Hi i'm back from Blackhat Amsterdam, and i really didn't liked it this time. I'm very disappointed with the organization, when i pay 1200 Eur i expect that the service and the organization of the event will be perfect (or at least very good), but this time it looked like a bunch of friends organized some conference without too much interest. Here is the list of things that i didn't liked:
0-Please stop giving for free those red bags, not even our girlfriends use them, they are totally ugly.
1-This year they didn't gave books, only the Cd-rom. (the book was ok, because you can take notes, read a slide that you miss, etc).
2-The organization wanted that the public use their laptops to read the cdroms, but in the conference room there were few sockets.
3-The lunch was a nightmare, the people had to wait in a queue to enter the restaurant, then make a queue to serve the food. Really a mess...
4-There were zero support for the speakers, some speakers had problems and there were nobody from the organizations to help them. For example one speaker had the audio
very low, and the public hardly heard him, nobody helped him until one person went outside to search for someone of the crew to fix the problem. Other speaker had a problem with his laptop socket and again, nobody from the crew was there.
5-The Microsoft party was a shame in comparison with 2006. Prefixed drinks, small place, it was more like a reunion in the house of a friend than a party :( (i think they spend all the budget in Windows Vista Marketing) ;)
6-The place was very small, and it was difficult to move when all the people was in the lobby.
7-There were coffe service with some food, but it was difficult to have a glass of water. Coffe a lot, water none.
That's all my thoughts, if they want to charge 1200 Eur, for the conference they have to mantain a quality level. From this year experience i don't recommend Blackhat Europe the next time.
If you have any question about blackhat, please let me know..
