BG - 14 Years Later, Proving Ground is Proving Out

okay folks uh let me take care that welcome everybody this is uh a panel on our Proving Ground program here at bsides LV something we started uh as far as I'm aware pretty much one of the first in the industry um this is a uh Mentor track for firsttime speakers at an international you know security conference so um a lot of the folks that come through are actually you know accomplished Security Professionals already they just haven't actually gotten up in front of an audience and uh you know stared them all in their naked eyeh holes um so we are uh excuse me joined today by uh our current and uh Future Track chairs for The Proving

Ground track and a number of our current uh mentees and speakers in the program um excuse me uh guy want don't you to go ahead and uh tell folks a little bit about yourself and uh uh my name is guy mcdell I've been one of the track chairs for approving ground since 2014 um and when I'm not here I am a senior software engineer at tenable and I have a uh recurring maker space habit all right and Phil uh hi can you hear me okay there we go uh hi everyone my name is Phil young uh I gave my very first talk here at bides 2012 in the mentor program I was one of the mentees and since then I have

been a mentor every year um and if you do it enough they just promote you up to the track CH that's just how it works um although we were joking earlier about how like the less hair you have the better your chances of being a track here so um what I'm not doing this and by the way love the program I'm a huge supporter of the program I think it's probably one of the best in the industry um when I'm not doing that I am the director of Mainframe pentesting for net buy so yeah uh guy has been leading this track for like the last decade um and uh you know as we're we're in a right now

we're in kind of a two-year handoff period between the two of them uh Phil shadowing guy this year and next year uh guy is going to Shadow Phil and uh we'll see how that goes but I think it's going to you know we're looking to to take this program up to the next level um KY can you tell us a little bit about like maybe how this got started what the original impetus was you know what were what the what we're trying to do with this track sure so the program started say 2011 uh it was it was originally run by Moy and remember her new handle but that I came on about three years after after my wife spoke at the

program um and we started doing uh run throughs and they went hey that's a good idea would you like to be a chair and I went uh sure um and yeah took it over outright in 2014 um and the entire time our what we've been trying to do is get across how important it is to be able to tell a story a lot of what we do as infoset professionals is try to communicate stories of risk to people who are in decision or in positions of being able to make decisions about that risk and the better we can tell that story The more likely we are to succeed in helping to protect people and protect

the organizations we work for and so being able to present at a conference like this is one way way of getting better at telling those stories and so that's basically the emphasis of the program we pair you with somebody who has a lot of experience in speaking and you spend basically 10 to 12 weeks depending on the year uh working intensively with that person to Workshop or talk and at the end you get a speaker credit at an International Conference so yeah it's what uh what kind of impact uh do you think this program's been having have you seen you know changes in the industry changes in you know uh uh speak you know people have gone through the

program coming back you know what what uh what's made this worth it in some ways it's it's interesting watching some mentees it's very clearly there they're power leveling through their career and they end up being in positions like this guy you know started as a speaker and now is running pen testing at a on on Mainframe um I've seen folks get their work covered in the BBC I've seen people on uh NHK and National J Japanese national broadcasting um it it it it basically just it's like a shot in the arm for your career how about you Phil what uh what have you seen like you know you I know you're involved in other conferences you

know very much um so um for those who don't know um this program has been it's it's it's not just impactful here it it influences other conferences and I know that for a fact because I helped someone put a you know put a proposal together where they created the black hat coaching program that's not a thing that existed like in 2019 or earlier and and that is a direct you know that's a direct cause of this program here I was talking about how wonderful the program is here and how black hat would benefit from having speaking coaches or anything like that and then now they have a very robust coaching program it it's run completely different than the program is

here but it's the same effect the people are confident in giving their talks because they've had someone who's had that experience coach them through it so that to me is the like like like it's spreading which is you know speaking is hard and speaking for the first time is extra hard and so it's nice to have someone in your corner helping you do that so um what would you say like are and you know this is open to either of you and then after you answer I think maybe we'll we'll introduce some of our panelists here and kind of get their take on this as well what are some of the most memorable like talks or moments within

this program for you one of my favorite talks of all time was actually one of my first mentees who talked about the E ethical implications of social engineering with robots and one of the things that she did was basically recreate the um not the Stanford Prison Experiment it's the other major psychology test but with robots um and basically getting people to do things that they wouldn't otherwise do just because a robot told them to do it and I was just like that is terrifying and also amazing um another one of my favorite talks was somebody who had gotten a summer internship at NATO talking about how they pent tested satellites and this was two years before deathcon started their

satellite hacking competition and so that was just fascinating like here's how we take this thing that's an orbit that could fall on people and make sure it doesn't fall on people so yeah that um every year we've done Proving Ground pregame has been extremely rewarding because we get to see people who are we we get to help them get over the butterflies we get to help them you know just sort of put that last a little bit of polish on the talking before they send up the door that's that's always very rewarding those are the those are the ones I can think of at the moment but you you definitely stole mine uh so thanks for that uh one of my

mentees um she was doing research maybe a different talk but also about satellites and adversarial threats to satellites and it was a very cool talk about like and that's nothing look I work in main frames that is not something that I would get exposed to if it weren't for me being a mentor right like because there's so much happening at the con you know that so I get exposure to all these things that I would never ever get exposed to um a couple of other memorable ones I know Cheryl she gave a talk on Shadow it that was really really excellent and from that talk her career i' I've watched her career just explode over the last like eight years or so so

yeah go ahead I just I just thought of one um there's a group of researchers at a University of Florida who used zmap to find open core routers core routers that had open SSH they were accepting open SSH connections and they hit all of these routers and basically asked what key exchange algorithms they accepted and discovered that something like 40 or 50% of them still accepted deaths oh and when the isps who ran those core routers discovered this all of a sudden the key algorithms changed so that is an example of a direct impact that a proven ground talk had on the state of the art no and what I love about these is it shows like

two things that I really love about this program one that this is for firsttime speakers not necessarily for people who have never like had an extensive Career Unit right you get people who are are new out of school but and have a great idea but you also get people people who are like accomplished and have done like amazing careers and this is just their first kind of getting that out into the community right uh and then the because of that because we draw from kind of a different you know more varied crowd like the the the topics that we're that we cover are just fascinating variety right in this one track so and these talks when they come out uh you know

they tell people this is not a kidy pool right like by the time these things go to stage they're as good as any talk in the conference it's like I'm very excited there's a talk coming up today that I really want to see it is about using Skyrim to hack other people's computers with mods that is it's such a fascinating thing and I've already seen the talk once so I know it's really good but um but that's the kind of diversity of talks like from satellite hacking to mods from a 10-year-old game right like like it's it's just amazing yep so in that vein what I'd like to do is kind of go down the line here in the panel and you know

tell the audience uh you know who you are you know what what you do how you um got to Proving Ground like why you decided to do this and then what you're talking about or what your talk was about when you did it right hi everybody my name is Le alpi I'm originally from Mexico uh currently working as a security engineer for Google and this is my first time speaking at Biz Las Vegas so I'm very happy about I have been coming for the last three years so I feel like it was time for me to contribute back to the community so yeah like my talk was yesterday it was a a CBE or an open

source software very popular that I found last year and with that I did a research uh as somebody mentioned uh we may have like uh technical skills but I I want to improve on my soft skill communication skills so that this was a great opportunity for me to pair with my mentor uh who teach me uh a lot of things about how to communicate better so I'm very happy and I really appreciate this opportunity all right hello everybody my name is master Chen um I was a mentee for Proving Grounds back in 2014 where I did a a talk on being a k artist and then uh I've been a mentor ever since um my day job is devops my night job is

stalking and ENT um and I want to I want to help build the community I want to bring up you know the Next Generation and that's why I'm here I'm lilan ashbaker I'm a product security engineer at uh the Boeing Company and whisk Arrow um I'm a this is the first time that I've done mentorship here at the proven grounds track um my Mente did a presentation on airline Fair hacking and how to read a lot of the data that's available out there within these internal systems um one of the big Parts about doing mentorship here here uh with Proving Grounds track and everything is not only what you can impart and teach others about but also

what you get to learn as a mentor about your own talk skills your own speaking style your own presentation uh the way that you put your own presentations together hi I'm caros Gonzalez I'm the C leader at banko Brazil a Brazilian public bank and it's my first time here speaking in in at besides my talk will be about how we are bringing uh thre and tail data to drive the red red blue team purple team exercises and bring changes to the organization much much faster much much more focused

much I I'm uh Paul Wartman um I'm a Bluetooth security researcher and a research scientist for um well uh I'm here as a mentee and give my talk today at 3 p.m. come and see it uh which is on Bluetooth research and trying to improve and augment the security community's ability to kind of explore the Bluetooth Wildlife that's out there and and really just improve the community's ability to dive into this space a lot more easily um I would say that what I've feel like I've gotten out of it so far though you know just nervous with the call with the presentation coming out is um it's been really useful in helping to kind of reconfigure my thought

process on how it is I should present the information that I have how to best kind of reach the point of what I'm trying to tell you without just fire hosing information at you in the hope that you're as curious about the subject as I am hi my name is uh George Wong I'm a senior engineer from a company called Cloud kitchens uh four months ago I could could not have imagined giving a talk at this uh conference uh and this Proving Ground actually has been fantastic I feel tremendously lucky uh to have a mentor um Australian bloke um to help me uh that's really cool um actually I always want to give a talk

somewhere but never knew the best way of doing it and U my manager just casually said hey why don't you SM a talk to B size so I worked hard on that and the deadline was actually like Fast approaching so i s submitted literally like the night before and he said basically it's not a security talk if you don't submit the last minute so it may me feel l better and I didn't hear back for besides for some time and assumed that basically it was going to be you know a wash but I was able to um hear back and actually OB obviously be here so I'm tremendously excited to be here I'm actually very grateful for the

experience and the opportunity to uh to do this thank you thank you I think we have two more here in the in the front would you like to come up to the mic here and tell your

story hi I'm Jen hman I'm a technical director with the government I work for the National Security Agency um this was and this is my first time being a mentor um and it was fantastic I'm OG I guess what they would consider OG right you've been around long enough you're OG so you know if you're in the career field for like 30 some years you get tired of hearing yourself talk so this is a great way to prepare and help new voices in the community come together so and my guy gives his talk um this afternoon on Nick and Flakes and I not a devops person um but this was a great way for me to get

more exposure to devops and get him to get his crowd excited about devops so I need to connect him with you later thank you and and finally we have soya aoyama who has a AEP carefully prepared a statement to read for us uh this is one of the things I love most please do come up it's one of the things I love most about this program is we work with folks who all the time who are not native English speakers right and we can still help them participate in this given that it's a lingua franka for this industry you know they can be part of the conversation way they couldn't otherwise uh hello uh I'm soya

a um founder and organizer of bze Tokyo uh my first presentation was at proving Grant in 2017 I thought uh Proving Ground program was great so I've been involved in uh many activity so far in 201 uh8 I founded besid Tokyo and encod bide Tokyo speaker to present at Proving Ground in fact a beside Tokyo speakers uh become a proving Grand speaker and I have been uh supporting uh them as a mentor uh since rest yeah thank you thank [Applause] you right so um I would love if there's any you know I have questions I can ask the panel but also if there's anyone from the audience who would like to you know ask a

question about the program we have a microphone up here so you know please feel free to just you know line up there and and fire away anybody on either side of the room here but um so I got to say um you know of this experience you know you youve gone through what um what you say was like the biggest thing that you learned like what was your big takeaway was there anything that you know we just again just go down the line or or you know and you know what was the biggest thing you got out of this right um one of the biggest take away from for me was to put myself in the

shoes of the of the people attending my talk like don't make assumptions like uh you know the way to present information uh make sure to always if somebody's looking at your presentation and get distracted uh and then look back to the screen uh the person should be able to very quickly you know know what's going on right so the way we present the data uh is one of the most important things because you could have the best research the most amazing research that you have done but if you are not able to communicate it or express it in a in in a very efficient way uh it's the same as uh don't not having anything right so

that's one of the of the things how you learn how to do nice presentation nice slides and I feel like that's going to improve my my career and those are things that I can apply in my day-to-day job thank you uh yeah actually to to piggy back off of that um I think it's it's great to get out of your own mind uh and into the mind of your audience and so uh the this program has really helped uh with with kind of organizing that and just uh making it a really nice uh place and and way to do that so yeah so I actually learned something very important from Guy the other day which is when you're about to do a

presentation go to the bathroom it calms everybody right down well for me I think it was I it's my first time so I don't have that much experience so anyway but for me I think it was to think about uh how what are you going to present and don't don't just read the books don't tell what's in the books tell your story what what your experience how are you're doing things what are what were your results what went wrong how do you manage to to to fix that I think that's a a big uh a great uh big change to just don't don't just tell what's the books tell your story so piggybacking off that I would I

would agree I think I think the biggest thing I learned was to really um boil down and be concise about what it is I wanted to get across sure I may have weeks months years of of research and practice that I could just throw up on you of of just a mountain of information but really what was clear was to get that initial hook in so that the folks that really are interested that hopefully will help kind of grow and expand the work that you're trying to share are the ones that get the concept that once once you've got that they'll spend the time they'll dig into it they'll they'll spend the time to really

get into the research you're trying to share but that's a lot harder without presenting it in a really clean and concise way uh I think m is more about self-discovery and confidence um because giving a speech is obviously a big thing to do at least for me and having a room packed with people to see you give a talk really gives you that feeling that you've done something you know worthwhile I feel it's hard to get that anywhere else another thing too I guess two things um it's really like the energy people here every been so excited about excited about everything and there's so much stuff going on I feel like that's a great gateway to like

learn more about everything in general and having that energy Propel you forward uh into the future no matter what you do all right now I'm I'm going to flip this so we stop picking on you first every time but now we we'll start at the other end here so you get to had go without any time to think about it um but uh what did you expect coming into this program and what surprised you the most about the experience yeah honestly I had like no idea what to expect I went to bsid in Austin the year before and uh it was pretty chill like not nearly as big as here so assum to be just as chill

here uh but the number of people showed up was actually quite overwhelming and also the quality speaker here is also quite overwhelming like the keyn notes given on both states were fantastic and I was very EXC excited about what happened so that that was really awesome um and also my mentor too I had no idea my mentor was so accomplished in so many fields and that guy is actually toing me on how to give a talk so that was like Michael Jordan coaching you to play basketball I feel not quite but I mean that was quite quite fortunate to be here thank you yeah so I would I would say I think what I expected to get out of this was

to just kind of get better maybe at being able to speak on the subject or or trying to present my information in a more meaningful way um which I think I got but not in the way that I necessarily expected I think my mentor did a really great job of kind of opening my mind to how I can improve what it is I'm saying how it is I can I can get better at it I think I think the main thing that has really surprised me about Proving Grounds is um people here are [ __ ] smart I mean they are really really smart and it is a little nerve-wracking to have my presentation be this late in the game that I've

already seen some really brilliant talks from everyone else improving ground so yeah I'm a I'm a little more nerve-racked than I thought I would be yeah I agree I I agree with you and my talk will be the last one and so but I wasn't as just as you I was I didn't had much expectation because I didn't know what to expect so it was great it has been it has been great uh my mentor helped me extract much more information from what I I was planning at first and it has been a great experience yeah so I'll say that as a mentor I didn't really have as much expectations as a lot of the speakers

here but uh one thing that I did get out of it was the satisfaction of of seeing somebody that you've talked with you've emailed with communicated uh you know work through hard to massage a a presentation out of a pile of information and see them just absolutely take off and Excel at providing that presentation to everybody and seeing how satisfied they are with themselves yeah well as a as a mentee um I mean I expected because of the way that Proving Grounds was advertised um I was expecting to work on my presentation skills and the the public speaking aspect of it um what I did not expect was how addicting it would be cuz um

I've been speaking every year since that first year in 2014 and I love it so much um wonderful and then on the mentor on the mentor side uh just meeting people who have great ideas and their need to share that those great ideas uh it's it's a drug a good one a good one it's good crack yeah I I have the same opinion but I have a quick story for that so when when I get the email that I have been accepted to The Proving Grounds my immediate feeling reaction was kind of like anxiety right because now now I need to deliver right and this is going to be an International Conference I'm pretty sure there's going to be really

cool talks way above my level and then uh I start feeling the uh it's a great commitment right you have to uh meet with your Mentor like every week and you have to practice over and over but uh it's a good feeling because you see your progress you iterate over that you get feedback you address it next week and as he say he like very addictive right like seeing how your your word gets improving over and over like a little bit every time until you see the final result and people add you good questions and everybody looks happy so it was a great experience thanks uh Phil guy same question for both of you actually thank

you uh so one of the things that surprised me the most when I first started being a mentor in the program was the friendships I would make with my mentees like I just came in thinking oh I'll Mentor them I've given some talks I'll give them some tips I am still friends with a lot of my mentees I still talk to them we're friends on LinkedIn we we see each other here at bsides it was not that's not what I expected to come out of that this program and it really is you know you really get to build a network being a mentor of like very smart people so for me it's two things one first of

all just watching the mes Stand and Deliver um anybody can talk for anybody can info dump it takes a lot of focused time and effort to put together a cogent 25 minute talk and not run out of time so watching mentees do that year after year has been one of the most rewarding things I think in this program the other one is just watching people grow you like watching Master Chen go from giving his first talk to like being a regular repeat mentor and speaker and like becoming an expert in the field has been extremely rewarding um watching uh Wendy Knox Everett go from giving a talk on uh very early hacker legal stuff to

now she's a ciso at a startup uh and that within the last decade like that career progression just took off like a rocket so watching that stuff has been extremely rewarding for me uh so back to the other end again here but uh just a very uh kind of classic exercise three things about the program what would you keep what would you start what would you

stop all right um I would definitely keep the mentorship program like the people mentoring you those are very high quality people and definitely will keep them um what I would stop um I don't know I don't think there's anything that I don't like about it um Okay but well I will start doing you're perfect telling us we're perfect is a valid answer great great yeah it's fantastic I really have nothing next to say um but what I started is that perhaps um tell us to book the hotels earlier cuz I booked one night here and I messed up rest of the booking so he end up having to uh share rumors on my my teammates was here and

he he snores a so it's it's not not fantastic but it was really my fault cuz I didn't really like figure out the logistics um and also I didn't realize death count you have a shut going to defcom so also mess it up too so I'm actually in like a really far hotel I have to like walk to defcom so really if you can start that like logistic uh chain a little bit earlier that could really help me uh in the future for new people in the future thank you uh what I would keep yeah I think I think I'd have to to voice my agreement that the mentorship progr program seems absolutely amazing I I wouldn't change

that for a thing um what I would start is maybe start communic or I don't know if necessarily forcing communication but getting the the mentor mentee communication maybe started earlier cuz while I feel like I was pretty ready um from the get-go I definitely could have used maybe a few more practice runs just a little more time to refine it but I mean at the same time really how much can you polish a tur before you put it up on stage at some point at some point you're just you're just doing busy work um in terms of stuff I would stop I nothing yet but if something comes to mind I will I will definitely let you

know all right all right about to keep I think that the I say the the mentorship program is great I would I really love the the the the schedule the the checkpoints because it helped helped me get a sense if I if I'm progressing what I should be now am I good am I ahead am I like behind that was great and what what I would start I don't know maybe as I said having a mentor was too has been so good maybe at a second one work in Paris to get a second a second view I don't know and I don't what just you you remove what you stop I don't know I nothing

all good yeah I think you're going to get a lot of people saying not to stop anything within the program because everything works out very well definitely keep the check-ins um because as even as a mentor it's really a nice little checkpoint to say like have you done this this and this checklists are great um the other thing that I would add is on the mentor side is introductions between all of us because many of us just just showed up in this room together and found out that we're all mentors uh yes that's that's an excellent point right there is uh uh as part of the mentorship program we are I don't want to say siloed but exactly we

we kind of only learned today that we were all mentors together and so I think it would have been a great uh thing to have these conversations a little bit beforehand and just uh introductions and I think that would be that would be a great thing um there was not aot about the actual program though that I would necessarily change it really is excellent the way it is or else I wouldn't be uh here doing it for all almost as long as Phil um and then just the the last thing is um I know sometime you know we we're asked what our expertise is so that we can be matched up with uh the the proper

uh uh presentation and I know that I know that they do their best to kind of match you up uh with uh with your expertise um I don't know if there's a a better way to scale that or score that um but sometimes I'm I'm looking at these presentations and I'm like I really really really want to work with this one and I know I don't always get what I want so but I don't know that's so so start giving you whatever you want is exactly it's Christmas Christmas is early cool I think uh things to keep I think the Proving Ground uh program as it is is amazing uh there was a great speaker reception party so you have the

chance to uh get together and and met people uh I think in terms of uh something to add or something to start will be really cool to have uh and I don't know if it exist already but kind of like a program of how to transition between being a mentee into a mentor or some followup pass the conference and I think that will be pretty cool and in terms of things to stop I I cannot think of anything to complain right now so sorry I apologize um so same question just feed it on over and then uh I've got another question for the audience in general after that there's a dam and I have a joke

that we've never found a cfp cfp program we didn't hate um it's the one we have is is it's the least bad we've ever had it's like democracy yeah it's yeah it's it's the worst form of of of program management except the all the other ones but it's it's better it's it's it is the least bad one we've ever had yes exactly um I would love to do a little bit more coaching on how to submit to a cfp because there are every year there are a handful of talks where you look at the title and you go this could be good and then you look at the abstract and there's nothing and that always breaks my heart

a little bit CU like there was an attempt and if if we had provided you with just a little bit more information we could have made something beautiful um yeah that's definitely something I think even for the the broader program that we're looking at submissions yeah just I would love to be I would love just to have a a too many to pick from M yeah for for me you know obviously I love the program I'm here because of the program um this is this is this is so amazing hearing all the people having very similar experiences to me it's it's it's it's very heartwarming um so I wouldn't change much I think what I

would change is adding more speaking slots MH right um and and right like putting something together for for because like obviously if you're a first-time speaker it's probably your first time writing a cfp and so we might we might want to put something on the website or something that says like this is how you fill out a cfp here's a talk go watch it for proven ground you know if you have questions email us about the cfp if you don't understand something so we can make ourselves more available um within reason to people first time submitters MH yeah I mean there are examples online and so forth but obviously like it's not yeah but it's an

art it's definitely an art like I know I know John's in the audience here I helped him write a bunch of cfps it's an art yeah all right so I I'm just out of curiosity show of hands in the audience how many of you have either as a a had anything to do with the the ground program yourselves like uh okay we got like about a dozen easy here yeah okay that's awesome um and then of the of the other folks how many are here because you're thinking about having something to do with Proving Ground and yep okay couple in the back there all right so um I'm going to invite any of you who who

want to answer any of the questions yourselves that I brought up so far go ahead and grab that mic right there and and and let or or even come up and use this one because we'd love to hear you know what you because you're in front of the 12 people who raised their hand you're all sitting over there together for some reason it's like you can smell each other sniff each other out it's it's kind of kind of eerie actually but um anyone at

all and if you want you you can even if you want to be on camera you can come up here or you can do it from back there if you don't F go so um I presented for the first time here uh yesterday so thank you for the opportunity for that and I think that for me one of the things that I found most valuable was just having somebody else to confirm whether or not my idea even makes sense uh I I was not sure if this was a talk that anybody would want to go to if it was either too esoteric or simply not novel enough um and having somebody to help me figure out what do I emphasize

and yes this is actually worth speaking about was very helpful validation how do I reach my audience that kind of thing yeah that's that's awesome thank you all right um hi Max your me awesome oh okay oh awesome I love it I love it this is great um okay so one more one more oh great yeah yeah please

yes all right uh my name is Jonathan fiser I I first presented um at a conference in 2022 I think now I didn't directly go through the program but Phil mentored me so in spirit I came through here and like you said it launched for me and I was able to speak more confidently I was able to write cfps more confidently and then build a community and so it's been very rewarding for me but even more so um from the mentor side of things it's my first year being a mentor and being able to get back to other people who want to realize their dream of speaking and coming here specifically to get that start is very rewarding and it um it

helps me learn more about what I'm doing what I could do better get and I learned just as much from my Mente as I think she did for me so um but I do have one question for you guys as well do you have an idea of how many people have directly been impacted by this mentorship knowing that it bleeds out into the industry and it's not just contained to this so is the question the the first order like people who've actually participated in the program as opposed toly mentored and right so it's been R running at least 12 years yeah so if we do the basic math let's say 25 talks a year yeah and then at least 500 and then

you know second order thousand who knows right that's that's incalculable really but but definitely yeah we I mean we have recorded you know talks all the way back to 2012 you know a couple dozen a years so yeah so thank you so much for all of your help and making this possible okay so the reason I we're here today is because I love this program this program is deeply personally important to me as a part of what I see this is our one of our core missions that bides is being able to open up this conversation in this community to people who otherwise wouldn't be able to participate right I mean and maybe not even as a speaker

there are people probably I show of H how many of you would have been able to come to this conference if you hadn't been part of this program one out of all of you would two maybe your employer might have sent you or whatever but like that and that's pretty typical like we we in a in a cohort usually 3ars of them would not ever be able to attend the conference let alone speak at it if they weren't participating I just think it's phenomenal so I'm on a mission and I want you all to help me with this Mission if you're here today you must Care at least a little bit about this and I want all of you

when you're done with your bsides or even maybe not even when you're done maybe during your bsides go out and find two people that you can get to submit to this program next year okay our our our process begins in January and you know I want I want to get as we're saying I want to fill the room I want to have so many people that we we need a bigger room you want you to kick out you know breaking ground and you know but yeah anyway um so want you guys talk a little bit about what the process looks like you know like detail it you know we've mentioned it in bits but I'd

love people to know what to expect when they apply so we start planning in January and we open the call for papers and call for mentors usually February right around usually around Valentine's Day and then we leave that open for a month month and a half um once we have once we close that we start looking at all the talks and we actually do sort of a two round vetting or two rounds of of cfp approval so the first one we make sure that you actually are a brand new speaker you've never spoken at Defcon you've never spoken at black hat never spoken at hack in a box any Global Information conference at all and we

always disqualify about a quarter of the people who apply um once we have that sort of first round of of review then we start looking at the papers in Earnest can just real quick though don't disqualify yourselves right let we'll tell you if you're no you're too big for your for this program he notice he said major International conferences right right if we have a very short list yeah if you spoke at like your local bsides right to you know and it's a one room con that's not that's not a disqualifying factor or even if it's 400 500 people like it's that's true that's true too right so like like don't don't think oh I spoke at this conference I

guess I can't ever submit to proven ground and get the benefits no that's not like let us be the judge yeah sorry did please continue I just so we do that first round of review and then we start looking at papers in Earnest and we narrow it down to as many speaking slots as we have plus two because we always we we always like to keep a couple in reserve because inevitably somebody will drop out somebody will get sick somebody will have a family emergency we need to fill those thoughts and then we we do the at the same time we're looking at the mentors so we look at the papers that we've got we say okay these mentors have

Hardware experience these members have social engineering experience these are policy people who would be a potentially a good fit once we have that batch of mentors and we don't always we we try to rotate through we have a we have sort of a repeating cast of characters we don't try to use everybody every year and so once we've got that that group of mentors then we send them a survey and the mentors actually get some say in whose talk they Mentor so we give them the title and we give them the abstract we don't tell them who it is we say rank these on a scale of 1 to five uh one being I have absolutely no idea I'll do

this if I have to and five being please please please put me in coach uh once we have that pairing once we have that selection then we pair you off and then it's basically just sort of watching and making sure everything stays on the rails we send out checkpoint emails we make sure things are going well um a few times we had to address some issues but for the most part it's sort of just you know making sure everything is staying on the rails and everybody is getting what they need and then the day before bsides we run a program called proving G pregame which is where we set up the proven ground track first and we get it ready to go

and then we invite the speakers to come in and give their talk and sort of do a dry run and then we give them feedback so everybody who's sitting in there gets to give feedback to the talks who are presenting and I'm sure for some of you it's probably one of the most terrifying experiences you've ever had but i' I know for a fact that it has had material impact on on a number of talks so that's basically it so there there's only one thing I think I I feel like we may be left out a little bit here which is the stipends right so speakers get a used to be 500 bucks now it's what 750 or eight

something like that yeah so firsttime speakers get a stipend to cover their travel and other expenses uh which is subsidize it subsidize it which is something we're only able to do thanks to some very generous donors yeah and I and this and we don't do this for anyone like we don't do this for Keynotes we don't do this for like this is a nonprofit conference everybody's here you know out of the the the generosity of their hearts and and their desire to you know grow and impact the community but for these particular folks we do provide a essentially a scholarship exactly and so yeah that's that that often will make make or break whether or

not somebody can come as well yeah all right so we're you know coming up on time here last chance is there anything else any of you would like to add you know to to you know any message you want to get out put remember this is going out on the tubes yeah so it's not just to the room uh I want to say thanks to guy for running the program um I was invited to be the co-chair this year and I was a little overwhelmed by what that meant because again I was a huge fan of the program I think it is probably one of the most important programs that any con I've ever been to so I really want to thank

you for doing this I want to thank you for running it I know running it running a track is a thankless job sometimes so I I really appreciate you doing it cuz this this one like now that i' I've helped them run it it's a lot more work than the other like there's a lot more wrangling cats and you've been helping me with our our breaking ground track and other things for you know years and it's like yeah it's still a step function above right yeah it's it's a lot more work but it is definitely so much more rewarding to watch people grow into their their talks and everything so thank you so so thank you so much for

running the can Round of Applause for Guy this is I [Applause] mean all right with that uh unless anyone else has something to add oh on the end please yeah I want to see the difference between the participant and speaker is huge and anyone who's thinking about doing the program should definitely do it uh it feels like a slide like once you start the journey it basically like guides you all the way down to become a speaker I feel like that's what this program is really good at doing and that's actually very easy Once you actually pick the first step so please do so thank you yep if you're if you're on the fence going well I don't know if I have if

you've ever looked at a technical problem and going huh that's weird you've got a cfp submission you've got it true yeah to apply then you just need to learn to tell the story exactly yeah all right so there you have it Proving Ground um again this is one of the the most core most bides things like right you know right up there with Pros versus Joe's and the way we you know teach people for cfp I mean CTF like I love that about this conference that we're we're always about bringing in and bringing up and and it's not just you know going out and being a hot shot so all right thank you folks enjoy the rest

of your calling [Applause]