This year’s edition of BSides St. Pete — the second BSides event to be held there — happens this Saturday, September 16 at St. Pete College, Seminole Campus, and you can still buy one of the 98 remaining (at the time of writing) “no swag” tickets if you register now! They’re a mere $20.
BSides gets it name from “b-side,” the alternate side of a vinyl or cassette single, where the a-side has the primary content and the b-side is the bonus or additional content. In 2009, when the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas received way more presentation submissions than they could take on, the rejected presenters (who still had very could presentations; there just wasn’t enough capacity for them) banded together and made their own “b-side” conference that ran in parallel with Black Hat. From that event came BSides.
BSides conferences are community events, and unlike a lot of tech conferences, they’re inexpensive. As I wrote earlier, the remaining “no swag” tickets — which unfortunately don’t come with swag but still get you in the door — sell for a mere $20.
BSides Tampa took place back in April, and it was a great event — you can check out my writeup to get a feel for it.
I’ve already got my ticket for BSides St. Pete, and if you’re interested in diving deeper into security, you should too!