Thank you for your interest in applying to speak at BSides Seattle 2027, which will be held in-person on Friday and Saturday, March 5th and 6th, in Redmond, WA. Decisions on submissions will be sent no later than November 30th. 

Please be sure to follow the below:
•    Talks must be submitted by the author / speaker who performed the work, and not by PR agencies or marketing teams on the speaker’s behalf. 
•    Descriptions can be no longer than 150 words. Session details can be no longer than 400 words. Submissions longer than this will be automatically rejected.
•    Submission cannot include PII (your name, your company name, your blog post, etc.). If you do this we reserve the right to reject the submission. 
•   Submissions cannot be sales pitches for products/services or marketing campaigns. 
•   Submissions must abide by our Code of Conduct.
•   While security is a team effort, talks may have at most 2 presenters. Panels can have up to 4 panelists and a moderator. Workshops can have up to 4 facilitators. 
•    We only allow 2 submissions per person. If you submit more than that, we will reject extra submissions. 

This year's theme is Human Still Required. The AI hype cycle has made big promises, from vibe code to freeing humans from repetitive tasks. How do we operate security in a world where the attacker no longer needs sleep? What’s working well, where are you leveraging AI? Where are promises not yet fulfilled? What is the next threat just over the horizon? 

While it would be great for you to incorporate this into your submission, it is not a requirement.

1. The Sleepless Adversary
Offense-focused: the latest attacks, TTPs, and vulnerabilities seen in the wild including how AI is changing attacker speed, scale, and trade craft. This topic is for red teamers, threat researchers, and anyone with a war story about how something actually got broken.
2. Built to Last
Defense-focused: engineering and securing complex systems that hold up under pressure, from legacy infrastructure to AI-assisted pipelines. This topic covers architecture, hard problems solved, and the frameworks, tools, and processes that made a real difference including honest accounts of what lived up to its promise and what didn't.
3. Just Over the Horizon
Research and innovation-focused: pushing the boundaries of security into new territory, including how attackers and defenders alike are exploring AI agents and tooling that haven't hit the mainstream yet. This topic covers novel techniques, unexpected system behavior, and deep dives into emerging niches.
4. The Human Element
People-focused: judgment, trust, ethics, and resilience in an increasingly automated field. This topic includes how we calibrate trust in AI-assisted tools without losing the skills that make us good at this job, navigating the ethical edges of new technology, recovering from burnout and bad incidents, and raising each other up through mentorship and community.
Sec Jam (Workshop)
Hands-on, skills-building workshops applicable to a wide range of security professionals, staying as tool-agnostic as possible including sessions that build the judgment AI tooling can't replace.

If you’ve got interesting security content that you’re not sure where it belongs, don’t worry - put it in anyway, and pick whichever track you think is the best fit. The review board will consider it on its merits just as any other submission. 

Talks can be 25 or 55 minutes including Q&A. Workshops can be 4-hours, 8-hours, or 2 days.

Unsure what we look for in talks? Examples of previously accepted submissions can be found here:

• Example 1 (55 minute talk)
  
• Example 2 (25-minute talk)
• Example 3 (panel)
• Example 4 (workshop)
  
  

As a community event, BSides Seattle is unfortunately unable to cover any speaker expenses. If you have questions about the CFP please reach out to us (bsidesseattle.presentations@gmail.com).