I’ve been to Defcon, and although I’m not in security, I have at least a primer in it via work and tinkering.
You’ll need some technical background to find the talks satisfying. But, I’ll be honest, it makes for great people watching. Not everyone knows this, but there’s 2 hacker cons that week: Defcon (the cheap, for-everyone con) and Blackhat (the expensive grownup con for people with security jobs).
Defcon is much more the shitshow with younger, mischievous folk with an axe to grind, or idle hands, wannabes, posers, script kiddies, etc… Blackhat runs something like $5k or $7k for a ticket, so it’s a huge barrier to entry and so it weeds out all those folks. At Defcon you’ll see a lot of people dressing up like you’d expect hackers in the movies to: wearing shirts or dresses with circuit board patterns, dyed hair, piercings, cool shoes, etc.
It’s a lot of fun, though. If you have some time off, and can afford the hotel prices I recommend going. Tickets are only on the order of a hundred bucks or something. And even if you can’t totally follow the talks, there’s a lot of cool stuff to see and do.
Last bit of advice, if you do go, keep your hands to your sides walking down the streets outside, or people will stick porn in your hands. That’s Vegas for you.
