And away I go.

[Wayne]

Tomorrow is BSides Lancashire. It's going to take a good 5 hours for me to get there by the time you factor in breaks and going the longer way to fill up with LPG. Time to jump in the shower before setting off. More info once I get back.

[Wayne]

And I'm back from BSides Lancashire.

I have to admit that this wasn't my most enjoyable BSides, but most of that was due to my trying to shake off the remnants of a cold, along with it being a long journey. I was away down the South coast of England the day before setting off, and worked it out that in 3 days I travelled 650 miles and spent over 12 hours on the road. But that's on me.

I set off on the Tuesday and made the decision to take the longer but much easier route of just taking the motorways. About halfway there I pulled into a service station for a stretch, called the wife to tell her it was all plain sailing so far and set off again, only to almost immediately get stuck in a series of traffic jams. No big deal though. It was a straight line and I had my talking book to listen to, so I made the most of it. The place I stayed overnight was hardly the Hilton, but then I hardly paid Hilton prices for it so it balances out. In a bit of a coincidence, I received an email from a magazine asking about help with an article they're working on about scammers using AI and said they'd heard about my previous talk at BSides Bristol.

I woke up early on the day and considered going for breakfast, but ended up deciding not to and used the time to do a final run through of the talk instead. I was only about a 10 minute walk to the venue and it was a nice day, so I decided to walk it rather than be lazy and drive down. The one thing I didn't like was the room everyone gathered in was too small for my liking. It made it difficult to be able to have a proper conversation, and a few others said the same thing. Other than that, everyone was polite and friendly. Speakers got a hat with a custom pin on it to set them apart. Personal opinion, I'd have gone for a different style of lanyard instead as it's easier to wear. The day itself is kind of a blur, as tends to happen with these things. Lots of talks, lots of making contacts, lots of going outside for a vape and to enjoy the quiet compared to inside the building. Then finally at 4pm came my talk. It was essentially a cut down version of the one I gave last month to NAPSA, which is a reworking of the one I gave at BSides Bristol. It seemed to go down well, and I even got an interesting question after it I hadn't thought about before but will definitely have to look into deeper. There was one more talk after that and then I snuck off. They'd given bad weather so I decided to leave early to try and avoid it rather than driving back the next day. I'm glad I did too as when I woke up today the hills here were covered with hailstones. The last thing I'd have wanted was to get caught up in that.

So then, how do I rate BSides Lancashire? It was good but uncomfortably loud at times. A bigger meeting room would have made a huge difference. Would I go again? Yeah, probably. They're great things to attend, but not expensive like some of the other conferences. It was also nice to see people giving their first talks and seeing the support they got with it. In general, if there's a BSides near you I'd recommend going.

One last thing. On my way back home I forgot to tell the sat nav to do the "longer but easier" route and ended up driving through the middle of Wales, through some of the most stunning landscapes Wales has to offer. In the dark, so I couldn't see any of it....

BSides Cymru is next month, and I'll be giving my talk there too. I'm going to isolate before it so I don't get any bugs before I leave, plus I can get there with a 30 minute train journey.