WHO SUBMITTED?

Total of 168 submissions.  Down again from last year and the year previous.  We believe part of this may be due to doing away with the early selection round.

203 unique names on submissions (some submissions had more than one author, some authors made more than one submission)

Using dubious best guess methods (based on indication by name, bio, google, and/or personal knowledge):

  • 168 male
  • 35 female
  • sadly, no animals this year


WHAT WAS SUBMITTED?

Talks submitted per track (most submissions submit to more than one track):

  • OTM: 56
  • Belay It: 35
  • Belay It Twenty: 19
  • Bring It On: 77
  • Bring It On Twenty: 51
  • Build It: 37
  • Build It Twenty: 28

Word Trends (shows how many times each word appeared in the submissions.  There are many more obviously, but here are some that stood out):

227 – security
96 – data
57 – tools
44 – malware
43 – cyber
40 – code
33 – attack
33 – research
31 – iot
29 – threat
25 – detection
24 – software
21 – users
19 – defense
16 – windows
16 – privacy
14 – blue
12 – science
4 – introvert
2 – apple
1 – iOS
1 – moose


WHO WAS ACCEPTED?

Submissions:

  • 41 of the 168 submissions were accepted for normal speaking slots for an acceptance rate of 24.4%.
  • 2 Alternates were also chosen

Speakers:

  • 55 Speakers in total (not including closing plenary, one speaker is on stage twice)
  • 10 are first time speakers any major conference/event
  • 45 are first time speakers at ShmooCon
  • 10 have spoken at ShmooCon at least once before


HOW DO SPEAKERS GET CHOSEN?

Our review committee this year was comprised of 20 people.  We use an open source system called OpenConf to collect, read, and review the CFP proposals.  There are no hard rules for our reviewers, we  prefer that they read each paper with their own unique point of view and skill sets. However, the committee keeps in mind ShmooCon’s emphasis on new and upcoming speakers – both to ShmooCon and to the industry in general.  There is also a strong emphasis on never before presented material as well as talks that include the release of open source code.  Talks that have been given repeatedly or have been submitted to multiple cons in the future tend to get rated down by our reviewers.  Talks that have been given before but promise new/updated material are given more leeway.After the committee has finished doing their reviews the Heidi and Bruce, along with the Program Chairs, take that information and start to create the line up.  This is a game of score, topic, and track balancing and can take several days as we work across time zones.

This year’s review committee consisted of the following people:

Ben Laurie* – Program Chair
Jon Callas* – Program Chair
Heidi Potter* – Conference Organizer
Bruce Potter*- Conference Organizer
Iftach Iam Amit
Wade Benson*
Frank Clowes
Todd Nagengast*
Krassimir Tzvetanov
Tim Vidas*
and then those who shall not be named

*members of The Shmoo Group


TO EVERYONE WHO SUBMITTED:

Thank you.  We say this every year but it’s worth repeating:  We very much appreciate your submission and we encourage you to submit again next year or to some alternate venue.