Great question, and we get this a lot. tldr; new content about SE or OSINT.

We understand the CFP process can be a bit daunting to some, and hopefully these few tips will help you get a sense of the type of content we’re looking for at Layer8.

Relevance: The talk or workshop should focus on Social Engineering or Open Source Intelligence (OSINT). We welcome talks that delve into the offensive and defensive sides of these fields, or help us understand some theory or concepts behind them.

Novelty: Although the content itself doesn’t have to be new or groundbreaking, we especially love to see topics or research that are novel. For example, we love to have solid fundamentals or 101 talks for newcomers, as well as new research, tools or techniques for our seasoned attendees. We tend to prioritize talks that haven’t been presented before. If it has been presented before, please make sure to explain where, and if changes have been made since its previous iterations. Be clear about these facts as the committee does research (a.k.a. OSINT) on many submissions for this info.

Passion: We want you to be excited about your topic! Speakers who are passionate about their presentation are more likely to keep the audience engaged.

Clarity: So that we can best assess its contents, your submission should be clear, complete and as detailed as possible. This means having an overview of the speaker, a short description and full talk outline. Not only will this help us, but it will better you help you assess the length of your presentation as we offer 25 or 50 minute spots.

Expertise: If you’ve been to Layer8 in the past, you’ll know that we welcome newcomers, students and professionals alike. We also welcome folks from any field- not just IT or information security!

Quick Tips That Increase Chances of Being Accepted

1. Make the content very relevant to social engineering and/or OSINT
2. Write the description so it is easy to understand.
3. Include a long description and/or outline for your presentation
4. Have it be new, unique or not already publicly accessible.
5. If you have presented this talk before, very clearly explain how this iteration is different and how different. Be clear about these facts as the committee does research many submissions for this info.

Quick Tips that Increase Chances of Being Not Accepted

1. Content of presentation has no relevance to social engineering or OSINT.
2. Give very little information in the description or focus on buzzwords.
3. Leave the long description field blank.
4. Offer content that you’ve presented at many conferences and is the exact same presentation that can be easily found on YouTube.

We have a content committee of five professionals from the industry. These people are deeply involved with social engineering and OSINT and have given presentations at conferences themselves. They understand and respect the time and effort required to put together a good presentation and proposal. When the proposals have been gathered, the committee reviews them over multiple days, ranking each on relevance, clarity of the submission, diversity of topics and the answer to the question “Is this a talk that attendees will find value in?”

To see more information about the Content Committee, see the About Us page.