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.

BSidesCLE 2014 Success

BSidesCLE 2014 is over and was a huge success. I'm not sure how, but there really were no major hiccoughs anywhere and it all went very smooth. There were a couple of cable fails here and there but for the most part it was a smashing success. Total attendance was a little over 200 and a lot of people stayed through the day and through the dinner and after-party. We provided coffee, bagels and muffins in the AM, the FiredUp Taco Food truck for lunch and Fried Chicken, parmesan redskin potatoes and salad for those that stayed around for dinner and afterparty. Actual Brewery from Columbus provided a couple of kegs of their microbrews (which were great) and we had a bloody mary bar for most of the AM. Our venue was the legendary Grog Shop music bar and their associated underground lounge below it called the BSide Arcade and Liquor Lounge (after all the talks were done we fired up the pinball and video games).

Much thanks to our awesome speakers:

Dave Kennedy
Ed McCabe
Brandon Geise
Spencer McIntyre
Jamie Murdock
Mark Kikta
Adrian Crenshaw
Kevin Gennuso
Eric Mikulas
Adam Hogan
Jeff Moss
Doug Hiwiller
Damon Ramsey
Gregorie Thomas
Deral Heiland
Zach Wojton
Nick Jacob
Steven Legg
Nathaniel Maier
Tom Kopchak
Warren Kopp

Much thanks to our great sponsors:

Black Box
Sourcefire
Something New Entertainment
Information Security Summit
Hurricane Labs
SecureState
Actual Brewery

Super thanks to our venue:

Grog Shop
BSide Liquor Lounge Arcade

Thanks to our volunteers:

Brent McRoberts
Justin Schmitt
Justin Alcorn
Jason Ashton
Alex Kott

Thanks to my co-organizers:

Justin Herman
Anna-Jeannine Herman
Ben Pijor
Jim Kennedy
Susie Brockway
Joshua Lochner

And thanks for everyone who attended and made BSidesCLE an amazing event. We will see you next year.

BSidesCleveland 2014

For those of you who are not aware, I recently joined a small group of other North East Ohio maniacs to organize BSidesCleveland 2014. We are coming down to the home stretch w/ the event scheduled for July 19th. Badges and shirts have been ordered. The venue is amazing (track 1: www.grogshop.gs and track 2: www.bsideliquorlounge.com) . There will be a bloody mary bar. We have a beer sponsor (www.actualbrewing.com). We have a food truck to provide lunch for all attendees, speakers and staff (www.fireduptacotruck.com). The talks look amazing and the speaker list is a great combination of veterans as well as rookies, as a BSides event should be. The sponsors have been great as well as generous. It is looking like we will be able to swing a BBQ for all who wish to float from the Con to the afterparty. All info is at www.BSidesCLE.com. There are still many things to do but much of the heavy lifting is over and I'm happy about that. We're shutting down registration this evening as capacity has been met. Thanks to all my fellow organizers and I hope to see many of you who may happen to be reading this there.