I was in Chicago last Friday for a meeting of the local Snort Users' Group (Powerpoint presentation available here). While the weather was as crummy as you'd expect out of Chicago in January, overall it was an excellent visit, thanks to the group of people who turned out for the meeting. The ChiSUG people are friendly, know their stuff, and had plenty of intelligent questions after my presentation. Best of all - IMHO, anyway - they were genuinely excited to see someone from the VRT coming out to speak, because they knew that meant the meeting would be technical as well as social.

The success of that meeting got me thinking about all of the Snort Users' Groups across the world that would be equally excited to have the VRT come and speak to them. Judging from how incredibly grateful the ChiSUG folks were that I'd flown "all the way from Washington" to see them, it seems like the main reason the VRT isn't already appearing at SUGs all over the place is that people don't realize that we're available, and that we're happy to come and talk to you. With that in mind, I'm here to officially dispel the myth that asking us to come speak at your local users' group would be an imposition. We love the user community, we love talking Snort with people, and we're ready to come to a city near you.

If you've got a meeting that you'd like the VRT to come speak to, drop me a line at alex.kirk@sourcefire.com. I can't promise we'll make every single event we're invited to, but we will seriously consider every request, and will make as many as is feasible. Note that we can come with a topic prepared, or take requests from the community for topics that might be of interest to you.