Day 5
The final full day of my Black Hat experience has come. Once all the classes are over, the books and talks all open. So I could get the full experience I got up early, surprisingly, and made it over to Mandalay bay. The exhibition hall is just on the first floor right by where the registration was, so heading back in that direction and you won't get lost.
In the hall, there is every security company you could imagine major companies will be in the front with massive booths and presentations to show off their products. If you haven't gotten the chance to see what some of these large name companies sell, it can give you some real insight. As you wander the hall, other companies will pitch products to anyone walking by. They know what brings people in, and that's freebies, mainly t-shirts. After walking around the hall for a few hours, I ended up with a bag full of free stuff and about seven t-shirts. I was pretty satisfied at that point.
Be careful to watch the time as you wander through the hall because many of the after-parties require you to stop by the booths and get your wristbands. I ended up getting 2 wristbands as I had pre-registered for both through the vendor's sites before the conference started. Once I was done with the halls and was tired of carrying all that stuff, I met up with my coworkers and went and grabbed some lunch nearby.
I had the option to check out some of the talks after lunch but instead decided to head back to the hotel and take it easy as five days of Vegas had started to catch up with me. Once the evening rolled around, I had dinner with a coworker and went over the after-party.
It's not surprising, as I put the featured photo in this article, but the company Qualys hosted Smash Mouth. This was at the House of Blues which is also at Mandalay Bay. It's a small venue, so it wasn't very busy, and an open bar with food. Smash Mouth played all the classics and was super nice, even giving out autographs and drumsticks to the clear super fans that were in the front of the stage. This was a great way to end the conference at which point I was completely exhausted.
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The next morning I checked out of my hotel room and grabbed an Uber to the airport. As I think I previously mentioned, the airport is very close to the hotels and makes it easy and cheap to get to. The only thing to remember is that the airport requires you to take a tram after security, so it takes a few extra minutes to get to the gate.
I hope this series has given you insight into what to experience when going to Blackhat. I tried to keep it as general as possible no matter what class you're taking so it can still apply in the future. I hope you have a wonderful time at Blackhat in the future and that it can benefit your computer security career.
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