SecZone: Just the facts!

It’s been a week now since I flew back from Colombia. I’ve been trying to get my thoughts in order to describe what Colombia meant to me personally, and what I think the conference meant to the people in Colombia. There’s been a lot of hype about this being the first international InfoSec conference in Colombia, and a lot of emphasis on the “experts” being flown in for the event. Putting aside my dislike of the word “experts” I feel proud to have been part of the first ever SecZone… and I’m only now coming to terms with everything.

I was sceptical on many levels when I boarded the plane to fly out. I was worried about possible security issues (no, I’m not talking buffer overflows here), and I was worried that the hype might not match with the reality at all. What I found once we arrived though was friendly faces, helpful people and a conference that, even if not the largest in the world, certainly had a special feeling and a real uniqueness to it all! It was unlike any security conference I’ve attended, and certainly a memory I’ll have with me for years to come.

It’s hard to tie down specifics, and taking a weeks worth of experiences in putting them into a single blogpost would never do it justice. There’s just no way to describe things…

How do you describe David Marcus convincing the army bomb disposal representative into demonstrating the bomb disposal robot. Yes, Dave got it to press enter on his keyboard. Pity he couldn’t get it on stage to automate his slides ;)

How do you describe the whirlwind drive through the Colombian mountains culminating at a childs petting zoo in the middle of nowhere (those who were there will know why this was a worthy of a mention ;)

How do you describe the hilarity of Chris Nickerson’s and Ian Amit’s “Red Team Testing” class being live translated by a group of Colombian school girls (for the benefit of the non-English speakers who attended)

These are just things you need to live through… what better way to end the #DirtySec 2011 tour!

Videos of the event are in the process of being edited and should be released with English/Spanish. As this is only my 2nd “big” conference talk I’m looking forward to seeing how bad my presentation really was. There’s always room for improvement!

Some Stats from SecZone 2011:

Attendees: 454 people (Colombia, UK, USA, Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico)

Live Video: 2403 people (Colombia, USA, Canada, UK, Chile, Ecuador, Spain, Peru, Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, Venezuela, Estonia, Argentina, Greece, Guatemala, France, Mexico, South Africa, Romania, Panama, Hungary, Portugal, Ireland, India, Brazil, Egypt)

Training attendees: 92 people (4 training classes)