The world of cyber descended to Newcastle! Although not there in person, I was there in spirit and joined virtually with legends Sam Humphries, Lisa Forte and Dan Card in a ShoDan showdown!

If you’ve been reading so far, you’ll know that one thing I love about the cyber community in particular is their embrace of the grass roots. Whether than be The Beer Farmers with BeerCon and Infosec Happy Hour, or The Many Hats Club ConINT, or Isolation Con there is certainly an element of helping people come together and make the world a better place. More so than in tech in general, in my humble opinion. BSides is another example of cyber doing good things. I love the original ethos of allowing others to speak that may not get a chance, but also having them speak along established speakers. The feeling that you’re there to speak on merit rather than who you know. I also love that anyone can run a BSides as long as you’re not a dick. You will be supported to do good things!

Anyhow this one is BSidesNCL – BSides Newcastle! Although I could not attend in person I love that BSidesNCL was streamed in its entirety. There as a very good keynote from Chris Kubeca, but also marvellous talks from Rosie Anderson, Aqeeb Husain, Anne Turner, Callum Lake and many more! Catch them all on the BSidesNCL YouTube Channel – here!

The rather wonderful Sam Humphries helps run BSidesNCL and asked if I would like to do a light hearted panel alongside Lisa Forte and Dan Card. Although I feel close to both of them through chatting online over the past few years, I’ve only met Lisa once at DTX last year and I’ve never met Dan Card yet – something we need to correct soon! Despite this closeness, I have been incredibly worried about this panel as they’re both fantastic speakers. I definitely felt like the noob in this panel of awesome and thanks so much for Sam for giving me the opportunity. Also these are three hugely talented professionals in Infosec and there is me. Although I’ve been a dev for nearly 10 years and have had a cyber tinge to most of my roles because it interested me, I feel very much a noob in cyber still.

I really needn’t have worried. Everyone was very kind and hopefully I didn’t talk over the others too much! It was a really good serious chat on how to avoid burnout in cyber, how can we switch off In Infosec, but also tinfoil hats, how Lisa likes goats, that Dan Card loves golf and how I might be in charge of a nation state – OK it might not have stayed that serious all the time! Check it out below!