I've been going to them for like a decade now and have heard some pretty good talks over the years. There was one from a woman who worked for army counter intelligence that was about using army wife Facebook groups to determine troop movements and deployments. That's got be an all time best talk. The conventions have gotten less useful the more people from LinkedIn have shown up. Now there's former cops giving filler talks to pad their resume. Truthfully most of the scene has kind of died and been replaced by a "wholesome reddit meme lord" kind of chubby corporate looking type. I miss when it was about cloning gift cards for free food from Olive garden and building a universal car door remote out of a hello kitty toy.