0x0Anniversary Information
September 14th, 2017
Welcome to the 10:th annual SEC-T conference. We are very happy to be back at Nalen again, and even thought it feels like we just left last years con it is already time for the next. This is basically how it has been feeling for the past 10 years for us. We come off one year having a thousand new ideas only to realize we could make a few of them reality when it’s all of a sudden time for SEC-T again. Of course when we look back we see the vast difference between what we are currently doing and how it all started back in 2008.
I know we said last year was “the big squeeze” and we managed to fit nearly 400 people into this room. Well this year there are 440 seats and that’s the amount of tickets circulating.
We have 9 sponsors this year instead of 8, so you’ll have one more sponsor to thank for making this event happen. But most importantly, we have 15 speakers this year. Now you will already have met 5 of them if you attended Community Night last night or if you attended our premiere SEC-T2ion (pronounced “dissection”) Training, and some of them are also doing a talk during the conference. Never before did we get so many high quality submissions, maybe it’s a sign that SEC-T is becoming known, or maybe it’s just because we are paying our speakers. 😉
This year more than ever the schedule is tightly packed, and since you are too I hope you will keep being an awesome audience and help us keep the schedule running.
When we started streaming SEC-T we were a bit worried that maybe people would not come to the venue, maybe it would be just as fun to stay in the office and watch YouTube all day. But obviously this does not impact the participation in the least. Which makes us happy, because there are undoubtedly people sitting out there that want and need this information but does not have an employer that will pay for them. It also hit us that since we can take questions for our speakers from the audience via email, audience participation from the internet isn’t really a problem. We have the IRC channel #SEC-T on EFNET and we have the [email protected] email. So if anyone is running a hackspace or organize an event in their office or living room anywhere that place, that space, could be just as much part of SEC-T as this main hall is. To try this out we have an extra room this year, downstairs, or more correctly, around the corner, is the entrance to Stacken. In Stacken you will find the stream running, you’ll find some cinema seating like in this room, some tables to sit by if you’re playing CTF or need a place to put your laptop, a lounge area, an Ice Cream machine, our gadget sales. Lunch will also be served down there to make it less tight, there is a bar and… there is also a SEC-T Anniversary T-shirt waiting for you if you bring your ticket QR-code. We have a T-shirt for everyone so take it at your leisure.
I mentioned the CTF, the CTF has actually been up and running since yesterday afternoon, the scoreboard should be visible, so register to play now at http://sec-t.ctf.rocks and may the people with the most time on their hands win. 😛
There is also something else about the stream this year that might be interesting. We have säkerhetspodcasten here in the audience, and they have promised to try to interview every speaker after their presentation, on video, and deliver the video to the streaming guys in the back so that people watching the stream can see them while you guys are on a coffee or lunch break. The interviews will of course be available on YouTube later when you’re back in the office on Monday.
Our tradition at SEC-T is that I come on stage after every talk and try to come up with smart sounding questions for the speakers, I have never written any questions in advance so far and sometimes it’s a bit of a challenge, but I think it’s a good tradition and something we will continue doing. However, when I’m on stage I will not be reading the IRC channel, and we do not have enough goons to do this so I would appreciate if anyone could keep an eye on the channel an proxy the questions to our speaker (please only do this with SFW questions). And if you are shy, email the question to [email protected] BEFORE the QnA and I can ask the question for you. But as you can see there is a stack of presents on stage, and those presents are for our speakers to hand out to those asking questions. We used to have books for the speaker to choose from, and we still do. The presents are books, mostly, but to add some surprise to the game Hanna was kind enough to play Christmas and wrap them all. So it’s worth being brave, first audience question for each talk gets a present.
This is also the first year we have a decent voting system for the speakers. As you know we are paying our speakers to perform, but the speaker that has performed the best according to you, the audience, will also be paid double. The webpage you got your ticket on has a voting system where you can vote on each speaker. You can’t vote in advance, but please remember to vote and the best way is if you do it directly after each talk.
I think there are still some Lightning Talk slots available this afternoon and we have been hoping for lightning talks to become something more spontaneous. So please, if you have something you want to share, let me or any organizer know and we’ll fit you into the schedule.
We hope you will have two awesome days!
Time for the first talk.