CMP Acquires Black Hat

An anonymous reader writes "Tradeshow and publishing behemoth CMP Media just acquired Black Hat for $10m.. It's ironic timing, because CMP also runs the Computer Security Institute tradeshow which wraps up in Washington DC today. There couldn't be a larger difference between a boring, institutional show like CSI and a small, independent event like Black Hat Briefings. Hopefully the corporate approach of CSI won't crush the life out of Black Hat."

Comments

SecurityFocus

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting. Back around 1999, SecurityFocus was in discussions with Jeff to buy Black Hat, but it would have been for stock options. Had he gone for it, they would have also been worth about $10 million when Symantec bought them. Jeff could have had his 10mil in 2002. I guess the stock option thing is a bit more risky than cash.

Kiss of Death

[Dynamoo]

CMP aquired BYTE some years ago. And promptly shut it down, leaving it to be a web-only publication. They have a history of acquiring other publications and killing them off. God only knows what their business model is.

Re:Kiss of Death

[Anonymous Coward]

I am a former employee of CMP and I can say as a company insider CMP in its current form is a disaster. To be fair it more a calamity of errors and greed dating back 1999.

CMP was sold by the Leeds Family a wonderful philanthropic family from Long Island, NY, they bent over backward to grow the business and help there employees. For many years CMP was listed as one of the top 50 places to work on LI. It truly was a wonderful place to work. In late April of 1999 CMP was sold at the height of the boom to United News and Media (now United Business Media) via Miller Freeman for 920M USD. The Leeds family gave a wonderful gift to there employees totaling about 40M dollars and then walked away with they're 900M.

Almost immedtiately after the purchase Miller Freeman was split up and sold in parts the largest part was purchased by VNU the dutch publishing monster. UBM also restructued selling off and stream lining offerings only to have the Tech market shit the bed in late 2000.

During the bad years CMP was a company coasting along on fumes no direction, no vision, no ideas. Just cost cutting and layoffs it was as if the Brits UBM were playing an accounting game to regain there 920M.

There has been some recent turn over in management at UBM and CMP but I honestly don't think a thing will change. I would imagine in the next five years CMP will be gobbled up by some bigger directionless mess of a company

I read byte for many many years before I worked at CMP. I hated them for closing that pub down. The only consilation is I actually got to yell at the guy who did it.

Re:Kiss of Death

[Anonymous Coward]

Seconded.

In addition, while working at CMP I was also able to witness firsthand the company's tendency to let go of talented people without so much as batting an eyelash. It was truly strange. I met one guy who had been with the company for over a decade with a string of successes, but when one new magazine project failed his whole division was given the axe, him included. I chalk it up to the ongoing attempts by the CMP management to consolidate power and eliminate the "legacy" Miller Freeman people from the tech publishing division -- but even so, it just seemed like a ridiculous shame to throw away talent like that.

But then, it wasn't all that surprising, either. Oddly enough, the most powerful people I knew in the San Francisco office were in human resources. It sounds like a joke until you actually have to work in an office where the only people who never get laid off are the HR admins, no matter what their seniority. These were people who couldn't even answer a basic question from the employee handbook during a layoff meeting, and yet somehow they never seemed worried about their jobs. It took weeks and weeks to bring new hires on board, too, even to replace key positions. When we finally managed to bring in a new editor in chief at our book to replace the one who quit, we were told by the candidate that it had taken so long because HR made him jump through countless hoops. They had told him that they were doing this because we insisted that HR should be "a partner" in the interview process. Bullshit; all we ever asked for was for HR to open the envelopes with the resumes in them and forward us the qualified candidates.

Basically, though I can't speak for what it's like now, a few years ago that company seemed to be devolving into an administrative sinkhole of "Office Space" proportions. Nobody I know who was working at CMP during that era (2000-2002 or so) seems the slightest bit bothered that they aren't working there anymore.

Re:Kiss of Death

[SirNAOF]

I've been annoyed with CMP recently, and I only freelance for them on occasion.

People coming/going for various reasons (I've heard more than I remember, but some were just fed up with the way things were going), shuffling things around, losing paperwork...

Like I said, only a freelancer, but still annoyed with how they do things.

Re:Jeff Moss, the old owner of BlackHat Briefings

[gclef]

Attendees at BlackHat Briefings used to receive free attendance at Defcon

They still do.

at defcon you could easily tell who the kiddies where and who were the professionals

That's not changed, though which ones were speaking is an open question. I remember quite clearly a talk from a few years ago where the speaker was attempting (and failing) to give a talk on Active Directory security...while drunk...at 9am.