CactusConKids++

CactusConKids was even better this year. #CactusCon is a two day regional security conference in #Arizona with a couple thousand attendees.

The one day program added an escape room. To participate in the escape room kids had to first complete three stations: lock picking, arduino updates and a simple breadboard build.

Each of the three rooms in the escape challenge had a puzzle matching one of the three pre-requisite skill stations. Each room also had a hack to bypass the challenge. CactusCon is a hacker/security conference after all :).

There was also a soldering station where kids could make robot-shaped board with flashing LEDs.

Other stations included:

• station for making ethernet cables
• computer boneyard for disassembling and rebuilding systems
• drone station
• ctf challenge
• a couple coding stations

Attendance went from 100 kids at last year's inaugural kids event to 350 kids this year. They had a much larger space and it was jammed with kids all day.

350 kids means that almost 20% of CactusCon attendance was kids :).

There were little kids all the way up to high school students.

Overall it was a fantastic kids event.

Thanks to all the volunteers who put on the event and to the sponsors who paid for it!

https://www.cactusconkids.com/

#TechKids #TechEvents #Phoenix #TechSecurity