Instruction for Authors

Like all hackers, we are looking to subvert the dominant paradigm...of life itself. Your talk should excite, elucidate, enlighten, and engage participants in the technical, mechanical, procedural, and human side of biohacking.

We are seeking three kinds of submissions: talks, demos, and labs.

Talks are the standard non-interactive presentation style, generally with slides, where one or several people enlighten, educate, and inspire the audience on an interesting topic or project.

Demos also stick to the presentation, one-to-many format, but the presenter uses most of the time to display a working technology, in real time, and may involve some level of audience interactivity.

Labs are purely hands on for the participants, who can wander in and DIY their way into biohacking. There is very little instruction, and when there is, it is one-on-one. Examples in other villages include the lock trees in the Lockpicking Village, and the tamper-evident kits in the Tamper Evident Village. Submitters are expected to provide their own materials.

In your submission, please indicate which you are applying for, but don’t worry too much if you aren’t sure. Take your best guess, and if we like your topic, we can easily change the submission type for you.

We require: A title, an abstract, outline, and presenter bio(s). If you have additional materials, such as an early draft of your slides or presentation text, please feel free to attach.

Time slots: Talk times can either be 30 or 60 minutes. Please select your preference on the form. We reserve the right to pick a different time slot for you.

AV: Please let us know if you have AV or technical requirements besides the standard projector and mic.

Multiple Submissions: You are allowed to separately submit as many papers as you like.

Your submission will be held to the following standards:

• Scientific rigor – Was the project conducted in accordance with the scientific method, and were any hypotheses properly investigated? Are less-scientific aspects of the topic acknowledged as such? If you’re not making any scientific claims, does your technology actually work? Or, if it was a failure, is it acknowledged as such with a detailed and interesting description of lessons-learned?
• Significance – Is your project significant to the biohacking and scientific community? Does it add value, for either scientific, technological, ethical, cultural, or artistic purposes?
• Originality – Is your project an original work, or at least sufficiently different from the work it builds on? (Exceptions can be made, especially for introductory & educational 101 talks.)
• Coolness – Extra points will be given for the “cool” factor. We want to be wowed. We want our jaws to drop in wonder. We want to be blown away with the inspiring possibility that you have made reality. Amaze us.

Other helpful hints for paper submission can be found here.

No Spam Zone: No sales-focused talks or demos. Product demos or brief mention of products may be appropriate if the audience walks away with a deeper understanding of the actual technology or science involved. The focus needs to be on knowledge and skills, not on promoting a specific for-fee product. Spammers will be immediately rejected!

Contact

Watch for our tweets @DC_BHV for important updates before, during, and after DEF CON 24... and for many neat biohacking & bioengineering retweets.

If you have any questions and for media inquires, please email us at info@dcbhv.org. For general discussion, we have a space on the DEF CON forums.