I have not been to either.  Why do you think Derbycon is better?  I am definitely going to the next one (#2) next year.  I was just curious as to what made it better??

DerbyCon had all the good talks, smaller conference with a real family vibe. DefCon tends to have some issues with elitism here and there and it's too large for me. Sure there's tons of cool stuff to do but I've always been more partial to the B-sides style events. Pretty much every speaker at DerbyCon was approachable and it was a real treat to hang out with folks I consider to be top tier talent in the industry over a beer and not feel like I was out of place. These folks are WAY smarter than I am but they never talked down to me, and if they had anything negative to say (about me) it happened after I left. Just a really awesome event. Lots of stuff to do, amazing talks, extremely well organized and really fun time. I'm not into nerdcore but if you are, Dual Core put on a great show too which is a bonus.

Let me put it this way, DerbyCon had roughly 10% of the attendees that DefCon had yet raised more money for HFC. It's all about Quality over Quantity and it shows. There is no better hacker con that I know of, but some I spoke with felt ShmooCon was a close 2nd to DerbyCon. I'll be going to Shmoo for the first time this next year (I'm hoping, submitted a talk so we shall see) so I'll reserve my judgement there until I experience it firsthand.