(ComputerSecurity) Conference Collecting...

[Haroon Meer <haroon () thinkst com>]

Hey DailyDavers

(a version of this mail with some pictures lives at http://blog.thinkst.com)

We wanted to quickly announce the availability of
http://cc.thinkst.com (a resource in need of it's own domain & a
better name.)

CC is a simple application that aims to give us a single point where
one can search and browse infosec conference talks and materials*.

Quick Overview
One of the cool things about having all of this data in a central db
is that we are just as easily able to search by topic
(http://cc.thinkst.com/searchMore/foo/) as we are by speaker
(http://cc.thinkst.com/searchMore/halvar/)
Finding a speaker we are interested in, allows us to see all the talks
(we know about) he has given
(http://cc.thinkst.com/speaker/Flake/Halvar/)
And also allows us to get a good overview of his public research
timeline (http://cc.thinkst.com/speaker/Flake/Halvar/timeline/)

One of the "funner" things is the ability to see who the speaker has
previously (publicly) collaborated with
(http://cc.thinkst.com/speaker/Flake/Halvar/links)

This allows you to go from topic, to speaker to birds of a feather.
Where the info is available, we can easily go from halvar to zynamics
to "who else from zynamics has spoken (and on what?)"

With quality input data, and solid pointers to the original content,
we would be able to move more easily towards a much needed infosec
siteseer of sorts (and there's a wealth of interesting meta
information just waiting to be examined).

All projects like this start with good intentions and their utility
tapers off as the members stop updating it (and we are all probably
slightly poorer for it). The good news is that this doesn't have to
happen here. We approached a handful of conferences already who have
agreed to climb aboard. They get an uber simple upload form, and a
csv'ish template. Before (or just after) a conference, they upload
speakers.csv and CC will add/index/process it. CC will still link to
the original content on their sites (so CC becomes a good way for
people to make their /archives more useful.)

(So far we have only spoken to BlackHat, SysScan, BruCon, Hack in the
Box & ZaCon )

Check out the site. if you see broken data, use the form to submit a
patch. If you run a conference or know people who do, please kick us
their details, we would love to talk to them...

* We initially built cc with a whole bunch of scraping (which would
account for it's occasional spulling-errers, but feedback and
conference organizer involvement is changing that.)

-- 
Haroon Meer | Thinkst Applied Research
http://thinkst.com/pgp/haroon.txt
Tel: +27 83 786 6637
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