First of all, sorry this post has taken a while to go up - I’ve been busy but I wanted to get it out so here we go

Serial Volunteer-er

Anyone that knows me, knows I like to volunteer for stuff. I help run a local hackspace as well as crewing at quite a few different community conferences;Bsides london, Bsides leeds and SteelCon to name a few.

I love crewing these conferences, and without volunteers, stuff like this is very hard to pull off. It’s something I like to do as a bit of a “be the change you want to see in the world”.

UK Cons - Bsides

I first cut my teeth volunteering at Bsides conferences, Bsides Manchester specifically, and I’ve been volunteering for conferences ever since. Confercences are such a great place to meet old friends, make new ones and learn stuff!

The first conference I attended was SteelCon. I don’t really count IP Expo but; I did get to meet Kevin Mitnick there, and get one of his lockpick business cards which was cool but it wasn’t the vibe I was after. it was a bit too sales focused.

Bsides London

Bsides London is quite a fun one, the last couple of years I’ve been part of the team doing the CTF which is super fun!

The first year we did it; a few people tried to cheat (I suspect to get the cool prizes) but it was super obvious so we just removed them from the leaderboard.

The next year, we decided not to offer prizes and just to have CTF for fun, for example last year someone played the CTF on a steamdeck.

I Can’t wait to see what happens this year … IIRC there’s one more ticket drop (1st November 13:37 BST if memory serves, but check the website for confirmation)

SteelCon kids track

SteelCon is pretty fun, and after the first time I attended, I thought I want to get involved crewing.

Now I help with the kids track which means that the grown ups get to enjoy the talks, and their little ones get to also enjoy the conference :). We’ve had lasers, soldering, bats, and dinosaurs amongst other things.

One of the other cool things about it is seeing some of the kids that used to attend the kids track are now old enough to help out with volunteering.

DEF CON

My first DEF CON was technically 2020 (safe mode) and I think that’s still the one I’ve seen the most talks from but the first one I came to in person was 32 (2024).

Work were kind enough to take a good chunk of the team out, and I was kind of nervous, I’d never been to the US before; truth be told I’d never flown for more than maybe 3 hours, so it was kind of daunting but after seeing some of the talks and talking to folks who’d been before it sounded pretty awesome, so off we went.

The vegas heat

Having never been in a desert before, I really wasn’t prepared for the heat… people had told me it’s hot there; and it’s not that I didn’t believe them (like, intellectually I know deserts are hot), but I wasn’t really prepared to step out of the airport at 20:00 and be greeted with 35C/~90F heat. Thankfully Ubers/Lyfts/Car Shares have air con :-) so, after a short ride to the hotel we got checked in.

The hotel was also air conditioned but had a strange smell, I want to say guava or something similar but it was cool (no pun intended). The hotel was also basically on the monorail line so it was super easy to get to and from the LVCC and back (again with air conditioning

Surviving said heat

Obviously, when you’re walking around a desert it’s very important to stay hydrated and covered in sunscreen - the higher the better for me at least!

In my experience of Vegas, you’re never too far from somewhere you can buy water/sunscreen/other drinks. However, bottled water can be pretty expensive if you’re just grabbing a single bottle from CVS or the like; what I did, was grab a couple of cans of Arizona Ice Tea (honey and ginseng) as it’s $0.99 for a gigantic can and throw them in my bag along with my double walled reusable water bottle - there are water refil stations through out the conference centre which is great!

A lot of folks recommend the 3-2-1 rule whilst at DEF CON that is every day you need (at least) 3 hours of sleep, 2 meals, and 1 shower - although you’re milage may vary on the sleep and showers needless to say the more sleep the better you’ll feel and I suppose the same rings true for showering.

Floor pull?

So after the first couple of years, I thought I’d really like to volunteer for this one too. DEF CON is arguably the biggest hacker conference in the world and I’d like to help make it an enjoyable experience for anyone involved.

I wasn’t sure about coming in the current political climate initially, but after speaking to a few friends (and a looming deadline to put my name forward to go again with work) I got to attend again, one thing about becoming a DEF CON goon is someone has to vouch for you, for me this was Bird so after being in Vegas for just over a half a day I got a text which basically said “right you’re in as floor pull!, I’ll meet you near the sign and we’ll get it all sorted”

Floor pull is effectively like being on the bench and getting called up, maybe a bit like try outs but I don’t know as I’m not a particularly sports human, you get to do the shifts and see if it’s for you. I was lucky enough to get third shift (the night shift).

Third shift

DEF CON SOC has three shifts early morning, middle, and the night shift - and I got to goon the night shift, which I quite enjoyed, although you end up getting to bed rather late… but hey by doing the late shift you get go to any talks you want and you also get to make sure everyone else is having a great time too! we also got sweet SOC patches which look stylish pinned to our lanyards or bags :)

What’s next?

There’s a couple more conferences this year; Theres BSides Newcastle in November and Bsides London in December the latter I’ll be doing the CTF again this year, maybe I’ll see you there :)