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Update: I'm flying to Vegas tomorrow for the conference. The briefings start on Wednesday Aug 3. I'll have security.SE t-shirts that I'll be giving away at the conference, and I'll do my best to tweet relevant questions from this site. Feel free to follow along on Twitter and tweet questions if you see a good opportunity to do so. I'll retweet them as I see them. The Black Hat Twitter Hashtag is #blackhat and my Twitter handle is @ZulyGonz. Keep in mind that I'll have my phone in airplane mode most of the time because they'll be trying to hack anything with an electronic pulse :-)

I'm a Moderator Pro Tem on the OnStartups Stack Exchange site. I also happen to have a web security startup. I will be attending Black Hat USA 2011, and I'd like to offer myself up to help you guys promote IT Security during the conference. I'm a big fan of the Stack Exchange network, and would be happy to do so.

I saw your Meta thread on site promotion suggestions, but I'm wondering if there are things I can do that are tailored to the Black Hat Conference. I mentioned this idea to the Stack Exchange Team, and they offered to provide custom IT Security swag if it's available in time for the conference (first week of August).

Any other suggestions on how I can help promote this site at the Black Hat Conference? Here's a link to this year's briefings in case that sparks some ideas.

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    Have a great time at blackhat!
    – AviD Mod
    Jul 4, 2011 at 19:06

4 Answers 4

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Thanks for the offer!

Take a look at this question - What are good ways to publicise security.stackexchange at conferences and events - though most of the ideas are acutally in the question.

My answer there, which I think was very useful (@Rory could corroborate):
Ask questions here relevant to specific talks ahead of time, then tweet those questions with the conf/talk's hashtag (or whatever they have for it).

One other thing I'd suggest, get the updated list of talks, and find/ask relevant questions here (ahead of time). Then, you can publicizse links to that question(s) in the context of the talk...
E.g. if there is a twitter feed or hashtag for the conf, throw up links there during the talk, preferably linking/mentioning the talk it is relevant to...

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    +1 for the plan ahead of time and tweet links appropriately during presentations.
    – Rory Alsop Mod
    Jul 4, 2011 at 12:29
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@Avid is absolutely right. We have done a bit of marketing at a few conferences and talks now, and the things that really work are:

  • talking to people and pointing them at interesting questions
  • linking topics at the conference to questions
  • recommending people join
  • blogging/tweeting including the URL

Just finished a charity car rally with the stackexchange logos on the car, hoping we got a few new joiners (60-ish entrants, all from information security or information assurance. (In fact I'm going to draft a blog post on it once I get home, but see whitehatrally.co.UK for info and links)

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A couple of thoughts:

  1. I like @AviD's idea of asking relevant questions before the conference, and then tweeting them during the conference. Timely content is very powerful. One minor issue with that is that I don't spend a whole lot of time on this site, so my knowledge of what questions have been asked is very limited. I think a good way to solve this would be to start a meta thread listing all the Black Hat talks for this year, and then under each talk we can list current questions relevant to that topic that I can tweet. That way all I have to do is go to that list for each talk, and tweet away. As a bonus, doing this will make it easier for folks to see what topics will be covered, and come up with relevant questions on those topics if there are none on the site yet. Thoughts on this?
  2. Assuming the custom swag is ready in time for the conference, in addition to tweeting relevant questions during the conference, what if I also tweet things like:

Got a security question? Ask on security.stackexchange and get a free T-shirt...plus get your question answered by experts!

Come ask me about Stack Exchange's Security Q&A site and get a free T-shirt.

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  • wrt 2, for shures! I would just say not to overload, because then the high-value question-tweets (qweets?) would get lost amongst the lower-value shirt-tweets...
    – AviD Mod
    Jul 4, 2011 at 19:03
  • wrt 1, have you tried searching, and not found anything? Not opposed to a specific thread, could surely help generate links, and probably new questions too - but I'm curious if you're saying that its too hard to find relevant stuff on the site....
    – AviD Mod
    Jul 4, 2011 at 19:05
  • Also, you can just try asking again - worst case, some overzealous moderator will just close it as duplicate ;)
    – AviD Mod
    Jul 4, 2011 at 19:06
  • @AviD: Re #2, agreed. I wasn't sure if I should even tweet that kind of stuff at all. My feeling is that this site is marketed to professionals...not exactly the types to get super excited about a free T-shirt :-) Re: #1, no, not too hard, just time consuming. I'd be nice to have everything in one place, if possible. I tend to overextend myself, and so my time is very limited. Even while at the conference I'll be working :-( I'd rather spend my time there listening to the talks and engaging with folks. So anything you guys can do to help me help you would be greatly appreciated :-)
    – Zuly Gonzalez
    Jul 6, 2011 at 6:27
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I'm at Security B-Sides and DEFCON this week. Can we send me some shirts security.se shirts to hand out?

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