Since I retired three years ago, I’ve made it part of my mission to help hackers get ham radio licenses. Thanks to an ARDC grant, I have been able to teach one-day Tech classes at hacker/cybersecurity conferences around the country.
August is a busy month for me, as there are two big hacker conferences at which I teach. DEFCON, which is arguably the largest hacker conference with 30,000+ attendees, takes place the first week of August in Las Vegas. Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE), which is run by 2600 magazine, takes place in New York City the week after. For someone who’s kind of a homebody that’s a lot of traveling, so I am glad to finally be back home.
DEFCON: The big one
DEFCON doesn’t release official numbers, but various sources estimate attendance to be more than 30,000 people, making it the world’s largest hacker convention. So, it’s no surprise that my one-day Tech classes are well-attended. Two years ago, we held the class in a large auditorium-type room at the Clark County Library, and we had more than 90 people in the room. This year, we were able to pack 66 hackers into the room at the Las Vegas Convention Center.
Ham Radio Village, which is the organization that handles all the logistics for this class, pre-registered more than 40 people for the class, but shortly after I arrived Thursday morning, people started queueing up for seats that might be available once those that pre-registered had checked in. All in all, we were able to shoehorn in 66 total. Honestly, I’m always overwhelmed that so many would want to take this class.
Overall, the class went pretty well. It was the first time teaching the updated question pool, so there were a few spots where I stumbled a bit. For example, they removed the question, “What is the approximate length, in inches, of a half-wavelength dipole antenna?” So, I had to talk around that when I got to the section on dipoles.
The biggest problem was the room layout. It was long and narrow, and I don’t think that the people in the back of the room could see the white board very well. They probably had a hard time hearing me, too. Next year, we’re going to have to make improvements.
Overall, I had a fairly good result. After the class, 58 took the test and 46 passed. Over the course of the next few days, four more folks who were in the class took and passed the test. 50/58 is a pass rate of 86.2%
There’s always HOPE
Last week, I taught a class at Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE). This conference, while addressing many of the same topics as DEFCON, has a completely different vibe. For one thing, it’s held in New York City, which is very much different from Las Vegas. The attendance is also an order of magnitude smaller than DEFCON.
This year, the conference was held at the New Yorker Hotel in midtown Manhattan. The hotel opened in 1929, and was the residence of Nikola Tesla, until he died in 1943. They even have a small Tesla museum with some artifacts from his apartment.
I had a nice room on the 35th floor. It was kind of small, but it had views to the north and west. From our room, we could see Times Square, the Empire State Building, the Hudson River, and if we really craned our necks, the Chrysler Building. And, it cost about the same as my room at the Sahara in Las Vegas.
It was our third time at HOPE, and the first two years, we did the class in a single day. this year, though, they asked if we could split it up into two, four-hour sessions. I was a little hesitant at first, but it worked out OK. The class was much smaller than the one at DEFCON—the first day there were 15 people in the room at some point or another—and some people didn’t return for the second day. But, some people showed up the second day who didn’t attend the first day, so it all evened out. Those that did attend asked a lot of great questions, and I really enjoyed teaching this particular class.
13 out of 14 students taking the class passed the test, and over the next two days, 12 others took the test. All of those passed.
On top of all that, I had a great time in New York City. My wife, Silvia, came with me, and we got to see some of the sights. We visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New York Public Library, and wandered through Time Square. We also took the Staten Island Ferry and visited the 9/11 Memorial. We didn’t do much at night, but maybe next year, we’ll make plans to go see a show or listen to some jazz at a club somewhere.
Changes forthcoming
After teaching two classes using the updated version of my study guide, I think that I’m going to make some more changes. The text for several of the questions could use more explanation, and I think that I’m going to add some more illustrations as well. I’ll be teaching my next class on October 10, here in Ann Arbor, and I’m hoping to get these changes done by then.
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