Security Conventions

Personally, I don't mind when security researchers go "on tour" and redo their Defcon talk at smaller Cons. Not everyone can afford to travel to Vegas. Not everyone wants to spend their limited vacation time on it. Watching it on YouTube is not even close to the same thing as being in the audience and getting to ask questions.

Con talks should not be presentations. They should be conversations. If I just wanted the content I can watch the replay on YouTube or you could have saved us all a lot of time by writing a whitepaper.

Cons are not all about the talks. I love a good CTF. I love going out for drinks and just bullshitting with like minded security professionals for a couple hours. I love meeting new people in the field. I love when people do dumb shit like hack the menu at the restaurant that was dumb enough to use an iPad for their menu in a town full of hackers.

An hour talk is the format for giving someone a high level introduction to a new topic or technique or technology that they have little to no experience with. It's deeper than a blog post, but lighter than a white paper. If you really want to turn a newbie in a reverse engineer, or something similar in scope, that depth probably should be a one week bootcamp, or a structured multi-week course (online or in class room).