What is Security B-Sides?

Security B-Sides is the first grass roots, DIY, open security conference in the world!  Security B-Sides is a great combination of two event styles: structured anchor events and grass-roots geocentric events.

“It is no failure to fall short of realizing all that we might dream.

The failure is to fall short of dreaming all that we might realize”

-- Dee Hock, Chairman Emeritus, Visa International

Anchor Events

There are three anchor events that are both geographicaly and chronologically separated.  These events are corporate sponsored and centrally managed (though locally organized).  Typically about 100+ people attend each event, which are FREE to all attendees.  These events work by having speakers post presentation topics to the wiki, which are then voted upon by the community via Twitter.  This process makes these events almost entirely community created and driven.

• BSidesSanFrancisco (March 2010)
• BSidesBoston (April 2010)
• BSidesLasVegas (July 2010)

These events do coincide with other major conferences, but the goal is not to draw people away from such events - in fact, how could we?  The fact of the matter is that many people attend Black Hat, RSA, and SOURCEBoston to meet with their friends event if they never attend the conferece.  BSides offers them another venue to spend their time during the day by either attending or presenting on "next best thing" material.

Grass-Roots Events

Beyond the three anchor events, Security B-Sides takes it to the streets by offering others the opportunity to create their own local event and have lots of fun doing so.  Security B-Sides offers you unconference-in-a-box by providing the framework of tools necessary to deliver a structured event.  Who is best to host such an event?

• Hacker spaces
• Professional associations
• Group of organized individuals with a will and a way

What B-Sides is not!

1. B-Sides does not compete with any other event.  The goal has and always will be to expand the spectrum of conversation and enable a greater variety of events.  Certainly one can take the business perspective and say that any and every security conference competes with each other, but this would ignore the fact that these events are FREE and simply offer people another alternative to everything else.
2. B-Sides is not the All-Conference-Rejects. Certainly the idea may have sparked after the organizer and others got rejected from a conference submission, but the goal in creating Security B-Sides is always to enable a greater variety of conversation.  We do not want speakers who are talking about the current big thing, we want to find new tallent who are discussing the NEXT BIG THING! 

What should I Bring?

• Open mind
• Lots of questions
• Computerness