DerbyCon 2012 was not just a conference. There was something magical about DerbyCon which transcended all expectations of  a first-year conference.

I could give you the facts and figures, but these details don’t tell the whole story. Instead, let me tell you the story of DerbyCon from my perspective.

In May 2010, a few guys (Dave Kennedy, Martin Bos, Adrian Crenshaw, Elliot Cutright, Kenneth Scott and others) put together a Metasploit class in Louisville, Ky. In the summarized words of these guys, they did it because they loved hacking, they had knowledge of specific subjects and they heard a clear plea for instruction from the community. So they put this class together and donated all the proceeds to Hackers For Charity.

Rob Dixon and Bill Gardner from 304geeks took HFC swag to the event and were on hand to thank the presenters and attendees for supporting HFC.

A few months later, in October of 2010, 304geeks and HFC decided to launch their own hacker conference, called hack3rcon. The purpose of the con was to provide education and a cool networking event for the hacker community and to raise funds for Hackers For Charity. All of the “Louisville guys” volunteered to present and help get the con off the ground.

At $40 a head, 100 people showed up. Carlo Perez flew in from puerto Rico to present. The following week, Carlo proudly wore his hack3rcon shirt and hat on the pauldotcom show as a show of support. We were proud as well.
That brings us to DerbyCon 2011. It was, of course, run by the same core crew that kicked off the Louisville metasploit class and helped get hack3rcon off the ground. Dave Kennedy reached out to me, asking if I would be interested in attending. I was thrilled at the idea, but the travel expenses were outrageous, with me coming in from Uganda. Rob Dixon started asking around and eventually found two more conferences in the area that would be willing to pay me to speak. Dave made a generous financial offer in support of the charity, and before I knew it I was scheduled for a 3-conference tour in KY and WV. Dell called later and asked if I was available for a 5-conference tour the week before. If it had not been for Dave and Rob, I would not have been in-country and I would have likely declined the Dell tour, which turned out to be fabulous, and I will likely work with them again.

Hopefully you’re seeing the theme here. The community working together to do free training, help out “competing” conferences and bend over backwards to support HFC.

DerbyCon was a staggering success. The venue was perfect. The expo and tracks were close together, and there was lots to do in walking distance of the hotel. (I will not discuss whether or not Fourth Street Live was a good or a bad thing to have within walking distance. It spelled eh.. disaster for far too many of us.) Beginning with a lightweight registration of 500, the conference quickly grew to over 1,000 attendees. The atmosphere was electric. The “all-stars” from the Friday track stuck around and mingled for the entire weekend. Each of the speakers on the Saturday and Sunday tracks delivered stellar content and hung out as well. Everyone had a chance to get to know each other, and the sense of community was strong. After all, ‘conference’ came from the Latin conferre which means ‘bring together’, and DerbyCon did exactly that. It brought us together as a community.

That brings us to the numbers. At Defcon this year, attended by approximately 15,000 people, the community provided about $7,000 but my travel expenses cut into that pretty deeply. At DerbyCon, the community pitched in over $11,000, and the conference organizers took care of all of our expenses.

You read that right. A con of only 1,000 people raised more support than a better-publicized and more popular con attended by 15,000 people!

But it keeps getting better. At the end of the con, Dave donated another $500 to Hackers For Charity on behalf of DerbyCon. Then he donated the extra 300(!) DerbyCon bags to HFC and made a generous donation to hack3rcon, making it the first time a hacker conference sponsored another hacker conference.

Technically, the cons are in competition. They’re geographically close together and are run mere weeks apart. But that didn’t matter. DerbyCon sponsored hack3rcon.

This is the side of the hacker community I wish the media would pay more attention to. Free training, fundraisers for good causes, and a camaraderie that is rarely seen in any community.

On behalf of myself and the rest of the community, I would like to thank all those that pitched in to make DebyCon happen. You did so much more than throw a successful con. You brought us together and reminded me of what this community is all about.