My Experience as a Marketer on the Cybersecurity Stage: Speaking at the Last ShmooCon

You might be familiar with Jerry Seinfeld’s bit about public speaking. The one where he talks about how people at a funeral would rather be in the casket than giving the eulogy. 

Here it is if you’d like to catch up: 

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I’m one of those people that actually likes public speaking. I have a background in standup comedy and though I haven’t performed in quite some time, I still really enjoy the opportunity to speak in front of crowds. 

Despite that interest, I wasn’t necessarily seeking out speaking opportunities in the cyber space until I wrote a blog post (We need an American Girl who bolsters cybersecurity) that resonated with the DomainTools team. My colleagues, Corin Imai and Ian Campbell, were my cheerleaders, encouraging me to submit it to different conferences. I had heard of ShmooCon before, and when the call for papers (CFP) opened up, I remember reading through the different kinds of talk tracks and felt mine would be ideal for the Fast and Furious track (presentations that were ten minutes in length). 

The CFP process was fairly standard and I submitted the way I submitted to comedy festivals back in the day with the attitude of: “all they can say is no.” A few weeks later, I got the alert that I was in! My first cyber talk!

I spent my winter holiday prepping my slides and practicing my speech out loud, really trying to get the timing just right. Even though it was the last ShmooCon, I didn’t want my reputation to be the person disregarding the time slot. I practiced at home with my partner, along with my colleagues who volunteered to listen and provide feedback. By the second week of January, I felt ready. 

The only other colleague from DomainTools who was able to snag tickets for ShmooCon was Aaron Gee-Clough, who has actually been to all 20 ShmooCons! How do you like that? The one and done ShmooConner with the extremely tenured ShmooConner! Aaron was my guide for all things Shmoo-lore - whispering the meaning behind inside-jokes heard on stage, giving me the run down of talks I might be interested in, and introducing me to new people. 

Another marketer, Jen VanAntwerp, whom I know from the Cybersecurity Marketing Society, was also there guiding the way. She invited me to a fundraiser held by Sober in Cyber, which was another great place to meet some new people. She’s also spoken at ShmooCon and gave me great advice on how to calm my nerves; despite my history with public speaking, it was hard not to be at least a little nervous given that it’s a new crowd of people and my content, while fun and funny at times, was not inherently meant to be standup. 

My presentation was on Saturday, which was ideal because it gave me all of Friday and Saturday morning to check out other presentations to see how others’ approaches. What I love about cybersecurity is that I’ve seen a lot of presentations that have a comedic edge to them. They’re entertaining as well as educational. They hold peoples’ attention and they have a lot of heart. You can really tell when people are speaking about a topic that it’s a true passion. Some of my favorite talks included: 

• Lighting Up ShmooCon: Interactive Light Wands for an Epic Opening by Rob Joyce (I definitely had to get two light up wands for my niece and nephew after this) 
• The Cost of an Incident by Amanda Drager
• Modern Day SOC Evolution: from Open Source to Unlimited Budget by Grifter and pope
• The Tech That Fought Back: How I Turned My Rejected ShmooCon Talk into a Democracy-Saving Research Project for the 2024 U.S. Election by Andrew Schoka
• OpSec for Grandma by Rich Mogull

When my turn came, I felt that familiar feeling of nervousness mixed with excitement (and I’m told that those parts of the brain are next to each other). When it comes to speaking in public, the excited part of my mind usually wins. I had notecards, and though I ended up not needing them, I still hung onto them like a security blanket. 

My presentation covered a campaign I looked at regarding the American Girl Doll brand. I had seen someone on Reddit asking if a domain purporting to sell discontinued merchandise was legitimate. This is DomainTools bread and butter. I looked into it more, and our research team recognized the domain I found as well, which legitimized my findings. I wanted to convey the importance of marketers doing their own research to support the work practitioners do, and why it’s important for practitioners to support marketers who have an interest in learning more about the tools so they can conduct research. You can watch the 10 minute presentation here for more information. 

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I received some great feedback after my presentation, including folks asking to learn more, which is always welcome. It made me feel less nervous to speak to the cybersecurity/infosec audience and I’d honestly love to do it more. I’m glad I had the ShmooCon opportunity to break the seal.

Recently, I had the opportunity to speak with Heidi and Bruce Potter, two of the co-founders of ShmooCon, on the Breaking Badness Cybersecurity Podcast, and what was interesting was they told me there are a number of people who got their start speaking at cybersecurity conferences at ShmooCon. They said it was a story they heard over and over again that ShmooCon was a way for people to get their feet wet in terms of gaining conference exposure and experience, which is wonderful and I’m glad I could be one of them. My hope is that now that ShmooCon has ended, other conferences will be as receptive to first-time speakers as we have something to offer and we have to start somewhere. 

I truly wish I could have been more than a one and done ShmooConner, but I’m grateful for the experience and I hope there will be more speaking opportunities in my future in cybersecurity.