BSidesSF 2025: Same Community, New Problems

Why BSides Still Works

BSidesSF aims for a simple formula: practical talks, approachable villages, and minimal expo noise.
The result is a conference where you can watch a live exploit demo at 10 a.m., re-flash a badge over lunch, and still find a quiet corner to argue about logging pipelines before the afternoon keynote. The scale stays reasonable; the conversations stay direct.

My First Year (2019)

When I first moved into security in 2019, BSidesSF was the first conference I attended — and I gave a talk that year too. It was overwhelming. There were so many new topics to dig into, and the breadth of it all felt huge (honestly, it still does sometimes). But what made all the difference was how kind and helpful everyone was. It turned something that could have felt intimidating into something welcoming and exciting all at once.

2025: A Familiar Crowd, Wider Scope

Walking into this year's event felt like bumping into coworkers at the coffee shop: familiar faces everywhere, even though the agenda has shifted. Topics that barely existed in 2019—LLM security, supply-chain SBOM automation, quantum-resistant crypto—now fill entire tracks. The vibe, however, is unchanged: people share code first and job titles second.

Practical Tips for First-Timers

• Schedule loosely. Pick one must-see talk per slot; leave space for hallway detours.
• Visit a village. An hour with a hardware kit teaches more than three slide decks.
• Lead with curiosity. Open with "What are you working on?"—it keeps the conversation useful.
• Write it down nightly. Monday reality will blur the weekend details.

Closing Thought

The attack surface keeps expanding, yet the most effective defenses still appear in hallway chats and impromptu demos. BSidesSF remains the reliable checkpoint to catch those ideas before they vanish into Slack history.

📊 Fun Data

_{Source: Security BSides front page, retrieved March 2025.}