The Road to Nowhere

For those who are unaware, I live in Minnesota. That puts me in a weird place where I am both fairly close to the Black Hills, but also far enough away where a travel day is truly a day. As I attended this conference entirely out of my own pocket, I decided to drive out to the conference as I didn't feel the need to fly out to Rapid City from MSP. This meant that I spent all of Tuesday last week on I-90 driving for about 10 hours from Central Minnesota to Deadwood, with the return trip on Saturday. It's about as exciting as a normal Midwestern road trip. Farms, Ranches, some hills as you go farther west, that's about it. At least until you get to Sturgis and start heading towards Deadwood. The drive down US-14A is one of the most beautiful drives in the country as far as I am concerned. The valley is incredibly beautiful. Doubly so since I managed to go through it during sunset.

Deadwood itself

Deadwood is a famous tourist town nowadays, but it has deep roots in the American West. There are a few significant figures from the old west who lived, and died in the town such as Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane, and others. Nowadays, to steal a quote from a friend: "Deadwood is a two-bit town which runs on beef and gambling". It's a rough town to be a vegetarian in. Fortunately, I love beef. That aside, the town itself is small but the people there are friendly and personable. My interactions with locals were positive overall. I had a conversation with a shop owner who was confused by why we had so many people in town who wore all black, which was funny. The town is lively in the afternoon and evening, but essentially dead during the week late at night and in the mornings. Furthermore, Deadwood is surrounded by hills which allegedly have some beautiful hiking. I will have to check them out next year, where I hopefully won't sprain my ankle the week before the conference again. One thing I will complain about and this may just be me picking bad places, but the food I had in town was just okay at best in most cases. I like Deadwood all things considered.

Hackin' in the West

Wild West Hackin' Fest (WWHF) is held in the Deadwood Mountain Grand for the most part. There were some workshops held in other locations, such as the Homestake Adams Research and Cultural Center. The conference had about 900 attendees and 300-350 sponsors, volunteers, staff, etc. It was awesome to experience a conference which is more intimate compared to something like DEF CON. Another awesome part of WWHF is that they feed you. WWHF provided lunch for both days of the conference, Thursday and Friday. WWHF also provided steak, potatoes, and baked beans for dinner on Thursday. A quick side note, I would kill a man for those baked beans. I don't know what they put in them, but I desperately wish I knew. The potatoes were solid, and the steak was good, but not mind-blowing.

The other thing which blew me away is since they cooked for 1200 people, they were using a literal cauldron over an open flame for a lot of the cooking. For the steaks, it was a grate over an open flame. It was cool to see cooking like that.

Okay, enough about food

As far as the content of the conference was concerned, it was excellent. I attended 2 workshops, which were Andrew Krug's AWS identity workshop and Tim Fowler's Bring Your Own Satellite Workshop. I also attended a few talks (Maybe all of them) which were given by Red Siege. The talks and workshops were all great, no complaints from me at all. The opening keynote by Gerald Auger was good, but Wade Wells killed it with the closing keynote. That was probably the best talk of the whole conference (at least of the ones I attended). Maybe even the best talk I have yet seen at a con. Once the "day" events of the conference was over WWHF would usually move to a bar in Deadwood, specifically the Elk bar. There was an Open Mic on Wednesday night which had some insanely talented performers from the WWHF attendees and staff. There was also a dance party on Friday night at the Elk, but it ended up being far less dancing and a lot more group Karaoke. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Oh, they also have a mechanical bull and cattle roping lessons.

Outside of official conference events, the other point of attending any Con is to meet new people, which of course I did. Generally speaking, the folks I met at the conference were super laid back, and down to earth. Everyone seemed like genuine, good people. It was great to meet folks. I met up with some folks I initially met at DEF CON, and hopefully made some new friends.

Is it worth it?

Yes. Congrats BHIS, you have a fanboy. I'll be attending this conference yearly for sure. I am also hoping to volunteer for it next year, and maybe even at Mile High in Denver in February, if I can swing it. If you have the ability to attend WWHF, I would highly recommend it. It's incredible. Well done BHIS.