Wow. What a DEF CON that was!

We are blown away by the popularity of our unofficial badge. Our goal was to put a badge in people's hands that we liked and hope that others like it too. We've been putting a lot of our work out in the public to ensure enough people know about it before DEF CON that we can make our money back on production. We hit that goal and even a little above it with some donations from various folks. We are pouring the extra into next year's badge to help do things right and seed some of our development. At one point we had about 300 people lined up to buy 70 badges. Watching the elevators on the 9th floor open at once and seeing everyone poor in was humbling. We really wished we had more and were disappointed not everyone could get some.

Our favorite comment we received from owners of the badges was the fact that they had difficulty walking around the conference without being stopped. Sorry everyone! We were stopped a lot too but that usually led to some great conversations. We went home with tired feet and no voices but we wouldn't have it any other way.

Next year we won't be hand assembling, nor will our learning curve be as steep. Our team is already brainstorming what to do. Right now the ideas are grand, eventually we'll narrow it down and start our design but for now it's all about big ideas! We also plan to do a run of a lot more badges.

In the near term, you won't see anything from us on development. We'll probably startup another hackaday.io page for DC25. We'll be quietly brainstorming and doing proofs of concepts in between real-life responsibilities. DC25 will be bigger and better.

Thank you everyone at DEF CON, you made all this work worthwhile!