I attended a talk at Defcon in 2007 or 2006 which was given by Chris Tarnovsky, in which he alluded to some of details covered in this article. It was definitely one of my formative tech career experiences, I don't remember much of the other talks then, but I think I could almost recount his presentation word for word, and I stayed after for an informal demo after the talk was "over". Mingling in that crowd I ran into a person who I vaguely remembered from college, who I would never have thought to show up in that environment.
I think it was that experience, along with a later experience at "Do it with Drupal" in New Orleans, that lead to me completely re-evaluating how I valued and approached conferences and other "community" type events. Prior to that I put them in the same class as picking the right powerpoint template and buying obnoxious people drinks at the hotel bar, i.e., complete sales / business fluff to my nerdy point of view. After Defcon and that presentation in particular, I tried to never miss any of the "community run" tech events, such as Defcon, Linux Fests, Drupal camps, etc.