BSides Melbourne 2026: my unofficial awards
A week after BSides Melbourne 2026, here are the talks, villages, and people that stuck with me.
BSides Melbourne 2026 ran 16-17 May at SEEK in Cremorne. I wrote this the week after. Still thinking about it.
Absolutely great conference. Kudos to Lukasz Gogolkiewicz, Kirstin McIntosh, Brett Williams, Vaughan Shanks, Lidia Giuliano, and all the volunteers who made it happen. Same for the speakers and labs I could actually get to. Paul McCarty and Lesley Carhart both gave great keynotes.
My awards
- Most-depressing-talk award (by necessity) - Lesley Carhart and Ricki Burke, both on cybersecurity jobs. Necessary. Gloomy. Worth hearing.
- Dear-to-my-heart award - David Grice on security architecture. This is the work I care about most.
- Most-notes award - Matt C. on securing CI/CD, then Kumar Soorya and Kaif Ahsan on securing AI workloads, then Kanik S. and Taran Montaperto on board and exec reporting. My notebook ran out of margin.
- This-will-cost-me-money award - George Ferres on homelab stuff, plus the Homelabs Village. Sorry, wallet.
- Take-care-of-the-dog-while-I'm-away award - My wife. She held the fort while I was in Melbourne.
And thanks for the apples.
What I'd tell someone who missed it
BSides is volunteer-run, community-first, and weird in the good way. Talks skew practical. Villages let you poke at things with your hands. First-time speakers sit next to people who've been doing this for decades.
If you went, what stuck with you?
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