WHO SUBMITTED?

Total of 182 Submissions.  Pretty much the same number of submissions as last year.
35 Accepted for normal speaking slots.   2 Alternates.
Acceptance Rate = 19.2%  Including alternates = 20.3%

233 unique names on submissions (some submissions had more than one author, some authors made more than one submission).

Using dubious best guess methods (based on obvious indication by name or personal knowledge):

  • 214 male
  • 18 female
  • 1 hat


WHAT WAS SUBMITTED?

Talks submitted per track (some talks were submitted to multiple tracks):

  • Belay It –  59
  • Bring It On – 80
  • Build It – 59
  • One Track Mind – 53

Belay It – Submissions were up this year, but only by a wee bit.
Bring it On –  A few less than last year but still a lot of submissions here.
Build It – Submissions were up, but lacking in cut and dry hardware builds
One Track Mind – Less submissions than last year, but for the first time we filled this track solely from these submissions


Word Trends (How many times each word appeared in the submissions.  Many more obviously, but just a few that jumped out):

241 security
129 data
81 new
67 malware
64 threat
59 intelligence
50 analysis
41 software
31 internet
30 web
28 vulnerability
26 applications
26 windows
26 incident
26 different
25 cyber <- down again!
25 defense
24 vulnerabilities
22 code
21 malicious
20 forensics
19 cloud
19 encryption
19 iot
18 phishing
17 hardware
17 computer
16 science
16 ios
15 secure
15 usb
15 cryptography
1 thumbs

HOW DO SPEAKERS GET CHOSEN?

Our selection committee this year was comprised of 18 people.  We use an open source system called OpenConf to collect, read and review the CFP proposals.  There are no hard rules for our reviewers, we  prefer that they read each paper with their own unique point of view and skill sets.  However, the committee keeps in mind ShmooCon’s emphasis on new and upcoming speakers – both to ShmooCon and to the industry in general.  There is also a strong emphasis on never before presented material as well as talks that include the release of open source code.  Talks that have been given repeatedly or have been submitted to multiple cons in the future tend to get rated down by our reviewers.  Talks that have been given before but promise new/updated material are given more leeway.  

After the committee has finished doing their reviews the Program Chairs along with Bruce and Heidi take that information and start to build a program.  This is a game of score, topic, and track balancing and can take several days as we work across time zones. 

This year’s selection committee consisted of the following people:

Ben Laurie* – Program Chair
Jon Callas* – Program Chair
Heidi Potter* – Conference Organizer
Bruce Potter*- Conference Organizer
Wade Benson*
Tamzen Cannoy*
Sandy Clark
Frank Clowes
Andrew Hobbs*
Toby Kohlenberg*
Logan Lodge*
David Mortman
Todd Nagengast*
Chris John Riley
Tim Vidas*
and then those who shall not be named

*members of The Shmoo Group


TO EVERYONE WHO SUBMITTED

Thank you.  Per the email we sent everyone who didn’t get selected this year, as it bears repeating:  We very much appreciate your submission and we encourage you to submit again next year or to some alternate venue.  Many great talks were turned away and it is our hope that some of those reach audiences by other means.