Let him give his talk like they promised.
Given literally everyone in that room is using his work in that same moment and they are literally there to hear him speak.
And the original question of how the situation could have been handled better is the most interesting one. The rest is a game of he said/she said, which hn commenters tend to enjoy arguing about but is ultimately not very instructive.
With hindsight it is clear that the situation had been brewing for some time, and the conflict had been escalating slowly. Perhaps due to the pressure ans stress (and time pressure) of organising an event like that nobody managed to have enough distance to deescalate it, which culminated in someone being escorted off stage by security, not a good experience for anyone.
Most likely once the invitation to talk had been rescinded the dice were thrown. It would have been hard for the speaker not to be offended, and unfair on him to expect him to take it quietly and move on without reacting. Someone should have been aware of that and worked with him to control the impact of this on his own reputation.
They made the software for the badge of your entire conference, for free, and then you won’t let them talk about it because what you got for free, wasn’t what you expected/wanted?
That’s just dumb on so many levels I don’t even know where to begin.
It’s like playing, no, selling someone elses mod and complaining it’s not up to the standards of a finished game.
You are saying this like it is unreasonable, but it seems entirely reasonable to me.
Just because you do something for free does not entitile you to a conference talk about it. If you wanted to be paid for it (and make no mistake, a conference talk is a form of compensation. In many conferences companies pay huge sums of money to have a platform) then they should have got a contract.
I think an easter egg that includes a monetary solicitation is (at best) in poor taste, regardless of the circumstances. But canceling his talk 30 minutes prior to its start time for that? Nope, not cool. DEFCON's behavior in disinviting him was much much worse than his action that triggered it.
Especially since they were okay with him giving the talk as long as he apologized. And he offered to say “I didn’t mean to offend anyone”.
So for a misunderstanding and mistake to drag him off the stage is stupid and ridiculous.
> What should they have done better? They didn't have the option of doing better with Dmitry, right? He deliberately set up the confrontation with security.
Maybe I misunderstood, I previously read that as “what could they have done better about the situation”.
Did you mean “what could they have done better once he was at the stage?”
The "drag him off the stage" thing was his own arrangement.
It sounds like defcon was mad at EE for going over budget - which honestly is fair even though they didn’t handle it well. And thought (wrongly) that Dmitry was a salty subcontractor of theirs. Their actions make some sense in that context. Not great, but eh.
But Dmitry has totally owned them in messaging - by forcing them to physically eject him (making a scene), and getting out ahead of the story. It’s great drama. He’s positioned defcon to look like an evil corporate buffoon hating on a hacker who was just donating his time.
At this point, defcon should take the L and apologise, and let him have a session talking about the code. That would be a very satisfying end to the drama for attendees. (Even if it does encourage more drama in future years.)
Either way, I agree - I’m sure attendance will go up next year too. People love this stuff.
It probably shouldn't have had the Bitcoin address, but it doesn't sound like that would have been treated much differently.
But it's objectively an easter egg. Why the scare quotes?
And unpaid programmers doing cheeky things with code because they want to is the heart of DEFCON.
I can see where DEFCON is coming from with the calls they made here. But it’s a mistake to treat Dimitri as if he were a vendor. He's not.
>PS: there are a few easter eggs in the stock badge firmware, try to find them or come to the badge talk at DEFCON to see for yourself ;)
I surveyed the ground tonight and found two that are interesting: Recon (in Montreal) and CCC (in Hamburg).
What do you think?
I've never heard anyone say anything but good things about REcon. I have FOMO about having never been.
It is an excellent conference that I've enjoyed every single time I've gone
Is it though? With 20+ attendances behind my belt, I was already sour on the experience at 2018 and didn't go in 2019 due to a family conflict and haven't been back since.
Not only did "badgelife" absolutely ruin the whole fucking experience, but I started seeing large numbers of people start getting othered and excluded because of running afoul of idpol which IMO is entirely counter to the spirit of what the con had always been about.
It permeates throughout the meta events of the con, like Ollam's Shoot, where you're warned very much in advance with overt threats to not express an opinion that even remotely smells right-wing while his staffers proudly wave antifa banners and shout the merits of being radleft.
At the same time, my experience with the security industry as a whole is that most vendors are completely full of shit and spend all of their time chasing after fake clout (and all of the shady bullshit that goes along with it).
The idea that DEF CON's brand is "in the shitter" seems risible. I say that ruefully, as (in my declining years) I get more and more bitter about the comic convention spectacle the event has become. Whatever the outcome from "badge-gate", I assure you, they'll set attendance records next year regardless.