The CFP for BSides Cape Town 2022 is now OPEN

Theme: Hack From Home (HFH)

Overview:
Our theme for 2022, ‘Hack From Home’, is hark back to the days of lockdowns and sitting at home. The theme is also a reflection of the brave new world or age of remote and being able to work from where you want to, rather than onsite visits for a meeting. Our theme is both a look back and look towards the future of infosec and hackers. It is undeniable that we have forever changed the way of the world, but what did and what will that world look like?

We encourage talks from all over South Africa, as well as globally, but this year we would especially like to encourage anyone to submit talk proposals, and to actively participate in the conference. The online team meetings and remote teams have made the world flatter and smaller so why shouldn’t our speakers originate from all corners of the world?

If you’d like to speak to BSides, have an idea, but need some encouragement or advice, feel free to speak to one of the organisers for assistance. As stated on the website, “Each BSides is a community-driven framework for building events for and by information security community members”, but this doesn’t exclude the devops and development communities. We all ensure security through our own efforts and we would welcome talks on these fronts. We want new, past, weird and wonderful speakers; as that forms the community and breathes continuous life into what we do.

To get you started, here are some ideas for topical issues in the local and global security space:

  1. Hacktivism and nation state warfare
  2. Learning to hack while stuck at home
  3. Remote work teams, privacy, security and data protection
  4. War and OPSEC
  5. Information warfare, Electronic warfare.
  6. OSINT
  7. Hacking for good from home (HFGFM)

We hope these suggestions give you some inspiration, but feel free to submit a talk on whatever topic you like, as long as it is related to information security in some way.

You can present a talk on: an academic paper that you have written, research that you have conducted, a tool that you have written or enhanced, a new technique, etc. Presentations are generally less than formal – speak about your research, talk about it with us, don’t merely read it to us.

The BSides team and members of the community are also able to mentor if you require some help in preparing.

Talk formats
Standard talks with 45 minute time-slots (including questions) to take on a topic. These can provide a mile-wide; inch-deep level of detail and will usually (if they strike interest) result in conversations with others outside of the main speaking room. Talks can also be more focused and provide a more detailed look at a particular area, e.g., a tool, technique, countermeasure, etc. They can also be somewhere in between as long as they will be interesting to our audience.

Lightning talks with 5 minute time-slots will be held at the end of the day. These are very quick, very focused talks. These talks must be submitted to speaker ops before lunch time on the day of the conference.

How to submit your talk proposal

Please send an email to cfp@bsidescapetown.co.za, and include the following information:

  1. The title of your talk, and a brief abstract
    A catchy title can go a long way in getting the attention of the reviewers. Please include as complete an abstract of your talk as possible. We understand that your work may be in the early stages when you submit, but do your best to explain to us what you want to talk about, and why it will provide value to BSides attendees. Abstracts are suggested to be between 200 and 250 words

  2. A short personal biography of yourself
    This doesn’t have to be anything too in-depth, just a sentence or three about yourself, who you are, what you do, notable previous achievements, and why you’re qualified to give the talk that you’re proposing.

  3. Where you are from, and how likely it is that you’ll be able to attend BSides without assistance from us should your talk be accepted

Please note that all talk proposals will undergo a blinded review process by the technical committee, similar to other large conferences.

The deadline for submissions is 23:59 on the 30th of September 2022, but the earlier you submit the better.

While we do our best to accommodate speakers from other parts of the country, and internationally, BSides Cape Town has limited resources to financially assist speakers with travel and accommodation arrangements. We will do our best to assist where possible, so please don’t be discouraged from submitting a talk if this is a problem. Send us an email explaining your situation and we’ll see what we can do.

When making your submissions, remember that the majority of the BSides Cape Town audience have historically been involved in the development and devops worlds.