That’s a wrap on 2019, the first year for Cyber Security Made Social. Let me first say thank you to the community and sponsors for making it such a success! I was genuinely surprised by the level of participation—we averaged 44 attendees at 5 gatherings—from both professionals and vendors in our first year of ramping this up.
My original goal was to create a regularly occurring social gathering for Chicago’s IT leaders centered around a conversation about cyber security, with a focus on sharing ideas and experiences and having fun. Less like a conference or camp in a hotel (we’ve already got great ones in the area), and more like a friendly get together at the local dive—at which the top companies in the industry help pick up the tab.
And that’s exactly what we did, whether it was watching the nail-biting endgame of The Avengers; tasting (and tasting again) the finest whiskeys in the West Loop; cruising the river at sunset; or bowling for the $1,000 cash prize at our Kingpin Classic. Cyber security was indeed made social.
I want to say a special thank you to all six of our sponsors this year, who helped make this all possible: Check Point; Velocloud, now part of VMware; Tanium; Netskope; Cloud Harmonics, an Ingram Micro company; and Palo Alto Networks.
Professionals, partners, vendors … as the digital transformation marches ahead, risks be damned, we all need to work together to ensure its safety. And if we’re spending time together, we might as well have fun …
I’m grateful for the community we’ve created so far and can’t wait to continue building it in 2020 and the new decade beyond. Happy New Year!