This year I attended my first BlackHat/DEFCON and during BlackHat, I didn't attend a single talk. I had talks I wanted to attend but I ended up enjoying myself at the booth so much, that I chose to stick around and talk to people. While I have to say that attending talks would be cool, I realized that BH isn't about the talks... that is definitely part of BH, but it's not all of it. I missed every talk and had an amazing time.

Those of you that go for the talks are probably wondering how I had an amazing time... it was really quite simple. I spoke to people at the booth; every person that came by, that I had the chance to speak to... I spoke with. I work at a desk, and interact with the rest of the team, and fellow security researchers via IM but security researchers, with a few exceptions, generally aren't the public face of a company. For those two days I was interacting with people non stop... I spoke with customers, evals, prospects and others in the industry.

When I showed up, I was expecting to take in as many talks as I could... but once I spent some time at the booth, I realized that it was the better place to be. Given the amount of work that I've done on our WebApp360 product, and that it was something a lot of booth visitors wanted to see, I was able to get direct feedback and insight. There was a certain amount of personal gratification that went along with it, but really it was more about the feedback. When a customer or potential customer tells you directly that they really like the way something was implemented, or that they'd like to see XYZ implemented differently, it's something you remember and, when needed, re-investigate.

Also, we had VERT Dog Tags at the booth, complete with a bit of geek humour. Passing out the dog tags and seeing the different reactions between people who got them and didn't get them was priceless. For those of you that wanted one and didn't get one, I apologize... they were quite popular and next year we'll need to make a note to have more of them.

I was able to walk people through our product line but with hopefully a slightly different perspective than they'd get from a marketing or sales person. I'm sure there are plenty of people who thought 'sure, sure' and rolled their eyes when I would respond with, 'Well, I'm not a marketing person, I'm a research engineer, so I can't really answer that'.

What am I getting at? Well, in the end, it's nice to, from time to time, get away from your daily routine. To do something completely different. It's something I highly recommend that everyone try. Not only did I walk away with increase self satisfaction and a sense of feeling that I benefited the company, but I walked away with some thoughts and interactions that really impressed me (more on this to follow). As well, I was at the booth at the right time, and got to do a quick microcast with Martin McKeay of the Network Security Podcast.