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 our biggest build that year, 177 tiles across three displays that each did a different job. A monolith wall anchored the booth, a third run filled the storage tower, and a 50-tile floor display put content under people's feet, which is the one that stops traffic, because nobody walking a show floor expects the ground to be a screen.

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 walls at two pitches, which is the right answer more often than people budget for. The 64-tile hanging sign is read from across an aisle, so it does not need to be fine. The 36-tile wall below it is read from three feet away, so it does, and at 1.5mm it was the tightest pitch we ran all show. We hung and rigged both.

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 in 2023 never showed up in a photo. Thirty-three booths ran on internet we ordered, pulled and supported, four hundred forty megabits mapped booth by booth and switched at each one, from a five-port at a startup pod to a sixteen-port at the big builds.

It matters more at this show than most. Black Hat's own public network is treated as hostile by everyone standing on that floor, and they are right to treat it that way. A demo that depends on it is a demo you are gambling with.