SHMOOCON VII, JANUARY 28-30, 2011
ANNOUNCEMENT AND CALL FOR PAPERS

ShmooCon and The Shmoo Group are soliciting papers and presentations for the seventh annual ShmooCon.

--== IMPORTANT DATES ==--

August 31, 2010 – CFP opens
October 31, 2010 – Papers for preferential first round consideration due
November 30, 2010 – Final due date for all papers
December 15, 2010 – All notifications to speakers sent


--== ABOUT SHMOOCON AND THE SHMOO GROUP ==--

The Shmoo Group (TSG) is an independent think-tank of security professionals from around the world who donate their time and energy towards information security research and development.  Several years ago TSG had an idea.  This idea has grown into a community recognized annual security conference attended by over 1500 people. 

Our goal for ShmooCon is to educate, inform, and entertain the attendees. ShmooCon is primarily a security conference, but we encourage innovative and interesting submissions on offbeat technology topics.


--== WHO SHOULD SUBMIT ==--

We are most interested in new presentations, but updates on existing work are also welcome. We also are interested in presentations from new faces, therefore, we invite any individual who has not spoken at a conference before to submit a talk and attempt to make ShmooCon their inaugural event. 


--== CONFERENCE FORMAT ==--

ShmooCon has four tracks to accommodate a variety of speaking styles and topics.

ONE TRACK MIND - Technical tales in twenty minutes or less 
BREAK IT - Technology exploitation

BUILD IT - Creating inventive software and hardware

BRING IT ON - Open discussion of technology and security topics


--== ONE TRACK MIND ==--

Format:

Friday night only
20 Minutes (hard limit)

In ONE TRACK MIND, presenters have 20 minutes on Friday night to give the entirety of ShmooCon a view into their mind.   Presenters beware:  You need to be diligent about your use of time as ShmooCon staff strictly enforces the 20-minute timeline.  You will have just a few minutes for audience questions while we switch to the next talk.

Topics for ONE TRACK MIND may include, but are not limited to:

Updates to talks given at other conferences
Works in Progress
Talks that are as much about fun as they are about technology
Anything that doesn't need 50 minutes to explain


--== BUILD IT, BREAK IT, BRING IT ON ==--

Format:

Tracks run concurrently on Saturday and Sunday
50 minutes (hard limit)
All presentations and discussions in these three tracks are 50 minutes in length and presented to attendees on either Saturday or Sunday. It is the speaker's responsibility to budget time for audience participation and questions – 50 minutes is a hard limit.

Presentations in the BUILD IT and BREAK IT tracks are strongly encouraged to include demonstrations of personally developed techniques, working code, and/or devices, with code and/or schematics being open-source and released to the public for free. We’re serious about this.  We want the community to get something from your presentation, not just 50 minutes of hot air.  So PLEASE, in your CFP response, indicate what you are releasing that will be of interest.  If you can’t release code or something similar, be sure your techniques and methods are mind blowing. 

Presentations in BRING IT ON are more open-ended, but presenters are strongly encouraged to structure their talk in a way that engages or enrages the audience.


--== SUGGESTED TOPICS ==--

ShmooCon presentations should be focused on topics that are of interest to security and technology professionals who are paying attention to current trends and issues.  Presentations dealing with new technologies such as cloud computing or advanced attack detection techniques or new takes on existing methods and techniques are of interest. 

Presentations that are rehashes of old talks, primers on known technologies, or vendor pitches will be rejected and summarily panned. We want ShmooCon to be educational and entertaining to the attendees and the community at large.  We expect our speakers to be a part of that through talks that are well thought out and well presented.

If you feel you have a presentation that would be appropriate but that does not meet the guidelines in this CFP, feel free to submit it anyway as we sometimes accept out-of-scope talks that are so cool and compelling they’ll obviously be of interest to ShmooCon attendees.  Just be sure to include information explaining your reasoning so we can better evaluate your proposal. 


--== SUBMISSION PROCEDURE ==--

ShmooCon VII will continue to use a web based submission process.  Please DO NOT just mail us your CFP response. Visit https://cfp.shmoocon.org and be prepared with the following information:

Speaker name(s) and contact information
Presentation Title
Track preference 
Keywords and 2-3 sentence abstract
Document in TEXT or PDF format (all others will likely not be read) which CONTAINS THE FOLLOWING, preferably in order:

a.     Presenter(s) Name
b.     Bio limited to 100 words for you OR your group (not 100 words per person) – this limit will be strictly enforced.
c.      Abstract of your presentation limited to 200 words or less.
d.     Detailed outline/description of your topic.  
e.     List of other conferences at which submission has been presented or submitted
f.      List of facilities requested beyond what is already provided (power, projector with VGA input, sound projection, and internet connectivity).
Speakers accepted to One Track Mind will receive free admission to the conference as well as a $100 (shared) honorarium.

Speakers accepted to Build It, Break it, or Bring it On will receive free admission to the conference as well as a $200 (shared) honorarium OR one (1) guest admission to ShmooCon. 

Several alternates will also be chosen and will receive free admission. Alternates should come to ShmooCon prepared to speak.


--== HINTS ABOUT SUBMISSIONS ==--

Follow the instructions above.  Nothing is more annoying than opening a submission and not finding all the information we need. 

Convince us that we should accept your talk. We get three to four times as many submissions as we have slots. The more you can help us see how cool/unique/timely/etc. your talk is, the better chance it has of being accepted.

Members of The Shmoo Group and select ShmooCon volunteers will review all submissions.  Questions can be sent to cfp@shmoocon.org.  The CFP can be found on the web at http://www.shmoocon.org/cfp