@Defcon was the best con of 2020, no exceptions. They offered all content for download as a torrent. They had a bumping discord set up, well moderated, and managed to create a linecon/hallwaycon experience that was every bit as dystopian/awesome (tick as appropriate) as a con. https://twitter.com/pipoe2h/status/1345451896111329286

The TL;DR on why nobody else has even approached the @defcon experience is this: Defcon picked the *best tools for the job*. Other vendors picked the tools from vendors already on their "approved suppliers" list, or which were popular enough they wouldn't get fired for using.

The reason @Defcon was so great was that their only goal was to create a great experience for their attendees. They didn't have product to push. They didn't care about lead gen. They didn't care about not offending some manager who doesn't like being out of their comfort zone.

While there is room to improve the @defcon virtual experience for 2021 - and honestly, when isn't there with any large event? - the part where Defcon was focused on making the event the best possible experience FOR ATTENDEES made all the difference.

If your primary goal is pushing a product/message, or getting "leads", then any event you do will suck. In person, online...it doesn't matter.

If you want to make a great event - whether it is a personal social party or a conference - the focus must be the attendee.

I realize this is where I break pretty hard from pretty much every marketing professional out there. For them, there is no point in doing an event unless it increases some measurable metric that can then be used to justify their continued employment but...that's the problem!

Do you really want to go to Yet Another VMworld and see the same booths from the same vendors, selling the same crap? Do you want to go to another usercon and get some marketing presentation full of buzzwords with no demos and no hardcore technical deep dives?

I sure don't.

We got into this because we like *machines*. We want to see the *machines* do cool things. We don't give a bent fnord about your marketing buzzwords or slideware voodoo, and I say this as someone who writes marketing content for a living!

I have been doing this for over a decade now, in multiple mediums, and I cannot emphasize enough that the content which connects with IT practitioners - with your customers - is the content that is not full of SEO, and buzzwords, and fully metered, metric-analyzed bullshit.

The stuff that connects with your "target audience" is stuff that speaks to their problems. And in the context of an event, the VERY best way to speak to those problems is to shut up and let practitioners speak.

The community does the best job of talking to the community.

If you want a great event focus on great speakers. Focus on new, exciting things. Rare things. Odd things. Funny things. Nobody gives a bent fnord that you iterated the VMware Kubernetes esxSANaaS by 0.1 of a version number, and added another encryption suite.

Nobody. Cares.

But you know that time where you got a customer request that sounded really easy at first, but actually took your engineers 8 months to solve?

That is what we want to hear about. Tell us more about that. Tell us about the hard things you did. Tell us about the lessons learned.

We can read blogs, whitepapers, datasheets and websites. We can download your demo videos and listen to your podcasts. By all means, add multi-flavoured propaganda to the virtual conference torrent, and that of all your partners! Why not?

But don't make that your conference.

Make your conference about talking to your fellow practitioners and comrades in arms. It's not about selling us. It's not about converting us.

If you want an excellent conference, make it about *sharing* with us. Your successes. Your failures.

Do you want to make a great, industry-defining conference? Then make a conference all about what your nerdiest nerds are passionate about. Get your most socially awkward, non-media-trained, nerdiest nerds to tell us what THEY do. From the helpdesk to your distinguished engineers.

A great conference is not one in which your sales people walk away with a fist full of leads to pester on the phone. A great conference is one where people walk away thinking "wow, those people know their stuff, and they understand the problems I face. I think I can trust them."

A great conference *enables attendees to network with one another*. It empowers them to share THEIR stories. It builds a sense of community. And if done right, it highlights the vendor hosting it as trustworthy because they "get" their customers. Because they see them as PEOPLE.

We have all just been through an absolute shitstorm of a year. All of us are burning at 150% of normal just to tread water, because our corporate overlords fired half the staff. We're watching tens of millions get evicted. Go starving. Over a million are dead of COVID.

Now ask yourself, in the wake of that do YOU want to be advertised at? Do you give a fnord about whether or not some product does buzzword buzzword analyst name buzzword buzzword? No. You don't care.

NEITHER DO ANY OF US.

If you wouldn't want to sit through it, why would we?

Believe me when I say that I understand entirely exactly how much the above thread is heathen blasphemy of the worst most damning sort to vendor marketing departments.

GOOD.

This isn't 2019 anymore. The world changed. Time to do better. Go study the @Defcon 2020 event. Learn.