in the Lockpick Village back at the Riv before it had its own room) would be like long-lost relatives finally coming home from overseas.

all of our staff would get together again, etc... that would be so terrific.


and, as a side benefit, the Hardware Hacking Village would finally get enough space to itself! (not to mention that the volatiles and solvents would no longer be near to the hot soldering irons, so that's also a good result, hahaha)

Re: Who the hell asked you?! (The "floorplan discussion" thread)

I think DO's plan looks very good. In considering DT's remarks, I've started to come around to the thought that it's OK that the two areas have different vibes -- when I want to do some learning and sit and think, it's not a bad thing that I'm in the zone where talks are going on. In other threads, there have been those who have mentioned some worries about events and kids. I have continued to think that there should be no policy level decision designed to affect that one way or the other. This plan, though, has the nice effect that the locus for our young hackers is in a (potentially) quieter space.

There is one tweak I would propose to the existing design. To my way of thinking, CTF should live with Events, and Vendors should live with Talks. The Champagne Ballroom, where Rootz+CTF exists in the current proposal, would be Vendors on my proposal. Rootz would go to DC101. DC101 would have to go somewhere else, and this problem I have not thought all the way through. Perhaps it could go to the 26th floor with Skytalks, making the whole area feel a little like an incubator for the rest of the con.

Then again, if CTF were moved into the space left by moving Vendors to the Talks area, there would be space for DC101 there, too (I know, I just violated my own goal of keeping things organized, exactly why I moved CTF in the first place... just roll with it...). Ultimately, though, with the addition of discussions of transforming the villages space a bit more, what I think this ends up doing is shaking up the entire villages space, which then needs a solid stab at a reorg.

It seems hard to avoid the conclusion that events should be in the giant room at Bally's -- with no clear way to carve out other spaces, it's hard to imagine it otherwise. Which means, I guess, that the other interesting exploration would be to reject that idea and see what happened.

Re: Who the hell asked you?! (The "floorplan discussion" thread)

And so here's a completely different approach. Note that the "flexible" space could very well be a split of contests/events if done right; alternately, given the right resources, it could be a split of the talks space. It all depends on how certain things fit together (in terms of loudness, infra needed, etc.).



Edit: Since it was mentioned that perhaps the rationale behind the organization was more important than the details of the suggestion itself, here goes:

* here, I place events and talks together again as it is today; it does have a kind of energy to it, and in some ways, I think these go better together in the sense of "what am I doing today" -- in other words, when I want to be doing shorter or more spontaneous things, I jump through talks and events, whereas often I'll spend a long stretch in one or more villages

* the contest area is bigger in this zone than it was at the Rio, but not hugely bigger as it would be in the other line of proposals; my (albeit novice-level) experience in the contest area is that it doesn't need to be too much bigger to be successful

* rootz is again in a nice space (not sure about the layout, there, though breakout rooms could be nice for them) in a part of the con that I think would be particularly attractive to kids: the villages

* as a comparatively new attendee, I can't speak to what exactly needed the most room for growth, and consequently, I left as a big open question-mark how to use one of the largest contiguous spaces in the new floorplan -- this was intentional

* I'm not sure I like the idea of the villages all being in the same area, but it's a very natural organization and fits well with the space; it could work very well, sort of like a trade or guild area

* I like the idea of making larger spaces more amenable to hanging out and sitting down with groups to talk about e.g. the Badge, or whatever people are trying to gather people together to do

Re: Who the hell asked you?! (The "floorplan discussion" thread)

Yes, the reasoning beind the organization and the problems you are trying to solve can have a greater influence.
All villages sharing the same large room amplifies some of the issues I mentioned to Deviant Ollam when combining 2 villages:
* Noise -- much worse with all villages in large room. Background noise of many conversations becomes a low rumble, which rises in volume as people in different parts of this large room start using amplified audio (mic / speakers) to lead classes, at the same time. People all around the room will increase their voices to compete with amplified voices. This can be dampened a little with cloth partitions to absorb some of the sound, but won't eliminate it. Think about visits to "Mac Expo" or "COMDEX" or "RSA Conference Vendors area" and remember the noise, and how it became louder when a vendor had someone start speaking on a mini-stage in their area.

* Trust -- if all villages are in the same room, and there is no separate access control (walls, doors, locks) then all it takes is one "bad" apple to ruin it for others. The greater the number of "badges" that grant access to the super-sized, shared space, the greater the risk for abuse, and one person harming another village's stuff. How do you resolve these kind of problems? Only allow access to "village people" (not *the* Village People ;-) after hours when escorted by a goon? How do they know which people should be accessing which village content, and not other villages? Are there any solutions here for this? What about validation, since some of our attendees are pretty good at creating fake badges. Multi-factor authentication?

From another thread:
Let's assume other village feel the same way, and we have 5 villages, and each want ~30 village people to have access to the whole shared village space? 5 * 30 = 150 people.

How would this work? The greater the number of people with access to an area, the greater the risk for abuse (social engineering, insider abuse, inability to recognize all 150 people visually, and greater risk for fabricated access and breaking multi-factor authentication -- chain is only as strong as its weakest link)

How would theft be resolved?

The Vendor area is not new to this. As vendors pack up to head out, they sometimes leave boxes behind without people to watch them, while lading the merch they plan to ship back home. This has left to stuff "disappearing" and never returning. Some has been returned.

Some of the problems faced by Vendor Goons will emerge in a massive shared space for all villages.

Maybe past and present vendor goons can comment on problems and solutions they found.

This should not stop you or others from coming up with solutions to address some of these problems.


Having vendors far from contests/events or villages may be troublesome for people that have requested parts for villages , contests or events be stocked by vendors. Any suggestions to address this? Splitting vendor space would likely nearly double the HR support for vendors, and increase costs to cover "2 places outside badge sales that cash is exchanging hands."

If a goal is having speaker tracks together, why not include Skytalks with speaker tracks? I recognize it would be fun to see the "Sky" in "Skytalks" be meaningful to location, again, like it was at the Riv, but DC101 and Skytalks are also speaker tracks of sorts.


Suggestions based on these? Solutions?

Thanks!
-Cot

Re: Who the hell asked you?! (The "floorplan discussion" thread)

I don't know how the Grand Ballroom Bronze, Silver, Gold and Grand Salon rooms are separated -- this is where I had the villages in my diagram. If that entire area is a big open space, then all of the concerns you mention arise immediately. The diagram given in other posts makes it seem like there are natural divisions -- presumably durable and at least partially sound-reducing partitions for 4 small rooms and 3 large ones. Given that I took two of those small rooms for DefCon internal activities, let's say that I'm proposing that 2 small (Bronze 1 and 2) and three large rooms (Silver, Gold and Grand Salon) could do the trick.

Supposing that each of the three large rooms can be two-village joint rooms, the numbers would just about work. By making the right pairings, perhaps most of the issues of trust and noise and access could be solved. Or, if it is an open possibility, perhaps the larger rooms could be divided formally into two.

Part of my thinking was that it might be possible to do presentation and "noisy" work /not in the village itself/. For example:

Suppose the lockpicking village is in room Bronze 1. It's about the same size as the space that village had at the Rio. So it's tight, no doubt about it. But now, suppose that instead of having to have their presentation area set up and static in that room, they could set up presentation stuff in Bally's Event Center. Imagine that space as an active space, with chillout there and lots of tables for people to chat. And imagine that one corner of it was somehow at least somewhat divided off from the rest, and that that area was dedicated to village presentations. I've always found the mix of presentation and action in the villages themselves to be somewhat disconcerting -- I'm sitting down to try out some locks, and over there in the other half of the room some guy is talking about stuff, and I feel like I can't really talk to the people at my table, or I can't hear them when they do, etc. But what if the villages rotated their presentations in this other area. It could be beneficial. The village wouldn't have to be as big, necessarily, and the presentations in a big open space could bring in new interested eyes and ears that they wouldn't have reached just by walk-ins to the village itself. Perhaps, too, this would ease the infrastructure burdens on the villages themselves, moving some of that out to the presentation area, which is shared between villages.

The downsides are real, too. Villages would have to spread out their coverage during presentation times between the presentation area and the village itself. Also, it would have to be made clear to everyone when presentations were taking place, and where, and people would have to move to go see them. It would involve more people-mixing.

For theft, something that people in the contest area think about too, I wonder if there are any relatively inexpensive ways to give each station/village/event some kind of simplistic locked storage. It really doesn't have to be much -- I don't think the goal is to try to prevent sophisticated theft, but rather crimes of opportunity. A big Tuff Bin with a contest runner/village runner/etc provided padlock could by itself be pretty good (so long as the bins could be anchored, I guess).

What is the current thinking about villages making not-for-profit sales of things? The lockpicking village, if I recall correctly, sold lockpicking tools at '21 (I wasn't able to get over there for any appreciable time at '22, alas), and the HHV sold DarkNet kits.

It sounds like splitting the vendor area would be a bad idea. In the proposal I ventured, I did have the vendors far from events and villages, though. So I guess my question would be: do the vendors provide things to the events/villages repeatedly throughout the con, or would it be a one time thing? The one time thing wouldn't be so bad, but I can see how it would be a problem if they had to deliver stuff multiple times a day.

Though it might be difficult to split the vendor area for /sales/, perhaps a solution could be that one of the rooms near Rootz or DefCon Logistics could be a locked supply room with some portion of vendor stuff needed by events etc. In this case, there would not be split sales to consider -- instead, an estimated allocation of needed stuff could be stored near the events/contest/villages area. If the allocation were off +/-, it would be a pain, but not I think outrageously so, to rebalance supplies to/from the vendor area.

An interesting alternate idea that could work would be to put Skytalks where I had CTF and put CTF on the 26th floor. Alternatively, Skytalks to CTF and CTF to Rootz and Rootz to the 26th floor.

Basically, at some point, someone has to decide who is going to be the healthiest portion of the con to be isolated up on the 26th floor. Arguments can be made for Skytalks, CTF, Rootz, I think, as each of them could sustain that kind of removal from the main areas of the con. Another alternate solution would be to leave things where they are, but carve out one of the larger talks area to have a smaller third of one of those rooms for Skytalks and put nothing dedicated on the 26th floor except for an alternate chill-out space.

Re: Who the hell asked you?! (The "floorplan discussion" thread)

HHV space this year was the tightest since the Riv. We could have easily used and filled 10 more tables and it was severely difficult to hold demos. But like all past cons we made it work with what we were given. At dc23 I would like to see the HHV return to a solo space again to ease the crush of people and allow us to grow and expand what we have to offer as well as starting off with internal contests.

On the vendor note... I do not every want to have a "for profit" vendor in the HHV as in my opinion that is not where that belongs. Last year I sold at cost (loss) in the HHV and it was a personal nightmare of time and effort. I am not sure I ever want to do that one again but if next year is not an electronic badge then we will have to do something to get some kits out.

So what about a village vendor area where all the villages can sell at cost the items that support their activities for maybe a reduced vendor table rate?

Re: Who the hell asked you?! (The "floorplan discussion" thread)

This link below shows the Ballys event center does have portable walls. Is that incorrect? dividing up that big area may give many more options for the villages.

http://www.meetings-conventions.com/...Vegas-p2377492

Re: Who the hell asked you?! (The "floorplan discussion" thread)

yeah, i think this is going to all work out well.


i could see that. indeed, i felt that CTF was very isolated where it was on my first sketch, over by the Paris side.


hmm... i'm sure that many Vendor folk may object to being "away from the action" and it spreads out any vendors who also connect to their associated Villages, but that can be life sometimes.


see, i thought about that, too... having Rootz up on some of the 26th floor space. I didn't think of the incubator idea overall, however. That's pretty badass.

Re: Who the hell asked you?! (The "floorplan discussion" thread)

IIRC, the "Bally's Event Center" room, has almost nothing in the way of support for movable walls.
The "Grand Ballroom" (which contains spaces for Bronze 1-4, Silver, Gold and Platinum "rooms" using portable walls) does have support for portable walls, as shown on the maps. The "dotted lines" show where walls can be added, to carve out rooms of various shapes.

In the first map of Bally's floor-plan from Deviant, you see the "Bally's Event Room" is the location for "Contests & Events etc." and in the map provided by zeroaltitude, the purpose for this room is, "Flexible Chill-out + Village/Event space + Party Space + Spillover/Chat/Hangout room." zeroaltitude chose the "Grand Ballroom" at Bally's for village space, but did not specify which walls would be used, and which villages would be contained or not. This caused me to assume that proposed use of the Grand Ballroom is unpartitioned, without use of walls. If walls are to be used, then the question becomes: which villages would be combined? (back to Deviant's suggestions) and which would have to use the smaller "Bronze" rooms. (IIRC, We don't need to use all walls for Bronze. We could have 2 "Bronze Rooms" instead of 4: one 2x bronze room[1,2,3 or 4], and another of the same size, or one Bronze room that is 3x bronze room [1,2,3, or 4] and another that is 1x that size.)

It is this room "Bally's Event Center" room, that I write about. This room is large. I do not think it has support for mobile walls (ceiling-to-floor.) Any attempt to partition with rented curtains will require extra fees for renting, setup, and tear down. Additionally, and changes to it during con would cost in time (people must leave while employees change it) and more money. (I do not fault casinos for wanting to make money. Each is a business. We can agree to cost for services or not.)

Curtains on such a large floor (which are not ceiling-to-floor portable walls) do not adequately contain noise from each space. There is bleed-over. Add amplified sound, speech or music, presentations, people running grinders or other loud devices cause people to talk even louder, adding to the overall background noise, which causes people to speak louder. Anyone that has been to a large convention should understand what I write-about. These conventions use curtain-style partitions, so it should be a good example of noise containment.

I visited these spaces at Bally's about 2+ years ago, and do not remember seeing any capacity for portable ceiling-to-floor walls in the "Bally's Event Room." Yes, it was not recent, but those kinds of changes to rooms are very uncommon in such old hotel/convention-center without a major remodel to both.

HTH,
-Cot

Re: Who the hell asked you?! (The "floorplan discussion" thread)

I wanted to say that your idea for splitting a long skinny room does work well. The HHV has been in this configuration for last the couple of years with Tamper and once we get on the same page as far as presentations, things have worked. I think that finding villages that can create some synergy would be important. There have been lots of questions about Tamper at the HHV and unfortunately we have just pointed interested parties to the other side of the room.

One apparent concern is that there doesn't seem to be hall space in the Grand Ballroom, other than for the bronze rooms. That could make the villages in the back harder to get to, as they would have to wonder through another village. Even more of a reason to pair villages that are sharing the space.

Looks like a great challenge. I will have to think on how I would work it out....

Re: Who the hell asked you?! (The "floorplan discussion" thread)

for possible Village options, here's one notion...


... that would entail Vendor being somewhere else, possibly over on the Paris side as was suggested here. That's not a really really bad idea, frankly. There are LOTS of newbies and others at DEF CON who aren't in it for the super solid experience of participating, but instead they opt to learn and observe. And consume. Many people seemed to be jamming in the hallways and spending their time between talk tracks and the Vendor room. If all of that traffic was way over on the Paris side it would make the hallways a LOT smoother in the Contest and Events areas, etc.

The only big problem I see on my little sketch above for Villages is the Wireless and/or Sheep folks. The Packet Capture Village came out with a fucking bang this summer and made amazing use of a whole room, with theme-ing, etc. This above sketch shows them possibly sharing room with the Wireless team.

I suspect there's a chance that Wireless could make use of a space the same size as what they had this year if they were up in one of the bronze rooms. However, both Privacy and SCADA villages are really quite self-contained and don't bleed over much to other spaces. Either L05T or the SECTF maybe could relocate? But i wouldn't want to suggest something that would pressure them at all. I do not know enough of their purpose and useage of the rooms they have. I've seen Chris's SECTF room and sound isolation is a critical element. Who knows, maybe one of them would move to the 26th floor?

All in all, the largest villages like Hardware Hacking (gets own) and Lockpick/Tamper (combined) would do rather well in these long spaces. We'd have to see what the Sheep and the Wireless folk feel about their spaces.

Re: Who the hell asked you?! (The "floorplan discussion" thread)

Also consider there is an interest in 1 or more new villages at DEF CON 23. Beyond the 2 new ones I have heard about as possible, I have seen other people writing about a desire to run other new villages at DEF CON (if accepted.) One of these, mentioned on twitter was a "Drone Village". It is always hard to estimate interest in a new village, and plan for space for it accordingly. If we are conservative, and estimate space the size of any one bronze rooms for up to 3 more new villages next year, how would that alter plans or suggestions for location of villages? Let's just call them "New Village 1," "New Village 2," and "New Village 3"

One more item:
I am not part of the department that gets plans on infrastructure and hotel/convention facilities. The HHV has special needs for power, to run many devices. Most convention centers are designed to allow them to get a great deal power, and networking to many different rooms. However, there are exceptions. Need of convention infrastructure and limits on access to those resources may limit the locations some villages may use.

Thanks for other ideas and advice!
-Cot

Re: Who the hell asked you?! (The "floorplan discussion" thread)

One thing to remember about the HHV is we are Defcon owned and controlled. Our founders are Russ and Lost and not having any sponsors take over the direction of the village in my opinion is a great thing. This has left the HHV to be "the attendees" village. Sure at time it seems like chaos but my favorite part is the conversations that take place between total strangers. Its a free form village where you can do just about anything and a lot of people use it as a hang out and that's just fine with me. We keep it loosely structured on purpose to offer the greatest freedom and the goons are there to keep you safe and from destroying the space and equipment. Other than that its pretty much fair game. Also need to remember the HHV has a $0 budget. The last 2 years DT has bought "you" 28 soldering stations and equipment to go along with them and that has been a major improvement from the old days of 5 to 10 donated irons. For me the HHV is my Defcon. I have not done much other than HHV for the last 5 cons and I love it!

With this said I want to officially state that the HHV is requesting a solo space for DC 23. We don't need a very large space. We just need a place where we can put down 25 tables and hold 200+ people safely. I prefer a packed HHV to a half empty HHV any day!