This year has already been filled with many exciting developments, making it one for the books. Among the biggest highlights so far is the record-breaking speed at which the first 100 tickets for our event sold out. Within just 30 minutes of their release, all 100 were snapped up. If you missed out on the first release, fear not! Our second and largest batch of tickets will be available for purchase tomorrow, 15/04/2023 at 9 am. This is the release you definitely don’t want to miss, so be sure to find out more here.
Even if you're unable to secure a ticket in the second release, there's still a chance to attend. We'll have a final small release of 50 tickets on May 12, in addition to any released tickets from those who are unable to attend. Moreover, if you don't manage to get a ticket, you can always sign up to become a volunteer. We'll be looking for people who can operate cameras, help with check-in, make timing calls, and much more. The call for volunteers will open next week so keep an eye out on socials for the signup form.
We also held our first community meet-up at the Frog and Fiddle. A small group of us settled in for a few drinks and to talk tech, conferences and life in general. Even the board games sat untouched and unplayed which is a sign of a good night and good conversation. It was such a success that we will be looking to hold quarterly community nights going forward, with the next one held in July.
Another incredible highlight of the event is the number of papers we've received. We have 27 incredible submissions to choose from, along with two talks that have been selected and organized by the Cheltenham BSides Team, so we'll certainly not be short of content. You can find out more about our paper selection committee and how the talks are selected here. If you'd like to join the paper selection committee, please email cfp@cheltenhambsides.org.uk. They will be meeting at the end of next week, so we hope to start announcing our speakers and content soon. As you can tell the team have a busy couple of weeks ahead of us as we start our final countdown towards the event.
We moved the venue to the Cheltenham Racecourse to accommodate more people. Turns out we are sharing the weekend with the Wychwood Festival. The plus side to this is that the family can go to Wychwood Festival while you come to BSides, the downside is we are now expecting a small amount of traffic getting to the venue. Overall, this shouldn’t affect the day too much but will keep communication open both leading up to the event and on the day to make it as smooth as possible.
Finally, we still have sponsorship opportunities available, including a gold package and, more importantly, the after-party sponsor. If you know a company that might be interested in sponsoring the event, please contact us at sponsor@cheltenhambsides.org.uk.
We're incredibly excited to welcome you on June 3rd to a day that promises to be filled with fantastic content, great people, and opportunities to network. So be sure to get your tickets while you can, and we'll see you there!
*A small note on the header image: while this year is all about the 80s it is really hard to find the perfect Canva stock images of Apple 3 or Commodore 64, so I took a tiny bit of artistic license and am aware that the computer in the image is a Macintosh Classic 2 which came out in the early 90s. Please forgive me.
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