A few years ago, the idea came up at our local AHA! meeting that our group should host an information security and/or hacking conference here in Austin, Texas.  Some venue ideas were tossed around, some preliminary cost research done, but the idea never went much beyond that due to a number of reasons, foremost of which is that AHA! folk are very, very busy people, myself included.  Back then, none of us simply had the time or resources to make such an undertaking happen.  Fortunately, while I still don’t really have the time personally, I now have the resources in the way of paid staff that I can have plan and execute such an event, so mid-2011 or so I decided to do so.

In hindsight, even though the target time frame during which I wanted to have the conference was still a good eight months away, my schedule may have been a bit too aggressive… I am a procrastinator, and I really didn’t get started until more like six months away.  Some delays and other complications turned that six months into four, which is where we really were able to begin.  It is now roughly two months from the conference date, and I’m feeling fairly confident in our execution thus far and the logistics we’ve nailed down.  We just recently announced our final speaker selections as well as our venue.  People seem quite excited about our unique take on Capture-the-Flag, which will be crowd-sourced, and the first few blocks of registrations have sold out which has us approaching our minimum goal of expected attendance level in registrations.  Finally, our Saturday Night Party is also coming together quite nicely, and hopefully I can again meet the high bar of expectation I set for myself in that area with my No More Cheap Bugs party last year during the BlackHat and DEFCON conferences in Vegas…  Overall, I’d say we’re well on our way to hosting our first successful conference.