I have now been attending conference for … hum … several decades and I believe the traditional format of 30, 40 or 50-minute talks should evolve, simply because we can’t remain concentrated for hours. The content is excellent, the delivery needs to be re-shaped.
Haven’t we improved in 10 years? 20 years?
We’ve improved a lot, compared to 20 years ago, where presentations were far more academic, slides were dull (mostly written text, nearly no figure or image), and speakers didn’t make much effort in pedagogy.
Compared to 10 years ago, progress is less visible, and I think it is time for us to consider new methods.
So, we won’t have any “x-minute” talk any longer?
Oh yes, we will! I am not saying we should remove them all, but that we should space standard talks with other formats of communication. Consider the natural organization of our days: we eat, we listen, we speak, we exercise, we sleep. We can’t listen all day, we can’t eat all day etc. We need each of these periods to be interspersed.
Idea 1: the Quizz
A “speaker” prepares a set of slides with 1 question per slide, and 4 possible answers.
Each person in the audience tries to answer the question on a smartphone app (or a web page).
At the end of the session, you get your rating + the solution.
Example: show a piece of vulnerable code and ask participants to find the issue / ask what some assembly code does …
Idea 2: Live Work
People in the audience provide a practical problem they encounter, on an agreed topic. Example: reversing a given Android malware, finding who is behind a nickname on an underground forum, understanding the malicious communication captured in a PCAP etc.
A panel of 1–3 malware analysts work on the problem (and can help each other). Their screens are casted live. Possibly, a 4th person comments live what the 3 analysts are doing.
The session ends after 45 minutes — whatever success or failure the panelists may have encountered.
The idea of such a session is to share the way you work with others. The submitted “problems” needs to be practical, not theoretical.
Idea 3: Treasure Hunt
The organizers hide a box in the conference venue and provide several computer security clues to find it. This can be a single stage hunt, or a multiple stage hunt.
The difficulty of clues is up to the organizers. This type of session is interesting because participants have to move. Organizers can get inspiration from geocaches for example.
Generally speaking, small CTF-like challenges can be added throughout conferences.
Things I wished existed in conferences (if ever that inspires you!)
- Augmented Reality glasses that add the name + nickname of people you see in a conference crowd.
- App which automatically shows subtitles for the current talk you are listening to (in case you have a hard time understanding the speaker).
- Automatically see on your smartphone or laptop the slide the speaker is currently commenting. Very useful for people with bad eyes!
That’s all for now folks, but I’ll post more ideas if I have some!
— Cryptax
