Narwhal.

How can you get involved?

• Follow us on Twitter at @NarwhalBe.
• Sign up for our emails! Want to make sure you hear about things as they're announced? Sign up for our ultra-low-traffic mailing list!
• Show up! If you're interested, come by; check out the Twitter account for announcements on events and general open times; if you'd like more confirmation, send a DM to make sure.
• Donate to support the suite this year! Our 2019 fundraising campaign is now live. We want to make sure we can make Narwhal happen, and while it's not incredibly expensive, it's not free. Your support is what makes Narwhal possible and enables us to keep doing it in the future! Current status:
  
• Seriously, though, show up! This is the third year of Narwhal as a suite, and it's still an experiment. (Perhaps it's more like Mad Engineering at this point.) It may be a terrible idea, in which case it won't return; if it goes well, we'll likely make it happen next year. We don't know what will happen until you show up!

Generally, the suite will be available during con-rational hours (roughly 2pm-11pm) Tuesday, August 6, through Sunday, August 11. We'll try to have someone there most of the time for general drop-ins and hanging out, but the suite is staffed by volunteers (volunteer nerds, to be fair), and all of us are attending the three big conferences as well. The suite will be open and particularly useful in the evenings, with hangouts, talks, or other events many evenings during the week. If you're a policy-type person and want to join us, do it!

Events:

• Monday, August 5
  • 8pm-11pm Pregame Afterparty
    • Members of the Security BSides Proving Ground program (mentors and mentees) who have just attended the Pregame program on Monday: this is your chance to relax and play (or watch others play) a friendly game of Power Slides. What if you didn't write your own talk slides, but had to pitch a product anyway? Come join us for a last moment of calm and fun before Summer Camp kicks off in earnest!
• Wednesday, August 7
  • 7:30pm-9:00pm Talks: "Memes: at What Cost?"
    • "Non-Profit Hackers" by Spam
    • "Misinfosec: what we did next" by Sara-Jayne Terp and Pablo Breuer
    • "Think of the kitten: Why our supply of online cat pictures depends on preserving Section 230" by Cathy Gellis
  • 9:00pm-10:30pm Post-Talk Drinks and Chat
    • Where you can have a drink and chat with interesting people. We're not renting out the biggest nightclub in Vegas, nor are we cramming 600 people into a hotel room (there are plenty of opportunities for both at other parties).
• Thursday, August 8
  • 7:30pm-9:00pm Talks: "Lessons Learned, Sometimes Poorly"
    • "Do or Do Not: Critical Infrastructure Regulation and Lessons Learned from Leaving NERC CIP" by Brandon Workentin
    • "Hackathons: I'M EXHAUSTED AND THIS IS FUN" by Caroline Hardin
    • "Black boxes, fraud and magic- avoiding extraordinary delusions before they crush us" by Alex Muentz
  • 9:00pm-10:30pm Post-Talk Drinks and Chat
• Friday, August 9
  • 7:30pm-9:00pm Talks: "This All Got Out of Hand So Quickly"
    • "You want to do *what*, _where_? -- An exploration of how hackerspaces intersect with municipal building codes" by Grant Dobbe
    • "Don't stay in your lane: direct applications of philosophical ethics to autonomous vehicle operating system design" by Falcon Darkstar Momot
    • "Programmatic Chaos - What I learned in 4 years of working in ad tech" by Win Suen
  • 9:00pm-10:30pm Drinks and Chat

Narwhal is a gathering point for two separate (though closely related) ideas in security:

• There needs to be a space in security for people who don't do red team work---policy, compliance, and academia are critical parts of security.
• Wouldn't it be nice if there was a space for people who didn't hate on education, diverse backgrounds, and/or anything that reminded them there was more than one way to do and/or be security?

Why a Narwhal in particular? There are a few reasons, but the simplest is that parts of the security community like to pretend that work that's not all-offensive isn't real security work---or that people that aren't offensive for offense's own sake aren't security people, and don't really exist in the industry. The truth is that, like narwhals, we do exist (even if it's hard to prove). We're important to ecosystems and the world of security, and we're often misunderstood. And we could use a space to hang out in (because even though we've had many great tech policy discussions in a nightclub during a Black Hat party, it'd be neat if we could hear ourselves think while planning the next response to cartels named after Dutch suburbs).

The genesis of this suite came during hacker summer camp 2016, when Brendan and a group of five other wonkish sorts tried for 45 minutes to find a single place anywhere within 100 miles of DEF CON that wasn't so loud they couldn't hear each other talk. They failed, but an idea was born. Thus, Narwhal, where those of us who do security in weird ways can talk, scheme, plan, and hang out as a useful addition to all the wonderful things happening at the various cons!

If you're reading this site, likely you! We encourage anyone of good will and interesting conversation to join us. Not allowed: bigots, haters, and people who think that the only useful security work is popping shells. (People who just like popping shells in concert with a larger panoply of security work are, of course, fine.) Know someone else who you think should know about this? Send them to this site!

Many people will have keys to the suite; people with keys are welcome to let others in and hold open hours. (Need to find a keyholder? Send a Twitter DM to @NarwhalBe.)

The suite will be at the Flamingo, across the skybridge from Bally's (DEF CON), and just a short hop away from the BSLV and BHUSA con hotels. We will post this year's room number as soon as we have it.

Diversity and inclusion are a significant portion of why Narwhal exists. We encourage participation from the most varied and diverse backgrounds possible and want to be very clear about where we stand. Our goal is to maintain a safe, helpful, and friendly community for everyone. This code and related procedures also apply to unacceptable behavior occurring outside the scope of community activities, in all community venues--online and in-person--as well as in all one-on-one communications, and anywhere such behavior has the potential to adversely affect the safety and well-being of community members. (In other words, if you're a jerk, regardless of whether you're a jerk in the space, you'll be shown the door.)

Unacceptable behavior includes:

• Nazi, fascist, or other imagery indicating a political viewpoint that begins with "X group aren't human beings." (We cannot believe that allegedly-major conferences can't figure this one out, but it's a hard line for us.)
• Conduct or speech which might be considered sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, ableist or otherwise discriminatory or offensive in nature.
• Using unwelcome, suggestive, derogatory or inappropriate nicknames or terms.
• Inappropriate attention or contact. Be aware of how your actions affect others. If it makes someone uncomfortable, stop.
• Not understanding the differences between constructive criticism and disparagement.

Understand that speech and actions have consequences, and unacceptable behavior will not be tolerated. Usually, this intolerance will involve being directed to leave via the door. Unusually, this intolerance will involve being directed to leave via any semipermeable membrane.

If you are the subject of, or witness to any violations of this Code of Conduct, please contact us by emailing coc@narwhal.be, or grab any staff member (identifiable by special badges).

Derived from the Slack Community Code of Conduct (CC-SA).