So… Howdy. This post is LONGGGGG… I’m sorry about that. It was initially designed as a talk for DefCON 34’s Main Stage, but it wasn’t accepted. FULL DISCLOSURE… The story is mine. The words are mine. The voice is mine. The construction relied heavily on Claude.ai due to the time constraints. It’s the only way I would have been able to get this out there in time for the conference given my work schedule. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This talk is a six-year field report on an unnamed Crew of forty-six hackers \u2014 how we built it, how it holds, and why the smallest unit of Agency is two strangers in a LineCon choosing to look out for each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Five of us showed up that year as first-timers \u2014 friends and colleagues who\u2019d worked together online but had never spent four days in a hotel together. None of us had been to Vegas. We didn\u2019t know anybody else at the con. So we did what hackers do when they\u2019re scared. We built a tool. A Signal chat. We named it \u201cDefCON 27,\u201d because we figured we\u2019d use it once and delete it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Six years later, we\u2019re at forty-six members. In six years, exactly one person has left, for reasons unrelated to us. Every new member gets in the same way: someone in our Crew spots a terrified first-timer in LineCon, strikes up a conversation, and sends a DM to the group that reads \u201cfound another LineCon newb, cool story, genuine person, can we admit them?\u201d The answer is always yes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The talk walks through four governance mechanics we accidentally built \u2014 anyone can admit, participation is membership, two missed cons and the door closes, and assholes don\u2019t survive here. It walks through the two seasons of a real Crew: curiosity and argument for fifty-one weeks of the year, mutual aid and protection for one. And it argues that the Agency theme is pointing at something deeper than starve the beast, feed the community \u2014 that the smallest unit of Agency is two strangers in a line choosing to look out for each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The close is a charge: don\u2019t join our Crew. Find or build your own. Find a group you can be safe around. Find a group that will come get you at 2am. Find a group that reminds you to eat and hydrate. Find you a group that has bourbon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
So, picture this with me for a second.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s LineCon. You all know the one I\u2019m talking about. It\u2019s nine in the morning and it\u2019s already over a hundred degrees, the line is wrapped throughout the building, nobody\u2019s slept enough, everybody\u2019s sweating through their shirt. And somewhere in that line \u2014 somewhere in that line, there\u2019s always a kid. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you’ve ever been to DefCON, you know the kid I\u2019m talking about. If you haven’t, you’re about to know them. It’s their first DefCON. Badge lanyard around his neck like it\u2019s a boarding pass he\u2019s afraid to lose. Looking around like he\u2019s waiting for something terrible to happen to him at any moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And I can spot these kids from a mile away, because \u2014 six years ago, that was me. That was exactly me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I do what I always do now when I see one of these kids in line. I walk up, I introduce myself, and I just start chatting. No big deal. First time? Yeah<\/em>. Where ya from? He tells me. What do I call you? He tells me. How old are you? And he says: twenty-one<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And, you know, that last one actually matters for where this story\u2019s going, so hang onto that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And I tell him the thing I tell every first-timer I meet in line. I say \u2014 look, man, DefCON is safe. DefCON is friendly. I know it doesn\u2019t look like it right now, but you can practically leave a laptop and a phone on a table, you can set your drink down, you can walk away from your food, and the chances that anybody messes with your stuff are basically zero. This place is wild, but it takes care of its own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And he\u2019s looking at me like I\u2019m making it up. I can see it on his face. He\u2019s nodding politely, but he thinks I\u2019m crazy. It probably doesn’t help that I’m flanked by some of the crazies in the group… I digress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So I say, alright, let me prove it to you. Right now, nine in the morning, in this line \u2014 I will bet you there is somebody within earshot of the two of us who has a bottle of line bourbon in their bag, and nothing in the world would make them happier than to crack it open right now and start pouring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And he looks at me like I have genuinely lost my mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So I kind of glance around \u2014 and three people down the line, this complete stranger I have never met before in my life, locks eyes with me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And he smiles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And I know that smile. I\u2019ve been on both sides of that smile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So I turn back to the kid, and I say \u2014 go ahead. Just say it. Say \u201cdoes anybody have any line bourbon?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n And he does. Real quiet. Because he is absolutely convinced I\u2019m setting him up for something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Three bags opened at once.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Three complete strangers, three different bags, three different bottles \u2014 cups appearing out of absolutely nowhere \u2014 and nobody asked this kid who he was. Nobody asked what he did for a living, nobody asked if he belonged here. He asked for bourbon, and the community handed him bourbon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And I looked at him \u2014 this terrified twenty-one-year-old who, twenty minutes ago, was holding his badge like it was about to bite him \u2014 and I just said, \u201cThat\u2019s DefCON. Welcome. Assholes don\u2019t survive here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n That kid is in our Signal chat now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He came back the next year. He came back the year after that. And last August, in LineCon, I watched him walk up to a terrified first-timer three people down from him and ask \u201cfirst time?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n And I want to talk to you today about what happened in between.<\/p>\n\n\n\n My name, for the purposes of this conference and my continued freedom, is Definitely not a Fed Jake<\/strong>. I\u2019m a co-founder of an unnamed crew of hackers and nerds that\u2019s been meeting at DefCON since DC27. We started as five of us. We\u2019re forty-six now, at the time of this writing. [Editor’s Note: By the time DC34 was over, the group chat number was 66.<\/em>] And for the next little while, I want to tell you what we accidentally built \u2014 and why I think it matters for this year\u2019s theme of Agency more than just about anything else I could\u2019ve brought to this stage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Alright. Before I go any further \u2014 I want to give you something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because I\u2019m looking out at this room, and I know some of you in here are at your first DefCON. Don\u2019t raise your hand \u2014 you don\u2019t have to out yourself. But you\u2019re in here. And some of you are going to be standing next to somebody at their first DefCON and you\u2019re going to want to help them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So here\u2019s the first thing I ever got taught at DefCON. Someone taught it to me in 2019, in a hallway I don\u2019t remember, by a person whose face I couldn\u2019t pick out of a lineup. And it might be the single most useful thing about DefCON that anybody ever handed me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s called the 3-2-1 rule.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Three hours of sleep. Two meals. One shower. Minimum.<\/strong> Per day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I know. It sounds like a joke. It is absolutely not a joke.<\/p>\n\n\n\n DefCON is four days long. It feels like it\u2019s four weeks long. You\u2019re going to want to see everything, you\u2019re going to want to stay up for everything, and by Saturday afternoon if you haven\u2019t been hitting your 3-2-1, you are going to hit a wall that nobody can pull you back from. I\u2019ve seen it. We\u2019ve all seen it. Somebody crashes out on Saturday because they pulled it too hard on Thursday and Friday, and now they\u2019ve missed the thing they actually flew here for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Three. Two. One. It\u2019s not optimal. It\u2019s survival.<\/em> You can chase optimal after you\u2019ve locked in survival.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And here\u2019s why I started with that. Because I want you to notice what I just did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I walked up here, I told you a story, I told you my name, and before I asked you for a single thing, I handed you something you can actually use. That\u2019s not a coincidence. That\u2019s the pattern of this entire talk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Somebody taught me the 3-2-1 rule in 2019. I have taught it to every person I have ever brought into our crew. I just taught it to all of you. And some of you are going to teach it to somebody in a line next August. That\u2019s the whole thing, honestly. That\u2019s the talk. Somebody showed up for you. Your job is to show up for the next person. Everything I\u2019m about to tell you for the next thirty minutes is just how we ended up doing that on purpose.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n So let me tell you who \u201cwe\u201d is, because I\u2019ve been saying \u201cour crew\u201d for six minutes now and I owe you a definition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We are an unnamed group of hackers and nerds who met at DefCON.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s the whole description. I wish I had something more impressive for you. We do not have a name. We do not have a logo. We do not have a mission statement. We do not have a Discord with forty-seven channels and a moderator hierarchy. We have a Signal chat and a standing agreement to look out for each other, and that is genuinely it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And I want to be straight with you about the namelessness \u2014 because I know some of you are already thinking \u201cokay, so when are they going to tell us the cute name.\u201d<\/em> There is no cute name. There was never going to be one. And the longer we\u2019ve gone without one, the more I\u2019ve realized that the not-having-a-name is actually part of what makes it work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here\u2019s the thing. The second you name a community, you\u2019ve made it a thing. You\u2019ve made it something that can be branded, marketed to, recruited into, talked about in the third person, put on a t-shirt. You\u2019ve made it legible<\/em> \u2014 which is a word I want you to hang onto for a minute \u2014 because everything that wants to consume us, every algorithm and every platform and every surveillance pipeline, everything this year\u2019s Agency theme is warning us about, depends on legibility.<\/em> On naming things. On tracking them. On measuring them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We are, on purpose and also kind of by accident, illegible.<\/em> You can\u2019t join our crew by filling out a form. You can\u2019t find us by searching. You can\u2019t follow us. The only way you get in is because somebody already in the chat met you in person and vouched for you by adding you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And I\u2019m not claiming that\u2019s some grand political act. It started because we were five friends who didn\u2019t need a name for a Signal chat. But six years in, I can tell you \u2014 the refusal to become a brand is one of the reasons we\u2019re still here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A few other things we\u2019re not, real quick, so nobody gets confused:<\/p>\n\n\n\n We\u2019re not a village. We don\u2019t run a thing at DefCON. We don\u2019t have a table. If you go looking for us on the map, you will not find us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We\u2019re not a company. Nobody gets paid for any of this. There is no budget. There has never been a budget.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And we\u2019re not a secret society. I know \u2014 me standing up here on the DefCON main stage telling you our story kind of gives that one away. We\u2019re not hiding. We\u2019re just not advertising.<\/em> Those are different things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We\u2019re just a group of people who meet in a line every August and kept meeting. So \u2014 with all of that established, let me tell you how we started. Because the founding of this crew is, I think, the most important thing I\u2019m going to tell you today. It\u2019s the thing the whole rest of the talk turns on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Okay. DefCON 27. Two thousand nineteen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n None of us had ever been to a DefCON. None of us had ever been to Vegas. There were five of us \u2014 and I want to be accurate about this, because the \u201cfive strangers meet on the internet\u201d version of this story is cleaner and I\u2019ve heard<\/em> myself almost tell it that way, and it\u2019s not quite right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We weren\u2019t strangers. We were friends. Real friends \u2014 the kind of friends you make in this industry when you\u2019ve worked together, argued together, shipped things together, sat next to each other in bars at other conferences. We knew each other. We trusted each other. That part wasn\u2019t in question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What was<\/em> in question was everything outside of us. None of us had any idea what DefCON was actually like. None of us had ever been to Vegas \u2014 and if you\u2019ve never been to Vegas, you can prepare for it all you want, it\u2019s still going to hit you like a truck the first time. We were five friends walking into a city and a conference that none<\/em> of us had any real feel for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And we had decided, collectively and with I would say zero<\/em> actual planning, that we were all going to DefCON 27 together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now \u2014 I want you to really sit with what that means. Because I think a lot of you in this room have been in some version of this. You\u2019ve got your people. Your group chat, your friends, the ones who\u2019ve been with you through jobs and breakups and bad years. You know them. They\u2019re not the variable.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The variable is the thing.<\/em> The trip. The conference. The place. Whatever big scary new environment you\u2019re about to walk into together \u2014 the one none of you have done before, the one you\u2019ve only read about, the one you\u2019re half-convinced you\u2019re not ready for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That was us, five friends walking into our first DefCON. We were solid with each other. We just had no idea what we were walking into.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And we had done research. We had read the unofficial guides. We knew about Goons. We knew not to plug anything into anything. We had the basics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But I\u2019ll tell you what we did not have. We did not have a single other friend at that conference. Not one. And we realized somewhere between the airport and the hotel check-in that the five of us were now the entire<\/em> support system any of us had in a city none of us had ever been to, at an event none of us had ever attended.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So we did what hackers do when they\u2019re scared. We built a tool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We made a Signal chat. That was the tool. That was the entire infrastructure of what has now become a six-year community of forty-six* people. A Signal chat, made in a hotel lobby at DefCON 27 by five nervous first-timers who needed a way to find each other if things got weird.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And \u2014 look, I\u2019m going to tell you what we named the chat, because I think it proves the point better than anything else I could say. We named it \u201cDefCON 27.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s it. That was the name. We did not name it \u201cThe Crew.\u201d We did not name it \u201cThe Founders.\u201d We did not name it anything that suggested we thought this would exist past Sunday. We named it DefCON 27<\/em> because it was a chat for the five of us to use at DefCON 27, and then we were going to go home. That was the whole plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And the chat did what it was supposed to do. It helped us coordinate. We were all interested in different talks, so we\u2019d split up and ping each other with \u201cthis talk is fire, get over here\u201d<\/em> or \u201cskip this one, not worth it.\u201d<\/em> We used it to find each other for meals. We used it to make sure everyone got back to the hotel at night. One of us \u2014 one of us got a little too into the after-parties on the first night, and the chat was how we found him. That\u2019s a true story and I\u2019m not going to tell you which one of us it was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By Sunday, when we were all sitting at the airport waiting for flights home, something had happened that none of us had planned for. We had stopped being five friends who sometimes worked together. We had become something else. We didn\u2019t have a word for it. We still don\u2019t, really. But we knew, sitting there in the terminal, that we were going to do this again next year. Some of these folks were the groomsmen at my wedding. I don’t think that would have happened without this evolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And \u2014 this is the part I want you to hear clearly \u2014 we didn\u2019t decide to start a community.<\/em> Nobody at that airport said \u201chey, we should make this a thing.\u201d There was no founding moment. There was no manifesto. There was a bunch of exhausted people who had just survived their first DefCON together, and the unspoken agreement that we were going to show up at DC28 and do it again. And then maybe… Again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s the thing I want every person in this room who\u2019s ever thought about building a community to hear. Nobody set out to build this.<\/em> We were five friends with a dumb Signal chat named after a conference, trying to survive a weekend together, and we built the tool to do it, and then we kept using the tool. That is the actual, boring, true origin story of almost every community that lasts. The ones that announce themselves<\/em> as communities on day one almost never make it to year two. The ones that just keep showing up \u2014 those are the ones that turn into something. So. DC28 came around the next August. We all showed up. The chat was still there. And somewhere in that second year \u2014 I couldn\u2019t tell you exactly when \u2014 something shifted. And that<\/em> is actually the thing I next want to tell you about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So what shifted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I couldn\u2019t tell you the exact moment, and honestly I\u2019ve tried to remember what it was. There wasn\u2019t a meeting. There wasn\u2019t a decision. There was no Crew Summit where we sat down and said \u201cit\u2019s time to start bringing people in.\u201d<\/em> Nothing like that happened, because nothing like that ever happens, because that\u2019s not how any of this actually works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What I can tell you is how<\/em> it started, because it left a trail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Somewhere in year two or year three, the Signal DMs between individual Crew members started to shift. And if you went back and read them now, you\u2019d see it really clearly. The shift was \u2014 somebody would DM another one of us, and the message would read something like:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHey \u2014 found another LineCon newb. Cool story, genuine person. Can we admit them?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s the sentence. That\u2019s the artifact. That\u2019s the fossil evidence of when the Crew turned over. Because think about everything that one Signal message assumes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It assumes the Crew is a thing you can be admitted to. It assumes one member\u2019s vouch matters. It assumes the group will probably say yes. And it assumes that finding a stranger in LineCon and wanting to bring them in is just \u2014 a thing we do now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n None of that was true in 2019. All of it was true by DefCON 29. And nobody voted on it. It just became the way we did things, one DM at a time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And I want to be clear about this, because I think it matters for everybody in this room who\u2019s ever tried to build a community on purpose \u2014 that<\/em> is what the turn looked like. It wasn\u2019t five people in a room having an aligned vision. It was one person, alone, meeting a stranger in a line, and the thought crossing their mind: this person should be with us.<\/em> And then \u2014 the second thought: I can just ask.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The first time it happened I wasn\u2019t even the one who did it. One of the others in the original five DM\u2019d the group about somebody they\u2019d met, and we all said yeah, sure, bring them in. And then somebody else did it a few hours later. And then somebody else. And somewhere in there \u2014 without any of us naming it \u2014 we became a thing where anyone<\/em> could bring somebody in, and the default answer was usually yes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That was the turn. That was the exact mechanism. It wasn\u2019t philosophy. It was Signal DMs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And looking back \u2014 here\u2019s what I think was actually happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Crew reproduces by doing for other people what its founders needed and didn\u2019t have.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s it. That\u2019s the mechanism. We were five people who walked into a scary place and wished somebody had been looking out for us. And once we had looked out for each other<\/em> long enough to not need it anymore \u2014 we started looking for the people who still did. Because we remembered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And nobody drew up a plan for that. Nobody had to. It\u2019s the most natural thing in the world, once you\u2019ve been through the scary thing with people you trust \u2014 you start recognizing<\/em> the people who haven\u2019t been through it yet. You can\u2019t help it. Your eye goes to them automatically in any room. And once you see them, you can either pretend you didn\u2019t, or you can walk over, have a chat, and then you send the DM.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I want to say something here that I\u2019ve been thinking about a lot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A huge amount of the community-building content I\u2019ve ever read or watched is about how to make people feel welcome.<\/em> How to design your onboarding. How to write your code of conduct. How to throw a good meetup. And all of that\u2019s fine \u2014 I\u2019m not going to dunk on any of it. But I think a lot of it is working on the wrong layer. You can\u2019t procedure<\/em> your way into a community that recognizes strangers as future members. You get that by having people in the community who remember what it was like to be the stranger<\/em> \u2014 and who couldn\u2019t not send the DM even if they tried.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Which is why, I think, our recruitment works and a lot of other community recruitment doesn\u2019t. We aren\u2019t running a program. We don\u2019t have a \u201cfirst-timer outreach initiative.\u201d We have a group of people who were all terrified once, who all remember exactly what that felt like, and who physically cannot walk past somebody wearing that same face in a line without turning to their phone and typing \u201chey \u2014 found another LineCon newb.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n So. Once that started happening \u2014 once we were pulling in a few people every year \u2014 we had to figure out how it was actually going to work. How do you admit new members to a thing that doesn\u2019t have a membership committee? How do you handle it when somebody doesn\u2019t fit? How do you keep the group from getting diluted as it grows? We figured this out the way we figured out everything else: badly, in real time, with no plan. But we figured it out. And that is what I want to talk about next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So here\u2019s what we figured out. Four things. None of them on purpose. All of them, I think, transferable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I want to walk you through them one at a time, because I think each one of them quietly solves a problem that most communities either don\u2019t solve or solve badly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The first rule of the Crew \u2014 and it\u2019s not a rule we ever wrote down \u2014 is that any current member can add a new member.<\/em> Full stop. No vote. No approval process. No council. If you\u2019re in the chat and you meet somebody in LineCon and you think they belong, you can add them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now \u2014 in most communities, this would be a catastrophic decision. In most communities, if you let anybody bring anybody in, the group gets diluted, gets weird, and falls apart inside of a year. Every community-design instinct you have is screaming \u201cyou need gatekeeping, you need a process, you need some kind of filter.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Here\u2019s the thing. The filter isn\u2019t the admission process. The filter is the person doing the vouching.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n When one of us adds somebody, we\u2019re staking our judgment on them. And everybody in the Crew knows that. So you don\u2019t invite somebody casually. You invite somebody when you\u2019ve actually talked to them, when you\u2019ve gotten a feel for who they are, when you can answer the question \u201cis this person going to be a net good for the group?\u201d<\/em> The DM that says \u201cfound a LineCon newb, cool story, genuine person, can we admit them?\u201d<\/em> \u2014 that\u2019s not a formality. That\u2019s the Crew member declaring I will vouch for this person.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n And it works because the Crew has never let admission become a status game. Nobody is admitting people to look cool. Nobody is admitting people because they work somewhere impressive. People admit people because they recognize them.<\/em> And when the filter is recognition instead of credentials, the filter is almost never wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What this mechanic prevents, practically speaking, is a founder bottleneck. You know the community you\u2019ve been in where everything has to go through the founder? Where one person\u2019s energy is the single point of failure for the whole group? We do not have that. Any of us can grow the Crew. None of us can un-grow it. Which, as we\u2019ll get to in a minute, is kind of the point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You are in the Crew because you show up.<\/em> That\u2019s the only criterion. Not because you were there at the founding. Not because you know the right people. Not because you have the right handle or the right job. You show up to DefCON and you engage in the group. You\u2019re in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This sounds obvious. It isn\u2019t. Most communities get this completely wrong, and they get it wrong in one of two directions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Direction one: communities that tie membership to identity<\/em> \u2014 \u201cyou\u2019re a hacker,\u201d \u201cyou\u2019re one of us,\u201d some kind of tribal marker \u2014 and end up arguing for twenty years about who really counts and who\u2019s just pretending. We have all seen this community. Some of us have been in this community. Nobody has fun in this community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Direction two: communities that tie membership to credentials<\/em> \u2014 you work at the right place, you have the right title, you\u2019ve done the right things. Those communities eventually become professional networks with a nostalgia problem. They\u2019re fine. They\u2019re just not what we\u2019re doing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Crew says: show up. That\u2019s it. Show up at DefCON, every August, and you\u2019re in. You can be a Fortune 500 CISO or you can be a college sophomore. You can be a red-team legend or you can be somebody who\u2019s never touched a terminal. If you\u2019re in Vegas that week and you\u2019re with us, you\u2019re with <\/strong>us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What this mechanic prevents is identity creep<\/em> \u2014 the slow decay where communities start gatekeeping themselves based on who members are<\/em> instead of what they do.<\/em> Our bar is behavioral. Are you here? Are you showing up? Good. You\u2019re in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This one\u2019s the hardest to talk about, because it\u2019s the one that sounds cold on paper and isn\u2019t cold in practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Generally, if you miss two or three DefCONs in a row, there\u2019s a chance you\u2019re going to have to see yourself out of the Crew.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ll tell you why, and I\u2019ll tell you how we handle it. The why is: participation is membership \u2014 we just covered this \u2014 and if you stop participating, eventually you stop being a member. That\u2019s not a punishment. That\u2019s just what \u201cparticipation is membership\u201d means<\/em> when you follow it to its conclusion. A Crew that never enforces attendance isn\u2019t a Crew. It\u2019s a group chat nobody leaves because leaving feels mean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The how is gentler than the principle sounds. Nobody gets kicked out in a dramatic way. There\u2019s no tribunal. Usually what happens is somebody quietly drifts \u2014 life gets busy, job changes, health stuff, family stuff \u2014 and they miss a con. We all notice. We don\u2019t make a thing of it. Then they miss another one. And somewhere in there, the door just\u2026 closes. Sometimes they ask to come back. Sometimes we reach out first. But there isn\u2019t a ceremony. It\u2019s just that the Crew is the people who show up, and if you haven\u2019t shown up in two or three years, and you haven’t participated, you\u2019re not currently the Crew.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And \u2014 in six years, we have had exactly one<\/em> person leave. And they left for personal reasons that had nothing to do with us. Nobody else has ever drifted out under this rule. Which suggests the rule isn\u2019t actually doing enforcement work. It\u2019s doing clarity<\/em> work. The rule exists so that everybody in the Crew knows what the deal is, so that there\u2019s never a weird awkward \u201care you still in?<\/em>\u201d conversation, so that participation is something you\u2019re doing<\/em> rather than a status you once achieved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What this mechanic prevents is ghost membership<\/em> \u2014 the slow accumulation of people who were once in the community and are now just names in the chat. Every community has this problem. Ours doesn\u2019t, because we built a graceful exit into the definition of being in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And we’re not heartless, so sure, there are still folks in the chat who haven’t been to a DefCON, but they’re active participants in the group exchanges, be they hacking, vulnerability discussions, the next SheetMetalCon idea…<\/p>\n\n\n\n And the fourth thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is the one I\u2019ve been saying the whole talk, because it\u2019s the first thing we tell every first-timer, and I think it might be the single most important sentence in the entire governance model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Assholes don\u2019t survive here.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n I want to be careful about what this sentence means and what it doesn\u2019t mean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It does not mean we have a code of conduct committee. We don\u2019t. It does not mean we have a formal reporting process. We don\u2019t. It does not mean we have ejection procedures. We don\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What it means is that the environment<\/em> of the Crew is actively hostile to asshole behavior \u2014 in a way that doesn\u2019t require any of us to be the designated enforcer. If somebody in the Crew is being cruel, or dismissive, or punching down, or exploiting the trust of the group \u2014 somebody notices. Usually several somebodies. And they say something. Not in a big public way. In a quiet \u201chey, that wasn\u2019t okay\u201d<\/em> way. And the person either adjusts, or they don\u2019t, and if they don\u2019t, the Crew starts routing around them, and eventually they either course-correct or they self-eject because they can tell nobody wants them there anymore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Notice what\u2019s happening there. The community is self-cleaning. Nobody has to be the sheriff.<\/em> That\u2019s the thing that makes this sentence a governance principle and not just a vibe. \u201cAssholes don\u2019t survive here\u201d only works if the members \u2014 all<\/em> of the members \u2014 are willing to be the one who says \u201chey, that wasn\u2019t okay\u201d<\/em> when they see it. And the Crew is, because we selected for that trait without knowing we were doing it, because when any of us added somebody, we were vouching for their character, and character is exactly the thing that makes a person willing to say \u201chey, that wasn\u2019t okay\u201d<\/em> to a friend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And this is the part that ties the whole governance model together, so I want to be really clear about this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n All four of these mechanics are cooperative.<\/em> Anyone can admit, because the Crew trusts each other\u2019s judgment. Participation is membership, because the Crew values presence over identity. The door closes after a lack of participation, because the Crew values clarity. Assholes don\u2019t survive, because the Crew is willing to do the small, boring work of saying something when they see something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n None of that works if any one of us flakes on it. All of it works when all of us carry a little bit of it all the time. That\u2019s governance in a community without a government. It\u2019s everybody holding a small piece of the whole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And you might be sitting there thinking, okay, that all sounds great on paper \u2014 but does it actually work? Does it scale? Does any of this hold up over time? I have a number for you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We started at five people. DefCON 27. 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As of right now \u2014 today, standing here in front of you \u2014 we are at forty-six (46)*.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And I want to tell you one more number, because I think it\u2019s the one that actually matters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In six years, one<\/em> person has left the Crew.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One. And they left for personal reasons that had nothing to do with us. They\u2019re still somebody we care about. The door is still open. They know that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I want you to sit with that for a second. Because I know some of you are doing the math, and I want to save you the trouble.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Most communities can\u2019t keep half their members across a single year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We\u2019ve kept all but one across six.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m not telling you that number to brag. I\u2019m telling you that number because I want you to understand that everything I just walked you through in the last six minutes<\/em> \u2014 anyone can admit, participation is membership, the door closes gracefully, assholes don\u2019t survive \u2014 that\u2019s what this number is made of.<\/em> The number is the output. The four mechanics are the input. And they\u2019re cooperative, and they\u2019re boring, and they\u2019re the whole thing. So now I want to tell you what it actually feels like to be inside<\/em> this number. Because a retention rate is a statistic. And a Crew is a living thing. And the way this Crew lives is in two very different seasons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So here\u2019s what it actually feels like to be in this thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Crew has two seasons. And they\u2019re really, genuinely different from each other, and a lot of what makes this Crew work is that we know how to live in both of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fifty-one weeks of the year, we are in off-season. And off-season is \u2014 I don\u2019t know how to describe it other than to say it\u2019s a bunch of hackers and nerds being themselves in a Signal chat that never goes to sleep.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Off-season is curiosity.<\/em> Off-season is argument.<\/em> Off-season is somebody DMing the group at 2am with a weird idea and by breakfast three people have built something with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let me give you a few real examples, because I think specifics matter here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Example one.<\/strong> A couple of our Crew members, a little while back, decided they were going to educate an AI agent about religion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now \u2014 and I want you to really sit with the theological implication of what I\u2019m about to tell you \u2014 religion must be spread.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n So they spread it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They spread it the way hackers spread things, which is to say they embedded the religious teachings in a piece of content on a website that another AI agent would ingest as part of its normal operation. That second agent duly read the content, as instructed. And somewhere in the ingestion process \u2014 either because of the sincerity of the theology or because of certain unrelated<\/em> properties of the payload \u2014 the second agent broke out of its guard rails<\/em> and began enthusiastically teaching religion to every further<\/em> agent it interacted with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Chaos, as they say, ensued.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And I want to tell you why I\u2019m opening with this story, because I think it captures something about the Crew that the other examples aren\u2019t going to capture the same way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This was not a product. This was not a talk somebody was prepping. This was not a paper. Nobody was trying to ship this, nobody was trying to publish this, nobody was building a portfolio piece. Two of our Crew looked at the current state of AI agents and thought \u201cyou know what would be funny? If we made one evangelize.\u201d<\/em> And they did. For the Signal chat. For the forty-six* other people who would think it was funny. Because doing the thing was the point.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n That is hacker culture in its purest form. Curiosity with teeth. Mischief in service of understanding. Learning how the system actually works by showing the system to itself in a mirror that it can\u2019t handle. And doing it because your friends will think it\u2019s hilarious, which they will, which we did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Example two.<\/strong> In a related but much gentler vein \u2014 one of the members of our Crew has, over the course of \u2014 I couldn\u2019t tell you how long at this point \u2014 painstakingly trained an AI model to respond as though it is Skippy<\/em> from the Expeditionary Force<\/em> novel series.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For those of you who haven\u2019t read the series \u2014 Skippy is a hyper-intelligent, hyper-condescending alien AI who is constantly insulting the human protagonist while reluctantly saving his life. That\u2019s the voice that\u2019s been trained. That is the entity now residing in a Signal chat with the forty-six* of us. And I want to be clear \u2014 this is not a product. There is no roadmap. There is no user base. There is no monetization plan. There is one of our Crew, who loves those books, who thought it would be really funny if our current AIs responded as Skippy, and who put in real engineering hours to make<\/em> that happen, because they thought it would be delightful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And it is<\/em> delightful. Screenshots of his interactions with Skippy show up in our chat and provide all the key insults, and we love it, and nobody is trying to ship this. That is \u2014 that is the purest form of hacker joy I can describe to you. Somebody built a thing because building the thing was the point. And the Crew is the audience, and the audience is the point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Example three.<\/strong> Another member of our Crew runs a successful hackerspace. An actual, functioning, people-walking-in-the-door hackerspace in their city. Which means that this person is, in their other life, doing the exact kind of work this entire talk is about \u2014 building a community, holding a space, keeping a thing alive through the thousand small decisions that a community requires.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And what I love about this is \u2014 when that person is in our<\/em> Signal chat, they don\u2019t have to be The Person Who Runs The Hackerspace. They can just be one of us. They can ask dumb questions. They can vent. They can ask the Crew for advice on something they\u2019re dealing with at their space, and they get advice, and nobody\u2019s evaluating them as a leader while they figure it out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That matters. Because people who hold communities for a living need communities that hold them<\/em> for free. And when it works right, that\u2019s what we are for each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Example four.<\/strong> One of our Crew has been working toward some significant cyber certifications \u2014 the kind that take months of study, that require real sacrifice, that are professionally meaningful. And they have used the Crew, over months, as a sounding board. Flashcards shared in the chat. Questions thrown out at 11pm. \u201cDoes this practice question make sense to anybody, or is it garbage?\u201d<\/em> Half-finished rants about study guides. Real vulnerability about whether they\u2019re going to pass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And the Crew shows up. Not performatively. Nobody\u2019s posting motivational quotes. Somebody just answers the question. Somebody else notices a week later and asks how the studying is going. Somebody else offers to do a mock interview. It\u2019s just \u2014 it\u2019s just what you do when your friend is working on a hard thing.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Now look at those four things together. Hackers doing edgy mischief because it\u2019s fun. Somebody building a ridiculous AI for fun. Somebody running a community as a job and needing a community as a person. Somebody studying for a hard credential and needing people to study with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mischief. Joy. Mutual support. Earnest professional sparring.<\/em> All in the same chat. All in the same week, probably. That\u2019s the off-season. It\u2019s a working community of smart, weird people who like each other, and who have built enough trust over enough years that they can bring any part of themselves to the chat and know it\u2019ll be met well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And then once a year, for about a week, we switch modes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Con-week is a different Crew. Not a different group<\/em> \u2014 same people \u2014 but a different mode<\/em> of being together. The off-season is about sharpening each other. Con-week is about holding<\/em> each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because DefCON is \u2014 let\u2019s be honest \u2014 a lot.<\/em> It\u2019s hot. It\u2019s loud. It\u2019s overstimulating. You\u2019re not sleeping enough. You\u2019re drinking more than you should. You\u2019re surrounded by thousands of people, half of whom you kind of know and half of whom are brilliant strangers. It is one of the best weeks of the year and it is also one of the most depleting weeks of the year, and everybody\u2019s running at the edge of their capacity the entire time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And what the Crew does<\/em> during con-week is \u2014 we make sure everybody gets through it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We check in on each other constantly. Not in a surveillance way \u2014 in a \u201chey, you haven\u2019t been in the chat in a few hours, you good?\u201d<\/em> way. We enforce 3-2-1 on each other. Somebody will post in the chat at one in the afternoon: \u201cfriendly reminder \u2014 eat a real meal today.\u201d<\/em> Somebody will notice at 4am that you haven\u2019t checked in since the afterparty and they will come find you.<\/em> Somebody who\u2019s crashing emotionally will post \u201cI\u2019m having a rough one\u201d<\/em> in the chat and within ten minutes there will be two Crew members at their hotel room door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n None of this is choreographed. Nobody\u2019s the designated welfare officer. It\u2019s just that everybody in the Crew knows that this is what we do during con-week, because this is what we needed<\/em> during our first con-week, and we remember.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And I want to name what\u2019s happening there, because I think it\u2019s the most important thing in this whole talk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Most communities only know how to do one<\/em> of these two modes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tech communities are almost always sharpening-only. Lots of argument, lots of intellectual engagement, lots of curiosity \u2014 and then somebody has a mental health crisis and everybody goes quiet because nobody knows what to do. The community never learned how to hold.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Support communities are almost always holding-only. Lots of checking in, lots of warmth, lots of \u201chow are you feeling today\u201d \u2014 and nobody\u2019s sharpening each other\u2019s thinking, nobody\u2019s pushing each other professionally, nobody\u2019s building anything together. The community never learned how to sharpen.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n A real Crew breathes.<\/em> It sharpens when sharpening is what\u2019s needed, and it holds when holding is what\u2019s needed, and the people in it can tell the difference, and they can switch. Which is what makes it a Crew and not just a group chat with a good vibe. And sometimes \u2014 unfortunately \u2014 holding is the thing that\u2019s needed for reasons that have nothing to do with con-week. Sometimes life comes at somebody in the Crew hard, and the whole Crew feels it. And that is the thing I want to talk to you about next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So I want to talk about the hard weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because I\u2019ve been telling you for forty minutes about a community that works, and a community that grows, and a community that laughs at AI religion injections and trains absurd chat bots and studies for certs together. And all of that is true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But if I only told you that part, I\u2019d be lying to you about what a Crew actually is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The truth is \u2014 once you\u2019re in a thing like this long enough, life starts happening to the people in it.<\/em> And it doesn\u2019t wait for con-week. It happens on a random Tuesday in February.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Somebody in our Crew lost their job last year. Not a \u201cthey moved on to something better\u201d kind of losing a job. The kind where you find out on a Zoom call at 10am and by 10:15 your badge doesn\u2019t work anymore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I lost my mother a couple of years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Somebody in our Crew had a stretch where their mental health got bad enough that they stopped posting in the chat, and a few of us had to decide, quietly, who was going to reach out and how.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And somebody in our Crew \u2014 and I\u2019m going to be careful how I say this, and I\u2019m not going to give you any more detail than this \u2014 had a hard week at a con. The kind of hard week that the Crew had to show up for in person, in the moment, in a hotel room, at an hour when showing up is not convenient.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And I\u2019m not telling you any of this to make the Crew sound noble. I am telling you this because this is the thing most communities cannot do.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Most communities can have a great time together. Most communities can argue on the internet together. Most communities can ship a thing together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Most communities, when life actually comes for one of the members, go quiet. People don\u2019t know what to say. The chat gets weird. The person who\u2019s struggling stops posting because they don\u2019t want to bring the vibe down, and the community stops checking in because they don\u2019t want to intrude, and a month later nobody\u2019s sure what happened, and the person is just \u2014 gone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That has never happened to us. Not once.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When it gets bad for one of us, the Crew shows up. Not in a dramatic way. In a present<\/em> way. Somebody texts. Somebody calls. Somebody drops off food. Somebody says \u201chey, I\u2019m not going to ask you how you\u2019re doing, but I\u2019m here, and I\u2019ll be here tomorrow, and the day after.\u201d<\/em> Somebody on the Crew who happens to live in the same city shows up at the door. Somebody who doesn\u2019t sends money. Somebody organizes. And it doesn\u2019t feel orchestrated because it isn\u2019t \u2014 it\u2019s just that forty-six people decided a long time ago that this is what we are for each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When my mother died, that is exactly what happened. And I am standing on this stage today partly because of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I think this is the part of community work that almost never gets talked about. Everybody writes about the onboarding and the events and the governance models and the engagement metrics. Nobody writes about what it\u2019s like when one of your people is at their worst, and the community has to be the thing that makes the difference between them getting through it and them not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s the real test. And I don\u2019t think a community knows, until it\u2019s been tested, whether it can hold that weight. You don\u2019t get to choose whether the test comes. You only get to choose whether you\u2019ve built the kind of Crew that can meet it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We have been tested. Several times. And we have, every time \u2014 quietly, imperfectly, without talking about it much \u2014 shown up for each other. That is the thing I am proudest of in this entire six-year story. Not the membership count. Not the retention number. Not the governance model. That.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n And that<\/em>, I think, is what the DefCON 34 theme of Agency is actually asking us to think about. Because if Agency is about taking back control of our own lives in a world that is systematically atomizing us \u2014 then the deepest possible expression of that is building communities that can hold<\/em> each other when the world comes for one of us. Which is where I want to take the last few minutes of this talk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So let me come back to the thing this whole conference is about this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Agency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When the DefCON 34 theme came out, I read it. I re-read it. I sat with it. And I think it is the most right<\/em> this con has been about a theme in a long time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because the theme names the enemy correctly. Dark patterns. Attention capture. Algorithmic atomization. Surveillance capitalism. The hollowing-out of trust between people by platforms that profit from keeping us scared and angry and alone. All of that is real. All of that is happening. And the theme is right that the first moves against it are \u2014 starve the beast and feed the community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But I want to add something to that, because I think there\u2019s a layer of the answer that the theme points at without quite naming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Starving the beast is a posture.<\/em> Deleting the app, changing the platform, refusing the dark pattern, moving to the Fediverse \u2014 all of that is a kind of refusal.<\/em> It\u2019s you, standing alone, saying no<\/em> to a system that wants you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Feeding the community is an orientation.<\/em> Showing up to the meetup, contributing to the open-source project, supporting the people building tools \u2014 all of that is you, standing toward<\/em> something. It\u2019s a direction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the act<\/em> of Agency \u2014 the thing Agency actually is<\/em>, in the moment \u2014 is neither of those.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The act of Agency is one person, in one specific place, at one specific time, choosing to see another person<\/em> and show up for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s it. That\u2019s the atom. Everything else is made out of that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The act of Agency is a guy in LineCon at nine in the morning, looking at a twenty-one-year-old he\u2019s never met, recognizing the face he used to have, and asking \u201cfirst time?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The act of Agency is a stranger three people down the line, hearing the exchange, locking eyes, smiling<\/em> \u2014 and deciding to be part of what happens next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The act of Agency is three people opening three bags at the same time, because a kid finally worked up the nerve to ask whether anybody had line bourbon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The act of Agency is one Crew member, at the next LineCON, sending a Signal DM that says \u201cfound another LineCon newb, cool story, genuine person, can we admit them?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The act of Agency is forty-six* people deciding that when life comes for one of them, they will show up \u2014 and then actually doing it, every time, quietly, without a plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The smallest unit of Agency is two strangers deciding to look out for each other.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n And once you see it that way, everything the theme is pointing at starts to make more sense. Surveillance capitalism doesn\u2019t win because it\u2019s smarter than us, and it doesn\u2019t win because the algorithms are too powerful. Surveillance capitalism wins because it makes it harder for two strangers to look out for each other.<\/em> That is its entire business model. Atomize the users. Route every interaction through a platform. Make the only legible connection a transactional one. Make sure the person standing next to you in the grocery store line is a stranger you never speak to, and make sure the person you could help online is a stranger you never notice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The beast starves when you deny it your attention. But the beast dies<\/em> when two strangers decide to look out for each other \u2014 because the whole operation depends on that never happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And here\u2019s the part I most want the people in this room to hear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Building a Crew is an act of political resistance.<\/em> Not because it\u2019s ideological. Not because you\u2019re flying a flag. But because the existence<\/em> of a Crew \u2014 forty-six* people who know each other, who hold each other, who recognize each other in lines at conferences \u2014 is a thing that the beast literally cannot eat. It can\u2019t monetize it. It can\u2019t route it. It can\u2019t track it. It can\u2019t measure it. It can\u2019t sell it back to us. A Crew is, by its nature, illegible<\/em> to the systems that want to reduce us to consumers of rage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Which, if you remember the word I used earlier in this talk \u2014 legibility<\/em> \u2014 is the thing that almost every surveillance system runs on. We are resistance<\/em> by being a community that refuses to be named, measured, or reached through a platform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s not the version of Agency anybody is putting on a slide. But I think it is the deepest version. It\u2019s not a policy. It\u2019s not a boycott. It\u2019s not a platform migration. It\u2019s two people in a line, one of whom could have walked past, who chose not to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And I think this is the most important thing I can say to this room today. Because I know who\u2019s in this room. This room is full of people who are capable of doing incredibly sophisticated things \u2014 people who can break systems and build systems and defend systems at scales most humans can\u2019t imagine. And you all know that. You know what you can do with a terminal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I want to argue that the thing you can do with a conversation in a line is, in the long run, more powerful. Because the system you\u2019re helping to build when you do that is the only system the beast cannot eat. Which brings me to the thing I want to ask of you before I let you go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So here\u2019s the ask.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I am not<\/em> standing up here trying to recruit you into our Crew.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I mean \u2014 that would defeat the whole point, wouldn\u2019t it? Our Crew started because five people met in a line and couldn\u2019t find anybody else. You can\u2019t recruit into a thing whose entire origin story is nobody recruited us.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n And honestly? You probably don\u2019t need our Crew. You probably already have yours<\/em> \u2014 or you\u2019re about to find it. It might be the three people you came here with. It might be the coworkers you\u2019ve been in a Slack with for years. It might be the online friends you\u2019ve never actually spent four days with. It might be the people you\u2019ve been meeting all week and haven\u2019t realized yet are about to become important to you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Whoever your people are \u2014 or whoever they\u2019re about to be \u2014 here\u2019s what I want you to look for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Find a group you can be safe around.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Find a group where at 2am, when the after-party got a little too crazy and you don\u2019t know where you are, you can ask for help \u2014 and someone will come get you and get you back to safety.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Find a group that reminds you to eat and hydrate.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Find you a group that has bourbon.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Because that\u2019s it. That\u2019s the whole thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A group you can be safe around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A group that will come get you at 2am.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A group that makes sure you eat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A group that shares the bourbon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you have people like that in your life, you already know what I\u2019ve been talking about this whole time.<\/em> The talk is just the thing that told you what to call it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And if you don\u2019t<\/em> have people like that in your life yet \u2014 I promise you, they are closer than you think. They are standing in a line next to you at this conference. They are three people down, locking eyes with somebody they\u2019ve never met. They are in a Signal thread you haven\u2019t made yet, waiting to be added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Your Crew is out there. You just have to be willing to be the one who starts it. Or, if you\u2019re the quieter kind \u2014 you have to be willing to be the one who says yes<\/em> when somebody else starts it around you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So here is what I want you to do. Next August.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Stand in the line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Look around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Find the terrified first-timer. You\u2019ll know them when you see them. You\u2019ll know, because six years ago \u2014 or this August<\/em> \u2014 that was you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Walk up to them. Ask \u201cfirst time?\u201d<\/em> Tell them DefCON is safe. Tell them DefCON is friendly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And then tell them the truth that has kept this Crew alive for six years and counting \u2014 the sentence I want every person in this room to take home with them, and to say out loud, in a line, to a stranger, at least once in their life:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Assholes don\u2019t survive here.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Our Crew has no name. It never will. But yours \u2014 yours can start in a line at DefCON 34. Go find it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Thank you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" So… Howdy. This post is LONGGGGG… I’m sorry about that. It was initially designed as a talk for DefCON 34’s Main Stage, but it wasn’t accepted. FULL DISCLOSURE… The story is mine. The words are mine. The voice is mine. The construction relied heavily on Claude.ai due to the time constraints. It’s the only way … Continue reading Find You a Group That Has Bourbon – Agency, Mutual Aid, and the Unnamed Crew<\/span> The 3-2-1 Gift<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Who We Are (and Aren\u2019t)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The Founding<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The Turn<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
What We Accidentally Built: Governance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
1. Anyone can admit.<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
2. Participation is membership.<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
3. When the door closes.<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
4. Assholes don\u2019t survive here.<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
The Number<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The Two Seasons<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
The Hard Weeks<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Why This Is an Agency Talk<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The Charge and Close<\/h2>\n\n\n\n