The CyberMarketingCon
2026 Agenda
Please note that session times and dates may change.
High Level Schedule: When should I arrive?
To experience the whole conference, plan to arrive in the late morning on Sunday, November 15 and leave late afternoon on Wednesday, November 18 (or stay over to Thursday if you would like or are attending our CEO-Founder-Investor Dinner!)
Sunday - 11/15
Sunday will be a day of workshops and our opening night reception! Plan to arrive around in the late morning or early afternoon if you don't want to miss our 3 hands-on workshops, which start at 1pm CT. Opening night reception starts around 7pm CT.
Monday - 11/16
We kickoff with a keynote at 8:45am CT. Sessions, workshops, and networking throughout the day, including our GovCon Summit. We end the day with a group outing!
Tuesday - 11/17
Today we have sessions, workshops, and networking, plus our CyberCMO Summit; the day kicks off at 9am CT. Tonight we will have multiple activities and dinners.
Wednesday - 11/18
Our final keynote will kick off at 9am CT. Today we will have a three-quarters day of sessions, workshops, and our closing remarks end at 3:30pm CT. Founders, CEOs, and Investors may attend our CyberCEO Dinner at 5:30pm CT.
Note on event times
Event times are subject to change and may not reflect the most up-to-date schedule. Please refer to the conference event app VirtualPro for the latest and most accurate times.
Sunday

Registration Desk Open!
Stop by the Registration Desk on the 2nd Floor Foyer and pick up your badge, swag bag, official conference notebook, and official conference t-shirt!
Explore the Expo Hall, the Fun Station, and join one of the workshops that we have set up on Sunday!
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Claude Beginner Workshop
Curious about Claude but not quite sure what to do beyond opening a chat and asking it questions? This hands-on beginner workshop is for you.
Designed specifically for cybersecurity marketers at CyberMarketingCon, this session will help you get comfortable using Claude for real marketing work — without requiring any technical or AI expertise.
We’ll cover the basics of how to work with Claude effectively, how to give it the context and direction it needs, and how to start using it across everyday workflows like research, campaign planning, content development, messaging, analysis, and more.
You’ll work through practical examples alongside other cybersecurity marketers and leave with ideas you can put to work immediately.
Bring your laptop and your corporate or personal Claude account. No AI expertise required!
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Claude Intermediate Workshop
Ready to move beyond one-off chats and start building repeatable AI workflows?
This hands-on workshop is designed for cybersecurity marketers at CyberMarketingCon who already use Claude and want to take the next step: turning the work you do repeatedly into reusable systems.
We’ll focus heavily on Claude Skills—what they are, when to use them, and how to build them around real cybersecurity marketing workflows. We’ll also explore more advanced ways to structure Claude around your work, connect context and resources, and create repeatable processes that can help you and your team work faster and more consistently.
Rather than spending the session perfecting individual prompts, we’ll think bigger: How do you teach Claude how you work once, then reuse that knowledge again and again?
Bring your laptop, your personal or corporate Claude account, and come ready to build!

Points for Creativity: A Roller Derby Workshop for Cybersecurity Marketers
Cybersecurity marketing is defined by constraint: dense jargon, complex concepts, and audiences who demand precision. The challenge isn’t a lack of creativity; it’s finding space to play, experiment, and make ideas feel truly memorable inside those constraints. This workshop is designed as a creative reset for marketers whose brains have been on “perform under pressure” for a little too long… or those who know they are over-relying on AI for tasks that used to feel fun.
Using the bold, irreverent naming culture of roller derby as our playground—think Penelope Bruise, Hermione Danger, Momentum Mori—we’ll explore what happens when you step away from AI and lean back pure sporting instinct. We’ll treat derby naming as a proxy for branding; names must instantly signal identity, tell a mini-story, and provoke a reaction, just like the best campaigns.
The workshop starts with a short individual warm-up to get people out of polished marketing mode and into free thinking. Attendees will quickly jot down the words, frustrations, and ideas that feel most “stuck” or overused in their day-to-day work—terms they’re tired of, value props that feel flat, or product areas that feel impossible to make exciting. This becomes our raw material.
From there, we’ll move into guided prompts such as:* “If this product or problem were a derby skater, what kind of troublemaker would they be?”* “If you could lean into FUD as a joke, what would you really call this thing?”Participants will then work in small teams, remixing their raw material into surprising combinations: pairing technical jargon with unexpected metaphors, fusing emotional states with security concepts, and bending industry clichés until they become something stranger and more interesting. The focus is less on “getting it right” and more on seeing how far they can stretch a concept without compromising accuracy. Teams will, for example: - Take a word from someone else’s list and combine it with their own to create a new character or brand.- Build a “family” of three related derby names that could all be features of the same product. Additional playful constraints will push their creativity further: limiting word counts, forcing a quick pivot from serious to absurd, or asking teams to defend a ridiculous name as if it were going into a boardroom deck. Each round builds on the last, moving from silly and safe to sharper and more deliberate.
As the workshop progresses, teams will converge on a brand concept and tagline born from this chaos—something that still nods to the original cybersecurity idea but now feels alive, specific, and ideally, fun to scream out loud.
Throughout, we’ll surface the meta-lessons: how constraints can unlock creativity instead of shutting it down, and how embracing a bit of discomfort or a “bad idea” often leads to better ones.
Attendees won’t leave with a rigid framework or a perfect campaign. They’ll leave with at least one absurd-but-delightful concept, a renewed sense of creative confidence, and a reminder that even in a jargon-heavy, high-stakes industry, there’s room to play for points.
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Workshop: Business Networking Pickup Lines
There will be NO NAPPING during this workshop, where everyone will stand up, talk, move around, and learn how to be a professional business “flirt.” We challenge both extroverts and introverts to come to this session and learn how to make in-person cold connections, find *the* person in the room you need to talk to, and qualify someone for a potential business relationship. Check out this video from our workshop at Cyber Marketing Con 2023. If you attended the 2023 workshop, come back again! This brand new workshop is loaded with new exercises.
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Opening Night Welcome Reception
CyberMarketingCon 2026 Welcome Reception: Choose Your Own Character
Every adventure starts with a character. Who will you be?
We’re kicking off CyberMarketingCon 2026 and our theme, Create Your Own Adventure, by inviting you to dress as your favorite character—from literally anything. Anything!
Here's some ideas: Indiana Jones, a medieval knight, an enterprising elf, Taylor Swift, the CISO at the last company that you sold into, Steve Jobs, Skyrim guards, a boxer, or someone entirely of your own creation.
Go all out or come as yourself (if you’re your own favorite character, that's totally fine)!
Join us to meet fellow adventurers, reconnect with friends, and get the CyberMarketingCon conference started!
Monday

Book Your Complimentary Extras & Activities
Make the most of your CyberMarketingCon experience with these complimentary experiences. Reserve your spot in advance—or stop by to see if a walk-in time is available.
Podcast Studio
Record a podcast, interview, or video in a private, professional studio. Four microphones and an AV technician are included, so all you need to bring is your idea. Walk-ins are welcome when the studio is available.
One-on-One Expert Consultations
Get complimentary, personalized advice from experienced professionals—including cybersecurity industry analysts. Book a session to discuss marketing, channel strategy, graphic design, career strategy, your LinkedIn presence, or the cybersecurity market.
Professional Headshot
Refresh your LinkedIn photo, speaker profile, or professional bio with a polished new headshot. Visit the headshot studio in the Expo Hall, located behind the Fornix Marketing booth. Walk-ins are welcome when space is available.
Fun Station & Postcards
Add some personality to your conference badge with stickers, supplies, and badge ribbons—or write and mail a postcard to someone back home. Stop by the Fun Station in the Expo Hall aka Marketing Land whenever you’re ready for a creative break.

Registration Desk Open!
Stop by the Registration Desk on the 2nd Floor Foyer and pick up your badge, swag bag, official conference notebook, and official conference t-shirt!_x000D_

Complimentary Coffee, Breakfast & Expo Hall (Marketing Land) Open!
Good morning, CyberMarketingCon! Join us at 8:00 AM for complimentary coffee and breakfast, catch up with fellow attendees, and explore the booths in the Expo Hall, aka Marketing Land!
We’ll have a set number of breakfasts ready to welcome you, available first come, first served while supplies last.
There’s plenty to explore: send a postcard from our fun station, drop in for a fresh headshot, catch content on the Expo Hall stage, or settle into a seat for networking and meetings. Come grab a bite and start the day with us!

Resist Comfort: How to Block Your Caveman Urge to Be Boring and Do the Best Work of Your Life
As AI makes it easier than ever to create content and campaigns, it's also making it easier than ever to sound exactly like everyone else. The more marketers rely on the same tools, prompts, playbooks, and best practices, the more the market becomes flooded with safe, predictable, and forgettable work.
In this keynote, Nathan Burke makes the bold claim that discomfort is becoming a competitive advantage. That being uncomfortable pushes the boundaries of your work towards what’s actually new, impactful, and worth making.
Drawing from lessons learned building high-growth cybersecurity companies, working within cultures obsessed with continuous improvement, and embracing AI as a force multiplier rather than a crutch, Nathan will explore why complacency is the enemy of great work. He'll share practical ways to seek criticism instead of compliments, challenge conventional thinking, and push beyond the ideas that feel safe.

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Nobody Read Your Threat Report. Designing Security Research Practitioners Want to Read
Our industry publishes hundreds of "state of" reports, threat landscapes, and security surveys every year. Practitioners ignore most of them. But there are good news for marketers: The report practitioners actually read, cite, and share is also the one that does the most for your brand and your pipeline. Useful and effective are not opposites. But most security research is just more of the same: Recycled dwell-time stats, leading survey questions, "n=12 CISOs" passed off as data, and a single headline number nobody can map to their own environment.This session is a practical design guide for reports and surveys the practitioner actually wants to read. We'll cover survey design that doesn't generate garbage, metrics that survive a skeptical reader, why segmentation beats a scary average, and how to mine the telemetry you already own instead of running another opinion poll. The goal is produce content practitioners trust — which is the only research that earns the awareness and demand you were after in the first place.

Embed Analyst Interactions In Your Marketing Roadmap
Many marketers view working with industry analysts as a necessary evil and an opportunity to tell them everything about what makes their product or service great. Marketers may only interact with analysts during evaluations, then forget about them until the next one. Getting the most out of industry analysts, however, requires ongoing engagement and listening as much as (or preferably, more than) you speak. Embedding analyst interactions in your marketing roadmap can provide objective third-party insight at crucial points throughout the year. Hear from Recovering Marketer and Forrester VP and Research Director Joseph Blankenship (JB) who was a cybersecurity marketer for 10 years before joining Forrester as an analyst. JB will talk about what worked for him as a marketer, what he sees successful marketers doing as they interact with analysts, and how well-timed analyst interactions can inform your marketing roadmap. Session attendees will learn:•_x0009_Understanding what analysts really do and how they can inform your marketing•_x0009_Creating a playbook for ongoing, successful analyst engagement•_x0009_Embedding analyst interactions to inform your product and messaging launches
Tuesday

15 Min Tech Talk - Storylane

CyberMarketing Benchmarks: What the Numbers Mean for Your Business
Benchmarks can inform planning, budget conversations, and performance expectations—but their usefulness depends on how closely they reflect your business.
This session will examine marketing benchmarks relevant to the leaders in the room, with attention to company stage, resources, and go-to-market model. We’ll explore what the data can tell you, where comparisons need context, and how to use benchmarks to ask better questions about your own performance.
Come ready to consider how external data can support investment decisions and more productive conversations with your executive team.
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Afternoon Break & Recharge
Take a moment to recharge, grab refreshments, and connect with fellow attendees. Use this afternoon break to continue conversations from the day’s sessions, visit sponsors and exhibitors, visit more locations on the Treasure Map, and prepare for the rest of the CyberMarketingCon 2026 program!

Plot It Like It's Hot: Building a Marketing Roadmap that Delivers
Marketing is the engine behind scalable, data-driven growth—but without a clear roadmap, even the strongest teams can lose momentum.
In this session, Kelsea Morrison, Director of Marketing Operations at Varonis, shares how to build a marketing roadmap that aligns with business goals, energizes your team, and drives measurable impact.
You’ll learn the essential steps to “plot it like it’s hot,” starting with how to structure your plan for success and define a mission that actually inspires action. From there, get practical guidance on running effective planning sessions that bring out real ideas—not just polite nodding—and how to turn those ideas into a strategic, actionable roadmap.
Whether you’re a team of one or leading a department, this session will give you the tools and frameworks to deliver results that matter.
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Under the Influence(r): Why Traditional B2B Marketing Is in Its Hangover Era
Influencer marketing is no longer a “nice to have” in B2B. It’s quickly becoming one of the most effective ways to reach technical buyers, especially as paid channels are getting more expensive, and buyers are increasingly tuning them out. At the same time, developers and security practitioners are turning to trusted voices, creators, peers, and community leaders for real insights and recommendations.
Yet most teams still treat influencer marketing as an experiment. They struggle to justify budgets, choose the right partners, or connect efforts to real business outcomes.
In this session, we’ll break down how you can build and scale your influencer program from the ground up, turning it into a repeatable, measurable growth channel tied directly to pipeline and revenue.
You’ll learn how to:1. Position influencer marketing as a core part of your GTM strategy (not a side experiment)2. Unlock and reallocate budget from traditional channels3. Work with influencers in a way that resonates with technical audiences4. Measure performance beyond vanity metrics, and tie it to demos, pipeline, and revenue.
You’ll walk away with a clear, actionable framework to build, scale, and prove the impact of an influencer program in a modern B2B organization.
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Your Brand Reputation’s Attack Surface Has Expanded – Here’s How to Get Ahead of It
Cybersecurity brands have long understood the stakes of crisis preparedness, but the emergence of generative AI has fundamentally expanded the ways brand reputation can be tarnished. No longer confined to data breaches or ransomware incidents, today’s crises can be manufactured at scale: convincing phishing campaigns impersonating executives, AI-generated recruiters targeting candidates, deepfakes, and fabricated online personas that erode trust before a company even realizes it’s under attack. For marketing and communications leaders, this shift demands a new level of vigilance, coordination, and strategic foresight to protect both brand reputation and stakeholder confidence.
Featuring marketing and communications leaders from OneTrust, Pentera, and Rubrik, this panel will discuss how cybersecurity marketers can evolve their crisis planning for an AI-driven world. Drawing on their own experiences, brand protection strategies, and crisis comms planning, this group will go into detail on how they are getting cross-functional groups on the same page, monitoring the many channels in which the brand lives and building proactive frameworks that anticipate—not just react to—evolving brand risks.
Wednesday

Founders & Marketers Mixer
Great companies grow when founders and marketers understand one another. This mixer creates space for cybersecurity founders and marketing professionals to connect, exchange perspectives, and explore the challenges of building a brand, finding product-market fit, earning trust, and scaling growth. It’s also a valuable opportunity for founders seeking marketing talent—and for marketers interested in discovering their next role, client, or collaboration.

VIP CEO Founder & Investor Dinner
Register on LUMA event RSVP platform here: https://luma.com/iegmii4y
After the conclusion of CyberCEO Summit, qualified attendees and local Austin builders are invited to an exceptional gathering of industry leaders at our VIP CEO, Founder & Investor Cocktail & Dinner on Wednesday, November 18th, from 5:00 to 8:00 PM.
This event is reserved for CEOs, Founders, and Investors within the cybersecurity sector, creating a unique space for collaboration and networking.
This dinner is your gateway to connect with fellow top-tier builders in the cybersecurity space. Immerse yourself in a culinary journey that will elevate your palate while fostering engaging discussions about growth and innovation in our dynamic industry!
