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!

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!

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!

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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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!

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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.

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_

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!

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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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.

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

Bring the challenge you’re still figuring out. Join fellow marketing leaders for an open conversation about the pain points of leading a marketing function—from budget pressures and team capacity to proving impact, aligning with sales, and managing executive expectations.

These roundtables are a chance to compare notes, ask honest questions, and hear how peers are tackling similar challenges. Come ready to share what’s working, where you’re stuck, and what you could use another perspective on.

Attendees will be invited to submit their pain points in advance to help shape the discussions. You’re also welcome to bring a challenge to the table that day.

Shhh. Come on in. Drop your 2026 campaign confessions into our “phish” bowl. No names, no judgment. Just a year in review of what's working and what's not, with some fun along the way.One of your hosts, William Jardine, spent a decade pentesting and running offensive security teams before pivoting to creative strategy. His co-host, Courtney Chatterton, has spent four years running full-funnel demand gen and writing the copy that actually sells in cyber. Together, they're putting cyber marketing campaigns on trial: real stories, anonymous audience confessions, slightly techie breach breakdowns, what works on cyber practitioners, and verdicts on what worked, what flopped, and what should've stayed in the drafts folder in 2026.Would your campaigns survive scrutiny from someone who's lived the other side of the claim? Come find out or just come for the cringe and the laughs!

For years, field marketing has battled a perception problem. Too often, teams are viewed as event planners, swag managers, or execution resources rather than strategic contributors to revenue growth.

Having built and scaled field marketing organizations across multiple cybersecurity companies—from startup environments to publicly traded organizations—we’ve seen firsthand what separates transactional marketing teams from those that become trusted revenue partners.

In this session, we’ll share the lessons, frameworks, and hard-earned experiences from building field and partner marketing functions that earned credibility with sales leadership, aligned cross-functional teams around pipeline goals, and demonstrated measurable business impact.

Attendees will learn:

• How to establish trust and influence with sales leaders from day one

• The operating principles that help field marketing move from reactive support to proactive revenue generation

• How to align field marketing, partner marketing, customer success, and sales around shared business outcomes

• The metrics and reporting strategies that demonstrate real business value beyond activity-based measurements

• Common mistakes organizations make when scaling field marketing teams—and how to avoid them

• Practical examples of integrated regional campaigns that drove pipeline and strengthened executive confidence in marketing

Whether you’re building a field marketing team, leading one, or looking to increase your strategic influence within your organization, you’ll leave with actionable frameworks that can be immediately applied to your own business.

Cybersecurity deals don't start when a buyer discovers your product. They start when something goes wrong — a competitor breach, a failed audit, a board question nobody could answer. Risk realization is the actual trigger. And from that moment, buyers aren't shopping for a product. They're buying risk reduction, internal credibility, and the ability to defend their decision if something fails anyway.

By the time cybersecurity buyers reach your website, they've already oriented in AI search, validated shortlists with peers, and formed opinions you can't easily change. Your content isn't introducing them to you. It either confirms or disproves what they already believe. Deals then range from 3 to 18 months, and they stall most often not at technical evaluation, but at procurement and CFO sign-off, where business justification is everything.

Product marketing needs to evolve to support the new journey and new buying committee. Learn how product marketing can impact the deal outcomes with the right AI stack.

In this fifteen-minute talk, Kerry Guard walks you through what we know today, what's proven to work, and the hypotheses still being tested for you to keep an eye on. She'll share first-party research and tests she and her team have run to date, how to (and how not to) measure performance, and her predictions for the future of AI Search.

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Antu Buck, who built the customer marketing function from the ground up at Gigamon and previously led programs at McAfee and Intel, challenges the common misconception that customer marketing is merely a content function. Instead, she positions it as a core growth driver that directly influences revenue, retention, and product direction.

In this session, Antu breaks customer marketing into three strategic pillars: customer advocacy (testimonials, case studies, and reference programs), community engagement (executive briefings, advisory boards, and social channels), and customer lifecycle management (onboarding, renewal, and expansion in close partnership with customer success). She shares how maintaining authentic voice-of-the-customer requires resisting over-scripted narratives—favoring open-ended questions that surface real insights and credible stories.

Through real-world examples, Antu demonstrates how customer feedback reshaped Gigamon’s messaging from public cloud to hybrid cloud, and how a customer advisory board directly influenced the launch of precryption. She also introduces her “credibility loop,” powered by transparent internal communication and executive dashboards tied to business outcomes.

Attendees will walk away with a practical starter playbook: align to business goals first, implement foundational tools within 30 days, establish advocacy and reference programs early, and progressively layer in win-loss research and advisory boards. This session is ideal for marketers looking to elevate customer marketing into a measurable, strategic growth function

Want to build your founder brand? It starts with knowing how to communicate your story, expertise, and vision with clarity, confidence, and consistency.

In cybersecurity, a strong founder brand can establish trust, create market visibility, attract customers and talent, and position both you and your company as credible industry leaders. But turning deep technical expertise into a compelling public presence requires more than simply knowing your subject—it requires thoughtful messaging, memorable storytelling, and media readiness.

In this interactive workshop, founders will learn how to define the ideas and perspectives they want their founder brands to represent—and communicate them effectively across interviews, podcasts, panels, and other high-visibility opportunities. Participants will explore how to develop concise, audience-focused messaging, translate complex cybersecurity topics into engaging narratives, and respond confidently to difficult or unexpected questions.

Through guided exercises and real-world scenarios, attendees will practice staying on message, delivering memorable sound bites, and connecting each media appearance to their broader founder-brand and business goals. They’ll leave better prepared to build executive visibility, strengthen market credibility, and become trusted voices for their companies and the cybersecurity industry.

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Cybersecurity buyers don’t want to be sold to- they want to validate, learn, and hear from people like them before they ever take a meeting.

So they turn to community.

Whether it’s private Slack groups, Discord servers, niche forums, or in-person conversations, the real buying journey is happening in places most marketing teams don’t control and often don’t participate in effectively.

This session breaks down how to turn those community spaces into a deliberate, scalable growth motion without killing the trust that makes them valuable in the first place.

I’ll share how we’ve approached community-led growth in cybersecurity, including what actually drives engagement (and what quietly kills it), how to activate practitioners as advocates in a way that feels natural, not transactional, and how to connect community efforts to real business outcomes like pipeline influence and deal acceleration.

This is not a “start a Slack group” talk. It’s a practical look at how to meet buyers where they already are and earn your way into the conversation.

Most cyber founders I meet think analyst relations is something you do "later": a tax you pay once you can afford Gartner, run by marketing, aimed at getting a distinct dot on a chart. That belief costs them one of the cheapest, fastest sources of market truth a startup can get.

In this session I'll reframe AR for CEOs and founders as a growth and traction tool, not a marketing or PR line item, drawing on a decade running AR across tech, VC, and cybersecurity and 300+ analyst engagements with significant outcomes in terms of number of mentions, category creation, and influence over pipeline and revenue. The analysts who write the reports also take inquiry calls from hundreds of your buyers and every one of your competitors. Engaged well, they become a feedback loop that provides upfront feedback on your positioning and category, a credibility signal that adds confidence and removes friction for a CISO betting on a startup, and an influence channel that touches deals and shapes how investors see you.

I'll show you what AR actually does for product-market fit, traction, and revenue; when to start (earlier than you think) and with whom; an MVP cadence a small team can run; and the moves that only founders can make. I'll separate the real impact from the expensive theater, so you spend scarce time and money where it yields results to your growing startup.

Join us as we close out this year's CyberMarketingCon with final thoughts, key takeaways, and a look ahead to next year.