Thursday, May 23, 2013

I Wanna Be Heard

A couple of weeks ago I blogged about presenting at BsidesLV. I am definitely excited, but am also quite nervous because I have never presented at a conference before. I am also still new to the conference scene, having only been to a handful of conferences and attended or watched a few talks. 

Even though I have only seen a few presentations, I have learned lots about what is rare at conferences:
  • Great presenters
  • Variety of perspectives
  • Variety of topics between and at the same conferences
  • Variety of presenters between and at the same conferences

What I fail to understand about conferences, is the persistent group of presenters/speakers - I will abbreviate this to PGPs. The PGPs are the same names that seem to get on the list for most of the conferences and talk about the same things. Conferences claim to be better or different than other conferences, yet I have not seen a variety when it comes to the bigger, well known conferences.

This leaves me with two questions:
  • Is this a conference issue where the PGP name and/or company where they work are recognized and almost automatically accepted?
  • Is it a game played by the PGPs to submit as many talks as possible to earn some air miles and share the same word with a lot of the same people throughout the year?

I've been watching my twitter feed as people mention if they have or have not been accepted for BlackHat USA this coming summer. What I have noticed is an increase in new presenters - which is very exciting. I hope there are also new topics to go along with the new faces.

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