Researchers have no intrinsic, "noble" reason to present their findings at a conference. They withhold interesting findings for months, and travel to a distant location, to do a slideshow in front of several hundred people. Hoping to capitalize on the profile of the event, and the PR attention that comes with it, is a huge part of the incentive. Events such as Pwn2own are the pinnacle of this trend.
Organizers... well, they often start for noble reasons, but are subject to perverse incentives: conferences don't get successful and profitable unless you allow the merits of the content to take a back seat. You need to seek presenters who are known to the journalists, and offer them high five-figure compensation for even the most trivial talks and keynotes. Vendors treat the conferences as trade shows (fair enough), or more insidiously, hope to befriend researchers and strategically score brownie points in ways that have no objective merits. They throw lavish "invitation-onlly" vendor parties (complete with escorts / strippers), or have entire teams seemingly dedicated to just shaking hands, taking photos with researchers, and blogging about how much they like responsible disclosure. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing, but I also think there's no point in getting too worked up about paid keynotes. There are more troubling trends. /mz _______________________________________________ Dailydave mailing list [email protected] http://lists.immunityinc.com/mailman/listinfo/dailydave
