all right trenton
sean uh welcome to the podcast and uh
thank you guys for being on
yeah thanks for having us yeah thank you
um so today we're gonna talk about
infosec oasis uh you guys kind of gave
me a little
before we started recording um you're
blowing my mind a bit
because apparently alt space vr
has a podcasting uh
application so you can have a radio show
in virtual reality and i just
upgraded to doing video
so now i'm doing 2d i'm not just doing
audio now i'm doing video
and now i find out that you can do
virtual
reality podcasting and yeah you're
blowing my mind
and i feel like i'm stuck in the 80s or
something like that
so but uh i wonder if you could just uh
you know right now we're in the time of
quarantine
coronavirus today's may 6th i'll
probably be releasing this in two weeks
so
uh you can remember what it was like at
may 6th
uh and uh but
you guys did this i think when it was
april 18th you guys did the
the the con and uh just yeah tell me a
little bit about
uh infosec oasis how you guys like came
up with the idea how you got rolling
with it and
uh yeah just tell me a bit about the the
process
the ideation process of it
yeah um so it's something i've been
wanting to do for a while
i love the idea of doing a conference in
vr um and had looked
for platforms to try to do it in and
people to be interested in
and uh the i think a lot of people were
interested in the idea but the execution
of it it was just like the technology
was too new and
not enough people had the uh the time or
the interest in spending
much time in vr and once once code
happened and everybody was trying to
self-isolate
i think all of a sudden people wanted to
have that more physical like connection
with with other people that that
more social interaction and so
started talking to people and i talked
to sean uh sean and i worked together
and he was really like yes let's do this
um and so we we jumped into alt space
just trying to like look at different
platforms and immediately sean started
making friends with everybody and got to
know a whole bunch of people in alt
space
uh and like after i'll let you tell
about kind of that first night
but then that that's kind of how it get
got kicked off
yeah and and i can tell you from i'll go
back to
the to my beginning of how it happened
for me but um a couple years ago i
talked about
uh doing alts you know not just not all
space because ultimately said well i
don't know if it was around back then
but i didn't know about it for sure
but i i thought about doing a vr
conference of some sort of meetups or
something like that just because i think
that it's really important to do
knowledge sharing and i don't think we
do enough of it
and um i wanted to make it so that way
we could have anybody anywhere
kind of come together and we could have
a group like kind of meet up or
conference
uh and share that knowledge and when i
was working at a different place one of
my co-workers was like well that's
that's kind of classist because you're
saying you have to have like a you have
to be
wealthy enough to have a vr headset to
get free information and it really kind
of hit me and i was like you know
she's right you know that's a really
really good point
um and so it just never i never really
did anything with it
um and then trent came to me and said
hey i found this
i found this platform called alt space
you should check it out and i was like
okay great
and he was like what do you think about
doing a conference in here and i was
like well
i don't know and i just remember you
know that here's that co-worker on my
shoulder
you know saying hey don't do it it's cut
you know it's just it's
you know how do you how do you make that
bar lower basically
in in trenton was saying that you can do
it in 2d you don't have to have er to do
it and i was like well that's perfect
because
now at least i mean you have to have a
windows machine right
and that i think that's pretty
attainable for for a lot of people
and and i think that uh most people in
infosec have
some kind of windows machines you know
but maybe you don't and and even then
we ended up working it out so that way
it could be streamed um and so that
lowered it even more so if you have an
internet
if you have an internet connection and a
phone uh you can watch the talks so
so that made it for me uh even better
like just
overall that just won me over and i said
let's do it
and so we we talked about it and
we jumped in the first day i jumped and
i jumped in in 2d because i wanted to
see how that experience was going to be
um in 2d for people who didn't have vr
and man i got to tell you it was really
immersive even in 2d
the first night we went in there we went
into a meet up it was what was that east
side
meetup or something like that or it was
like
which east side is this let's find out
and it ended up being seattle
and um we ended up talking to this guy
and and i didn't know what the icon's
been people had different icons or
people
with a heart that's green next to their
name with a smiley face on it
um we later found out those are
community helpers which are like kind of
like
helpers to the admins of the game and
then the people that have an a with the
trying you know triangular like
a all space logo it's in gold or admins
actually employees default space
and so the the first person we really
ran into was the guy running this east
uh east side meetup and his name was
drufin and he ended up being the events
coordinator for alt space and so
uh we were like hey we're just jumping
in here it's our first time uh we just
were looking around
and talking about doing an event in all
space um and he was like wow you came to
the right place
like we just really lucked out like we
just ran into the right
place and i was like you know it'd be
really cool if we could like
maybe make a own our own custom venue
kind of thing and he was like you should
go talk to this person over here her
name's nira and
we went over and talked to her and she
created this wonderful place
for a big event she did for new year's
and she took us to this new year's event
that she made and there was
there was like a i've i never like
there's things in the alts that you
you can do that you just don't i don't
even know if they do this in real life
but she had a choreographed
fireworks show for new year's what
yeah it was really crazy it was amazing
like mind-blowing the music would come
on like drones came out
and drones flew out and then arranged
themselves as an alt space logo
and this you know ball came up and
dropped and
you know it was like this 2020 uh new
year's thing and
fireworks started going off and it was
going off to the to the music and
everything we're like holy crap this is
amazing
and even in 2d i was just like wow this
is cool
and trends like dude you should be here
in vr right now it's like it's really
really cool
and so i i mean even in 2d though i was
like wow this is really cool
um and i later got to see in 3d and it's
awesome in 3d as well but
so you guys just like you signed up for
all spaces and you just like went in and
like
is there just like a bunch of is it like
like chat rooms or something like that
where you just kind of go into it or
like
and you happen to go to the east side
meetup and like meet
the event coordinator and like really
hooked you up with the people that you
needed to meet to make this thing happen
yeah it sounds weird but pretty much
yeah yeah the chat rooms is probably
like a good good analogy i suppose
like it it's they have uh events and so
anybody can go in and create
your own event and then from that point
you can share a link which is
essentially what we did with infosyc
oasis uh and then you can
work with their team to get the event
featured which makes it
more prominently displayed on the
website and it shows up to people when
they log into the space so they kind of
have like current events
so if you log in you can see what's
going on most of the time they have like
live
music or they have uh games sometimes
they'll do
like i don't know we've got all sorts of
stuff there's a house party that we love
to go to regularly like there's just
just really
really cool stuff uh and so you can just
jump in and kind of go where you want
um and we just happen to luck out and
end up in
the right meet up the uh the fireworks
show that you were talking about kind of
reminds me
of i went to this um it was like an
interactive art space in uh scottsdale
arizona
it was called wander spaces and one of
they had like all these like really
crazy really cool
creative things that you could interact
with and uh
one they had like this one vr thing that
like someone made and it was just like
this bizarre thing of this guy
singing this really weird song and like
all these like weird creatures around
them all choreographed doing this weird
dance and like
you could look around and like they'd
all be doing it in different areas and
each one to have their own kind of
personality sort of
and it was just like so i see the
potential like i'm listening to this and
i'm like
okay there's a lot of really cool stuff
that you can do yeah
the the really cool thing about it is it
so it's all backed on unity and they
actually allow people to contribute
both unity assets and uh spaces
they have limitations on it they
restrict some scripting and some other
things for security reasons but
um but users can actually submit their
own worlds
um which is really cool because it's not
just you know the alt space team
making these these places like one of
the one of the fun pastimes is to
uh to world hop where you jump in and
just you get a group of people together
and you just go explore
places and spaces that people have made
um
so it's pretty it's pretty cool that's
amazing i'm definitely gonna get an
account and check this out
now sean it looks like you have a you're
you're in
uh alt space world right now you have a
background that looks like you're at the
con right now i see the infrastack oasis
stuff
is this yeah so here we are i'll move
that way a little bit i don't know if
that tracks
that's cool so uh what are we looking at
here is this what it looks like
so right right about my hero my fingers
you can kind of see
that's um i think that's grifter neil
weiler on stage presenting
uh about his talk about uh the black hat
sock
um and maybe defcons i can't remember uh
but
so he he was doing a presentation and
that was him on stage and this is his
audience over here these are all people
they're all actual people
they're all either in a vr or in 2d and
they were just
hanging out in their seats watching the
show um
it's really really kind of the gist of
it i mean it's it's
it's yeah so does everyone have an
avatar it looks like
there's a couple of robots in the
audience and like um
do you pick out like what you look like
and stuff like that in in
alt space vr world yeah there's
there's um let's see one two three
different robots you can be
as far as the shapes go and then there's
uh two other
avatars uh one's like a male and one's a
female like
um you know appearance and then you can
customize them more in
robots you can just do their colors and
then the other one you know the the
male female you can adjust all kinds of
different things shirt colors and
shirt patterns and pants and all that
stuff so
uh yeah they're definitely more i mean
there could be more customization
options but i think it's pretty good for
you know um tell me a little bit about
the space that you guys created what was
that process like how did you make it
feel
con like what what what what things did
you do
so that you know people could interact
with each other because
i think trenton you mentioned that you
didn't want you know you you wanted to
be something more than just
uh you know 2d videos of people giving
presentations you wanted to have
that con feel even though you can't
physically be at a con where you're
interacting and networking with
people learning cool cool stuff from you
know someone that you just met and
you know walking around or whatever yeah
so
i'll let shannon say this one in a
minute what i will say is that for the
conference this year we use the default
spaces um
and they support a lot of different
platforms and if you create your own
custom worlds there can be
um potential glitches with the different
platforms and so they they actually were
really supportive and offered to
test our own custom stuff but to get a
custom world built in unity
and then get it to their team in time to
review was just too tight of a timeline
so we ended up using the default spaces
so like what you can see behind shawn
right now is actually one of the
spaces that they provide to users and
they've got some really neat spaces that
are just
default and available to everybody
we had some really lofty goals that i
wish could have worked out but they
didn't but i'll let sean talk a little
bit about
his vision and then kind of what we did
to make it social
yeah so um when trenton told me about
this i said why don't we do
like an actual oasis in the desert right
and i was like let's do
a mat let's just find a map or or an
asset immunity
customize it we'll make this desert
it'll have dunes all around it it will
be kind of like a bowl shaped you know
and
we're going to have all our events kind
of in the area in the in the middle of
this place
you can see the sand dunes out in the
distance we'll make it nighttime
we got permission to do the firework
show from nera she said she'd import it
into our map for us oh that's awesome uh
yeah i know i know it's pretty cool
um i wanted to put a stage in there and
um and like the like use this thing here
that you can see
that where the sign is with the speaker
so kind of having this
um this big billboard sized um
screen and um and having having this um
stand here with the with the portrait
and and then the speaker's name
i think that that those were kind of
like the things i just wanted to have
and then around
around the area you know there's going
to be of course a body of water in the
middle
maybe some palm trees i thought and we
could put some bonfires there
have some bean bag toss some basketball
people see
here's the thing the bean bag toss in
the basketball are really important for
me i feel because
um it allows people to like do something
with their hands while they're talking
and there's a lot of nervous
yeah talkers out there and you know we
don't want people to be standing around
like what do i do and just stand there
awkwardly
and i feel like another thing that's
really cool about all space is that
allows people who have like social
anxiety to like really
feel more comfortable i've had actually
several people come up to me
uh during the conference and say dude i
really love this because i don't have to
feel so
anxious and i feel like i can talk and
be myself right
and i i think that's just really amazing
and
and having you know making things a
little bit more comfortable having
activity for people to do together and
talk and bond and
learn from each other while they're just
kind of playing bean bags and talking
about
whatever you know exploits they've
learned about or
have been working on or whatever i think
that's really important thing to have so
ultimately my ultimately my goal is to
have a space like that where we have
some
some activities kind of spread out or
because it's proximity sound based so
the closer you are to the louder they
are the further away you get the
yeah so it kind of feels like you're
there right um
which is perfect for what we wanted we
wanted it to feel like you were there
and i think we pulled that off thanks to
all space because of the away the way
that they do the
talk you know the proximity sounds and
the way the drill set up
so yeah yeah wow
an introvert i could pretend to be an
extrovert for a while but like if if i
pretend too long it starts like make me
tired
and and video conferences and like
video calls for work all that stuff
doesn't bother me like i can do it all
day
i do it all day for work uh and it
doesn't get to me but i the the
after three or four hours of being in vr
i've i noticed kind of that same like i
just need to unplug for 10 minutes and
go walk away and be by myself because
it is so much your brain just kind of
accepts it as
reality after a while i mean obviously
you know that you're not truly there
but it fools your brain enough to allow
you to think that you're
in a physical space with other people uh
which which is really cool especially in
a time where everybody is trying to be
socially distant to be able to have
a group of people that share similar
likes and interests being able to join
together in the same physical
space i think was was really cool
yeah that sounds awesome and i'm a vr
novice i think i've
you know i've i've played you know i
played around with like uh
the 3d paint stuff i had a friend that
just kind of like gave me that
like he you know played the the
lightsaber game thing and
the the pain the pain was cool because
there's like really cool
things that you can do with like uh fire
and like you know just like
i don't know like make like these portal
looking weird things and like
you can do a lot with it like i'm like
wow this is and like watching some of
the stuff that like people have been
messing around with it for a while you
watch and paint all this stuff
but i'm just wondering like what's
what's like just simply like how do you
move around like how do you interact
with people like
how does how does it work
yeah so there's um so with vr and so i
mean
there's different headsets but it's
gonna look something like this so i mean
i i use the uh comparison of like the
cell phone right like they first were in
like this giant briefcase and then they
were like the clunky like giant brick
phones and then they were the flip
phones and now we've got like
touchscreen
like smartphones um we're kind of like
past the clunky suitcase phase but not
much
um so you strap that thing onto your
head and then you can walk around in
uh within a play area in a room that you
set up
um if you want to go beyond that play
area
you can then teleport so you kind of
point a controller to where you want to
go
and then just push a button and you'll
just teleport there
so you tend to stay in the middle of a
play area in the physical world
and then teleport where you want to go
and then once you're close you can kind
of walk around
and it takes a little while for your
mind to get used to like being both in a
virtual space and in
like real space but after you do it for
a little while it almost becomes
second nature like you just your brain
the idea of teleporting places just
becomes like a part of
how you move um interesting i i'm really
bad at it i
uh i was at i was at some like
it was like some conference or something
and they had like vr headsets you put on
and i put on this one and uh they it was
like
you guys are probably aware it's called
something i don't know you push like a
button on an elevator and it takes you
up to the top floor and you're like oh
the plank experience
yes richie's playing experience yes and
then they they told me to walk around
and then jump off of it and i jumped and
forgot that like there's this concrete
ground underneath me
and i landed on my knees and just like
there's like all these people around me
there's probably like 15 people laughing
it's like the most embarrassing thing i
think after that i'm like
no more vr i'm done no i'm back on vr
now that you know i can podcast from
there
yeah yeah the first time i played it
actually was at sean's house
uh we were is after a security meet up
in the area and he's like
i got vr as well as i've never tried it
let's go try so he invited me over
and uh he showed me this it was one of
the oculus
games but there was a table in vr
and after playing for about 10 minutes i
went to the table to go lean on it
and of course it's not a real table and
it's like i fell and like
but like after a few minutes of it your
brain just accepts it as like this is
this is real this is how things are i
mean you know and it takes a little
while to actually like
reel it back to realize that like no
this is this is not real
um so
have you read ready player one yeah yeah
yeah for sure i love that book
yeah so that was one of the things that
one of the i think that one of the
things that we
we talked about when we were early on uh
when he was talking about how this
conference
could happen right and we were trying to
think of names and
and whatnot and i was like but before we
even started thinking about names i was
like dude this
the covid is how the oasis starts like
this is how
it starts everybody's going to online
yeah virtual meetups everybody's going
to online virtual education
like this is this could very well be if
if this continues for any
longer than you know a short short
amount of time like this could really be
how it all began you know yeah um if
this were to happen
um for for any long period of time and
and so and it i still think this could
very well be
uh the case because it seems like it's
going to be a bit longer than people
expect
i think things are going to be uh
nothing they are going to go back to
normal
right away right and i feel like this is
actually
kind of not a bad thing in a way because
i mean we have so many people who are
just blown away with the whole thing
um and who just loved it and think this
is maybe the thing of the future but
um yeah that was like our the whole name
of the influx like oasis was a nod
at uh ready player one's always how was
that yeah yeah that's great
i didn't i don't know why i didn't pick
up on that i was just i was about to ask
a ready player one question
and uh no i love i love that and
actually i remember last year at
cyprecon there was a game that like
referenced
ready player one you had to like go
backwards on the thing i remember doing
that and i was like oh wait i know
i know this um but yeah
um yeah that's fine and the thing is is
there's like
there's no limitations right like you
can like learn how to fly or like you
know these things that you can't do in
the real world in this vr world right
and it's just like
what does that do for creativity you can
create so many things that you know
and actually do the things that you
think about in your imagination right
and
has anyone experimented with anything
like that during the con like uh just
something that was just like so out
there i mean
the fireworks is super cool i'm
wondering like what were your favorite
things
you know during the con so so the uh
the space like we we wanted to make sure
that it was people weren't
like one of the things that happens if
you play all space for a while is you'll
inevitably have a group of people and
somebody
you know a kid will come running and
start yelling and screaming and just
kind of
being distracting so so we locked down
what players could do
in the spaces that we had created during
the talks people couldn't talk unless
they raised their hand
while the speaker was presenting and
then in between talks they could talk
and then you can't actually fly in the
game um but we disabled that so that
people weren't like you know flying
around and zooming past each other and
so like
we put some limitations in the space to
try to keep it more like a real
conference instead of like
you know just crazy with people flying
around
um so so i think our space was a little
bit limited in terms of the crazy stuff
you can do but if you actually go into
alt space there are some amazing worlds
people have done some really cool stuff
they have an sdk where you can create
your own code it's
using typescript uh to interact with the
platform
um and so people have like one one
person wrote uh something to like
basically redo the entire stargate
um like like the several worlds you can
jump in and out of the stargates it's
just really cool stuff i don't know sean
you've seen
i don't know what are some of your
favorite worlds oh man
there's so many i think i'd like to go
to the popular worlds
and then just bookmark them for later
like when i feel like world hopping
and um so i'll see where there's a bunch
of people like
anytime i'm on i'll just look at the
favorites there's like a worlds menu
if you go to the settings and you go to
uh you know like worlds beta you can
turn the bait on
and it allows you to go all these custom
third-party or for you know
player-made worlds right and so i i like
to spend a lot of time hopping to those
places but
sometimes i don't have a ton of time to
go to all of them and as soon as
everybody leaves
it'll fall off of the popular menu so
what i'll do is i'll go into the world
and i'll go to the info section and i'll
favorite them and go back and check on
them later but i've seen some really
cool stuff there's some
some really cool like japanese place
that had
amazing like architecture and hills and
then mount fuji out in the distance and
just really really cool stuff people
have made there's been some um
just some really crazy stuff there's a
jump park i think is hilarious it's just
like
four trampolines in a park environment
and it's like like if you walk you can
walk off the point like all walk off the
map and just fall
like you know and then you'll just
respawn um so it's kind of weird like
it's not like made so that you can
i mean the only thing people cared about
was that there were trampolines in the
park so
it's not like they spent a lot of time
making it so that people wouldn't escape
to the trampoline park you know they
you and as soon as you jump on a
trampoline you'll hear like jump
by van halen or like you go to another
one it'll be like crisscross jump
or you go to like another like so when
you're jumping on one trampoline you're
like hopping up and down and it's
playing music
you go to another trampoline it's
playing a different song um
you can go to like this little like menu
board there and you can hit like a
rainbow button and it makes like a
rainbow streamer behind you when you're
jumping
and or like mix your hands into like
some kind of rainbow
that's it's crazy it's kind of that
paint game you're talking about google
tilt brush where like as you jump around
you'll have these little trails coming
off of your body your hands
it's so cool it's really funny that
that's a lot of fun
i like to take my people like my friends
who are um
not motion sick uh often to this place
called the vomiter and it's my favorite
it's so funny
it's like um imagine like a gerbil ball
and you ever seen those those
you ever seen those um i don't know what
they're called
it's like a ball and then it's got a
bunch of loops around it and you can
spin it in any direction like a
gyroscope
like thing it's like that except for
you're in the gerbil ball and it is
spinning
all different directions yeah cool
outside and like
it's just to make it's just it's crazy
it's called the vomiter
um it's it's nuts uh we have a friend
who made a
development kit that uh our kit that is
in that
um space that she can make people throw
up whenever so
we like to bring her with us and then
she'll just like randomly make people
throw up
it's pretty amazing i got a really funny
screenshot of jason street throwing up
on the dominator
that's so funny it's a good one if you
ever get into the game
anytime soon let me know i'll take you
to like my home space i'll show you some
funny funny pictures i have posted in my
home spaces
things like that or take you to the
vomiter itself you know and you can see
it for yourself
yeah somebody made like a really really
awful
i'd say awful it's pretty cool but it's
it's just bad for motion sickness it's a
like a pirate ship have you seen that
one trenton
yeah yeah it's it's imagine like being
2000 feet in the air and then you know
this pirate ship
um carnival rides where it goes back and
forth
yeah yeah yeah it's like one of those
but you're way up in the air
and like it's swinging and the whole
world's a tilting yeah
it's it's pretty bad i think that one
it's a contender for
for the vomit for sure yeah um there's
there's lots of cool places but besides
that there's like
uh trenton you want to talk about the
adventure world that we found
um oh man there's been so many i'm
trying to get which one that one is
that's the one with like the hidden
rabbit hole that we found oh yeah
so we've got like a whole bunch of games
that are built in like it's like a
it's almost like a i mean like the
closest influence analogy probably would
be like a catch the flag but it's like
puzzles within the game that you have to
solve to get to the next part of the
space
and so you get to move throughout the
world
and solve pieces of the puzzle one one
bit at a time so
yeah people are very creative i guess
back to the question like
you can do all sorts of stuff and people
have found ways to
really push what the platform can do to
make it fun wow it's super awesome i'm
really excited to check this out and i
think i'm gonna have to get one of those
headsets now it wasn't even on my radar
until like right now i'm like oh my god
this is awesome
uh did you put googly eyes on your uh
headset by the way
i did it's so you mentioned the plank
experience i love getting like
in real life pictures of people with
googly eyes like freaking out saying i'm
not going to do it i'm not going to do
it
lots of the worst was we had a good
friend that came over and so
if you've played that game uh you you
step into an elevator
and you push a button and it takes you
up to a really tall uh
top of the towel building and you walk
out on this wooden plank and you hear
these creaky sounds and like
you gotta walk to the end and if you
fall off you know you you fall into the
concrete or it looks like you do
um but uh somebody got to another plank
and got scared turned around and then
tried to jump back into the elevator but
the elevator was past the play space
so they slammed into the back of the
wall and so like that was the only
injury we've had on dr so far it was
somebody trying to jump into a virtual
elevator and is that the vive right
there
yeah this is the original vive sean's
got the the newer one
yeah the cosmos looks like this
and those are the ones you have to have
those connected to a machine correct
yeah yeah they're this one is his is not
but
it's well it is it's just wirelessly
connected to a machine
yeah gotcha what would you guys
recommend to somebody that's like maybe
they're thinking about
you know diving into vr what kind of
headset should they get
man there's so many different decisions
it kind of comes down to
uh what machine you already have so so
the biggest expense really is not the
headset the headsets are expensive but
you need a
rig to play it on um the oculus quest i
think is probably the exception of that
it has some built-in
hardware um and then if you really want
to just like
peek at it some of the mobile stuff like
you mentioned earlier when we were
talking ahead of time
things like google cardboard right like
it's not nearly as immersive it's not
going to give the full experience but if
you want to like
just get an idea um at a really low
price point that's a fun way to play
with it too
i don't know sean what do you think yeah
i
i mean i hear things about the go uh
being okay
people want to have two hands um so the
goalie has the ability to hit track one
of your hands
um the quest i hear is better because
it's not as heavy
um i hear that it lasts a bit longer it
also has two controllers for hands
so you can interact with more things um
if you were going to get one of those
i'd recommend getting like probably the
bigger
storage if you can just so that you have
the longevity you can install
multiple games and not have to uninstall
stuff because there's no upgrade
option for that you can't like just plug
in another sd card or something
and increase the storage so the bigger
storage is better kind of like a phone
right
sure and then if you don't have if you
have a computer i would say then
i mean there's a lot of options out
there there's the the rift s
oculus rift s if you'd rather not have
oculus you can go with htc vive i've got
an htc vive cosmos
they're probably about six seven hundred
bucks or something like that
the rift i think is maybe 4.99 um for
the rift s and it's not bad i had a riff
before and i loved it
um and then of course uh valve makes it
her own
um what's yours called the the valve
index it's yeah
it's kind of pricey it's about a
thousand bucks but it has like finger
tracking which is kind of interesting
i think um and so anyway but it's it's
pretty cool there's a lot of options out
there
um but i want the cosmos i think it's
supposed to have better pictures than
the rift
um i had to riff before then to try
something new
and uh yeah the whole i mean the whole
space is exploding i think it's just
finally getting to the point where it's
consumer ready you know right
three or four years ago it was i mean it
was incredibly early adoption
um whereas now i feel like it's becoming
mainstream enough and there's enough
software out there to make it
make it entertaining enough to almost
justify the uh purchase for a lot of
people
well and like you said sean i think this
is pushing us to
to that space right like being away from
people like we still want to be
in each other's presence and i mean the
you know the the social distancing has
really changed the way that like
there's so many places like my wife for
example she uh her
her job like went remote she's like we
were remote in like
two weeks and they would have taken us
and she works for government energy and
she's like it would have taken us
a like five years of stupid
like back and forth oh we can't do this
we can't do that and they're like no we
have to do it and like i made them
change right and so like yeah
this is one of those like things that
just like really
uh makes everyone's behavior change all
of a sudden so i think
i think you're right this this vr thing
is really gonna start to take off all of
a sudden because of that i mean the
other interesting
like so the the headset you know you're
paying probably about a thousand dollars
um if you've got a gaming more than that
if you don't so the costs
sound expensive but like so sean and i
both work for a company that takes our
team
to derbycon or has taken our team to
derbycon almost every year
um and so we've got a little over a
hundred people on the team
um so you add that up you know 100
people going and flying to derbycon and
doing hotels and
travel costs and like that that can get
to be
uh really expensive and i know a lot of
people are doing the same thing
especially security right like
the way you get better and stay sharp in
security is through conferences and
information sharing and training
um and uh you know
one of those for every players on the
team means that you can actually hang
out in virtual reality
all year long uh and interact whereas
you know one one conference is going to
like easily be more than
a vr rig right so i think especially
with social distancing people are going
to start to realize that there are other
outlets that are more cost
effect effective really even yeah not to
say that traveling's
like i love traveling like the the cons
and stuff and i think being in person of
the con
there's no probably there's there's no
real replacement for that
you know yeah i enjoy i enjoy all the
con stuff like
you know with their become their their
after parties their
other parties their swag you can't
forget the flag right you know there's
um all the other things that you might
need maybe you need a vendor for
something and you need to talk to them
and that's really important that
a lot of people make good business out
of this uh you know being a vendor at
those conferences i think there's
i don't know if there's a full real
replacement for that and i don't know if
vr will be the solution but i feel like
if we could do
some of the conferences at least in vr
or if we do some of our meetups in vr
not only will it be helpful financially
but it's also going to have a good
environmental impact as well because
think about all the people that are
flying we find a hundred people across
the planet
you know that's a lot of fuel and all
kinds of stuff you know
um i just i hate to i don't know i'd
hate to add all that up but
i think it's got to be at least
something better than than doing that
and you know if there's one one
conference a year or something like that
we can all go to
that i know i like to go to several
conferences a year because i think it's
that's where you learn so cyphercon yeah
so uh but i mean there's nothing better
than vomit in real life though right i
mean you got it right right
yeah um but i wanted to ask you guys uh
back to uh the infosec oasis um
how long did like how looks like you
guys like ramped up this thing pretty
quickly like how
when did you guys like decide okay we're
doing this and then like what was like
the steps you took in order to
to get there i mean it sounds like did
you have like did you have other
volunteers i mean imagine you have other
people helping you out with this thing
or did you guys all run it yourself or
like what was that whole process like
that was a whirlwind it's pretty quick
it was like what
five or six weeks maybe uh not even that
yeah not even yeah it was pretty quick
i mean the cool thing about it is the
costs were like zero right it's like
when you have a real world conference
you have to book the venue
way in advance you have to figure out
how to raise money to pay for the venue
or at least put a deposit in the venue
which means that you have to get
sponsors uh so that you can afford it up
front without having to put a bunch of
costs and so then you have to deal with
managing sponsors uh you have to deal
with travel arrangements for speakers
and schedules and all of that stuff like
where is this like the cost of the whole
conference is like 12 bucks for the
domain
um and so that's incredible yeah like
in alt space is currently trying to grow
their user base
everything that you do on that platform
is entirely free they actually gave us
an event coordinator that was
super helpful on their team to help us
so like
um we couldn't have done that in real
life i don't use any way we could pull
the con together that
that quickly with the size that it ended
up being um
what was the size in the world i think a
safe
estimate is that there was over a
thousand um at the conference throughout
the day and then even more
when you add in streaming wow
so but yeah continue on with the the uh
the process let's
like what did you guys have to do yeah
so i think like once we
decide like after that first night we
met everybody we saw the fireworks we're
like this is we're doing this
um sean went and just started asking
people like hey do you want to talk you
want to talk and sean
shaw knows everybody right like
everybody knows sean so like
i think we got uh you know a couple of
speakers up front
uh i think david kennedy jason a few if
you him yeah
grifter or leslie so we got a few people
that were that were
fairly well known in the community to
say like yeah this is cool i want to do
it which
i think really gave us uh the ability to
then go and and push it and get it in
front of the community
um so we put up a website uh we opened
up a cfp so that other people could
submit
um and started hitting up twitter
and people started submitting papers and
um
i don't know it was pretty crazy it was
just a lot of
a lot of logistics sean sean did an
amazing job
of scheduling the moderators so with a
space like this you want to have i mean
just like you have
uh security at a real con you have to
have security in a
vr con um not that you have
the fear of like the physical abuse it
could have in a real con but there is
still you know you have to worry about
the the
emotional abuse and people just not
being kind to each other
and so we well i guess shawn let me talk
a little bit about that process
yeah so one of the things that we've
determined and we didn't really want to
do this necessarily but it ended up
being okay
we pretty much when once you the idea
was that everybody comes in through a
main space and then once they come in
through the main space they can hang out
there they can interact there they can
do whatever
they want to go to the conference talks
they can go to the conference talks if
they want to hang out there and just
play bean bags or shoot hoops and talk
they can do that there as well so we had
to have moderators just watching that
space
making sure that there wasn't somebody
causing problems or
or you know doing things that would just
otherwise ruin the experience for other
people that were there
so we had to have moderators for that
space and we knew that that was going to
be a thing
but the other thing is that the way all
space works is once you go
into a room and you you can have maybe
60 80 people in a room let's say
once you get 60 people in that room all
space has this thing called front row
that spins up another
instance of that room with another 60 80
people in there
and then once that one gets full
somebody a moderator has to go and open
another room
and open another room and open another
room so it's scalable
but you can only see the 80 people or so
that are in your room
at any given time so we needed to have a
moderator for each
instance of the rooms that we had open
and that was not just like
it's not going to affect the talks the
speaker if he's in room 1
and we have somebody in room 2 running
up on the stage the speaker is not going
to see the person in room 2. they're not
going to see the person in any other
room in the room that they're in
um generally speaking but we can make it
so that the speaker is visible and
audible to everybody in all rooms
right it's this thing called on air is
what they they gave us of the ability
that we can make somebody visible and
awful to everybody in all spaces at one
time
so we would make that presenter on air
and then they would do their
presentation
and then when they were done we would
take them off air or we leave them on
air and we do questions now for
questions people could raise their hand
and they could be in any space
any of the any of the instances and when
they would raise their hand a moderator
would go ahead and write you know go
ahead and click on them and and give
them
a voice ability to unmute them and then
make them a visible that make them
visible to everybody in all spaces so
they can answer
get their questions you know out and
have an answer for their question and
then we would
go ahead and take that ability back and
they would kind of just disappear into
their room again
and so that made things helpful but the
problem is that we had to have like a
moderate for every single instance that
we did so we didn't know how many people
were going to need
um and we you know
just going off the rsvps we had quite a
bit of rsp
you know in 100 700 and something rsvp's
i think it was
and we knew there would be people who
didn't rncp they would just come so
and that's what happened um so we
weren't quite sure how
how many of those people were going to
have to have so i went out and i found
community helpers friends people who
were involved that wanted to be involved
people who
had an interest people who you know we
just reached out to them and said hey
can you come
we had several events before the the
main event
and we hadn't come in and we showed them
how to how to moderate
how to meet somebody had to kick
somebody how to ban somebody how to you
know put that person on air how to open
up the rooms
uh all that kind of stuff we went over
we i think we had like 37 people
who offered to help yeah um
one of the big challenges was like this
was new to us like our
first time really spending any any
amount of time in all space was like the
the trial run of like is this something
we can even do and so we had five weeks
to not only
learn the space ourselves figure out how
to set it up but then also
teach everybody that was going to be
moderating for us and speaking for us
how to do it so we had
three or four trial runs um and we were
still learning stuff each trial run like
we were figuring out how the platform
worked and you know little little
intricacies of how the
front row system worked and so
we said from the beginning this is all
just a big experiment like we want it to
work
but at the end of the day this is this
is an experiment let's let's let's make
it fun let's do the best we can to share
information let's make sure it
has good community um you know and i
think
sean mentioned that we had several
community helpers uh the cool thing
about that was that those were people
from all space they were not
involved with infosec at all they had
part of the community and they're just
like this is this is cool this is one of
the biggest events that have happened in
alt space like i want to be part of it
and uh so so it was really cool to see
people that had no idea about
information security sitting and
listening to talks about
uh you know deep fakes or um
you know the knock or like what what how
to break into a bank right like all
these cool things that like
people you know completely outside of
our community um
were able to come in and hear so it was
pretty neat
wow that's awesome and what was the
feedback been from people like what do
you
what have you heard so far i think it's
been
pretty much all positive i i've i don't
think we've really gotten any
noteworthy negative feedback like i
think people are really impressed with
all space i think people
were really happy with this we had some
really awesome speakers
everybody did a great job it was you
know really good content i mean
almost everybody on the list i think has
keynoted it other some major con
you know in the past so we were just
really thrilled with the people that
submitted in the talks that we were able
to have
um so there's a lot of really good
feedback around around that as well
i think it's just good content good good
socializing neat
neat space as far as we know this is the
first information security conference
in vr um at least this size for sure um
so that was kind of cool that you know
this is something that's been talked
about
in you know hacker hacker culture for a
long time right it's been in science
fiction or
hacker fiction um you know so to be
be part of uh you know the first
conference i think was fun for a lot of
people was definitely
fun for me that's great so what did you
guys learn and what are your plans for
the future
oh man um well so
i i i mean i think a lot of what we
learned well first first i
i i thought this was gonna be easy as
like this will this you know it's vr
let's just get some friends together and
then when it started ramping up and we
went to like
you know 100 and then 200 and then 500
and then 700
like it went from like this is this is
going to be like a fun event where we
just try something to like this is a
real conference with a whole bunch of
people and a lot of big speakers so
so um you know i think i tended to
underestimate the amount of work
that something like this takes i think
you know next year i'll have probably a
better idea of how to
how to allocate time a little bit better
and spread things out a little more
um i don't know we've got some big plans
sean do you want to talk about where
we're going next
sure yeah i would just i want to answer
the first part of that real quick um
because i think next year i think one of
the things i'd like to do is
you know obviously we spun this up
pretty quickly uh and i mean we only had
the website up for maybe three weeks
before
before the conference even you know uh
before it started
so there wasn't a whole lot of time for
people to rsvp for it
um you know we had people word of mouth
and twitter and i could i think i posted
a couple places on reddit
um just to kind of get it out there just
to see if anybody was interested
and then suddenly like towards the end
there it started every day
uh you know it would double you know two
days preview it was like coronavirus it
was like watching that
the exponential curve somebody invited
two friends every couple of days you
know so
um it just started growing exponentially
and i was like holy cow how is this is
this gonna
is this gonna it definitely crushed the
numbers that we thought we were gonna
have we thought we were gonna have a
couple hundred
like trenton said um and then i i think
the
the the line that i have that was the
average line that i had there
on my chart i was i was vlogging like
pretty much every day or every couple of
days how many people in the beginning at
least
um and then towards the end it was like
every day how many people are going to
rcp
and it started to get like like i said
it was just starting to go up
exponentially and i was like this is
crazy so
i think next year we would probably want
to launch earlier so that we would have
a better idea
um get more coverage and things like
that we probably gonna need if we're
gonna do that that would be more helpers
um you know more people to come and help
moderate and things like that but
um and then as far as the future goes we
learned a lot of really cool things we
learned that people really want to have
this interaction with people more often
we had some people who came in
and they uh you know people who who
spoke or people who were part of it said
you know this really brought me out of a
slump i was in a bad slump
i felt like i wasn't getting enough
interaction with people and
this like trenton said this was real
enough your mind gets kind of tricked
into
believing that you're physically there
that this really helped them feel better
you know like it kind of brought them
out of
it was some kind of light you know that
uh some kind of bright light there at
the end of the tunnel that wasn't a
train that they felt like they could
you know come and interact with people
and it kind of filled that space in the
in their in their lives that they were
they were missing and i felt like that
was a huge
you know wonderful feedback that was
beyond what we what we ever
expected obviously um that's kind of we
didn't expect we just wanted to hang out
with some friends we didn't expect that
like phil avoid
someone's like really feel like a mental
health
you know yeah boy we're all going
through a weird time right now
so it's like yeah it's cool you guys
were able to like
make this thing happen you know that's
awesome
i think you mentioned uh two i don't
know if you mentioned it before we
started recording
uh you had a couple bands play yeah so
we had
we had some so uh do you want to talk
about the other thing trenton or
or is that something we can have the
music i guess
one other quick um call out before i
lose it um
basically the prayer question of things
that we learned um one of the things
that was
was really cool it was how um
how helpful this community can be we had
a lot of people that just immediately
were like this is awesome i want to help
um i think within the first week we had
somebody that's like let's spin up a
test event i'll
post it let's get people on the platform
early so people were like let's let's
start getting people used to this space
i think mcluffin did that
um i heart malware or ronnie um
offered to jump in and stream the entire
event which was something we wanted to
do
but we didn't have the extra hardware
and bandwidth to like moderate the event
run the event and
try to deal with streaming so like he
came in and that helped
i think you know several probably close
to a thousand people
uh view the event uh they couldn't have
seen it otherwise so
um i think one of the other big lessons
learned is just how cool the community i
mean i think we kind of already knew
this but it was demonstrated
uh once again that this you know
influenza community can be a really
awesome community to be a part of and
can be really
tight-knit you got a lot of really good
people out there yeah definitely shout
out to ronnie i heard malware for that i
mean we
we wanted to stream it we just didn't
know how it was going to happen how we
could do it and then he just
picked it up and ran with it and we were
so grateful for that
you know he he was on the phone with his
isp and you know
getting higher bandwidth and they're
shipping out a new router for him and
he's got an extra laptop i think he
borrowed his wife's computer
and like set it up to stream and he just
did a fantastic job
not only did he come and speak but you
know doing all that stuff was just over
above and beyond you know what we ever
dreamed of
so and it made it more uh and made it
reach a bigger crowd right so there are
a lot of people i know there are people
who
who messaged uh from from work who said
you know i can't i can't get on i
you know um and then we're like oh but
there's a stream and they're like oh
great you know i was
i was worried i was going to miss it and
and it was so great to be able to send
him that information
and even afterwards people who were like
oh man i totally wanted to
come and i overslept you know or
whatever because they were overseas
and um you know i was like oh but you
can watch it they're like oh awesome so
that was my next question yeah uh is it
recorded somewhere where people can find
it
so that's a great question because one
of the things that we're
we we're it's actually emerging right
now is that
ronnie's been uploading the videos for
us and we're going to be
releasing the videos on friday awesome
on on youtube but it was on um it was a
mixer i don't know if it's still on
mixer i'm not sure if that's um
if it's there or not if it appears yeah
i think the streams are down i think
that the videos will all go live on
youtube though
um so hopefully by the time this is out
uh the videos will be out
cool cool awesome and then uh yeah if
you guys uh
have like a youtube channel or something
like that i can put that in the show
notes too
yeah awesome so the the way that we've
been doing most communication is through
uh the infosec oasis twitter account and
then we've got a discord link on the
website uh which is infosec oasis.com
perfect and i'll put all that from the
show notes and the website definitely
feel free to if you're watching this
feel free to jump in the discord you can
talk to
trenton and i or any of the speakers if
you have questions about their talks or
something like that you can always reach
out there
um we you know like to keep it pretty
chill and and make sure that everybody's
being respectful but
you know we haven't had i mean the
community's so cool you know we had i
think we
you had an issue you just kind of a
scary thing happened in one of your
talks the first talk right trenton where
um you couldn't meet somebody maybe we
didn't at one point
during the during the event we didn't
meet the whole crowd
i mean people were so courteous and
quiet like yeah i didn't know it for
five minutes
like normally like we went to a ton of
events um
to just kind of get an idea of how they
work and what the workflow is and how
they're supposed to be running what
works and what doesn't work
and always there was people just yelling
over top of each other asking questions
out of turn be noisy
and like so the only events that we saw
that ever worked out were the ones where
the moderators just needed everybody
um so so to be in a room where we forgot
to mute
everybody for 10 minutes and not have
anybody take advantage of it was just
like
you know that's pretty cool like i know
there's always you know infosec drama or
whatever but like
from our experience with the conference
like everybody was super respectful and
and was uh you know great to have
or someone yelling at their cat like all
of a sudden get out of my way or
whatever that'll happen
maybe that happens yeah it's funny
especially at the like the more casual
social like hangouts when people are
just
you know hanging around like you forget
that people are not in vr until like all
of a sudden you hear like
the best is when like somebody like my
wife would have come up and like poked
me a couple times and that's like the
creepiest thing because like you're in a
world you can't
see them and all of a sudden somebody's
touching you it's just like like when
when
virtual in real life makes it's always a
surprise
sure and then like when you're in an
experience with like a band
like uh are you in a crowd with people
and you can
like you can go up to people and talk to
them you know while the all the bands
play like you're at a concert kind of a
thing is that sort of how it works
yeah so we got sean uh found this
really cool venue and became friends
with with the owner of the space of the
world and
they uh trash panda said that we could
actually use it for the concert so it
was if you've been to like
def con or black hat it was like one of
the cool like high-rise
like bars like i know it's like
nightclub style
venues really really cool space and so
we had a live acoustic set to open it up
a guy that plays regularly in alt space
called vr luke if you want to go listen
to him he's regularly at the campfire
but really nice guy offered to come and
play and then uh
we had a live dj afterwards as well that
did a bunch of like
80s style like infosec like the oasis
style like ready player one music
um did a really good job on it so um
yeah
there you go there's the uh there's
there's part of the club so
um yeah you can see like you can have
people up right next to the stage
and like listen um and then it's a
really big space and so as you get
further away from the stage
the audio gets quieter and you can
actually have circles with people
talking
um so yeah pretty neat that's awesome
that was really cool vr luke did a great
job trash band did a great job
uh i think people really enjoyed it a
lot of people come to the after party
which was which is
that's something that i think i would
change next year too is announce that
too because we didn't announce it until
like the day of
um that we were doing it and and so we
didn't have as many people come as i
think we'd hope but
um it was still really awesome i think
more people would have loved it would
love to come if we would have made it a
little bit more
um you know publicized or whatever
so how did it work with a like a live
acoustic like is it is
avatar have like a you know a guitar or
like
you know like and he's just like at a
microphone on his computer doing it or
sorry i don't really
how'd that work yeah so i think the way
that they did it was that they would
actually pipe
the uh they had an audio mixing panel
and that
would take their um their voice mic and
then their acoustic set or you know
whatever they're using for music
um and plug that into the headset wow
and they can adjust the volume on the
player
some of them i think sometimes you'll
see people that actually use like
a second bot for the audio um but both
of these players i think did it straight
through their
their main primary players audio
wow i'm gonna have to get on this vr
thing this is amazing this is so cool
do it hey check it out next podcast you
guys i'm gonna have you back
in in vr world and uh yeah
we're gonna do it uh maybe maybe i'll
poke mike and be like hey we gotta do
like some kind of century con vr thing
or something that sounds awesome
yeah yeah let's do it i know i know he
he's poked me a couple times about maybe
trying to like get doing something for
cyphercon so so hopefully we can make
that happen i think i think it'd be a
ton of fun to
to do like a cyphercon vr um
even if it's just you know in in between
conference time
so yeah yeah that'd be super awesome it
sounds like you guys had a lot of
success with it and uh yeah i'm like i
i gotta get in vr world now so this is
awesome
i didn't really know what to expect
talking to you guys but you guys have
blown my mind
so thank you for that yeah well thanks
for having us this has been fun
yeah for sure um any final thoughts like
where can people find you
uh you know like if they want to say hi
on twitter or wherever you are in the
internet land
how can they sign up for alt space all
the things
we're working where can they find you
let's uh let's start with you sean
yeah sure you can find me on twitter
at sean the peterson is my handle and
you can always add me on twitter you can
find me on the infosec oasis discord if
you want to jump in there and shoot me a
message
my handler is the rapture and um
i'm available all the time you know i'll
respond if somebody dm's me or something
i'll hit them back
up um yeah you know you can hit me up in
alt space we can go do stuff and go
world hop together or whatever
uh and indefinitely come on the first of
the month
every month uh i like the first of the
month because it's not like a city sec
meetups where it's like every second
whatever of the month
the first of the month rotates so that
allows people who have wednesday soccer
practice to show up on the next month
when it's on a saturday or when it's on
a tuesday or whatever
so i think we're going to keep it on the
first day of the month it's easy to
remember
from five o'clock until at 10 o'clock or
so um
we'd like to to keep this going and have
a you know a talk or two and
and that's that's a good way to contact
us as well yeah awesome and that's
uh people can find that like if they
interact with the discorders like how
did
yeah and once you get the discord you're
always i mean it's going to be in the
announcement section
we'll have a you know and we'll post the
link there
so you can rsvp for it and in all space
um
on their website you can rsvp on their
website and then when you get in the
game
you should be able to go into your your
events panel and then the events panel
will show what you're interested in
and you can just jump right in from when
you start up the game you get in the
game
go to your advanced events panel and
then boom you can jump right into the
event when it starts
um so it's pretty quick pretty quick
navigation
cool thanks sean and trenton where can
people find you
yeah uh so i have uh twitter at trenton
ivy um
i post like probably once every two
months so i'm not super active there but
um if you follow me there i can
you know in dm if you have any questions
i uh
try to hang out on discord from time to
time as well so you can hit me up there
as well we also have the infosec oasis
twitter account so we'll be posting
information about
infosys oasis specifically there and
also the website infosec oasis.com
as we start to ramp up the monthly
events we're going to try to have
speakers
probably one speaker a month more or
less
and so we'll be posting information
there um about
you know upcoming events awesome all
right well thanks guys this has been a
really fantastic podcast thanks for the
time thanks for putting
together um you know an alternative
space for people to gather
because i think people really need that
right now and it sounds like that's the
feedback you've been getting so that's
true so
um that's awesome so uh yeah thank you
guys
so much and uh next time we're gonna do
a podcast in vr world it's gonna be
awesome
love it let's do it be great alright bye
guys
thank you