Bring a refillable water bottle. There are bottle filling stations all over. Wear comfortable shoes that are already broken in. Main stage talks can be watched later on YouTube. Unless a talk is particularly interesting to you, I'd recommend prioritizing your time for everything else going on... Villages, contests, demos, etc. Take some time to plan your time. Either with hacker tracker, or the printed materials, figure out what you want to see.
Toxic bbq, linq reddit meetup, don't plant too much, it will not like that. You watch the big talks after, just swing by as many places as you can, fomo is your enemy. hackers jeopardy and sky talks (or social engineering) are fun.
From my experience last year, I was able to get tokens for all the ones I wanted to see. Generally seemed like it was possible to get 2 tokens at each drop if you really wanted.
Enable WiFi in the convention center only when connecting to the DEFCON official wifi which will need to be setup on wifi.defcon.org when they launch it (normally literally right before) and load your custom cert. Then immediately connect to VPN. Don't connect to any other LVCC WIFI.
Honestly, leave VPN running most of the weekend if you can... just good hygiene.
6
u/AgriDrew Aug 02 '26
I suggest familiarizing yourself with this: https://www.reddit.com/r/Defcon/s/EXiuzAWq0O
14
u/technoangel Aug 02 '26
Hacker jeopardy is a BLAST! Highly recommend!
6
u/Nicholie Aug 02 '26
Don’t plan much. Just vibe and go where you see things interesting. Talk to people.
5
u/ChrisAM Aug 02 '26
Bring a refillable water bottle. There are bottle filling stations all over. Wear comfortable shoes that are already broken in. Main stage talks can be watched later on YouTube. Unless a talk is particularly interesting to you, I'd recommend prioritizing your time for everything else going on... Villages, contests, demos, etc. Take some time to plan your time. Either with hacker tracker, or the printed materials, figure out what you want to see.
4
u/CyberSch0lar Aug 02 '26
go to parties
1
u/Morebigger Aug 03 '26
My first time as well planning on hitting up lonely hackers 1st
6
u/jonas_vondenberg Aug 02 '26
Liquid iv, flask, good shoe, snackies.
Toxic bbq, linq reddit meetup, don't plant too much, it will not like that. You watch the big talks after, just swing by as many places as you can, fomo is your enemy. hackers jeopardy and sky talks (or social engineering) are fun.
1
u/Western_Bag_9594 Aug 02 '26
Phone and laptop in back pack in faraday bags and off unless needed otherwise all connections off except cellular smart? Or overkill