Cатсн²² (in)sесuяitу / ChrisJohnRiley

Las Vegas – The entertainment capital of the world.

Where your every desire is catered for, and you never have to go without. If there’s another place on earth with so many flashy lights, then I’ve certainly never heard about it!

Still, When I saw that this year Blackhat had gone to 11 tracks, I couldn’t help but think they’d were going a little bit too far, even for Vegas!

There’s a fine line between offering good content and swamping visitors with just too much choice…  and no matter how much I try, I just can’t help but get the feeling that Blackhat Las Vegas just jumped the shark!

I go to more than my fair share of conferences, and one thing that connects them all for me is the excitement and anticipation I get when looking over the list of speakers and talks. Picking out the ones I really want to see, the people I want to meet and the things I want to learn about, are one of the highlights of a conference for me. The build-up is almost as important as the event after all. When I saw the schedule for this years Blackhat however, I didn’t feel excited. It wasn’t because there were no good talks, because there were a lot of great talks and great speakers. It was just too much. In my mind Blackhat had hit that point where it just didn’t matter what talks people went to anymore. It was just too big, too complex, and too confusing to me. I couldn’t help but get the feeling that no matter what talk I saw, I’d always be thinking about the other 10 tracks and what I was missing out on!

Maybe it’s just me, maybe everybody else thinks this was the best Blackhat ever. Everybody has his/her own opinion, and mine is that Blackhat (at least in Vegas) is dead to me. I doubt I’ll be attending next year for the new improved 12 track program (they have to make it more impressive next year after all… there’s no backing down now!). If you want to find me, I’ll be sitting by the pool at BSides talking to people who do this for the love of it, and not the money.