Stature of the Ministry

all right

got crime

all right um so yeah uh how how did it start and where's it going uh so as it's been mentioned uh the talk is stature of the ministry um a while back before things were less Well when things were less heated uh I thought it was kind of cheeky to base everything off of like East block terminology with Ministry of this and Ministry with that now it's almost a little cringey um but we're sticking with it so uh alternate title I I I don't want to do this again now it's been said um I've said something similar to this over the years uh I think every major conference person uh has said something to that effect at one

time or another um it's can we get that shut um it's possibly less of it's not so much I don't want to do it it's I don't want to do it in the same way um there's things that need to be improved um and yeah so uh if you hadn't caught the uh the slight nod to our theme or our theme being the slight nod to uh 13th floor um back in the 90s when they were doing multiple movies of the same genre for everything it seemed like uh this was the alternate to The Matrix uh technically came out first just got less popular um where it all started oh super quick history where it all got started uh 2009

in Las Vegas there's some arguments besides San Francisco was technically first although not done under the bid's name uh 2009 Las Vegas was the first major bides um I thought it was going to be a one-time thing if I remember correctly I didn't I wasn't in Vegas that year and I saw the article afterwards and I was like man that would have been awesome and then I thought about it a little more and I'd be like man I would have never been invited to that um it was a bit of a collection of Who's Who at the time and apparently everybody went home and immediately started doing local bsides events uh slight plug bsides DFW is one of the longest

continuous running bsides and it's um I think Austin has Us by one event um in Texas um so fast forward to to well yeah so in 2010 um Vegas obviously being in March April uh for whatever reason it didn't quite hit in not March April July August for whatever reason it didn't quite hit in 2009 but in 2010 uh Michelle Clinger kicked off besides DFW uh with the assistant of syntax error and they ran it for several years in 2014 Michelle mentioned that she was going to be um well likewise she had said several years in a row this is my last year 2014 she really meant it and it was her last year unfortunately in early 2015 syntax error

sent a message out and was like Hey life happens I can't do bides this year and it kind of started staring down this void and I'm not sure who it was I never quite got the name um I reached out to Michelle somebody was already talking to her uh followed back up with her like a month later that person had backed out because being that it was already April or something like that they didn't think they had enough time to make it be what they wanted it to be and me other than up to that point in time I had purely been an attendee uh and I was like how hard can it be I'll do that

um the the DFW metroplex has a bad habit of or at least it used to I don't know so much today had a bad habit if something stopped once it would never come back my original goal was to do it one time in 15 and hand it off to somebody else um yeah that didn't quite work out um so that gets us to yeah 2015 me the newcomer uh technically I picked it up in May I found some of those old mem mails while refreshing my memory um I thought it was closer to June but I picked it up in May um first year we ran just under well just over n grand for a total budget um

I was told prior to that that it was well over double that um so 2015 I was like look we got a venue we got speakers everything else is gravy um which is really the two biggest things you need fast oh not well fast forward not so much uh 2016 2015 we actually ran because we didn't have enough time to do any real organization uh I did incorporate with the state no I didn't I lie um I didn't incorporate with the state I was looking at how to do that um 2015 we technically ran under the flag of the lab Ms in Plano uh they were already a full on nonprofit they graciously accepted my offer of using

their 501c3 and uh ACC access to their bank account we brought in our own money but we wrote it underneath their umbrella so that everything could happen and very very immediately after the event I started working on the paperwork and 2016 we filed as 501c3 um in order to get money from sponsors it's a lot easier if you are a corporation of some sort whether it's an LLC or otherwise rather than an individual ask asking for some of the amounts that conferences asked for and my original attention because it was besides DFW uh but it was always in Dallas and typically in Northeast Dallas um I wanted to rotate it every year between Dallas and Fort Worth that didn't really

pan out until 2019 uh we finally got over to Fort Worth and then of course everything else happened and we went virtual from for a couple years and after leaving virtual um we've basically been in a rebuilding phase uh we we 2019 we had a false drop in attendance because it uh our venue had not dealt with a group of the size we were estimating so they had us put a cap on the attendees which was the first time we'd ever done that actually the only time we've ever done that and between the artificial cap on the attendees the fact that it was in Fort Worth and people were scared that were they were going to have to drive two

hours to get there at 7 a.m. on a Saturday morning um they uh a lot of the Dallas folks just didn't bother coming out and I talked to several afterwards and they were like oh I didn't think I'd get in and I was like okay we're a free con you know we have a high no-show rate and it's not a 2hour drive that early in the morning in Dallas so um point be um just to add to that I believe it was 20 2018 was Richland I think it was 2017 the last year we were at SMU in Plano I have an 80s Jeep YJ I made it from Arlington to Plano in 45 minutes on

a Saturday morning I don't know how but if I can do that in an 80s YJ I'm sure your car can get to Fort Worth anyhow enough about beating up on that um so yeah we finally got to the west side and then we had to go virtual oh right the uh the artificial cap so between the cap and being in the west side we lost a lot of attendance that year and then virtual kind of finished it off uh 20 22 we were back in Fort Worth um just the way things came down it wasn't the awesomest location uh but it worked and we like I said we've been on a rebuild track so um

yeah we'll see what the numbers say this year originally in bides land there was three original tenants being it has to be free uh we don't provide coming out of Defcon and the old hacker mentality of anonymity and handles and that kind of a thing we don't provide uh participant information to sponsors just blanket here you go go call everyone um and open cfp uh that is one of the primary reasons besides got started in the first place uh many folks were upset with the way speaker selection was handled in 2009 so had to be an open uh open cfp and from a sponsor standpoint no payer FL no pay for play um so yeah you might

be the Platinum latinum whatever sponsor of the event that doesn't mean you automatically get a speaking slot you still have to go through the cfp process and cost was very quickly or modified um I the story I heard um one of the one of the what's the word I'm looking for one of the catalysts for that uh was coming out of Austin and they were like look we cannot find a venue for free that can handle the number of people we're getting each year uh can we start charging a nominal fee to cover venue and what I heard was originally it was modified and the cost was supposed or the admission price was supposed to go

primarily directly only to covering the cost of the venue um yeah that's about all I have for that um you can look across the board uh like Las Vegas right now is technically a free event um but they stopped doing walk-ins before pandemic and to get a ticket you basically have to do something uh either volunteer with the the event uh sponsor somebody else to attend um be a donor so it's it's technically free but a good number of the ways to get a ticket you're exchanging some sort of funds um and you can look at at other events normally um if you track the bside stuff after about two or three events they really start

charging and some of them have even kind of raised their price a little bit um but uh normally what you'll see like Brian uh Brian College Station is a good example uh they had is it Brian College Station or is am I mixing that up yeah uh but I mean like Stevenville is different right Brian College Station is one and yeah okay okay so Brian College Station had one event uh it was free that first year um I was waiting to see if it was going to be free again or if it was going to charge unfortunately their first year was 2019 we know what happened there you'll normally see other events or other uh groups they'll pop up

they'll do a free event at a university and then the next year they'll generally start charging or something like that um personally I I've kind of taken it as a mission in life that as long as I'm in charge I'm going to keep DFW free um if I can humanly do that I will um this gets us into uh some of the future looking stuff um well actually this is current state right now programs uh obviously the conference or what bsides was originally tagged as an unconference um if you look at the Hard definition of what that is H doesn't really fit um however a lot of the bsides have fallen into sort of the standard conference

format uh it's still on a lot of the documentation that besides is a unconference but anyways that's our manual program right now or major program right now uh a once a year event one of the things that we kind of used to do um arguably not formally as bides but some of the key players were involved in other community outreach and engagements uh there for a while we had some cross pollination with um crypto party which sort of morphed into Libra Technica uh there was key people that were in both camps that were aiding and helping with women shelters and showing them how to detect whether or not there is a tracker on their phone

and those kind of things Technology based to help keep them safe um we also had a soft kickoff of a laptop donation donation program um [Music] in 20 I guess that was 2022 actually um that went okay uh by the time we really got to the point of making strides or formulating a a formal process the person who was really in charge of that left and has moved on to other things uh they gave us permission to keep moving forward with the program under the model they kind of lined out um technically we have uh a small allotment of laptops that were donated tail end of 2023 a little couple early in 2024 um because life has happened and

other people are busy at their day jobs those machines are still sitting there unrefurbished and we need to get those set up uh new hard drives and builds ready to go I would like to include sort of a little guide on generic safe Computing practices and steps and get those out to K12 kids that need them and beyond that projects um along the lines of Dallas not being really good or DFW not being really good with things stopping and coming back uh in the past it's been my experience you'll see people talk at one of the events and they'll want to collaborate on something and they'll have a lot of emails and discussions and if it does come to

fruition they never really report back to the groups where they met or it just kind of dies on the vine and nothing happens um in the past early days of pre 2012 the groups all sort of hated each other uh we had a turning point um 2012 was probably the beginning of the turning point and now most of the groups are very cross-pollinated massive core folks that float between everything um so love to see that but don't still don't see a lot of collaboration happening and projects outside of the monthly events and other things that happen um so we would love to be able to get some projects going keep them going and and do something

else other than just a single con uh challenges permanent staff uh being all volunteer being people's free time being unpaid things um like I said life happens and I totally get that um I don't know why certain people put up with me because I have a very skewed idea of work life balance uh it's not healthy don't be like me um but at the same time uh some of you might notice there was a very prominent key absence this year life happens they're busy with work they could not attend um also uh functional continuity you get that one person that one year they do an awesome job nothing gets documented they move on and oh hell

now how do we do this um one key aspect being the recording um this is actually virtual probably actually helped us out in that regard this is the first year besides DFW has kind of provided its own recording setup and it has actually been run by the volunteers without a dedicated you know oh I've been tinkering with OBS for five years you know it's like previously it was always one person was the only person who knew how to do any of that kind of stuff um now we've got it pretty streamlined um and I've done work with some other Vol uh nonprofits and volunteer groups and like I said folks are unpaid um not everybody but you definitely see a

difference in some people's output and how much they're willing to actually work it yes it's a nonprofit yes it's to help people the community whomever it's still a job you agreed to do a job do the job um I've seen so many of the volunteers treat it as if it doesn't necessarily matter and you might have 20 people but what's actually getting done um so that's the other challenge with the Staffing uh beyond that um as you might be able to tell some of these slides I I didn't quite finish them uh funding is always a challenge uh we we are trying to move more towards uh for multiple reasons we are trying to move

more towards a true Community funded by the participants donorship uh first thing everybody says to me do an admission uh yes that would be the easy way out I'm also lazy and admission prices are not tax deductible for a nonprofit I don't want to do that extra paperwork work that's one of the reasons I want to keep it free but you know more like a pay as you can type model those that can contribute more you know that that's why we're Hawking Our Vintage swag for donations outside um that's why I haven't done it too much this year uh in the past we've made General call outs actually we did mention this year um giving Tuesday or whatever it was in

September you know trying to get those things going uh there's also a slight um technical line in the IRS code uh regarding sources of your funding and if it is a highly condensed few select things you could technically technically get restructured as a foundation rather than a charitable nonprofit in order to be a true charitable nonprofit 33.3% of your profit or your Revenue has to come from a quote unquote public entity if over the aggregate a single entity has donated more than 2% of your multi-year aggregate they are no longer considered public so the first couple years I was like we only had eight sponsors uh I thought it was cool cuz you know going to some conferences

you got just lines of 30 some odd uh vendors and you're like oh my gosh um I thought it was cool we were able to do such a good thing with so [Music] few inputs um on the back side that kind of bit us on taxes because yeah um so we need to increase our public donorship um it wears you out uh this is my 10th year I think and there's a lot of different things there's a lot of moving parts and if you don't have a proper team behind things um it it it very easily ends up being mostly one person or it just shuts down uh so that's that's one thing I've struggled with I'm not good at

delegation and uh it is my absolute Mission uh after November to get actual committee setup and get more people involved as key players and individual teams uh so that this thing can kind of become more self- sustaining rather than relying on a few uh primary players um I'm sure there's more uh that's all the challenges I'm thinking of at the moment highlights um it usually isn't until November and December and after the first Saturday in November that I start to remember part of the reason why I do this and it's every year because I'm so close to it I'm like man this sucked that sucked this failed this didn't work and then I'll run into somebody in the hallway

and they'll be like dude this was the best con ever and I was like oh all right okay it it's it is definitely a matter of perspective um so getting the feedback hearing what you all have to say definitely keeps this train moving um witnessing the impact in life uh it's not just people feeling good and having a good time we've seen folks get jobs start careers change careers um get out of bad situations um some of the things like with the women's shelter um not only seeing you help somebody but knowing that that's very very specifically having an impact on them um for folks that are looking for self-advancement uh if you're in a job well actually

that's more the second one um You probably hear at your day job a lot about being well-rounded and doing this and doing that and if you want this position you've got to improve whatever it definitely helps with the solve skills I am unfortunately still using a lot of ums up here I have I think I've gotten better at speaking I have definitely gotten better at negotiating with uh entities and corporations and um choosing words uh not to be deceptive not to sugarcoat things but just to be clear and effective in the language that you use to get a job done um and then on the other side for the technical aspect uh day job you're siloed you can only do

this but you want to learn a different angle of something we we probably have some of that technology going on that we need assistance with um you can't get into Cloud at your day job you don't have whatever resources to do Cloud on your own well maybe we're standing something up maybe we want to move off of some other platform into a cloud platform um the some of the recording stuff uh you know you want to get into Av Graphics uh Mad Hat has done a lot of our art in the past um I am trying not to abuse him every year for that purpose if we can get other people that can draw and do

art and create logos all the better you know um Step Up the T-shirt game um I know you've probably seen it most of the socials it's just text I don't have the time or inclination to put together all kinds of cool graphics for a post that is going to trend for a minute and a half um so I I I've always been more about the content rather than the Polish um that may be to our own detriment who knows at the same time maybe somebody else has more of that polished skill and again there's more but this is what I had going off the top of my head and so that gets us to the uh to the

Future U I've have already mentioned uh establishing some committees expanding Beyond just this event uh some of the ideas that have been bounced around technically a year and three months ago I recorded uh several Folks at dha's 10th anniversary and I still haven't gotten that put together to actually use on a podcast um I've got name I want to use uh all that kind of thing I just haven't actually pulled the trigger on it um tutorials um providing if we can putting together uh well actually a good example of that Mastadon [Music] when good God was that when he bought it um a while back there was a huge push to get on Mastadon 2022 and I was like this is perfect

timing because I was already trying to work on some sort of a almost like an eff style comparison of the different um platforms and which ones you know have the best privacy settings and what privacy settings do you need to check within each one to make sure you're doing things securely and then that happened and everybody started moving to Mastadon and we were going to try to put together one for bsides 2022 it just didn't happen in time and since then it's kind of died on the vine uh reviews this borders on endorsements it can brush up against advertising uh a lot of that stuff kind of gets into a gray Zone being a nonprofit um but if there's a technology

that you really like and you just want to let people know about that or you you know like it's lifechanging you know let's you know post some extra content on reviews uh we're at a university again this year I would like to be able to do more with the universities uh a lot of it is actually benefiting us we get a venue uh what does the University get back um some of their students attend uh but I would also like to do more of a job fair if we could partner with the different schools and you know do a job fair in the spring at UTD do a job fair in the fall at uh you know SMU or whatever um

another idea that I had recently piece together or do like an alternate style job board um if you were around in the olden days uh one of our folks who has since moved away kind of did that don't know if that's still active uh I've got a weird idea for an interactive Capture the Flag I won't to go into too many details but basically rather than the typical command line portal um trying to do something else um books uh Defcon has their story writing competition um was thinking of doing like a uh the Jason E Street stealing the network stealing the identity series that was novel like but technically accurate throughout I would kind of like

to do something like that possibly in a Choose Your Own Adventure format um there was some old books back in the day from Scholastic where by the end of the book you actually had like a functional basic program um do something like that not only would it get people contributing but it would also provide possibly something educational for the younger folks coming up in techn techology um so bunch of other ideas that are out there um and of course uh because it's too small on my screen um yeah half of this is just my own delusional ravings um so if you want to come on that ride and and see if we can make it happen let's talk about that and

hopefully not fall into the Trap I mentioned on slide three so that's kind of where we at or where we are um yeah at this point it's

questions I don't I don't know how that would work as far as donation on Amazon um just yeah I mean I I know we could self-publish and get it out there um and okay yeah is that hard copy or is that

PDF okay and for for the video

okay so for the video folks were mentioning Amazon possibly with donations also Black Hills does something similar with the pay as you go model um yeah uh my big thing right now is you know the call to action out of all of this is who's willing to help who wants to do to do stuff and um how quickly can we kind of make that happen um just because well we don't want to do it too quickly because November December I'm going to be wrapping up uh 2024 numbers and year end stuff uh but definitely in January uh want to get a head start and start uh working on 2025 and the various other programs um the laptop donation is one in

particular uh aside from people straight up donating laptops there's the option of what's it called um monitoring the uh various public auctions and finding decent laptops that are still relatively usable that are being sold on a pallet for you know like $10 a pop or whatever and if we can get a bulk a pallet of those and then just go through them if we have to scaven Parks you know take two and scavenge Ram to make one good one so be it um but basically finding the stuff somebody that's has the time and inclination to actually refurb the devices install new hard drives somebody that wants to set up the os's and all that um so that's that's going to be

multiple people working in tandem to get that done um that's probably one of the most physical ones that I can think of uh but yeah just just looking for people's assistance and help uh ideas even um if you see something that we can improve um and ideally you want to help improve it uh those are the things we're looking for to to drive this forward and keep making it bigger and better uh We've as I mentioned earlier we in a rebuilding phase I'm okay with slow growth I I I don't want to see some of the things that have happened at other events um whether or not that was attributed to the fact that they did grow too fast or

they didn't grow too fast um being in the smaller event there's a lot of those kind of things that H that that just don't happen here um so I'm okay with a slow level of growth but I would still like to see some growth year after year any other

questions that would have been an awesome slide to have in here um the the the best way that is that might still get ignored for a month but will get followed up on is email uh besides besides DFW Gmail is the the singular best way to get our attention um and to not be overlooked uh we do have the uh the bsides DFW Discord you can DM us on Twitter you can DM us on Mastadon um you can even send us a message on LinkedIn but the primary means would definitely be uh email besides DFW Gmail anything

else for bides DFW it is the first Saturday of every year um first Saturday of November every year um now with that said uh the Metroplex has a plethora of things you might have noticed the DFW infos QR code out in the lobby um there is uh is Fort Worth 2600 okay so there's D okay Dallas 2600 uh Denton 904 DC Group DC 21 yeah yeah DC 214 DHA um North Texas cyber is rebooting uh then you have your more corporate ones like Issa uh there's supposedly an ISC squared Meetup I don't know that I've ever seen them actually have a meeting uh oasp is still sporadically active so there are many other groups to engage with that aren't

technically besides DFW from a bside standpoint uh there is a loose Global organization that kind of provides guidance but technically every bides is its own independent thing um so I mean really other than the fact that we have the name DFW if somebody wanted to they could start up bides Dallas or bsides Fort Worth or bsides Mansfield um but uh every bsides is technically an independent Grassroots org um and they're all different types of some of them are llc's some of them are nonprofits some of them are structured other ways um so it's all over the map but locally the only thing besides DFW has done in a consistent basis is this conference once a year

yeah they're moving to L North Texas cyber is moving to Lewisville yep uh I don't know

Hardware hacking basically came out of um DHA Ibis and hono um we we got in contact with them because they were at DHA as regulars uh prior to that albeer was running the hardware hacking um we met up with him at the other Meetup Group um so yeah it's there's a lot of organic stuff around here uh it's just getting plugged into those

meetings yep yep and we got a couple more minutes anything else all right um if that's it uh you can you can always find me um the last hour is going to be a little inconvenient for me to really chat with anybody um but again email um socials uh find me at one of the monthly meetings and we can definitely hook up and see what we can make happen um I am looking for any assistance possible I I I don't want to leave besides DFW and see it go away I want to make sure that it can carry on before I back out and stop doing things so as much as I'm tired as much as I don't want to do

certain things again next year um I I'm here until somebody else can carry it forward so grou or a group of somebody's AF yeah don't like I said don't be me but the the more somebody's I mean even DC 214 uh went from a single person to two people this year so yeah the the more people that can run it in a team fashion all the better provided the teams get along which is a whole other issue but cool thank you guys for coming out [Applause]