[bsidesclt] Re: BSides planning
- From: Chris Teodorski <chris.teodorski@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: bsidesclt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2012 10:14:47 -0400
Heather,
1. Right.
2. Shmoo I assume will be that least weekend of Jan (25-27), so potentially.
3. I didn't get here till Feb, and coming from PA -- I wouldn't call
it winter, but I'll let the locals with more experience than me answer
that one.
4. I assume the majority of the audience will be CLT locals, with a
few dedicated folks being willing to travel. That seems to be the
case with most local Bsides events.
5. When we did BsidesPGH, we really struggled with the anchor speaker
from out of town vs local talent. I can argue both sides of that.
Last year Dave Kennedy spoke and Chris Nickerson was at the event
(coincidentally he was doing a pentest in Pittsburgh that week), but
he was as low key as he can be -- he was just an attendee.
6. Honestly I don't have a sense of that -- we managed to pack 120ish
people into BsidesPGH. I assume we can do similar here. How many
folks show up for ISSA events? In Pittsburgh ISSA was a huge part of
our sponsorship and how we got word of the event out to the community.
7. Again, BSidesPGH, we had 2 rooms -- the speaker and the chill out
area (which was outside). What they found to be very successful at
BSidesPGH was to allow long social breaks between speakers -- they
found that with the time -- people actually talked to one another. I
know at least one person landed a job out of connections made there
this year.
So basically, my feeling is this -- we decide on the type of venue
(local flair, brew pub, teepee, men's restroom) we want and then we
start looking to see what is available.
On Mon, Jun 25, 2012 at 9:37 AM, Hpilking <h.pilkington@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Bsides Chicago was also in a bar, fwiw, the bar scene is popular. What
> reasons can you think of that a bar wouldn't be preferable because it's a bar?
>
> But, is pursuit of local flavor putting the cart before the horse? Shouldn't
> we have some way of screening the venues before deciding?
>
> Questions I had (and I know not all of these have answers, necessarily, but
> some definitely impact venue)
>
> 1) You don't want to schedule this in parallel with another event to boost
> attendance, right?
>
> 2) Is Shmoocon a conflict with this date range?
>
> 3) Is weather a concern? (availability of venue, accessibility of venue) - I
> didn't make it through a winter in CLT so I don't know what to expect.
>
> 4) Who is the target audience? CLT locals, NC/SC regionals only, or other?
> How will you reach them?
>
> 5) Is the timing/locale attractive to that target? What is going to make
> people want to come? What about having a couple of anchor speakers/trainers
> (if you want to go that route) first?
>
> 6) How many people do you plan on having (venue sizing)
>
> 7) How many rooms do you need? (Bsides Chicago had one room with a downstairs
> bar and an outside patio. They split their room into four spaces using
> scrims. One room was for staff/speakers, one for chill out/lockpick village,
> one for the main track, and one for classes. It was freezing outside and
> sucked completely to stand out there. But, it was so loud inside, it was
> nearly impossible to have a conversation. There was so much sound bleed from
> the speaking track and the teaching track that dueling microphones happened.
> The venue had stationary speakers that couldn't be moved to fix it. Thotcon
> and BsidesLV also had this problem. Except they had multiple rooms. But you
> had to walk through the main speaker track to get to any of the other rooms,
> and it was large enough that people stopped to talk, drowning out the
> speakers.) I would recommend there be room for people to socialize separately
> from people who want to present, GSO was a small Bsides, but it was less
> social than some other events b/c people were mostly politely quiet during
> presos (it was also hard to hear and impossible to see from the back of the
> room).
>
> 8) What kinds of accommodations can they provide? Do they have screens,
> speakers, mics, power, wireless...
>
>
>
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