Pre-BSidesCLE post

This is exciting. First year we've offered training, so we purposely kept the number of tracks relatively low and still had double the number of submissions than slots available, which was great, but also tough decision making. Sign up for the selected talks has been excellent and tomorrow we will be trying this for the first time. We are ready. Today, 6/23, the only thing we are waiting for are the programs and stickers which both should be ready tomorrow. The conference itself (sold out) has another great schedule. Opening comments at 8:45AM 6/25, first keynote at 9AM. Ian Amit, Chris Roberts and hometown hero Dave K are this year's keynotes. Bloody mary bar opens at 8 and will be complimented by mimosas, fired up taco food truck for lunch, beer sponsor hardbit solutions will be providing actual brewery microbrews, amazing sponsors and 3 tracks of awesome knowledge. See you there!

BSidesCLE 2016 planning

We are well underway for our 2016 event, which is Saturday, June 25th and again at the legendary indie rock venue the Grog Shop in Cleveland Height's Coventry locale. TrustedSec has already signed on as our Event Sponsor for the 2nd year in a row! The CFP is open now and runs until 5/1 and can be found here. New this year #BSidesCLE will be having a training day! Friday, June 24th will be dedicated for training and we will have multiple tracks. The Call for Trainers is open, will also be open until 5/1 and can be found here.

We have an amazing group of keynotes (this year there will be morning, afternoon and closing keynote slots) - Chris Roberts (@sidragon1), Dave Kennedy (@hackingdave) and Ian Amit (@iiamit). Holy crap, this is going to be dope! Again! More info will be forthcoming. You can get tickets here. See you there.

BSidesCLE - The good and the bad

Don't get me wrong, there's not much bad to take away from BSidesCLE 2015. The good includes another amazing event with fantastic sponsors:

• Event Sponsor - TrustedSec
• AfterParty Sponsor - Heureka Software
• Diamond Sponsors - Black Box, Cisco
• Gold Sponsor - Hurricane Labs
• Silver Sponsors - Emerging Technologies Group, OpenDNS and Rapid7
• A/V Partner - Something New Entertainment
• Beer Sponsor - Actual Brewery and Hardbit Solutions

Amazing speakers and talks, all of which were recorded by Irongeek and are here. Jack's and Chris' keynotes are must sees, special thanks to them for coming out and spending time with us.

Good turnout, great attendees, free ticket, free shirt, free badge, free beer, free breakfast, free bloody mary bar, free taco food truck, free dinner for those who stuck around for the afterparty. A dedicated crew from PGH even figured out and won the crypto challenge late in the evening.

With all of that free awesomeness it baffles me that we had close to 35% no shows. Was it that the next day was father's day? C'mon, the crypto key on the shirt was BADDAD in honor of the fact that there were definitely a bunch of fathers spending their time at the Grog Shop instead of with their family on father's day weekend. No, general consensus was that many people don't put value in free, since they didn't have any skin in the game they can easily blow it off without thinking about it too much.

Could be, there is merit to that. Irrespective, I now have just shy of 100 badges, bags and badass BADDAD glow in the dark shirts in boxes in my dining room waiting to go to Goodwill because whatever the reason and those dollars could have been spent on doorprizes and such for those who spent time with us this year. Do we charge next year to make it more of an investment just to get more people to show up?

I am open to suggestions, hit me on twitter @rockiebrockway

Thanks again to my co-organizers, sponsors, speakers, volunteers, the grog/bside crew and everyone who made BSidesCLE 2015 another smashing success and super fun event. I love helping to run the event and am always looking for areas of improvement.

BSidesCLE 2015 Planning

The BSidesCLE crew is back again for another round of planning an awesome event. We lost one of our partners in crime to the fact that there aren't enough hours in a day, big props to Jim Kennedy for helping us get last year's event off the ground and a huge success. We are welcoming one of our great volunteers from last year Justin Alcorn in to assist in the planning efforts in Jim's absence.

This year's event is taking place at the same phenomenal venue, the legendary indie-rock club Grog Shop and the associated BSide Liquor Lounge and Arcade, and is set for June 20, 2015. The CFP is now open http://t.co/9JwgFAJQZO. Our sponsor levels will be posted in the next couple of days, as will the tickets, and we're trying to lure in some great keynotes, more to come on that.

We're looking forward to another great event, see you there.

random musing

If you're not looking at "cybersecurity" as a strategic risk to the business, you're not prepared to successfully adapt your business in this rapidly changing technical climate where both your business and your adversary's business are intertwined with the same advanced technologies.