Digital Trainer Summit 1- Circumvention Tech Festival, Spain

Context

I must start by saying that Valencia is a beautiful city, awesome weather and friendly people. It was a nice location to host the CT Festival. The DST summit comprised of variety of people across the globe and if am to go by the statistics we were 80 DS trainers from 43 different countries. How awesome is that? So this is an automatic plus. Las Naves was an awesome venue thanks to the sunlight patches that we had and Ali was an excellent facilitator, I never dozed off not even a blink during the sessions. That’s how amazing I found him to be. One of my major likes was the speed geeking session. Getting to hear about all the awesome works being done across the globe by different people was just amazing. All the speed geeks were great but I liked the cyber arabs the most because it was the newest site I heard of in the summit, Bahaa and the team are doing a great job. Tactical Tech new IU is also awesome. So speed geeking is a plus, I will adopt it. Another like is that the sessions time management was on point, so kudos to that and the sessions were relevant to my work. I hope that the networks I made will lead to long term collaborations which will help me in my work as a digital security trainer. All these are likes.

Motivation

More likes goes to the diversity of the trainers and the pool of knowledge that came from different corners of the world. Hosting different cultures with everyone’s eagerness to learn from each other was awesome. Another great like is how the DTS sessions had a flow. We kept on building on one objective throughout the training. I dint know that, that was the goal. At the end of the summit it was a brilliant flow. My dislikes are as follows: I felt that the trainers were confined in one space, it could have been better if it was more interactive with the circumvention techies who create the digital security tools that we train about. Maybe language and security is an issue so this can be like a 50/50 comment. Not a + or a -, maybe something can be done in future festivals so that it’s more integrated.

Outcomes

I felt that the breakout sessions on the last day (Friday) was not well executed to some extent. I would suggest that future breakout sessions be more dynamic and the facilitators be more involving especially the tech-related break outs. There is always a language barrier between the software programmers and the DS trainers. Unfortunately, I have experienced this challenge in several conferences I have attended and not this one only. Maybe in future sessions, invite a programmer/ techie with people skills who can easily explain the concepts without much hassle. All in all, the likes out ways the dislikes and I intend to keep the likes and correct the dislikes in future summits. It was awesome to meet new people who we do similar work with and just psych one another up. Out of 10, I give DTS organizers a 8. Great job!!