Welcome! You are submitting to the FIFTH annual BSides Knoxville!

For the local neighborly scruffians, you know what you’re getting into.

For those of you that “ain’t from ‘round here”, don’t worry. Knoxville is a friendly, if scruffy, city and BSides Knoxville has a relaxed, come-as-you-are atmosphere.

Here’s a few quick facts about BSides Knoxville that set us apart from other security conferences:

• Each of our tracks are hosted in different businesses in downtown Knoxville’s Market Square
• Two of these tracks are bars - the third is a business accelerator: Knoxville Entrepreneur Center
• We feed all attendees “breakfast” (usually donuts) and lunch. Water, soda and coffee is available for free all day. Each attendee gets two tickets for alcoholic drinks. You’re on your own after that. Roughly half of the attendees don’t drink, so we’re working on a system where they can get some cool swag instead. We usually do nice coffee mugs and cool handmade posters.
• Each speaker gets a personalized walkout song! We feel this is a great way to get the presenter and crowd pumped up. After all, two of our tracks are designed to be music and entertainment venues.
• It’s a one day conference that runs from 9AM to 6PM EST. We host a speaker dinner at 6:30PM, immediately following the conference.
• We offer complimentary speaker training, slide reviews and practice sessions to those that need or want it.
• Quiet, private speaker rooms are provided with extra snacks, drinks and caffeine.

Tickets sell out every year (except for that one year we scheduled on the same day as CodeStock … oops). We typically have 2.5 tracks (one just runs the morning) and each talk is 30-50 minutes in length.

Moving from one track to another requires walking out into the square under the open sky, so we always keep our fingers crossed for good weather. The upside is that if you’re a smoker or get overwhelmed by the crowds, escaping is a quick and easy affair. If you don’t like the food we provide, there are dozens of restaurants within a 5 minute walk. Several hotels are a 5-20 minute walk away. Downtown is a 15 minute Uber/Lyft ride from the airport (TYS).

If you’re still not convinced or have additional questions, hit us up on Twitter or via email.