Category: Meetings

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November Meeting tomorrow evening

Our November meeting is tomorrow evening Monday 11/18. Show up as early as six if you want. We’ll be in the basement again, it’s so much more comfortable than the library. Registration on the dc540.org website, remember, not on Meetup.

I will try to put some lighting in the side and back yards to make the path easier to navigate now that it’s getting darker earlier. I promise you won’t get murdered here, this is a nice neighborhood.

BYOB if you’re picky. There’s still some Durian candy left over.

As expected, the LED marquee group build stuff won’t be here in time for tomorrow’s meeting, but really should be here in time for the December meeting.

If there’s something you want to say, learn, try or do during the meeting, speak up. I’m just a facilitator, not a leader. 🙂

My kink is fringe culture, always has been. What’s yours? Bring something for show and tell.

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BSidesDC?

How many of us are going to BSidesDC next weekend? I’m volunteering Saturday and Sunday mid-day, but I’ll have some time before and after to wander and maybe have a drink with some of y’all, especially those of you who can’t make the Monday night meetup in Stone Ridge.

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Thanks, Meetup!

So, if you were following our Meetup page, you’ll notice that WeWork/Meetup announced some upcoming changes that I, as an organizer, was not comfortable with.

They decided that, beginning in November, they would reduce organizer fees. Great. All in favor. But at the same time, they would start charging attendees $2 per RSVP. Yeah. No.

I would be okay with $1 per RSVP, -if- and -only- if, that money were split between Meetup and the organizer somehow. But it’s not, and I feel pretty strongly that they will either reverse this decision, or face the demise of their platform.

It’s easy for me. I’m a small organizer. It’s EASY for me to get off their platform. I don’t have to rely on them. I really feel for some of the organizers of larger events. Especially those who charge for attendance — this new schema, at this time, doesn’t seem to offer the capability to upcharge.

But again, it’s not about the money — for me, anyway. It’s that I resent a sudden inconvenience on my user base that benefits me in almost no way.

So from this point on, please feel free to follow this website and/or Twitter (@dc540baab) for updates. How this is likely to flesh out is that I continue to announce the events on Meetup, but no longer allow RSVPs through that platform, instead driving them here, where I will add a registration form of some sort.

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In case you’re not following the Meetup Group…

It has been decided that for the foreseeable future, meetings will be held in my hackerspace basement (hackerspasement?) just a few blocks from the Gum Spring Library.

I (Bob) am looking to grow this group and its members. I am also looking to transition it into more of a cooperative and less of me being the main driver. I love hosting these things, and I’m more than happy to keep doing so, but I thrive on entropy. So for the future, I would love to see:

  • Someone step up to help out with comms for the group. A social media presence maintainer, so to speak.
  • Someone (or hopefully more than one) step up to offer to teach us something new. Along those lines, maybe for the September meeting we can collect a list of our collective weak points, and move forward from there in the act of bolstering them. Examples:
    • I’m reasonably strong on linux exploits, server hardening, network device hardening, and getting there on hardware hacking.
    • I’m weak on Windows exploits, buffer/stack overflows and reverse engineering. Anything that makes that knowledge more easily transmissible (shortcuts) is a good thing.

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And on to the next meetup!

Tonight was another fun evening for DC540.  Three of us pregamed at Red Dragon Brewery, then headed over to the library, where our three became five.  We played show and tell with the CrowPi and the TS80 solder iron, and shared our experiences with the Pontifex crypto scheme, designed by Bruce Schneier for Neal Stephenson’s excellent book Cryptonomicon.

We decided that even though there’s no meeting on the 4th Monday of December because the library is unavailable for Xmas eve, that we’re going to go ahead with a social meeting at the brewery on Tuesday, December 18.  

Interesting upcoming events: Shmoocon tickets – next round Friday.  BSides Philly February 1.  If anyone has extra Shmoocon barcodes and is looking for worthy buyers, look no further.

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Meeting prep…

You’re doing a great job with your RSVPs so far.  I’ve got 8 members coming to the first meeting last time I looked.  If you haven’t RSVPd, and you plan to come, you should probably RSVP via Meetup (or directly if you don’t use Meetup), because the room doesn’t have unlimited capacity. Also helps for planning.  Also, we’re still not listed on the official Defcon groups page. When that happens, a few more slots may fill up.

I should mention that there will be swag.

I expect there will also be a lockpicking station. Maybe a Proxmark to play with.  

If anyone is interested in helping behind the scenes, let’s meet up before the meeting, I’d love to hear your ideas.

Also, please take the poll I posted a few days ago if you haven’t already.  It will help guide meeting content.