This will be fascinating to attend/watch not just to see the impacts of doing it all virtual, but the fact that it’s free is going to attract a monstrous (virtual) crowd.
(New venue is/will be (?) absolutely enormous; featuring the largest “pillar-less” ballrooms in the world it promised the ability to accommodate not only all talks and villages in a single venue again but everyone in a single keynote talk. Looking forward to witnessing that next year.)
edit: It's occurred to me that it could conceivably be more difficult to get into talks at this year's virtual event than it would have been in-person. Perhaps they'll implement a virtual waiting room so we can get our LINECON fix.
I feel like it is getting worse, and can't wait for Caesars. With the multiple venues and hallway congestion most the people in my company were able to get to 2-3 talks a day max.
Counterfeit DEF CON badges (and a sanctioned competition for them) have really added to capacity issues since about 2016. I know of one vendor that sold over 1,500 last year.
Regardless, I am very intrigued by your experience with counterfeit badges. I'm familiar with the counterfeit badge contest and many jokes were made about last year's "urinal cakes on a lanyard" but this is the first I've heard suggesting there was effectively mass production of counterfeit badges. Can you tell us more?
Given that #badgelife folks have difficulty manufacturing hundreds of badges they themselves designed and there's been no real scrutiny of attendee badges as would surely result if it were found that 5%+ of attendees had counterfeits, I have to call bullshit.
If reasonable evidence is presented to the contrary, I will eat my hat by donating the $300 I won't be spending for this year's DEF CON admission to the EFF.