Presenting at PhreakNIC 21 in Nashville, TN

This is just a quick update for what’s been going on lately. I responded to a CFP from PhreakNIC, a hacker/computer security conference in Nashville, organized by the Nashville 2600 chapter. They accepeted my talk proposals, the first about a side project related to some work projects I’d done, called DKEY) and another about comparing the network analisys tools Wireshark and tcpdump (which I called “SharkDump” because I am oh-so-clever). It’s not the first time I’ve been to a security/hacker conference but my first time to PhreakNIC AND my first year presenting at one. So, I am excited about the opportunity to share some knowledge and flesh out my professional portfolio. Nashville is a fun city, about a 4 hour drive from Atlanta, so it makes visiting from out of town fun. The show prides itself on Southern Geek Hospitality and they deliver.

The show was very well organized, with two rooms of talks and one lab room. Both of my talks were early Friday morning, designed for new speakers, but I was fine with that. I wound up being a little more nervous than I expected to be; it’s a little different talking to a new audience about your technical work outside of day-to-day work than it is about, say, a hobby environment. My talks went swimmingly well and seemed to go over very well with the audience. I’m hoping to go back next year and talk some more.

All of the other speakers did very well, too. I found myself rarely looking for something else to do and each presentation, with a wide variety of technical subject matter, was interesting in its own regard. I’m awaiting the videos to be posted for the conference as I believe every talk was recorded.

The one area that really intrigued me about the conference was the lab area they had set up. This room acted as a multi-purpose lab for the Network King Of The Hill simulation game competition, various hands-on lab segments/trainings and a kid’s hacking village. The kid’s space was oriented around games and stuff but focused on things like programming. I didn’t spend a lot of time there but I’m hoping that next year I might do a lab segment as well.

I know this isn’t as verbose as some of my other pieces but once videos are live, I’ll be linking them over on my CV page (and maybe here). Definitely looking forward to it next year!