Black Hat 2023

ThreatLocker's landmark hung over the aisle: a 120-tile LED sign, corners and all, wrapping the booth in content you could read from across the hall. Underneath it ran a 31-tile LED wall, all of it 2.3-millimeter tile, with booth audio on Meyer speakers and a Shure wireless kit.

We also ran two 4K timelapse cameras over the build, start to finish, the kind of week worth recording.

Axonius was the biggest build of our week: 177 LED tiles across three separate displays. A monolith wall anchored the booth in crisp 2.6-millimeter tile, a third run filled the storage tower, and a 50-tile floor display turned the ground itself into content underfoot.

Four Meyer speakers and a wireless mic kit carried the booth audio over the floor noise. Three different ways to put light in one footprint, and we ran all of them.

Salt Security ran a 66-tile LED wall at 2.6-millimeter pitch, driven through a 4K processor and Millumin playback so the content stayed sharp from doors to close. A 49-inch touchscreen and two 40-inch monitors turned the counter into demo space, with QSC audio and a wireless mic for the booth talks.

Rapid7 got two LED walls at two pitches. A 64-tile hanging sign in 2.5-millimeter tile marked the booth from the aisle; a tighter 36-tile wall in 1.5-millimeter, the finest pitch we ran all show, kept the up-close content razor sharp. We hung and rigged both, and ran the booth audio under them.

ReliaQuest got the full kit. A hanging LED wall and a 28-tile ground-level wall, six monitors from 43 to 80 inches plus a 65-inch touchscreen, and a Mac Aura LED wash-lighting package on its own truss and rigging to set the booth's mood. Audio ran on Meyer speakers with a Shure wireless and a Countryman headset for presenters.

Elastic skipped LED for screens and sound. A 75-inch monitor anchored an in-booth theater, five 49-inch displays ran demos around the floor, and a rotating, internally lit hanging sign turned overhead. We carried the audio on Meyer speakers with a Shure wireless kit and ran the booth on a dedicated 10-megabit line with six hardwired drops. One of our techs was on it for five days, A/V and network both.

Devo's booth centered on an 8-tile beMatrix LED wall in 2.5-millimeter tile, framed right into the booth structure. Six 4K monitors, from 32 to 65 inches, ran demos around it, fed by a rack of media players we set and ran.

IBM went big and curved. Two LED hanging banners, 48 tiles of 2.3-millimeter curved into the corners, floated over a 30-tile LED tower, with eleven monitors running demos below. We also kitted the booth's registration and lead retrieval: five iPads and a dozen iPhones, preloaded and on data, plus the dedicated network behind it all.

Adlumin ran a clean 24-tile LED wall with an 80-inch monitor and a pair of 43-inch screens mounted around it, with media players and an LED processor behind the scenes keeping the content live for the two-day run.

For Tailscale we built the whole booth, not just the tech inside it: a 10-by-10 beMatrix frame with tensioned SEG graphics, two 55-inch monitors, furniture, carpet, and the wired network and show services to make it run. A small footprint, turnkey.

Most of what we did at Black Hat 2023 never showed up in a photo. Thirty-three booths ran on internet we ordered, pulled, and supported: four hundred forty megabits of dedicated bandwidth in all, mapped booth by booth and switched at each one, from a five-port at a startup pod to a sixteen-port smart switch at the big builds.

At a show where the public Wi-Fi is treated as a live threat, a hardwired line you control isn't a luxury. It's the whole job.