A Different Kind of Defcon Attendee

As an educator, feminist, mental health advocate, and environmental researcher who participated at Defcon this year I felt that sharing my take on Defcon 25 might be of interest to other educators, women, and attendees. So here it goes. It was my third year attending but my first year going for educational research. This year my boss and her son came with me, our goal ; discover what R00tz Asylum has to offer, learn from other educators, consider SpyCamp games we could share, and explore possibilities of bringing our kids from SpyCamp to the program <conference>. What we found was a world of opportunity and I wanted to share some of my thoughts on the subject while they are fresh.
And to Sarah, I just want to thank you a bit more formally for going on this trip (and for all of the food of course) It meant so much. I felt honored by how much trust and confidence you placed in me, it was so much fun to share the experience of this quirky gathering of individuals.
It felt like a success on many levels and really made me think a little differently about SpyCamp and SpyKids. With as quickly as Defcon has grown and made a place for “info sec” education (Information Security) and with the growing tech industry I see alot of possibility for SpyCamp that I hope I get to be apart of in the years to come.
Before I delve into the amazing workshops and talks I think it’s only fair to acknowledge the perhaps inaccessible price point. I previously thought kids at Defcon got in for free, in fact several goons at the con seemed to think so as well, as they insisted that they were instructed not to look for kids badges. Yet, Nico who has been running R00tz from the beginning is adamant that kids pay the same price as adults. However surprising this was to me, parents at Defcon did not seem to blink at paying 260$ for 2 to 3 days of R00tz Asylum. (Although many parents were also volunteers so perhaps their kids did get in for free) While the curriculum is clearly advanced and well funded (companies like Facebook and Logitek offer full day workshops for free) I found that 260 dollars seems steep considerjng that most all camps in San Francisco max out at around 500 for a week of 9am to 4 pm full on child care. While R00tz does offer many unique opportunities for children such as guided workshops in building and flying drones and lock picking, parents are expected to be with their children at all times, forcing them to miss the conference themselves. Similarly, there is a large disparity between what adults get from the conference for the same price point. Adults have a maze of villages, tournaments, talks, and workshops available to them throughout a fairly large portion of the casino while R00tz Asylum is condensed into one small room. And families had to wait in line for at least 1.5 hours.
I was inspired by the curriculum content itself. Information Security, as we teach at Spy Camp, is not merely some passing fad or gimmick. It is a deeply needed tool in any modern kid’s belt. On Saturday night a traveler from Israel studying information security in grad school said to me “I want to leave grad school because the problems which we are addressing feel so contrived, especially here in America where your government can take care of everything.” Which prompted my response, as I believe it would have prompted many others, that information security is unequivocally important, especially within the context of our current political climate. Since Defcon, it has made national news that hackers were able to exploit vulnerabilities in voting machines in just 12 minutes. Voting machines were but one type of technology to prove guilty of security failures at the hands of Defcon attendees, other technology included electric cars, all gadgets wifi and most locks on the market. Considering the fact that we set the tone for the rest of the world regarding consumerism, I find it a little disturbing that security is not a more universal topic of discussion in this regard.
This year, right now, our own president is under investigation. We are faced with a hacked election. There are growing security concerns regarding the 100K plus self driving cars Google will place on the roads along with the millions of drones delivering packages that Amazon will place in the sky. And of course there is the fact that once again net neutrality is up for debate. And how could I forget to mention the myriad of problems facing the environment which everyone ignores hoping technology will save.
Considering all of this I can think of nothing in the world more relevant then educating children and properly arming them to face these issues.
When I was a kid we were given only vague colloquialisms in response to our concerns about the planet and humanitarian issues. We were told of the atrocities being committed overseas and to the earth and given little more than posters with cute animals and catch phrases ….
“If you can dream it, you can do it” still haunts my inner psyche in conjunction with my mediocre education of math, science, social studies, and the ever shrinking arts. Needless to say, it was not enough. My generation grew into boredom, into mental disorders from stress our parents will never understand the degree to which they may have participated in “You’re going to save the world” Grandma says.
The most inspirational speech I heard at the con came from (name?) He talked very simply and practically about the need to give children the tools to “withstand”. Withstand what? Well what’s coming of course. He listed 6 tools every child should have in their chest and to that I wanted to add a few and hope others will participate in this conversation in arming children for the world we are leaving them.
I hope beyond hope that in my time educating kids I am helping them think critically and to self actualize. I hope to grow our program to include more of what will, or already have, become essentials in our world today; such as coding, the importance and right to privacy, as well as the necessity of transparency within our governing agencies. And I must say I honestly feel like at Spy Camp we are in a pretty good place. Kids at my camp go home with a hand made solar powered battery charger that we make at the local hacker/maker space called Noisebridge (Wednesdays at 2:00pm open to the public, join us!) Our kids get one-on-one attention with instructors such as Agent Q who leads a talk on ihe importance of innovation (iteration and tenacity!) in engineering on Tuesdays.
All in all I hope next year we are able to take kids to Defcon. I think SpyCamp would be able to offer a unique, kid led workshop on LASER’s culminating in the creation of a functioning LASER maze (like the one we have at SpyCamp)
At the con next year I hope to see more workshops offered at a more diverse range of experience. For kids who are not tech aficionados, there didn’t seem to be a lot of intro level talks at R00tz. Most of the time I really couldn’t understand what the people on stage were talking about and I wouldn’t know how to explain it to a child either. A packet was passed out at R00tz that still remains a mystery to me. I heard talk that there might be a bigger space which would be great, because this year by Saturday goons were blocking the entrance to keep anyone who wasn’t a child out both as creep control (understandable to some extent) but also because the space was to small to afford additional adults who may (like me) have simply been interested how to educate children about general hackerdom and information security. I also hope that someone of importance will reconsider the ticket price for kids, R00tz is fun and yes important, but it ain’t Disney world and it is priced as such (Disney is $97 on weekdays and $165 weekends — and open from 8am to midnight!!) it is also hard to understand where the kids ticket price goes considering most the people working are volunteers and the main workshops and talks are given by volunteers and sponsoring companies like Facebook and Logitek who seem happy to donate equipment and time.
Anyway, I had a lot of fun and am looking forward to next year! I really hope that SpyCamp can be part of improving DefCon ROOtz to add more kid-led activities, more pure-fun-with-technology events like a laser maze, more How-To workshops, and maybe even motivating bigger giveaways to help with the high price point.
