Recapping Black Hat

I’m feeling like myself again and can finally put that week of travel hell behind me. As a new parent, my normal baseline is to usually be tired but the combination of work, social events, multiple city travel, and especially the delays really put me in a bad spot the last couple of days. Sleep deprivation is a real thing and needless to say I’m glad to have positivity back in my brain.

It’s the middle of August and it feels like everyone is on vacation but a handful of us. I am jealous in many ways, but I’m also happy to be here to catch-up on things and just enjoy being a Dad for a few weeks.

On the work front, it was my first time at the Black Hat conference last week. As a non-technical person at a cybersecurity conference, I did find it interesting to learn where the industry is headed. To no one’s surprise, the big topic was AI and agents. It seemed like every company was out there touting their new products for agents and marketing budgets were all focused there.

Like most of these industry conferences, I did feel like the most productive use of my time was scheduling meetings with my network ahead of time. Secondly, it was going to the small presentations and meeting executives at companies we’re following. The business hall was interesting to learn, but I’m not a CSO looking to buy a solution so it was always a bit awkward asking for a demo from a BDR there.

The focus of these conferences is to sell product and meeting investors is almost always secondary. All that said, it’s a great meeting place for the network so it’s always a bit of a toss-up whether the conference is worth going to or not. Going forward, we’ll definitely need to figure out a more defined plan on what we want to accomplish and schedule more meetings ahead of time.