Welcome to the BSides Joburg 2025 CFP (Call for Papers and Workshops)

TL;DR

Event Date: 26 July 2025
Venue: Focus Rooms, Johannesburg
Theme: Shadow Algorithms: Rewriting Realities
CFP Close: 23:59 24 May 2025
CFP Notifications: 1 June 2025
Code of conduct
Recordings of previous years

CFP Guidance

When submitting to our CFP, please focus on clarity, originality, and relevance in your submission. A strong proposal should clearly outline the topic, key takeaways, and why it matters to the audience. Start with a compelling title and abstract that succinctly convey the core idea while sparking interest. Be specific about what the talk covers and what attendees will learn—whether it’s new research, practical techniques, or thought-provoking insights. Avoid overly broad or vague descriptions; instead, highlight unique perspectives, case studies, or real-world applications. Ensure that your proposal aligns with the conference’s focus and target audience. Finally, proofread your submission for coherence and professionalism—concise, well-structured proposals stand out. CFPs that are a couple of sentences may be outright rejected without review.

View this blog post around what a good CFP looks like

Our Theme - Shadow Algorithms: Rewriting Realities

The theme "Shadow Algorithms: Rewriting Realities" explores the unseen influence of algorithms in shaping our understanding of the world. These digital mechanisms, often operating in the background, dictate the content we see, the narratives we engage with, and ultimately, our perception of reality. From social media feeds to search engine results, recommendation systems subtly curate information, reinforcing biases, amplifying certain viewpoints, and suppressing others. As these algorithms learn from our interactions, they create personalized echo chambers, where truth becomes subjective and malleable.

This raises critical questions: Who controls these algorithms? What unseen forces dictate the reality we consume? And as machine-driven curation deepens, are we seeing the world as it is—or only as it is being rewritten for us? "Shadow Algorithms" invites us to interrogate these hidden digital forces and reclaim agency over our own realities.

While talks that align with our theme are preferred, we welcome all research and talks that cover other topics in the cybersecurity realm.

Talk Types

Standard Talks

Our standard talks are 45 minutes long. If you need less (e.g. 30 mins) or longer (1 hour) please let us know and we will try to accommodate you.

Lightning Talks

Our lightning talks are 15 minutes long

Workshops

Workshops are a great opportunity for attendees to get hands-on learning from experts in the field. We invite proposals for workshops for hands-on training around various topics in cybersecurity. Workshops around network security, API security, application security, penetration testing and tool demonstrations have been popular at other BSides events. These workshops can cater for novice or experts, however note that most people attending this event will be on the more experienced side of information security.

We are aiming to have a dedicated workshop day before the conference (Friday 25 July) depending on the CFPs that we receive and sponsor commitments. The Friday workshop sessions can be a half-day (4 hour) or full day (8 hour) which includes time for breaks. We will host workshops on Saturday, however these sessions will be limited to either 1 or 2 hour sessions. If you submit a proposal for Friday and we do not go ahead with the dedicated workshop day, you will be given an opportunity to present on Saturday if you would like to do that.

We welcome workshop proposals from vendors, however these proposals must add value to attendees and cannot be sales pitch orientated. These workshops should have a practical component and will be subject to additional scrutiny to ensure a high quality event. If you are a vendor submitting a workshop proposal, detailed information about what the workshop will cover must be included in your proposal. We recognize that many attendees would like to get hands on time with tools they may not use, and doing a walk-through of an incident, investigation, vulnerability or assessment using your tooling could be a good idea so long as the attendee can walk away with something tangible from the workshop.

You can enter proposals until 2025-05-24 23:59 (UTC), 1 month from now.