WHO SUBMITTED?

Total of 169 submissions. Up from last year, but still a bit on the lower side compared to “normal”. We hear this is true across a number of conferences right now, and it wasn’t a big surprise.

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

Using dubious, incomplete, and (we really did try based on bios/google) best guess methods:

  • 156 He/Him
  • 31 She/Her
  • 5 Other or Unknown

WHAT WAS SUBMITTED?

Talks submitted per track (most submissions submit to more than one track, detailing how the talk would change per track):

  • OTM: 51
  • Belay It: 27
  • Belay It 20: 24
  • Bring It On: 57
  • Bring It On 20: 48
  • Build It: 30
  • Build It 20: 24
  • Fast and Furious: 23

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

  • security – 1075
  • vulnerability – 252
  • cyber – 215
  • attack – 210
  • cybersecurity – 204
  • software – 190
  • community – 146
  • red – 136
  • chain – 125
  • ransomware – 117
  • api – 106
  • demo 96
  • blue – 87
  • kernel – 80
  • adversary – 60
  • rfid – 52
  • russia – 48
  • python – 45
  • apple – 34
  • ukraine – 33
  • purple – 32
  • quantum – 29
  • kubernetes – 26
  • war – 23
  • mordor – 1
  • moose – 1

WHO WAS ACCEPTED?

Submissions:

  • 45 of the 169 submissions were accepted, making our acceptance rate 26.6%
  • 2 Alternates were also chosen

Speakers:

There are 54 speakers total (not including closing plenary)

  • 14 have spoken at ShmooCon before
  • 40 are first time ShmooCon Speakers
  • 8 have never spoken at a major conference before

HOW DO SPEAKERS GET CHOSEN?

Our review committee this year was comprised of 14 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.  

First and foremost, submissions must be complete. 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 conference organizers along with the program chairs, take that information and start to create the line up.  This is a combination of score, topic, and track balancing, and can take several days as we work across time zones.

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.