Author: summercon

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It’s time to register for Summercon.

Some notes:

• If you elect to attend at Littlefield, you’ll need to abide with whatever COVID protocols the venue and NYC DOH impose. If you register and for whatever reason you cannot abide by these COVID rules, we’ll refund your ticket. It’s been two years of this, so you know the drill.
• We’re hopeful that there will be a Summercon simulcast at Parklife. Frankly, it might be nicer to be outside in the Parklife courtyard for the duration of Summercon.
• You can also register for the live stream. 

Choose your ticket at Eventbrite here. 

Hey, brave viewers! Here’s the Day 1 live stream of Summercon 2021!

Turns out, YouTube is very fast to kill streams if they detect music with a copyright. Try this link instead.

And to address audio problems, we now have this link.

Summercon starts tomorrow, Friday, July 9. Believe me, we’re as shocked as you.

You’ll see that the schedule, speakers, and presentations have all been updated. We won’t have printed programs, so keep these links handy.

Notes:

• If you’ve managed to snag a ticket for the Littlefield location, you will absolutely need to provide evidence of vaccination. This is a Littlefield policy, and they have their own verification rules. Their verification process takes place when they check ID to make sure you’re 21 or older. 
• Littlefield accepts the following forms of evidence: 1) your CDC vaccination card, 2) a digital health passport (e.g. NY Excelsior Pass, Clear Pass, etc.), 3) a clean photo of your CDC vaccination card, 4) (if you were in the trial vax studies) an email from the hospital or clinic that you received the full vaccination from as a participant in that initial vax trial.
• If Littlefield decides your evidence is insufficient, or you decide that you don’t want to share your vaccination status with Littlefield, we’ll refund your admission to the original method of payment and you will be free to do anything you want, just not at Littlefield. For example, there’s a live stream you could check out. 
• Parklife will be open to the public.  We’ve been informed that there is some construction going on over there at the Parklife courtyard, so the live video of Summercon to that location may only be available indoors, but the audio will be available outside.
• We’re all in this together, and this whole thing only works if everyone works together. We’re grateful for your contributions to the history of Summercon.

Thanks; we’re extremely excited to see you all!

With a little more than a month to go, it’s time to register for Summercon.

Some notes:

• We are currently restricted to an absurdly low number of in-person attendees at the Littlefield space. This is in coordination with NYC and New York State COVID restrictions. These regulations are evolving quickly, so more Littlefield tickets may be made available at a later date.
• If you do elect to attend at Littlefield, you’ll need to prove you’ve been vaccinated two weeks before Summercon, or that you’ve had a negative COVID test within three days of Summercon. If you don’t intend to meet either of these requirements, we ask that you not buy a Littlefield ticket. If you do intend to meet these requirements, but for some reason on gameday are unable to, we’ll refund your ticket (because we understand that life happens).
• Parklife will be open to the public, with a Summercon simulcast. Frankly, it might be nicer to be outside in the Parklife courtyard for the duration of Summercon.
• You can also register for the live stream. 

Choose your ticket at eventbrite here. 

While there isn’t enough time to shovel a bunch of money out for Summercon 2021 research, we are really excited about being able to fund new research. Thanks for being patient!

With the opening of the Summercon 2021 CFP, we thought we’d provide a few friendly tips for what we think makes a great Summercon presentation. These seven points represent the kinds of things that we are evaluating when we look at CFP proposals.

1. Technical
   • While we occasionally incorporate talks of a non-technical nature, almost every presentation that shows up at Summercon is deeply technical. They’re not sales pitches, and they’re not about righting societal wrongs. So if you’re planning on submitting a talk about why people should buy your company’s particular security snake oil, or why your company has the best culture (and you can too!), you’ll have more success somewhere else.
2. Novel
   • From time to time, in the interest of getting important content in front of the best audience in the world, we let people present something they’ve already shown at events of lesser stature. But we prefer totally new presentations instead of rehashed talks. New content has a better chance of getting shown on the Summercon stage.
3. Irreverent
   • While the presentations are technical, successful Summercon presentations get their point across is through non-traditional means. This is not the place to read slides. One memorable presentation used an Android-shaped piñata as a prop. Another invited participation through an AA-meeting style format. The sky’s the limit (within the limits of our code of conduct, of course).
4. Revels in the Journey
   • If you like talking about the trials and tribulations of research, we are all ears. Even though your final results may be super polished and look effortless, everyone knows you had at least three major setbacks and went down two totally worthless paths before you arrived at a good solution. Share those. People love that, especially our speaker selection committee.
5. Sticks it to The Man
   • Despite all the sponsorships, corporate attendance, and more buttoned-up nature of Summercon (see our Code of Conduct, which is totally reasonable, by the way), we are still, at heart, a hacker conference. Challenge authority. Show you’re not a patsy for The Man. Fight the Power.
6. Engages the Audience
   • Summercon speakers are a special breed, because Summercon attendees are a special breed. Prepare to have people call out your mistakes, heckle if you’re less than prepared, and generally push your buttons. Successful presentations channel this misplaced audience enthusiasm. We still fondly recall a choose-your-own-adventure presentation, where randomly selected audience members got to dictate the direction of the talk. Engage your audience, and they won’t turn on you. (This can be good life advice, too.)
7. Fits into the Allocated Time
   • We cannot overstate this: fill the time, generally 45 minutes of speaking with 10 minutes of Q&A. Our speaker selection committee has been around the block, so if you’re going to try to pretend that a six hour seminar fits into 55 minutes of speaking slot, it’s probably not going to get selected.

The Summercon 2021 CFP is now officially open!

We’re in a bit of a hurry, so if you have good ideas, you better send ’em over to us right away; [email protected].

This is happening. We are back. In careful coordination with local and state authorities, Summercon 2021 will be a hybrid in-person/virtual event on July 9-10. We’ll once again be at Littlefield (capacity limited), with live simulcast at Parklife and on your favorite internet streaming platforms.

It’s less than 10 weeks away, and frankly none of us thought we’d be allowed to be in the same room ever again, so we’re frantic with excitement about seeing you all again! Stay tuned for updates!