There’s a 1675 letter by Isaac Newton: “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.” A large part of this sentiment is having other folks lift you up to take you further. The infosec community is a great way to do this – and making sure you preserve your learnings is a great way to lift others.
Get involved in the community is a popular response when folks ask “how can I learn more about security”. But that response seldom answers the “how?” for people who are just breaking into the field. It’s almost like you need the secret decoder ring to be able to break into the secret decoder community. The wonderful thing about the field is that it is constantly changing, which means everyone has something to contribute! Join this talk to learn how to identify your community, immediate actions you can take and contributions you can make and get involved today.
Stay with this talk to learn more about preserving the past for the future. We’ve all heard the saying that once it’s on the Internet it’s there forever… but computers and the Internet don’t always apply the best context. As Rupert Giles would say, “Books smell. Musty and rich. The knowledge gained from a computer, it has no texture, no context. It’s there and then it’s gone. If it’s to last, then the getting of knowledge should be tangible, it should be…smelly.” Properly preserving and archiving your pictures for the future gives everyone something to look at – even when the power goes out – and it can help connect you to folks when you don’t get a chance to see them in a long while. Scrapbooking teaches us with minimal tools and just a little perseverance, you can capture memories in tangible ways for the future.