Last month I got to go to my very first IISYG Meetup, now IISYG is one of the oldest Cyber/Security Groups in the UK, and up till now, I simply haven’t been senior enough or brought enough to the table to be invited as a member. I had seen it for years as a tantalising event that people went to, but other than the subject of its talks I did not know its contents, only that there was a number of senior guests speakers, and a lot of conversations about details in the security industry. So it was with much excitement I received an invitation and potted along to the House of Lords with my security ID, all suited and booted.
Now, the whole of the meetup is under Chatham House rules, which will make this review understandably vague, however it wasn’t its actual content that I wanted to review. It was about the fact that I have seldom enjoyed a professional meetup more, particularly as it was my first time, everybody was instantly friendly and likeable, easy to get on with and most surprisingly, there was none of the normal conference posturing, there was no titles or anything like that, I was engaged within minutes of walking through the door, and people said what they did, but not the level that they did it. when we did a quick roundtable of who was there, it was like a who’s who of security, massive industry representation across the board, incredibly impressive but not one of them was trying to me the most important {{Often on a new project when you do a round table, there will be a few people that can’t resist tooting their own horn, there was none of that here}}. It was a minimal name, title, and what they did, which was an indication of things to come.
This was a forum in which people share expertise, shared their knowledge and shared them in a way that everybody else could learn from, it was truly a safe space where you could ask for help, where you could repeat how you’ve done something and would do it differently again, or what plans you had, and people with decades of experience would help you address issues that they could see coming up for you. It was simply like that. there was so little ego in the room, it was unbelievable, just a vast amount of help and experience. conversations would go from deeply technical security details, to laughing and joking then back to serious. It was a very dynamic and very, very open experience.
I don’t know what else to say about it, other than I felt like the most junior person there and I have not felt that for a decade, also that in a couple of hours, I learnt more that weeks of Internet research and public conferences.
However, I did make one mistake. It turns out that even though it officially finishes at 1pm, people go to the pub, have lunch and keep the conversation going, and I’d already got stuff booked for the rest of the day. I’m not going make that mistake again.