Converge and BSides Detroit wrap-up

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Last week, I headed to Detroit for a wonderful conference called Converge. It was quickly followed on Saturday by BSides. This is one of staple conferences every year. The crowd is great. The venue is top notch. The other speakers are fantastic. The organizers are awesome! And of course dueling coney dog restaurants. 

This year I got the opportunity to both speak and put on a workshop. The topic is the one I've been peddling all year, Social Engineering for the Blue Team. The talk went well enough. I had to transfer slides to our new company template and I missed some notes. The workshop went really well. I got some great feedback and found some refinements that need to be made. I only had six people in the workshop. Which worked out well, because I had a lot of back and forth and contributions from the crowd. I look forward to doing it again in the future.

I recorded one podcast interview and then did another conference interview that will come out this week. I'm going to try and do more podcast interviews while I'm conferences. Before I wanted to enjoy the conference and not worry about audio equipment and recording. That's a bit selfish, because I think I can record in-person with people. This would ideally lead to some better quality interviews and content. Shout out to Jesse who told me that he liked the new format. Thanks Jesse!

I'm playing with the format a bit so, I think this can slide in nicely. I plan to record some impromptu interviews where I just hit the record button and go. I think for the over-the-internet interviews I'll use my old format. I'll tweak it a bit. Ditch the old opening where I have the interviewee listen in. Instead I'll record an intro for each episode. This will allow me to give impressions of the interview and any promotional things. Still experimenting.

The conference went really well. I caught up with some friends and made some new ones in the process. If you missed it this year, I highly encourage you to check it out next year.

Converge and BSides Detroit talks and slides

I had a great time at Converge and BSides Detroit.

This was my third attempt at going and I'm happy I finally got the opportunity to do so. The last two years I've had to cancel my plans due to life reasons. I did two talks this year. One at Converge and one at BSides. Both are linked below along with the slides for both talks.

How to kick start an application security program - Converge Detroit

I've given this talk at three other BSides prior to Converge. I feel like this is my best presentation of the talk so far. I will be giving it again at ShowMeCon in June.

Slides

 

The AppSec Starter Kit - BSides Detroit

This was my first time giving this talk. I thought it went well for it's first attempt. It still needs polish. It will probably be a while before I give this talk again at a security conference. I made this talk to present at developer conferences. It hasn't been picked up, yet. I'm hopeful it will for some talks later this year.

Slides

This blog post first appeared on Exploring Information Security.