BSidesLondon and the Rookie Track

René Pfeiffer/ April 12, 2013/ Conference, Discussion

DeepSec is actively supporting the BSidesLondon conference this month. We are joining the panel of mentors of the rookie track, and we’re looking forward to see a lot of interesting talks. In March we talked about our motivation to support the rookie track idea with Finux on the Rookie Track Podcast. DeepSec has been supporting young security researchers for years. Some of them were given an opportunity to speak at past DeepSec conferences in order to present their work. We think that this is a good idea, and here is why:

Speaking publicly in front of an audience can be hard. It is even harder if you have never done this before. It gets a lot harder if you talk about IT security, because there’s a chance you found something that probably broke, is probably a secret, or is generally unpleasant to talk about. Vendors, customers and developers might get angry (with you). All of this doesn’t sound very cheerful. However we strongly believe in making failures public and talk about them openly – and fairly. In order to get potential/ future security researchers to participate, we decided to support them. It’s just a matter of sharing knowledge and information. We do this at DeepSec anyway, so why not do it with speakers who are new to the arena? This is exactly why we decided to support BSidesLondon back in November 2012.

So we ask you to focus your attention on the BSidesLondon Rookie Track. Have a look at the schedule. Read the abstracts. The Rookie Track is not just an exercise. Everyone presenting there has worked hard to prepare the content of their talk. The titles and the abstracts look very promising. Please give all the rookies respect for what they have done so far. We will be present throughout the whole Rookie Track and will watch all Rookie talks. One of the Rookie speakers will be invited to DeepSec 2013 (we provide a ticket for the conference and accommodation at the hotel in Vienna).

Since DeepSec 2013 is all about secrets, failures and visions: Our vision for future IT security events includes a lot more support and respect for anyone daring to address IT security issues in public. That’s how community works!