Meetups and Events

This post is inspired by the video Highly Caffeinated InfoSec by Black Hills Information Security. It made me realize that the events are important but are easy to overlook if you’re searching the Internet for information on a topic.

Events and meetups are great because you get to ask people about work in a field or with a tool/programming language you are interested in. Although books, videos, and written works definitely have their place as well, they often don’t tell you how something is really used. In events, people will talk about their experiences, and of course in hackathon events, you can try it yourself.

Here’s a list of events or other peoples’ lists of events and resources to look up:

• Meetup.com: (General) Search your area for user groups, meetups, hackathons that you can visit without planning a big trip
• Security BSides: (InfoSec, Hackathon) Information security events that are all over the place
• Tech4Good: (All Tech Fields, Hackathon) My local Tech4Good event had a bunch of charity projects
• Data for Good (Dev, Data Science, Hackathon) Write code to process data for charity!
• https://ctftime.org: (InfoSec, Hackathon) Check out the events that are hosting the various competitions.
• “Awesome” on Github: Apparently ‘Awesome’ is a code-word in Git for curated list of stuff to check out. Here’s what I found in a quick search ordered by username; haven’t checked all of these out in detail:
  • https://github.com/anu0012/awesome-computer-science-opportunities
  • https://github.com/genesisdotre/awesome-ethereum-events
  • https://github.com/OutspokenWomen/2018-events
  • https://github.com/planetruby/calendar

Take a look at these events and try to get out there! (I’m by no means an expert - actually I’m hit hard by impostor syndrome.) For people who are new to this, here’s some tips I have.

• A lot of the smaller events not only welcome beginners, but they focus on beginners.
  • As an example, I presented an intro to Docker for a meetup … as my first presentation in about 2 years.
• Contact the event organizers if you have questions! They want you to be there (to pitch their favourite tools, or to educate), so they will answer questions regarding what to bring, whether you’d be a good fit to go the event (almost always yes), how to get there by bicycle, etc.
• On that same note, prepare a bit before the event.
  • Check if the event wants you to bring or prepare something. While you will almost never be kicked out for missing prerequisites, you won’t get the most out of the event if you spend most of the time downloading Visual Studio or something like that. I’ve also seen some events slow down because too many people didn’t prepare, and that’s no fun for everyone.
  • Check where the event is social (Twitter, Meetup.com, their own Slack channel), and make sure to their feed a quick look before starting your trip. If there are any delays or cancellations, they’ll post there. Events can be cancelled or moved due to weather or other issues with the venue.
  • If it’s a hackathon, make sure to bring a laptop with your favourite development environment (or pentesting tools if it’s an InfoSec)