Check out https://www.flightsfrom.com/explorer/LAS — particularly comparing its direct flights from all over the continental US to the same for other American cities.
That settles it, DEF CON in Dubai, London or Amsterdam. I vote for Amsterdam.
Frankfurt also has the most international destinations (just not volume).
(Probably not Dubai, considering a few speakers would be thrown out at the border - or worse if they get though. It's also artificially inflated because it's almost all transit traffic).
Aimed largely at the MENA, SAARC, and a bit of the APJ market.
Most DefCon attendees are in North America, which makes the flight to the UAE hellishly long and expensive.
Most attendees are also expensing the trip, so a $700-900 round trip ticket plus an additional $500-700 for hotels makes Managers balk, as that's a major expense coming out of your yearly budget.
Also, DefCon sponsors largely showed up because it was occuring around the same time and same location as BlackHat
Source: travelled a lot for corporate tech conferences in my PM days.
Terrible location for any conference that cares about everyone being able to attend. While one could argue about "hiding the gay" (I'd still say that's hard to impossible), I would never be able to attend as visibly trans.
No community which has a healthy amount thinking about ethics and stuff would want to go to Dubai. Sorry but Dubai is one of the worst rich citys in existence.
Europe has CCC. CCC is older than DEFCON. It sucks for Americans to go across the ocean. Also given that I just came back from a month long eurotrip, hospitality services in post COVID Europe is even worse than it was before COVID. I'll stay in Vegas.
