YSTS
lorehackingsecurityevents
Stands for: You Shot the Sheriff
You Shot the Sheriff: Brazil's curated, single-day security conference - invitation-flavored, bar-hosted, and famously well-connected.
Running in Sao Paulo since the late 2000s, YSTS packs hand-picked national and international speakers into one relaxed day (traditionally in a bar, drinks included), the weekend after BSidesSP. Its first edition was opened by 2600's Emmanuel Goldstein, and its tradition endures: selected speakers receive a medal granting free entry to every future edition. Widely regarded as the most sought-after ticket in the Brazilian scene.
YSTS packs hand-picked national and international speakers into a single day in São Paulo, and its distinguishing choice is deliberate smallness with an unusual format: it has historically run in venues that feel nothing like conference halls, with an invitation-influenced audience.
The reasoning behind that is the same one behind ShmooCon's attendance cap, arrived at independently. A room where everyone can plausibly meet everyone produces different conversations than a hall of two thousand, and the value of a security event is often less the talks than who you end up standing next to. Curating the audience is unfashionable and does produce the thing it aims at.
The trade is the obvious one and worth naming. A curated event is by definition exclusionary, and who gets invited reflects who the organizers already know, which is how professional networks reproduce themselves and how newcomers stay outside. The healthy ecosystem needs both models: the open free event that lets anyone in, and the small dense one that produces depth, and a country with only one of them is missing something.
Also known as: ysts, you shot the sheriff