Who Should Submit?
We are looking for new presentations and policy roundtable topics, however, work that has been or will be presented at an excellent conference that would otherwise be missed by most of the DistrictCon community is also welcome. We especially encourage new presenters to submit talks!

Conference Format
DistrictCon has a number of hands-on events and contests running in parallel to our on-stage talk tracks. We will have two spaces for our on-stage talks this year: our larger audience venue on the Main Stage and DisCo After Dark, which will host talks in a more intimate setting and is suitable for talks with more audience engagement, lighting talks, or talks with more sensitive content. Policy roundtable discussions will be held on a separate track.

On Stage: Hacking Magic: technical offensive or defensive topics
Talk Duration: 20 or 50 minutes including Q&A

Presenters are encouraged to show demonstrations of techniques, working code, hardware projects, or other items that you personally developed and that are open-source and released to the public. This will help the community get the most from your presentation.

In your submission please note what you are releasing or, if you are not releasing something, why the findings or techniques you're presenting provide value independently.

On Stage: Informing Policy: 1-2 talks for exceptional policy research
DistrictCon, in the spirit of engaging with the wider DC area, will also be accepting a very limited number of talks on the main stage for exceptional policy research or policy content that directly engages the hacker community.

Hackers do not enjoy being read talking points so we are looking for the spiciest content that will resonate with DistrictCon participants. Original research or projects on cyber security in the policy arena will be considered: feel free to read the term policy broadly to include impacts on people and communities, not just government-type work.

Policy Roundtables: compelling ideas for lively roundtable discussions on topics at the intersection of cybersecurity & policy

Roundtable discussion duration: 75 minutes or 90 minutes (up to the discretion of conference organizers & scheduling). 1 speaker per submission, maximum.

DistrictCon will be accepting a handful of ideas for policy roundtable discussion. If accepted to this track, speakers will work together with the DistrictCon policy organizing team in the months ahead of the conference to curate and finalize discussion questions for the conversation. For logistical purposes, the conversation will be co-moderated by the speaker and a DistrictCon organizer.

Effective submissions will be narrow in focus and spicy – we’re looking for discussions that directly engage with the hacker community. These are cybersecurity policy conversations for hackers, facilitated by hackers. Offensive, defensive, legal, policymaking, governance, and geopolitical topics are welcome. Attribution policies for individual roundtable discussions will be determined by DistrictCon organizers before the conference; if you have a strong preference for a specific attribution level based on your topic and professional background, please note it in your submission. These discussions will not be video recorded.



Other tracks: In addition to submitting a talk please also remember to consider participating in our other tracks such as the Junkyard End-of-Life Pwnathon!


Some Ideas for Topics:
These are not exhaustive lists but are meant to indicate some items we think would be of interest. Keep in mind that the other tracks listed above are great places for a broad variety of other content, including 0-days!

On Stage: Hacking Magic:

Bizarre Reverse Engineering side projects
Exploits and Vulnerabilities
Tool-release talks (we want to hear about why you made it and its impact)
Security automation tools that provide defenders asymmetric advantage via open-source tooling and data
Novel ways to cluster and track threat groups, information operations and/or disinformation
On Stage: Informing Policy:

Openly gathered intelligence with policy consequences that impact cyber security
Actionable insights to protect marginalized communities in cyberspace
Policy Roundtable:

Policy and ethical implications of specific emerging security techniques
Specific policy changes or considerations that impact cybersecurity
Geopolitical factors or legal frameworks that impact cyberspace
Security and policy considerations for emerging cyber-physical systems
Governance and cooperation challenges in existing cybersecurity investigations and operations
We will politely decline talks and policy roundtable topics that are primers on well-known technologies, vendor pitches, or refactors of old talks (except if they were recently presented in a venue that most DistrictCon attendees would not have been able to consume).


If you aren’t sure if your talk fits, submit it anyway! We’d love to see it and discuss it with you.