Author Archives: warrenko

Be Cool

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I’ve watched people fumble in presentations, I’ve watched them lose audiences because they let a hiccup break their concentration.

Giant caveat here; I’ve done the same. For a long time, every time I was put on the spot I would make the same mistakes. Get lost in something loosely, or entirely unrelated, have glitches, or lose your place. Lose the concentration needed to pick right up.

The best speakers are the ones who take this all in stride and adapt their ideas on the fly. The first time I remember watching this failure to fail happen was in high school. Watching a garage band play, one guitar player broke a string towards the end of a song. The other members broke into a long, winding interlude while the other dropped out, strung a new string, retuned his guitar and picked back up. They didn’t pause, they didn’t even look at each other. Was this something they rehearsed?! It doesn’t matter. To most of the audience, they probably didn’t even notice that the band was short a member for 5 minutes, the show just went on.

This is the message I am trying to internalize. If you don’t act like something is wrong, nothing is wrong. I’ve seen presenters lose sound or video, and just keep right on trucking. Projector fails? Slides are wrong, missing, out of order, typo’ed? Just keep swimming.  If you show your audience that those things are unimportant to your message, it’s easy to get past. I was reminded of this situation recently by reading redteams.net.

  1. Look cool.
  2. Never get lost.
  3. If you get lost, look cool.

Looking cool is important to get your audience to believe you. To believe that you know your material. Acting cool is how you keep your audience, how you hold them tight when you’re going to shit. Public speaking is rarely as life-threatening as Special Forces operations, but those three rules still apply for the same reasons. Look cool; know your talk, know your slides. Be prepared to go it without slides, without a mike. Never Get Lost; don’t let something unexpected get in your head. If you do get lost, Look Cool; practice what you’re doing so that you can fall back on what you’re talking about, or how you’re talking. If you build your talk, your presentation, your meeting this way, you will succeed, you will get your message across, you will hold their attention.

This weighs heavy on my mind this year as I’ve started speaking at conferences, something I had never before even considered doing. Previously I was scared stiff of anything remotely related to public speaking, even in small meetings. Now I am forcing myself to build a simple message and deliver it to the best of my ability. I have rehearsed my talk, I have learned how to look cool while I’m doing it. It’s not easy, but it is a new muscle that needs flexing. Communication is always the most important thing in any job, so I am forcing myself to get better at the parts I know I struggle with.

BSides Cleveland – Afterwords

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07.13.2012 – Attended BSidesCLE

Now that I’m a grown-up and actually have held a job that requires growing, I’ve gone to off-site meetings or demo days. So far they’ve always been in nice hotels, provide breakfast, lunch and refreshments, but what they really are is a sales pitch. Some better disguised than others, but none the less, for a professional function, during the work week, held in a hotel, they were fancy sales pitches.

This was the first time I felt strongly enough to use paid time off to attend something. Turns out, my current job is fantastic, and when they found out it was a Security conference, told me to cancel the PTO request and just go on the clock. I don’t know much about what happens at “hacker” cons, but the atmosphere at BSides was incredible compared to other off-site functions for work. Every other one was a sales pitch.

BSides, and I hope others match this experience, is a place to hang out. There was a lovely breakfast with plenty of good food, big, open tables and areas to gather and converse, and a schedule events to learn things. Oh the things to learn; building an awareness program, lockpicking, anti-forensics, industry politics, and general pentesting. These presenters came from all walks, authors, executives, admins, pentesters, developers, they were as varied as the attendees. Before I got to the event I was feeling intimidated, I know I am a novice in all things InfoSec, but I want to learn, and that’s what the day was full of, learning. I was given an outpouring of information about how to do things, learn things, and think about things different. All the speakers drove the point home, “we can do this, why aren’t you?” about their dayjobs, about their hobbies, about their lives in and around the community. No one was unapproachable, no one was concerned when things had to change last minute; re-write a talk, have someone sub with one of their old talks, let’s just keep the show running. It was great to experience this and take away the feeling I can get to that point.

What did I really take away? The same thing this blog is built to enforce. Changing is hard work. Sometimes the hard part is plugging away with no end in sight until something just clicks, sometimes it’s learning 100 new skills at once and trying to balance. I learned that I’m always one click, one video, one blog post away from learning all the secrets, but really what it takes is DOING. More and more I know how to learn things; do them. Now I have a job that will PAY ME to go to things to learn. They will pay me to prove that I know things by getting certifications. They do this to keep me happy, but to also give me a path. They do not dictate that path, I am open to choose these topics, choose these certifications. I have to pay this back by following a path. Doing more than just watching something pass by and reading about it.

Post 1

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So who am I?

Nobody, at least, not yet. I’m “from” the midwest, about average height/weight/build/etc. I’ve graduated from a school or two, then started to (slowly) learn about things. I’ve done art; ceramics, drawing, animation, sculpture, design, and probably a few other things. I’ve done hard work; restaurants, construction, yardwork, again, probably a few more I’m forgetting. I’ve been an “administrator”, a “coordinator”, an “analyst”, an “operator”. I don’t know how any of that really defines me. I like to read; blogs, books, manuals, instructions, stories, histories, accounts. If it’s words, I’ll probably read it, at least for a little while.

This is where it gets interesting, at least for me. In a recent blog post Shawn Blanc talks about his writing and gave the following bit of wisdom; “Reading about writing is not the same as writing”. My whole life I want to be a creator. I’ve spent years at this point reading things by writers about how to write and ignoring their #1 comment:

To be a writer, you have to write.

So I’m writing. I don’t know where it will lead, or how long I’ll be able to continue to do it, but I’m starting.

What are you writing about?

Probably everything I can think about for awhile. I need to find my voice. I know my opinions, but formating them in a logical fashion is not commonly my strong suit. So this will be all about the things I know; mostly Macs, a little about good design, and general tech; gadgets and computers. Probably, hopefully just as much about the
things I don’t know but want to; InfoSec, good design, moving forward with creating, doing things, rather than more reading.