ladies and gentlemen
welcome ben he's going to give us a talk
about how he can get by with a lot of
help from his friends yeah
well uh all right so i i did plan on
having a few other things for this talk
but things happen
uh so i've instead wrote a little script
for myself and uh we're going slideless
so that's gonna be fun
uh yeah and i'm i've got the uh the beer
farmers accompanying me for when i
inevitably break down and need a bit
more support
[Laughter]
uh so yeah hashtag here for you exactly
exactly uh and have been many years well
a good few years
since i've known you
cool so i thought i'd uh i
popped this talk in uh first of all i'd
like to say welcome to everyone to my
talk uh this is i get both a little help
from my friends
or alternatively wow some paramaniac
from the north may to b sides and it's
freaking awesome
how the title works uh so
first thing a little bit about me i'm
ben dougherty i'm a team leader over at
uh team leader of engineering over at
gorham cyber
uh i'm quite an empathetic person and
what i mean by that is i bounce off the
energy in a room nothing makes me
happier than being in a room full of
energy
uh it's
my drug of choice really that that kick
of everyone working towards one goal and
that's what i love about cyber really uh
i did plan this talk a little
differently uh to how it's turned out i
had a full script set up i had obs
scenes and things going across the
bottom and all of that but
unfortunately some gates decided to
break into my shirt and make me laptop
with all that along with other stuff so
hey these things happen but plan b time
uh it's time to run over it this is the
version with 0.05 of the research uh a
lot more of the uh
energy and yeah skimming over a few of
the difficult bits that are just a
little bit too difficult to go into so
my talk i need uh i get by with a little
help from my friends what do i mean by
that well
i'm here to talk to you all about the
story of
an odd
fire-liking guy from the north that
somehow managed to make a conference uh
it's and it wouldn't have happened with
without well a lot of people sitting
that you can see on the other side of
the screen
uh it's uh it all starts with the chat
with the guy in the office next door to
me
this is many moons ago in a far
different company to what i work at uh
work out now
uh andrew waite uh he was a security guy
at where i'd worked at that time uh we
got chatting about security we got
chatting about the things that we know
and he mentioned b-sides london so i
thought right
i'll cool down i'll go down with him
i'll see if i can swing it from work
work managed to cover it uh and when i
got there it was just like
wow
i found my community i found my people i
was nowhere near the smartest guy in the
room i'm not normally but it's nice to
know that you're nowhere near the
smartest guy in the room and the energy
in the room of everyone that was there
for the same goal to see awesome talks
to make everyone more secure and to just
have a good time and catch up with their
friends it was really something that
i thought
yeah i want to bring this back i mean uh
besides events and other community brand
events like uh beer con
like uh
the many many many uh b-sides events uh
like steel khan like forty-four con that
kind of stuff those events are really
what kind of
brings it to me and makes me happy to go
to makes me
joyous to go to
uh it's everyone being in there working
towards the same goal and went to the
same room and i as soon as i saw i
wanted to bring this home i want to
bring this to newcastle and i don't want
to show everyone
that hey we can do it we can make
something
but
that thought
it was in my head i didn't really know
many people it was there i was a lovely
security consultant i had a couple of
friends in the field but nothing much
but that's kind of where my journey
started uh it's been a couple years
after that and uh
after i'd started chatting with a few
people here at twitter and started
that's here on twitter and just started
kind of trying to make make myself a
little bit known uh i was
chatting at 44 con 2019 uh with jenny
radcliffe and chris morgan sitting
outside the ilec
i think it was
either just before or just after i
showed cyber sex stew how to spit how to
play with fire properly actually
spinning fires would be a glorious thing
to try and mix with infosec uh and
jenny was just chatting about how uh how
she'd set up and how she'd start to run
the b-side specs we started talking a
little bit more uh and by the end of the
conversation she gave me her contact
details and she was happy to mentor me
and guide me towards
helping with b-sides she'd give me the
information that i needed she told me
who to talk to she told me everything so
as all the b-sides organizers out there
know the crucial part of the process is
the jack chat
uh
this is something that everyone knows uh
who's part of these sites it's uh you
get to talk to jack daniel who
is uh someone that i've always massively
looked up to uh even getting in the
early d uh the early years when i was at
visa massively looked up to him getting
a sit down and have an honest chat about
these are what's gonna go wrong on your
b side this is how it's gonna fail don't
spend any of your own money on it
remember to get sponsors in all of those
glorious don't don't put your name on
credit things when you're not going to
you don't know if you've got money all
those glorious things that i totally
ignored
uh
and he was particularly worried about
the time scale
uh at the time that was uh a little bit
after uh 44 con 2019 so that was
mid to late september and we were
planning on uh
having it in
oh
apparently gone uh september november uh
to plan on having b-sides in november i
think it was november 13th off the top
of my head or is that because i said
and it was about nine weeks by that time
he really didn't think we'd be able to
pull it off we'd be able to get the
people in and he warned me you know
don't don't tie yourself to it don't do
that so
now that we've got authorization it's
time for me to kind of go right we'll do
it and if anyone that knows me when i
say we'll do it it's happening it may be
a little bit late it may sometimes be a
little bit different to what was
originally designed but it's happening
uh and that's
when things started so what do you do
first you reach out you reach out on
twitter you reach out to the community
you ask people for help
uh and that's where
one of the people that
has kind of really really helped me all
along the process sam has had stepped in
and uh and phil had stepped in to kind
of help me run it uh sam she asked for a
sponsor form and then said oh is there
anything we can do to help
oh silly mistake
so she ended up roped in as one of the
organizers with me uh there was phil who
uh who runs quite a few of the north
east uh cyber fest north east a few
things like that chipped into right i'll
give you a hand organizing it so we had
our little team uh there was a lot more
people and as i've said there was a lot
more research version of this and there
should be a load of names going across
the bottom but it's not going to happen
i will give everyone credit anything in
the end but hey
uh
yeah so now we had some people who
wanted to run a thing next we need the
venue
so same again i'm this kind of person i
went to my friends
uh
i tried looking around for venues i
tried looking around for things and i
thought right let's let's think a little
bit off the uh off the reservation here
another off my plot yeah that's my plot
somewhere around that lines uh and i
reached out to one of my friends who'd
uh who ran a skate park in the area
so we had our venue we had a indoor
skatepark in the middle of november with
no heating but we'll get back to that
later
uh we had them offering to do it for
essentially the cost of covering what
they'd lose that day with being shut
which was awesome of them and better
still because they were friends they
didn't ask for a deposit
or other things like that but they
probably should have but hey
i was blagging everything at this point
we had very few sponsors involved we had
nothing kind of there
so yeah that's we had our venue we had
somewhere to put it currently was a
little bit odd but we had somewhere so
what did we need now
well we needed money
and that's the difficult bit finding the
sponsors but again that was made easy by
friends friends were reaching out to the
companies that they worked for uh people
were reaching out to other people that
they knew in recruiting other people
that they knew and that kind of thing
and they were working together to
really find and help me get this off the
ground uh quite a lot of friends
including some of the beer farmers
themselves
uh chipped in money off their own back
to get it running which really
made me want to do it so much better
because it wasn't just a semi-faceless
organization it was a friend that put
money in and really wanted to help make
something good so yeah it's
it's kind of i mean the sponsors that we
had in that first year there's x being
burmest tag box nte octopi moon on a
stick
uh octopi research well yeah moon on a
stick uh harvey nash and sharp
recruitment all people giving their
hard-earned money the valuable time to
make it come true to make the dream of
this weird madman who thrown them up out
the blue and said here give me some
money i want to run something give me
some money worked
so
once we had a little bit of money sorted
out
i wasn't i was freaking out about uh
about being essentially really badly on
the hook for all of the money for the
conference
but i still was
things hadn't cleared stuff like that
but hey uh so
under the what what else do you need for
a conference you've got
your venue you've got your sponsors
you've got
your people your team uh oh i totally
missed it you've also got your villages
so tim from uh from lockpick and village
uh tipped him from lockwood village he
pulls around a lot of the uh uk events
uh it's
offered up said right yeah i'll i'll
come and run the lockpicking village
lizzie chipped in and say right i'll
come on the mental health hackers jenny
you'd popped up say right i'll offer
i'll i'll do a keynote for you ian who
is sadly missing i'm sure he's on his
way running to give me a hug uh chipped
in and said right i'll keep i'll do the
lock note for you as well so it was it
was really just one of those things
where everyone that i'd started to meet
as i was growing had just come up and
said right yeah i'll help i'll help i
want to help you build this i really
want and it's it's that that means so
much
when you're trying to set up events like
this
uh
scroll down
so
we come to the part that's kind of the
most important bit the speakers and
again we ran a cfp over i think there's
three or four weeks
ridiculously short time scale
ridiculously badly planned uh
google uh form to fill in for it oh it
was it was it was barely running barely
getting everything but it worked and we
got enough to enough people to fill up
the one track that we were planning and
then we got small people so we thought
we'll open up another track so we had to
work out where we're putting the other
track put the other track in
and it was uh
it was awesome i mean we had a load of
spat i did have the number in front of
me but it's not my list now but we had a
load of speakers there
uh we had a lot of people reaching out
on their personal accounts to get more
people involved in these more people
coming down to the b sides i mean at
that point i think b sides newcastle had
about 100 followers give or take uh on
twitter which is nothing uh but yeah
it's really
it was trying to uh
trying to get there uh we decided where
we're gonna put the second track
it ended up being quite close to the
wrestlers but again we'll come to that
one later on
uh and we started to feel that it was
going to work and work well
so on other finishing touches
many people who've organized conferences
will know what what's the most important
thing food
you get them fed they tend to be happy
you don't feed people they tend to get
grumpy halfway through especially if
you're doing something in a warehouse
with no food places around and nothing
in walking distance apart from
mcdonald's which
i'll leave that open as to whether that
counts as sustenance uh but yeah so so
what'd they do again more friends more
people came in i put a shout out
to a few people that i knew and said
look are we able to do anything is there
anyone got a food van that comes down
there's a limited kitchen but we can
maybe try and do that see what we can do
and uh it ended up uh some of my friends
who ran their own pizza truck a log five
pizza company come down and give us some
freaking awesome pizzas
funny
uh
but it dawned on me what would people do
while eating their pizza
of course they'd want something to do
they're not just gonna sit around so
run a wrestler
don't put a wrestling event on that's
gonna work i was uh i was walking
through with rico and rosa uh the owners
of uh dynamics the venue that we put it
at uh and there was a lot of grunting
coming from one of the corners
and
initially i thought this was a bit odd
lots of shouting slapping and grunting
but hey you know what happens in a
warehouse stays in a warehouse uh but on
a plate more investigation it was a
wrestling gym
so agreements were made pizza was traded
and all of a sudden we had a nice
wrestling show something odd we can't be
normal we put b sides in a
that's a freaking uh
skate park in the middle of november
it's it's gonna be cold uh yeah
so with with all the people involved it
was gonna absolutely kick ass
and then the problem started
uh
we didn't have projectors projector
rentals freaking expensive so me being
me yeah
everyone's well known owned by a rocket
person
uh shipping company
uh
we ordered some projectors 60 quid
projector what could go wrong
uh no speakers ah speakers with the mic
25 quid what could go wrong
uh recording again
i had a few laptops
now they're gone but hey uh so hey order
a few cameras sweet should work great
got some cheap cameras sorted
so
that point we've got everything we
thought right
everything's there let's throw the
tickets open
so we threw some tickets out there this
old
we threw a few more out there they sold
a few few more out there that's all for
all them out and they went i was like
what the hell
there's 250 people coming to this event
it's an event
uh time to panic
burnt panic we did as people who know me
know i do a very good headless chicken
impression uh but in the end it worked
everyone pulled together we had
speakers
filling the swag bags before the event
we had people printing stuff off at last
minute everyone who was involved in it
chipped in uh it was
it was it was good i mean we get on to
the the day of the event so near the
event pitch up it's knee tables
minor problem
sort it again managed to get in touch
with a local church borrowed some tables
off them happy enough got that done
so i got back and i got informed on the
other problem while i was there oh yeah
uh you forgot to set up your stages oh
okay okay so standard room only all
right everyone fixed that they went they
looked around they found benches they
found chairs they found stools they
found camping things they sat on the
side of half pipes and we made it work
it was the only conference that i'm
aware of where the attendees have built
the venue essentially
we had people running around hammering
nails into walls and all kinds so we
could get screens up and
it was insanity but it was
possibly my favorite event i've ever
been to and i mean i only caught three
talks out of it alive the rest i watched
catch up uh but yeah only caught well no
i didn't they never got recorded i only
caught a few few talks live on it but it
was awesome uh
oh yeah i forgot about the cold it was
freaking cold
we did warn everyone we said put a
hoodie on we said put a jumper on we
said it's maybe not the warmest of
events and we even got a heater rendered
a heater a little bit of a tip check
sizes of things
peter arrived it's about that big of
course you can't see that's about that
big
it's not the biggest of things
uh but we set it up at the village area
we got that going uh dr king has quickly
annexed it uh but hey
and it provided heat for maybe two or
three people okay
it worked it was part of the event it
was there it was part of the feel of the
event and
i mean
yeah it's it was awesome anyway back to
the day we had dan card reach out uh
beforehand offered to build us an
awesome ctf
uh
they went off it was the only bit that
went off without a hitch they managed to
find and steal the only airtight room or
the air windproof room let's see and uh
with a few laptop fans spinning they
even managed to heat it which was pretty
good for them
no one else but good for them
they had a great event and it was the
ctfs i mean i was playing a few of them
after the event pretty cool stuff uh dan
really kind of kicked us out the park
the villagers were working and set up
lizzie at the metro village nice and
chilled timing core had the lock-picking
village sorted the sticker stand was
there our sponsors chop and harvey nash
were holding down the fort in the
recruitment village there was cv
workshops there was great hint for you
advice and i was walking around my first
event that i'd organized having that
feeling of
i helped do this
i pulled everyone together i i
seems a little bit me centric that
little bit but it's it's to to walk
around to get that feeling of
accomplishment that feeling of
this is awesome all of these people here
they've put their time in they're
talking to other people people having
conversations it just makes you so happy
on the inside
uh i mean
yeah uh
yeah so always running well they
proceeded the talks were awesome all was
good then i realized about lunchtime
cameras never got set up
a little bit of a scary one there so we
uh i bought it around trying to fix the
cameras trying to get things up
absolutely no hope the lighting was
ruined the camera shot was massive
nothing got recorded and that's my big
that's my big regret and that's that's
my only big regret about 2019 b-sides
that nothing got recorded but i kind of
get over it by saying it was
it was the woodstock of b-sides events
if you were there you were there
if you weren't you missed out and it was
awesome
i'm sure come come many a moon's time
there'll be people pretending they were
there because it was there
but anyway while i was trying to uh
trying to fix the cameras we had a
wrestling show and that was freaking
awesome i caught some little bits from
over the top when i was sitting on the
top trying to sort some cameras out
uh still to know who won but plenty of
people look confused as hell uh why was
that there so job done on that one
uh the second part of the day rolled on
no more awesome talks
took us towards the end of the day uh we
had our other stage that had to share
their sound with the wrestling uh
practice so uh
there was a few odd grunts and things
like that coming over at inopportune
moments but hey
uh
and we got we really uh
yeah it really started to uh start to
look good and then as the light faded
another problem popped up
we had a minor issue
if we switch the lights on no one can
see the the uh
screens on either one
and there's only one circuit of light
for this whole warehouse
so what's the solution switch the lights
off
so towards the end of the day we shut
down a few of the other villages left
mental health building because it had
its own likes it was a little bit
indoors uh and thought sorry we'll just
do it with the lights off uh so that
that kind of gets to
get to my kind of major memory of the
event and uh it was kind of thanks to
one of the uh on the beer farmers who's
see it's still empty
get yourself running you should be here
by now
uh
and that was watching ian
give his origin talk essentially while i
was sitting on the edge of a half pipe
so well sorry sorry watching ian
silhouetted against the screen because
obviously you couldn't see him you could
just about see the projector
i was sitting on the edge of a half pipe
i was surrounded by friends and i really
felt at home that was
that was just the best feeling
and that
that's the feeling that makes me do
b-sides again and again and again and
it's going to keep me going it was it
was awesome
uh
all right so what where'd it go from
there we had 2019 the bag weird guy
community pulled together and we all
made it happen uh so we started planning
for 2020 thought right 2020 is going to
be our year it's going to be excellent
then the venue polls
because they're going to get read about
dinner housing thing and then we've got
another venue who also counsel on us
because a reservation without a deposit
gets trumped by a wedding
hey
uh and then kobe happened
which kind of everyone that's
sorry mocked everyone up uh you know
it's it's yeah so
to be honest i started panicking
i started locking down
i didn't know what to do i wasn't
reaching out for help i wasn't asking
and i wasn't doing what i should and
that's where happy hour kind of came
into the fruit came into the fray so on
happy hour i met people i met great
people i'm at people like scott i met
people like jen i'm at leonard i'm at
chrissy i'm at jer mark david nicos ivan
james
the list goes on and should really be
scrolling along the bottom but hey we
covered that
uh
and
they really helped out it was
i was talking about the planning and it
was probably about a week before the
event was meant to happen and the
planning was in a disarray everything
was ruined
and i was in a bit of a state on happy
hour and
scott and cole reached out and they said
look we want to help you make this work
want to help this event work we want to
help you we want to help help everything
running so if it hadn't been for them
stepping in at what
i i've got down in my notes a week but
i'm pretty sure it was something like
three days
maybe two uh the that uh yeah we managed
to pull it together
we put on a great conference again we
managed to do two days we doubled the
size of it uh we did one and a half
tracks because we did one track on
monday and two tracks on the other day
we got scott in to do won the present
and sam was in presenting the other
track and we kept it open we we kept it
as much of the feeling of the b-sides
newcastle as we could
uh it's
it was
yeah it was getting
sorry i've lost my space on my notes uh
yeah that a huge response everyone
chipped in and it was really a community
effort and that's when the community
started feeling really like a family
everyone was looking out for each other
everyone was helping out uh it was a
case of right what can we do to help
what can we do to bring it in and we got
it to run through we had some awesome
keynotes
uh we had
where was it we had the beer farmers
kicking us off with our keynote on the
first day was the first year was that
the yeah we had anyway we had the beer
farmers we had charlie sims we had sean
wright
uh we had
re-redacted come in and do the closing
keynote on it uh and we really reached
out there uh at the time the many hats
club really helped us out as well uh
yeah uh but yeah we were really
for the first time really kind of
starting to realize that hey this this
pandemic crack
still do things we can still run
comforters we would still be
bb side events at that year i believe we
were the only post covered
uk b-sides event to have ran that year
uh and i wasn't gonna not run it there
was no time in that where i genuinely
thought that's not gonna happen if it
would have been me sitting there ranting
at you all for for eight hours that's
what would have happened
but yeah it was it was awesome uh i mean
we had that's where we start to get some
of the little bit more order twitches in
so we decided how could we keep the
oddness well i know a few people at the
bartette association so hey two grown
men beating uh each other up
one kneeling down and pretending he's in
a hall and all of that yep yep yep
sounds exactly right so yeah we got them
into a talk at lunch uh i was chatting
with uh with one of my friends adam uh
and he had some contacts and managed to
get frank white to come over and talk to
us uh he did the lunchtime chat why
hacker should get involved with space he
went over the overview effect and all
kinds of awesome talks that really
i'd thought it existed but i didn't know
how to explain things and yeah he's
really is his talks were awesome we
managed to broadcast over twitch and
youtube and the only reason we managed
to get anything done was the crew that
all chipped in at essentially the last
minute everyone stood up everyone
put time out of their day put the effort
in and really worked together and that
that's where you get to it's the whole
community bringing things in and being
one big family and getting things done
it's uh i mean there was issues with the
stream there was issues with the
recordings i mean i stupidly record the
whole thing as one chunk don't do that
that that leaves you with a 14 gig video
file which doesn't edit well on like
eight gig i5s first jedi fives of that
uh and ten plus year old zeons no so
things like things like that the
recordings took a while to get up but
they were there it was an improvement
over last year and because everyone else
had reached out it was the real feeling
of everyone pushing towards the goal so
we actually managed to get all of it
kind of sorted out
uh it was awesome i mean
we had sponsors reaching out that we
were reaching out to them and like the
last days before the event and they'll
come back right we can't sponsor but
here's a prize we can't sponsor but
we'll help you with licensing we can
help you with this we can help you with
that and it really did feel like
everyone was just pulling together for
the for the main goal
so
where do we get to after that and i'm
skimming on because i know i'm chatting
a bit too much uh but we get to 2021
uh we are we were proudly the first live
b-sides event after call vid
it's it was
awesome we had
yeah we didn't have as many turn up as
we sold the tickets for yes a few people
dropped out judy covered which totally
understandable a few people dropped out
because they just didn't feel like they
could get there
but to help that we ran our platform on
gather james one of the guys that i've
met on happy hour uh i found this
platform was working with it and it's
awesome platform so we had that and the
interactions that we had on that we had
the feeling that it started bringing the
the b-sides flavor back to the online
ones uh we had all kinds of companies i
mean
the sponsors from last year colin over
at jumping uh sorry from this oh colin
over at jumping rivers without him we
wouldn't have had a venue
uh it was only because they'd got
involved that we managed to get as cheap
a price as we did on the venue we
wouldn't have been able to afford it
plain and simple
uh it was
people like that reaching out and saying
right look here here's a solution for
your problem have you tried this have
you tried that do you want to do that
and that's really kind of
the crux of it the the crux of the the
talk really uh
reach out when you need help
and the right people and then that
you'll find people will reach back
people will say no i want to help out i
mean i am if any of you want to run an
event i'm more than happy to help out to
show you where i've went wrong uh i mean
the the beer farmers helping out with
every event i've done
uh and being there for the shoulder to
cry on in a lot of the situations as uh
as scott's rather wet shoulders would
tell you uh but yeah being there as a
friend and being there for it really
i mean
before i found myself my community in
cyber and my family in cyber
i was
that weird guy that liked playing with
things that that liked oh it
why are you plotting bits on your
network why are you doing that you meant
to be an itg you meant to play around
with computers i was that weird fire
spinning guy and with the family that i
found through infosec i'm not
i'm one of the one of the brothers when
i've got millions brothers in infosec
well thousands of brothers and sisters
in infosec and we all pull together for
the same goal it's all about
being better
getting better and growing with each
other and that's
i know it's been a bit of a choppy talk
but that that's pretty much it
i mean we're going to go on to 2022
we've got the same venue booked for that
double the space booked we've got so
many ideas in the planning
i mean speaking of ideas in the planning
all of the event things we were thinking
about the previous ones they're all
still there we're still thinking about
trying to do the highest hack i've still
got a iot catapult sitting in my garden
i've still got other things like that
that are going to be tied in i mean
duckless ships will be back it will be
rebuilt at some point but hey until it
gets to the point where we can all be
100
in a big area without masks without that
then it's just
i can't wait a bit but everything's
still there everything will be planned
and we'll get done but yeah i mean to to
wrap up i think one of the most
important things i need to say
is thanks to the beer farmers
i mean all of from your members
individually to together as a group you
have always supported me he has always
supported b-sides newcastle and he's
always been there for us and that's a
massive thing to me that that's
something that
it really means a lot and from about my
heart thank you guys you're awesome keep
doing what you're
doing that's brilliant and it means a
lot to hear that but it also means a lot
to me
to have the opportunity to support
you know and we know putting on
conferences isn't easy this morning's
challenges have demonstrated that but
again
a fascinating story and anybody that's
looking to
create an event of their own a i think
you'd agree
do it
be
maybe plan it
if you didn't mention too much around
planning um that was jack's
biggest biggest biggest planet
yeah
but three which is the point of your
talk
use your community
that's what it's there for so listen ben
fantastic story
you're a great guy and under the
circumstances of this week
we're really grateful that you you were
able to join us thanks man
thank you thank you it's been a pleasure