But Jack, community and stuff…
A few folks have asked me about my roles on the advisory board for Intelligent Defence and as a judge for RSA’s new crowdsourced track. I’m often thought of as “Mr. BSides”, which is unfair to a lot of people who do a lot more than I do to build and sustain the Security BSides movement and community, and unfair to the thousands of organizers, volunteers, speakers, sponsors, and participants who make BSides what it is. This also overlooks the fact that I have long been engaged with a variety of groups and events, and I work in the security industry.
The short version of the story is this:
Two big events are listening to their attendees and responding to their audiences’ requests, and they asked me to be involved. As someone who has pushed for better content, conversations, and community engagement in numerous events and organizations over the years I jumped at the opportunities; I would have to be a much bigger hypocrite than I already am to decline the requests.
Of course I am watching to see if these new programs have any impact on the local security and hacker communities, but the nearby BSides San Francisco and BSides London events have a very different vibe from RSA and Infosecurity Europe, and other events such as 44Con are at other times of the year. My hope is that the new programs will expand the much-needed conversations about information security and security research and help grow the security community, that’s why I’m involved.
Jack