Today let’s start with a look at the conferences and events themselves. One of the cyclical things I see is dismissing events people don’t like as irrelevant or worse.
“The big commercial cons are irrelevant…” as tens of thousands of people go to them, learn, share and yes, do the business of InfoSec. The business of InfoSec, it’s so ugly and dirty, oh, and pays tens of thousands of us a living while funding an amazing amount of research. Maybe they aren’t the places for cutting edge research, especially offensive security stuff, but that’s not their core audience.
Are there excesses? Sure there are.
Are they valuable to a lot of people? Of course they are.
And very few people are forced to go unless they are paid to do so.
Don’t like it? Not your scene? Cool, don’t go.
“That’s just a hacker con, full of criminals…” as thousands or even tens of thousands of people gather to learn, share, and (gasp) maybe even do a little business. Yeah, we’re all a bunch of criminals, right. No, almost all of us at hacker cons are trying to make the world more secure. You may disagree with some methods and opinions, but hacker cons help make us more secure. Some may not be the best places to learn a lot about policy and compliance issues, or securing global enterprises, but that’s not what they’re about- and some “hacker” cons do cover these topics well.
Are there excesses? Sure there are.
Are they valuable to a lot of people? Of course they are.
And very few people are forced to go unless they are paid to do so.
Don’t like it? Not your scene? Cool, don’t go.
Fifty years ago buffalo Springfield sang “Nobody's right if everybody's wrong”, and that sums up the way I feel about a lot of the con noise, hype, and drama. Find the events that work for you, contribute to making them better, and avoid the ones that don’t work for you.
There are plenty of things I don’t like about a lot of events, I’m a cranky old man. I do, however, understand that different events serve different needs and audiences. That doesn’t excuse hype, lies, and bullshit but no event has a monopoly on that.
More on events in the next few posts.
Jack
