🐉 Here Be Dragons🐉

This year, we dive into uncharted territory of security under the theme "Here Be Dragons." Like the ancient maps that marked unknown regions with dragons, today's landscape is filled with threats that are complex, evolving, and often unpredictable. As security practitioners, we are the navigators of this vast, sometimes dangerous terrain. We're opening the call to participate in our 2025 conference - come share your experiences exploring new challenges, discovering the unknown, battling cutting-edge technologies, and sharing strategies to confront the 'dragons' lurking in the shadows. ⚔️

BSidesSF 2025 will take place in San Francisco from April 26-27, 2025.

About BSidesSF

BSidesSF is a non-profit organization designed to advance the body of Information Security knowledge, by providing an annual, open forum for discussion and debate for security practitioners. We produce a conference that is a source of education, collaboration, and continued conversation for information technologists. The technical and academic presentations at BSidesSF are given in the spirit of peer review and advanced knowledge dissemination. This allows the field of Information Security to grow in breadth and depth, and continue in its pursuit of highly advanced, scientifically based knowledge.

We are a practitioner-focused event that attracts a wide range of attendees ranging from engineers & security leaders to executive decision makers. This is a great opportunity for you to showcase your work and share your ideas with industry peers. Bonus points if you can tie your presentation to this year’s conference theme!

The BSides community has continuously raised the bar and put the info back in infosec. We thank each and every member/participant/organizer of this community for their hard work, sweat, and relentless pursuit of making high quality content accessible. We celebrate diverse approaches and points of view and believe that our commitment to diversity fosters innovation. BSidesSF is continuing to build upon a culture that drives our community to include a wide range of thoughts and ideas.

Session Types

Informational. Due: 1/7

Want to share something you've built, been working on, a strategy you think could be useful, or something else that could benefit the security community? Informational track is 1-2 Speakers sharing information with the audience. These sessions can be one of:

• 30-minute presentation (regular)
• 45-minute presentation (deep dive)
• 45-minute panel (3-4 panelists & 1 host) - Please note that we will not accept manels; it's 2025 - we will represent diverse perspectives on stage because that is the right thing to do.

Collaborative. Due: 1/7

Looking to engage the community directly? Why not submit a proposal for a collaborative session:

• Workshops (120 minutes) - all workshops this year will be held on Sunday, 4/27
• Birds of a Feather Sessions (45 minutes - 1 facilitator)
  • "Definition: An informal discussion group, typically at a conference, based on a shared interest and without any fixed agenda."
  • These sessions will NOT be recorded and NOT be streamed.
  • These are generally hosted in the theatres; we will provide paper pads and markers for use by the facilitator and participants.
  • You may set whatever additional rules for the session, provided they still align with our code of conduct. If you have additional requirements, please e-mail us at program@ to verify we can accommodate them.
  • While rare, you should expect participants to walk in/out at any time.
• The Call for Villages can be found here: https://bsidessf.org/cfv

Please Note:

• We are a practitioner-focused event, and as such we will be prioritizing submissions from security practitioners; in practice this usually means we'll prioritize submissions from individual contributors and a handful of leaders.
• We aim to represent different views and voices, so a speaker may take the stage for a maximum of one session (you may submit multiple submissions, but a maximum of one presentation per person will be accepted), and we aim to minimize a high number of presentations from any one company/employer.
• We ARE NOT ABLE TO provide speaker or travel stipends at this time (except on a case-by-case basis with villages). We also DO NOT accept vendor pitches of any sort in our conference program. Thank you for your understanding.
• We operate a 100% double-blind CFP review process. This means the program committee will not know the prospective presenters behind the submission, nor their background!
  • The pros are: if you are an unknown name, this is a great chance to break into the conference-speaking circuit.
  • The cons are: you cannot rely on reputation alone to appear on stage. 🙂

As courtesy to your 100% volunteer-run program committee, we ask you to:

• Review your presentation abstract & description for clarity and completeness (we recommend asking a friend/colleague who may not be close to the work to review) - it should be clear to the review committee what you plan to cover and the key takeaways from your presentation. Keeping things mysterious in your abstract is not the move. Here are some examples of clear, well-written submissions from 2024.
• Ensure all speaker emails are added to your submission before hitting submit (we will have a maximum of 2 speakers on stage for non-panel presentations - feel free to thank others or highlight contributions during your presentation, but only 2 people can speak in a slot).

All deadlines are in Pacific Standard Time (UTC-8).

Questions?

E-mail program [at] bsidessf.org.

You can enter proposals until 2025-01-07 23:59 (US/Pacific), 2 weeks, 3 days from now.