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DerbyCon Will Hold Its Last InfoSec Conference in September This Year (derbycon.com)
DerbyCon 9.0, the upcoming edition of the popular InfoSec conference in September, will be its last. From an official announcement: When we first started DerbyCon, our goal was to create a conference where we could all come together to collaborate and share as a community, but most importantly as a profession. DerbyCon 1.0 was a huge gamble for us both personally and financially, but we believed in what we were doing, and it worked. For those that don't know the history of DerbyCon, it started off inside of a pizza shop as an idea between a few friends. Our goal was to create an affordable conference that shared a lot of what we had experienced in our early days in security. The ideas of collaboration, community, and the betterment of the industry and the safety of technology were at the forefront. At the end of DerbyCon 1.0, we realized that the conference was a huge success and our dream became a reality.
[...] What we have had to deal with on the back-end the past few years is more than just running a conference and sharing with friends. The conference scene in general changed drastically and small pocket groups focus on outrage and disruption where there is no right answer (regardless of how you respond, it's wrong), instead of coming together, or making the industry better. There is a small, yet vocal group of people creating negativity, polarization, and disruption, with the primary intent of self-promotion to advance a career, for personal gain, or for more social media followers. Individuals that would have us be judge, jury, and executioner for people they have had issues with outside of the conference that has nothing to do with the conference itself.
Instead of working hard in research, being a positive force in the industry, or sharing their own unique experiences (which makes us better as a whole), they tear others down in order to promote themselves. This isn't just about DerbyCon, it is present at other conferences as well and it's getting worse each year. We've spoken with a number of conference organizers, and each year it becomes substantially more difficult to host a conference where people can come together in large group settings. It's not just conferences either. This behavior is happening all over the place on social media, in our industry, targeting people trying to do good. As a community, we add fuel to fire, attack others, and give them a platform in one massive toxic environment. We do this all in fear of repercussions from upsetting others. Until this pattern changes, it will continue to get worse.
[...] What we have had to deal with on the back-end the past few years is more than just running a conference and sharing with friends. The conference scene in general changed drastically and small pocket groups focus on outrage and disruption where there is no right answer (regardless of how you respond, it's wrong), instead of coming together, or making the industry better. There is a small, yet vocal group of people creating negativity, polarization, and disruption, with the primary intent of self-promotion to advance a career, for personal gain, or for more social media followers. Individuals that would have us be judge, jury, and executioner for people they have had issues with outside of the conference that has nothing to do with the conference itself.
Instead of working hard in research, being a positive force in the industry, or sharing their own unique experiences (which makes us better as a whole), they tear others down in order to promote themselves. This isn't just about DerbyCon, it is present at other conferences as well and it's getting worse each year. We've spoken with a number of conference organizers, and each year it becomes substantially more difficult to host a conference where people can come together in large group settings. It's not just conferences either. This behavior is happening all over the place on social media, in our industry, targeting people trying to do good. As a community, we add fuel to fire, attack others, and give them a platform in one massive toxic environment. We do this all in fear of repercussions from upsetting others. Until this pattern changes, it will continue to get worse.
Rumour is this is all over some guy writing the word 'boobies' on a markerboard that ended up pissing off feminists. I kid you not.
good for them
-------
1. Enjoy your job
2. Make lots of money
3. Work within the law
Choose any two.
You canâ(TM)t have freedom to express yourself without the freedom to cause someone to feel insulted.
The two are related, if you cannot insult someone. Nearly all free speech is bound to make someone feel bad. If you say you got bad customer service, the service agent will feel bad. Nearly all speech will make somebody feel bad.
Tomorrow morning I expect most of the comments on this thread to be about how SJWs ruin everything, and Linux has gone to hell in a handbasket since they stopped letting developers swear, and how the only true communications are insults. What a brave new world!
from the writeup I would have thought it was because people were using it to PROMOTE THEMSELVES FOR GETTING MONEY purely by fluffing up shit(and providing shit all nothing content).
instead it's of some guy writing boobies, doing the exact opposite of that? fuck this shit.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
...we can't have nice things.
Just try attending an amateur radio meeting!
Why do people, especially value-neutral technically-focused people ... not just start saying: No!
No. We want to focus on our stuff and have no obligation to engage with your issues.
No. We will not ban people because you want us to.
No. You cannot have special treatment. You get the same as everyone else. Nothing more, nothing less.
No. We will not enforce your Purity Code of Conduct. Want an ethics code? Use the ACM's. Or the IEEE.
No. Your chosen group membership does not compensate for your lack of ability. Meritocracy or GTFO.
No. You have not been elected, and do not represent the community you claim to defend.
No. We will not apologise for our intrinsic attributes, whether skin color or lifestyle choices.
No. Your ideological goals will not cause your behaviour to be overlooked or forgiven. You are what you do.
And in return: You get the same freedom from our interference.
The VILENESS of some activists, both left and right, but increasingly primarily on the left,
is despicable. Bipolar, partisan, nastiness. 100% agreement or you will be purged and punished.
Instead of merely a "2 minute hate" session, they are in a continual state of ideological fervour.
And like children, they are constantly calling for Authority to bring force down on their enemies.
More rules. More control. More force. Comply or be purged.
If this is not how you want to live, it is time to start telling them: NO!
Or is this now Radical as well?
(R)ule in Hell or (S)erve in Heaven [R]?
You can't appropriate Nazi while we literally still have real Nazis running around, to say nothing of neo-Nazis. Nice try there, sport.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I agree!
In fact, I agree so strongly that I intend to protest about it, and be mollified by nothing!!
The Conference for Horses.
Was my first thought.
Uh...please have that second cup of coffee. DerbyCon is held in Louisville, Kentucky, home to Churchill Downs, which is a famous horse racing complex that hosts the famous "Kentucky Derby" horse race. So...er...yeah, "DerbyCon" is meant to be a play on "the place with the horses".
The whole Derby team was lovingly supported by swaths of well meaning and inclusive companies and groups, yes mainly comprised of men. This doesn't make it's core culture this patriarchal blanket of abuse and oppression against women or minorities.
Never in the 8 years that I have attended or the 20+ years on the scene with many of these people did I play a party to or see oppressive white male-centric behavior keep others out.If behaviors kept people out it was because they chose to be offended and to that I say good riddance.
The SJW botnet has gotten out of control and I lay it's rise and dominance at the feet of organizers of conferences such as Derbycon. Sure it's bad press to publicly tell SJWs to piss off because then they'll brand the conference inherently aggressive or racist but at the same time the odds of survival for the organization are much higher than the job or personal life of the individual who might have made an out of time joke or worse yet, was acting like the *gasp* juvenile person that attends the convention as he/she/it/them had since their teens and if the conference and their friends are it's outlet, who is any one else to try to destroy their life for it?
There were people in 01' - 05' who attended many conferences warning organizers and panel members that the choice between equality or freedom would be the single largest single point and possible detriment to the scene and it's future. Looks like they were right.
The worst part is that trusted members of the community contributed to the chaos to save public face. Deviant Ollam comes to mind. He spent YEARS around Defcon Alum, hosting and attending parties, keeping company with a rotating cast of people, many not fit for polite company and surely not the type you'd take to family gatherings. He swiftly got this reputation for whereas keeping perplexing company was reasonable and fair and this got him many eyes and ears (=money) at whatever conference he would attend.
In the last 4 years he has taken company with almost the polar opposite group now that the tables are turned and will frequently draw outrage to any one who dares in his mind to be racist or sexist (still hangs out with Machine Gun Kelly), going so far as to stoke hordes of Feminists (Uses his wife) against people he as recent as a couple years ago would have called friend all to save face and make a buck!
Deviant is a good knowable example of this but surely not the only one who has recently developed a curious sense of amnesia since the nonsense had started. I suppose he's trying to get ahead of any of his own #metoos start to shake out of the tree in order to insulate that sham of a non for profit he runs.
I guess all I really mean to say is that it looks like the security scene got owned from the inside and the social virus prevails, it's a shame and I wish it were different. New things are coming, they are all as a result going to be invite only, exclusive and elitist and above all else:
It's
All
Your
Fault!
I went to the first few DerbyCons, and there was a lot of drinking. At the last one I attended, so many people (including the presenters) were drunk after lunch that I left. I don't know if David is primarily referring to the markerboard incident, but if you throw a drunken party, you're going to get drunken behavior.
> But this is the point. If you leave a whiteboard somewhere, it is likely that someone will write something on it. Maybe interesting, probably not, potentially offensive.
If you invite people to write / draw whatever, some idiot will draw a penis. How long it takes before someone draws a penis in different situations is a measurable quantity known as TTP, time to penis.
An area for further study is TTPE, time to penis erasure. This is how long after the penis is drawn until some reasonable person comes by and erases it.
Recently we've been seeing an inversion. TTPE is sometimes higher (longer time) than TTSJW, meaning a whack job has the opportunity to see it and go insane prior to a reasonable person erasing it.
Another thing that would have prevented you from succeeding as a female in the open source community is you being a straight white male.
Aren't most people who are successful in open source straight white males? Where are you getting your data from?
"Real Nazis?
No, they were defeated.
In 1945."
The third Reich was defeated. Plenty of Nazis ran off with their stolen art and Jew gold and settled in Argentina or Costa Rica, etc. Or went to work for the US government.
"All that's left is some dumb teenagers drawing swastikas with sharpies on bathroom walls."
There's plenty of that, but there's also organized groups of white supremacists doing stuff like infiltrating police and military organizations. Or taking the presidency...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
"organized groups of white supremacists doing stuff like infiltrating police and military organizations"
There are no "white supremacists". Such cartoonish villains exist only in racist divide-and-conquer propaganda, and in the imaginations of people whipped into a frenzy by said propaganda.