Challenges of Setting Up a Security Conference

Orome1 writes "The founder of the SecurityByte conference talks about his motivations for organizing such an event in his native country and what he hopes it will achieve. He shares knowledge regarding the differences between the organization processes involved when setting up this type of event in India as opposed to North America, which he says have a lot to do with the fact that there is lack of awareness about security in India, and that the majority of such events held there are mostly vendor-driven and free for visitors."

Comments

Re:Transcript anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm running Linux, so no speakers for me.

Re:Just my two cents...

[dkf]

In the third world country where I live in, vendor-driven and free events usually have their marketing guys do all the talking. This means biased information. On the other hand, paid events are the ones that have real knowledgeable guys in it.

That's very often the case in the rest of the world too. The best events tend to be the ones that attract people who are professionally in the field, and yet where the sponsors are restricted/absent. That means they're usually held during the working week in substantial hotels in cities and so tend to cost a lot (hotels charging what they do, and not much sponsor money to bear the cost). Yes, this is hard but its just how it works; getting the people that make it really worth it just tends to push costs up, and many conferences are run on a razor edge in terms of costs, with even a small error in terms of income estimation — attendance really — leading to ruin or high profitability. (I'm on the committee for a small conference, but thankfully don't have to deal with the financial side.)