Content
Along that theme, we want to hear about anything that sheds light on the breadth and variety in the infosec field - Beginner to advanced, hardware to cloud, and theoretical to advanced.
Nearly everyone has something useful to share. Even if you've only been working in a field for a year - there will be plenty of folks at BSidesPDX who don't know anything about your favorite topic, and would really benefit from hearing what you've discovered.
>Presentations
By default, every presentation will be for a 20 minute slot. Attendees don't come for a lecture, they come for new information they can think about and act on. Let us know if there's important background, and give attendees resources to get deeper details.
If you really feels your submission warrants a 40 minute slot - tell us why, and we'll consider it.
>Workshops
Workshops will be ~ 2 hour, in-depth training. These are for up to 30 attendees and are intended to be hands-on, but we're flexible with the current situation and will work with you to try to accommodate what you need.
>Events:
In addition to our CTF, we'd love to include other event and contests. What ideas do you have? What resources might you need?
>BSidesPDX CFP Submission AI Usage Guideline
Your submission will be reviewed by humans. If accepted, humans will read your abstract, and humans will attend your talk. Where does AI fit into this?
AI can be very useful for a lot of tasks; trimming down your 500 word proposal to a short abstract, or to help check grammer, speling, and punctuation. But it can also be used to take your two sentence idea and expand it into a 40 minute talk.
In the first two cases, you’re using AI to help the review board and attendees understand your work more quickly, accurately, and efficiently. But in the third case, you’re asking reviewers and attendees to read something you couldn’t be bothered to write.
We won’t object strongly if you use AI to refine, condense, organize, and proofread your submission. This makes the review board’s job easier. We will object strongly if you use AI to inflate, pad, expand, or fabricate your submission. It disrespectful to the reviewers and attendees.
In all cases, you should proofread everything, and you and only you are responsible for your submission. If you have any uncertainty about whether your use is acceptable you should probably avoid it, ask about it, or at least, disclose it
Getting Help
New this year! Foregoing the normal round 1/round 2 cycle, we introduce the "I want help" option on the CFP. We are organizing members of the community who are willing to provide feedback and help to improve your CFP submission. If you check this button before September 1st, someone will hopefully reach out to you. Supplies are limited- we don't know how many volunteers to help we will have or submissions requesting help. But we are hoping to provide help to those who want it.
Additional Questions
We want to do a good job getting the right content in the right place at the right time. To help us with that, we'll ask you to indicate if your submission fits these categories
* Beginner Speaker: you haven't presented much, or this is your first time
* 101 track: you have info you think is relevant to beginners
* OTR: off the record, do not record, or other constriants
* 2nd Stage: you'd prefer a smaller room with a smaller audience
Reviewers
As BSidesPDX has evolved over the years into a larger event, the process of curating the content has evolved as well. In an effort to recognize that the goal of BSidesPDX is to support the local information security community, we’ve recruited Review Board of local experts to help with the selection process.
Questions?
Submissions close on 2026-09-25 23:59 (America/Los_Angeles), 3 months, 2 weeks from now.