So when I sat down in a packed room at BSides Tampa 13 this past Saturday for a talk titled Dealing with Shadows: A Day in the Life of a Threat Actor Negotiator the timing felt less like a conference session and more like a debrief.

The speaker was Matt Barnett, CEO and co-founder of SEVN-X, a Pennsylvania-based cybersecurity firm. Matt spends his working hours talking to criminals on the dark web on behalf of clients whose systems have just been encrypted, whose data has just been exfiltrated, or  frequently both. He was joined onstage (in spirit, anyway) by his colleague Dave Zofran, who Matt repeatedly tried to make wave at the audience and who, in the great tradition of every backstage engineer at every conference ever, was having none of it.

This was easily one of the best talks of the day. Matt is jokey, sweary, self-deprecating, and irreverent, and the audience stayed well past the scheduled end for a Q&A that ended only because it was time for the closing keynote and raffle for Chris Machowski’s amazing BSides posters. Here’s what I took away.

“My career is a series of clerical errors”

Matt opened by describing his career path as “mostly an annoying inability to say no to things.” Somebody asked him if he wanted to do physical penetration testing. Sure. Forensic analysis school? Sure. Want to talk to criminals on the dark web? Hell yeah. Do you know what you’re doing? Not a clue. We’ll figure it out.

He compared himself to Jim Carrey in Yes Man, which he claimed was autobiographical. As somebody whose own career has been driven in no small part by saying yes to the next weird thing (DevRel, accordion-on-stage, organizing meetups, writing this blog for two decades), I felt seen.

Before getting into the meat of it, Matt did a room survey: students, IT folks (“the unpaid group, maybe the underpaid group”), cyber pros with one-to-five years (“the unjaded ones, because you still believe you can make a difference”), and the over-fives (“the unbothered”). Then he asked if there were any vendors in the room, and offered them the mic. Nobody took him up on it. They know a trap when they see one.

Myth-busting: paying ransoms, double-dipping, and “why does this exist?”

Matt opened with a couple of myths he wanted to put to bed.

Myth number one: Paying ransoms is illegal. Nope. Some payments are illegal, specifically payments to entities on the OFAC sanctions list, which is why you don’t want amateurs handling the wire. Ransom payment as a category is not, in itself, against the law.

Myth number two: You don’t always get what you pay for. Mostly false, with caveats. Double and triple extortion happen, but in Matt’s experience, they’re typically different groups exploiting the same unpatched Fortinet firewall (a refrain that came up roughly every six minutes during the talk; more on that in a moment), and not the original group going back on its word. Reputable ransomware crews are, weirdly, reputable, and that’s because their business model depends on it.

There is, however, no certification body for what Matt does. He has a GCFA, meaning that he’s a certified forensic analyst, but there’s no such thing as a certified-ransomware-negotiator credential. He quoted Jon DiMaggio (whom he says everyone calls ”Joe”) on the state of the field: nobody can really tell you whether you’re good at this job. You learn it the way Jason Statham’s character in The Mechanic learned his trade: “Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.”

And on the moral question of “Why do negotiators exist at all? Doesn’t paying ransoms just feed the system?”, Matt invoked Tony Stark from the first Iron Man (alas, he’s no fan of the sequels): “It’s an imperfect world, but it’s the only one we got. The minute we don’t need threat actor negotiators anymore, I will build bricks and beams for baby hospitals.”

The ransomware industry is, in fact, an industry

Probably the most important reframe in the talk (and one I’m going to be repeating to people at NetFoundry and at Tampa Bay AI meetups) is that the mental image of “ransomware operator” most non-security people still carry around is wildly out of date.

The kid in his mom’s basement, surrounded by cold pizza, while she yells about meatballs? Not a thing anymore. Or more accurately, never coming back to a screen near you. Modern ransomware groups are full-on enterprises with:

• Ransomware developers
• Initial access brokers
• Software and codebase maintainers
• AI specialists (yes, really)
• Web devs building the victim portals
• Customer service / “help desk”
• Translators (or rather, prompt engineers driving Google Translate and Claude and ChatGPT)
• HR. HR.

“I don’t know if they have benefits,” Matt said. “The minute they have benefits, I might consider a career change.”

These aren’t lone actors. They’re businesses, and in many cases they’re tacitly or explicitly protected by their host governments because the money flowing back into their towns and villages props up local economies. As Matt put it: they’re heroes where they live. Which is one of those facts about the modern threat landscape that you have to sit with for a minute before you can keep going.

The shift to enterprise has changed everything about negotiation strategy. The old groups sometimes had a moral compass; for example, there was a group that would hand over decryption keys for free if they realized they’d accidentally hit a hospital, and another that announced they were retiring after they hit a billion dollars and then actually published a master decryption key on their way out. Those days are over. Today’s groups operate on margin and SLA, like any other B2B company. They just happen to be in the extortion vertical.

“Why use a negotiator?” Because you know everyone at your company.

Here’s a part of the talk worth keeping in mind should you find yourself or your company at the mercy of a ransomware organization.

Matt asked how many of us had worked at our current job for more than a year. Then more than five. Then more than ten. Then he asked the ten-plus hands: do you have kids? Because if you do, you have worked with these people longer than your kids have been alive. You know your coworkers better than you know your spouse, your friends, sometimes your own children.

Which means when your company gets ransomed, you’re most likely not going to be a calm, collected, rational actor. You’re a person watching your work-family bleed out, and you will do dumb things because of it. This is exactly why, in hostage negotiations, local PD will bring in officers from another jurisdiction the moment they realize anyone involved knows anyone involved. Emotional distance is the whole point.

A negotiator isn’t there because they’re smarter than you. They’re there because they don’t know your accounts receivable manager who just had her first kid, and that distance is, perversely, a gift.

The other thing negotiators bring is pattern recognition across hundreds of cases. There are really only two companies in the U.S. that actually facilitate ransom payments because it’s a risky line of work. Matt didn’t name them, but they’re not hard to find, and the negotiators who work with them have visibility into asks, settlements, durations, and outcomes that no individual victim can possibly have. Which brings us to the data.

Ransomware company discount curves

Hey, actual numbers!

Matt put up actual data from the last 12 months of facilitated payments. I’m reproducing the highlights here because they’re genuinely useful for anyone thinking about cyber insurance, incident response runbooks, or just calibrating their understanding of the threat landscape.

Akira (traditional / technical, business-oriented group)

• Average initial ask: ~$1.3 million
• Average settled payment: ~$429,000
• Average discount: 60–70%
• Average duration: ~20 days

Qilin (pronounced “CHEE-lin”; it’s Chinese and denotes a magical creature close in spirit to a unicorn or magical giraffe)

• Average initial ask: ~$800,000
• Average discount: ~62.5%, but with a hard floor around 50%
• Tighter statistical clustering than Akira

ShinyHunters (the new kids; social engineering and help desk scams)

• Much higher initial asks
• Average discount: ~71%
• Much shorter duration. Matt called it “almost like a fire sale.” I like to think of them as the TJ Maxx or Ross of malware.

The shape of the discount curve is the interesting part: time on the x-axis, percent off on the y-axis, and the curve goes up and to the right. Like buying a car, except the dealership is in a sanctions-adjacent country and the test drive is your production environment.

A practical consequence: if you’re paying for recovery (your systems are down, you’re hemorrhaging money), you pay faster and you pay more. If you’re paying for suppression (they didn’t encrypt anything, they just exfiltrated data and are threatening to leak), you can drag it out for a bigger discount. Which is exactly what we just watched happen with Canvas — Instructure ultimately paid for suppression and “shred logs,” not recovery.

The Black Basta “I had COVID” story

The single best war story of the talk involved Black Basta about a year and a half ago. The Black Basta victim portal, Matt said with what sounded like genuine professional admiration, is gorgeous. Looks like iMessage. Read receipts. Tight UX. “I wanted to send a meme. It doesn’t support that. The first ransomware group that allows GIFs [in their chats] is gonna be a work of art.”

But at the top of the portal: a countdown timer. Six days, twenty-three hours, fifty-nine minutes, fifty-eight seconds. Tick.

Matt was working a real case, was actually going to pay, and needed to stall. So he asked for more time. They gave him seven days. He asked again the following week. Seven more days. He was feeling pretty pleased with himself when, on the Friday of week three, they finally said: no more extensions. Pay or else.

Then Matt got on a flight home from Denver to King of Prussia, PA (which, as he pointed out, sounds like a Batman villain, as does his other hometown, Wayne, and look, I lived in Wayne; I can confirm it sounds exactly like the kind of place Bruce Wayne would buy a second house). He proceeded to get deathbed sick. Lost an entire weekend. Woke up Monday morning with roughly forty hours left on the clock and a portal full of increasingly unhinged messages from his criminal counterparts: “Are you there? Hello! I’m serious. Don’t make me do what I’m going to do.”

Matt typed back: “Really sorry, I got super sick. I think I had COVID.”

They gave him seven more days.

Matt’s rules of engagement (lightly paraphrased and worth tattooing somewhere)

He’s a flat-fee operator. Never a percentage of savings — because at that point you’re not a negotiator, you’re a co-conspirator with a conflict of interest. (The two negotiators who got federally indicted for actively colluding with ALPHV BlackCat are the cautionary tale he doesn’t want to become.)

He will lie to criminals with abandon, but he won’t lie to clients.

He won’t negotiate in bad faith. If you tell him “just stall, we’re never paying a dime,” he walks. Because he’s seen what happens when threat actors realize they’ve been strung along. He told a story about a client that changed their mind at the last minute after a long negotiation. The group responded by publishing pediatric patients’ Social Security numbers on Facebook. One. At. A. Time, in a slow, painful, drip campaign.

He does not hack back. He has heard of illicit activities waivers. They take two to three years to get and they are not a Get Out of Jail Free card. They are, at best, a “you probably won’t go to jail” card.

He does not facilitate the actual payment, because (a) money laundering, (b) OFAC compliance is a specialty unto itself, and (c) the two payment-facilitation firms have current data on which Bitcoin addresses and chat fingerprints map to which sanctioned entities. He just does the talking.

The four things he wants from every threat actor

When Matt’s at the table, he is always asking for the same four things:

1. The decryption key. Of course.
2. Proof of deletion. Typically a screenshot, ideally a video. He has an eight-hour video of someone DoD-wiping a drive somewhere in his archive.
3. How they got in. No guarantees on how honest they’ll be; sometimes ransomeware operators will literally copy-paste from a different victim’s report. Matt and another negotiator once compared notes and got the exact same “you had a Fortinet firewall” attribution for clients who, respectively, ran Meraki and Cisco.
4. A promise to never do it again. Worth roughly what you’d expect, but worth getting in writing.

If he can get those four, he’s done his job.

Q&A

The Q&A ran long. A few highlights:

Where do ransomware group names come from? Matt blames CrowdStrike. Honestly, fair. “Every cool t-shirt you’ve ever gotten from Black Hat came from the CrowdStrike booth.” I jumped in to point out that Qilin (pronounced “CHEE-lin”) is a Chinese mythological creature usually translated as “unicorn” or, more delightfully, “magic giraffe.”

Is ransomware seasonal? Absolutely. American holidays, especially Thanksgiving, are target-rich, because skeleton crews and four-day weekends mean defenders are slow to respond. Attackers also take vacations themselves. Ransomware drops off in the summer months. Because who wants to be at their computer when the weather’s nice? Even criminals deserve a beach day.

Are you ever personally targeted? Matt’s whole career is built around not announcing himself as a negotiator on the live chat. He plays the dumb IT guy. He’s got a story about a colleague suggesting they ask the threat actor what a “botcoin” is (after one of them mistyped “Bitcoin” in a chat), and the threat actors spent two days patiently explaining cryptocurrency to him. “Best time stall ever.”

What about emotional toll? Matt has been a paramedic, a cop, and a firefighter. “I don’t know of a crisis I haven’t run head-first into. It’s a programming defect from up top.” Then: “Better living through pharmacology. Oh God, don’t call my therapist.”

What industries get hit hardest? Manufacturing. Not necessarily the most often, but the hardest, because of legacy systems. He told a story about a Pennsylvania university that literally cemented a Novell NetWare box into a basement wall during construction because it was running directory services and they didn’t want to unplug it. It’s been running since the ’80s. It’s still there.

Why I’m writing this up

Two reasons.

One: BSides Tampa is a regional con and the speaker quality this year was outstanding. Matt’s talk in particular deserves a wider audience than the room it ran in. It could’ve been a keynote.

Two: I spend most of my professional life right now thinking about zero trust and AI-plus-network-security at NetFoundry, and what Matt’s talk drove home (better than any threat report I’ve seen lately) is that the human layer of incident response is where most of the leverage is. You can do everything technically right at the perimeter and still lose a six-figure negotiation because somebody on your team panicked, told the truth at the wrong moment, or said the magic words that flipped a transactional extortion into a personal vendetta. Zero trust as a philosophy (not just a product category) is partly about acknowledging that humans will always be the soft target, and designing accordingly.

Also: I am now permanently delighted by the idea that every ransomware negotiator on the planet should adopt the alias “Matt” so that threat actor groups go forever convinced that U.S. companies are staffed by an army of identically-named slow-witted staff who don’t know what Bitcoin is. Matt, if you read this, I’m in. Sign me up.

Big thanks to Matt Barnett and SEVN-X for an outstanding session, and to the BSides Tampa crew for putting on one of the best regional security cons in the Southeast!

The post Notes from BSides Tampa 13: “Dealing with Shadows” or “A day in the life of a threat actor negotiator” appeared first on Global Nerdy.

The reason poweredUP Tampa Bay Tech Fest led to those jobs is because a lot of tech industry people here in “The Other Bay Area” also attend. If you’re looking to meet technology leaders, innovators, entrepreneurs, and students, they’re at poweredUP, and they make it an opportunity-rich environment.

They’re mixing up their usual formula this year with a new format whose aim is to give attendees both the big-picture view of where technology is heading in Tampa Bay and the practical knowledge they can take back to their teams.

Here’s what’s on the agenda:

• Job Seeker Hiring Event with High Tech Connect
  This will start at 10:30 (a little earlier than the rest of the conference) and it’s your chance to see who’s hiring and who’s looking! Bring your resume and your A-game.
• The State of Tech – Tampa Bay
  They’ll kick off the day with a forward-looking conversation about how technology (and especially AI) is shaping Tampa Bay’s economy, workforce, and innovation ecosystem. They’ll have regional leaders, founders, and industry experts talk about the momentum building across our tech community and what it means for the future of our region.
• Networking + Exploring Geek Row
  My favorite part! It’s happens in the part of the Mahaffey with the big windows and the view of the Bay, where you can connect with fellow attendees, meet innovative companies, and explore the Geek Row exhibitor area, where you can see what the local tech companies and orgs are up to.
• Technical Keynote + Deep-Dive Sessions
  In the afternoon, poweredUP shifts into technical programming, featuring an inspiring keynote and multiple tech tracks focused on real-world implementation and best practices across today’s most important technologies.
• More Networking + Happy Hour
  Wind down and reflect on the day’s insights with fellow attendees at our celebratory happy hour. Enjoy two complimentary drink tickets (21+) and build lasting connections in a relaxed setting.

Over the years, poweredUP has become a cornerstone event for Tampa Bay’s tech community, bringing people together to learn, collaborate, and spark new ideas about what’s next.

And I’ve said before, it’s led to some very nice outcomes for me. Go on May 20 and be part of the conversation shaping the future of technology in Tampa Bay!

Here’s where you can register for poweredUP Tampa Bay Tech Fest.

The post poweredUp Tampa Bay Tech Festival 2026 appeared first on Global Nerdy.

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There are plenty of reasons to attend BSides Tampa, a cybersecurity conference that brings in 2,000+ attendees, including…

• Great keynotes and presentations across seven tracks: keynotes, red team, blue team, cloud security, GRC and privacy, appsec, and AI and emerging
• The exhibitor hall, where they don’t scan your badge, which means that you won’t get spammed as a result and they won’t sell your info
• Interactive villages: malware, social engineering, IOT, network, lockpicking
• A chance to meet the technology and cybersecurity professionals in the area, including these two…
  

But the most compelling reason I can think of to go is…

Let me repeat that:

80 percent of success is just showing up.

Let me illustrate with a story. Last May, techie-about-town Ammar Yusuf said he could hook me up with a free ticket to VueConf, which was taking place right here in Tampa.

I’d just come back from an expensive two-week trip, and I was still operating as an independent consultant. The spring and summer of 2025 were pretty slow; the well of clients was running dry.

I was strongly tempted to turn down the free ticket so I could devote more time and energy to finding my next job or client. Some might argue that it would be the smart thing to do.

But I decided to take the free ticket and go to VueConf instead, because I remembered all those times when showing up led to great things. Again, I remind you:

At VueConf, I met one of the organizers, Pratik Patel. When he came here in February, I decided to say hi and attend the Java User Group meetup where he gave a talk about AI architecture, pictured below:

I ended up chatting with Pratik, who then offered both me and Anitra free tickets to the Dev/Nexus conference in Atlanta that would take place a couple of weeks later. It was short notice, and Atlanta’s a 7+ hour drive from Tampa. But we remembered the rule:

So we went, learned a lot, and had a great time:

And while we were at Dev/Nexus, I ran into Pratik, who was walking the exhibitor floor with Venkat Subramaniam, who knows me because I show up to his talks whenever he comes to town.

Here’s the “Bollywood Buddy Movie Poster” photo taken at the meetup where I met Venkat:

When I ran into Pratik and Venkat at Dev/Nexus, Pratik suggested to Venkat that I speak at the Arc of AI conference that would take place the following month. Venkat thought that would be a good idea, and asked me to submit a couple of talk proposals. So I did, even though I was knee-deep in contract work and a job search, because…

My submissions got accepted, and the result was my talk about writing documentation and example code for consumption by AI agents:

…and I met a lot of people:

And here’s the kicker: not only did I get to meet new people and attend (and speak) at conferences, but all this helped me land my current job at NetFoundry. The fact that I’d managed to land a speaker gig at Arc of AI was a key point in my job interviews. And I wouldn’t have the key point for that interview if…

• I didn’t speak at Arc of AI, which wouldn’t have happened if
• I didn’t apply to speak at Arc of AI, which wouldn’t have happened if
• I didn’t go to Dev/Nexus, which wouldn’t have happened if
• I didn’t go to Pratik’s talk at the Tampa Java User Group meetup, which wouldn’t have happened if
•  I didn’t go to VueConf with the free ticket Ammar gave me.

The lesson here is simple:

So if you don’t have prior commitments and you can afford to do so and you’re in a tech/tech-adjacent/cybersecurity/cybersecurity-adjacent field — and especially if you’re looking for work — consider going to BSides Tampa tomorrow, because you know what showing up can do for you!

Once again, ticket prices are:

• $45 for general admission
• $30 for students and military

…and you can save 20% by using Tampa Devs’ discount code, TampaDevs20_BSIDESTAMPA_2026.

The post Go to BSides Tampa, because 80% of success is showing up appeared first on Global Nerdy.

This list includes both in-person and online events. Note that each item in the list includes:

When the event will take place

What the event is

Where the event will take place

Who is holding the event

This week’s events

• Monday, May 18
• Tuesday, May 19
• Wednesday, May 20
• Thursday, May 21
• Friday, May 22
• Saturday, May 23
• Sunday, May 24

Monday, May 18

Tuesday, May 19

Wednesday, May 20

Wednesday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. at Duke Energy Center for the Arts – Mahaffey Theater (St. Pete): poweredUP Tampa Bay Tech Fest returns! It’s one of the largest technology conferences in the Tampa Bay region and brings together hundreds of technology leaders, innovators, entrepreneurs, and students for a full day of learning, insight, and connection.

This year, they’re going with a new format designed to give attendees both the big-picture view of where technology is heading in our region and the practical knowledge they can take back to their teams.

Find out more and register here.

Wednesday at 6 p.m. at Embarc Collective (Tampa): Clarky AI presents an AI-focused happy hour bringing together developers, founders, business owners, AI companies, and enthusiasts. Tickets are $30, and the price includes two drink tickets.

Find out more and register here.

Thursday, May 21

Friday, May 22

Saturday, May 23

Sunday, May 24

About this list

How do I put this list together?

It’s largely automated. I have a collection of Python scripts in a Jupyter Notebook that scrapes Meetup and Eventbrite for events in categories that I consider to be “tech,” “entrepreneur,” and “nerd.” The result is a checklist that I review. I make judgment calls and uncheck any items that I don’t think fit on this list.

In addition to events that my scripts find, I also manually add events when their organizers contact me with their details.

What goes into this list?

I prefer to cast a wide net, so the list includes events that would be of interest to techies, nerds, and entrepreneurs. It includes (but isn’t limited to) events that fall under any of these categories:

• • Programming, DevOps, systems administration, and testing
  • Tech project management / agile processes
  • Video, board, and role-playing games
  • Book, philosophy, and discussion clubs
  • Tech, business, and entrepreneur networking events
  • Toastmasters and other events related to improving your presentation and public speaking skills, because nerds really need to up their presentation game
  • Sci-fi, fantasy, and other genre fandoms

• Self-improvement, especially of the sort that appeals to techies
• Anything I deem geeky

The post Tampa Bay tech, entrepreneur, and nerd events list (Monday, May 18 – Sunday, May 24) appeared first on Global Nerdy.

Is you career safe in the age of AI?

That’s what we’ll discuss in a panel called AI Is Stealing Your Job — What can you do about it ? A Gen Alpha Perspective.

I don’t need to tell you that AI’s already replacing jobs (or at least being used as an excuse), reshaping industries, and rewriting the rules of the workforce and the ways we work. Wouldn’t it be nice to get some perspective?

Join us this Tuesday! On the panel will be:

• Sam Kasimalla as the host. You’ll know him from all sorts of local events, including Tampa Java User Group. He wears many hats, including IT business owner, ex-FAANG engineer, and Board of Director MATA.
• Dakshesh Kaki will provide the Gen Alpha perspective. He’s a TED Talk speaker, multiple FBLA award winner recognized by the CEO of Publix, and he’ll bring his generational lens to the future of work.
• Your Truly will be the Gen X representative.

Each of us has their own take and tactics for the era of AI. Come watch this online show and learn!

Find out more and register here.

The post “AI Is Stealing Your Job”: An online panel happening this Tuesday, May 12 at 8 p.m. appeared first on Global Nerdy.

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This list includes both in-person and online events. Note that each item in the list includes:

When the event will take place

What the event is

Where the event will take place

Who is holding the event

This week’s events

• Monday, May 11
• Tuesday, May 12
• Wednesday, May 13
• Thursday, May 14
• Friday, May 15
• Saturday, May 16
• Sunday, May 17

Monday, May 11

Tuesday, May 12

Tuesday at 8:00 p.m., online: Need something to watch on Tuesday evening? I’ll be participating in an online discussion titled about a discussion titled AI Is Stealing Your Job — What can you do about it? A Gen Alpha Perspective.

The disucssion will feature:

• Sam Kasimalla as the host. You’ll know him from all sorts of local events, including Tampa Java User Group. He wears many hats, including IT business owner, ex-FAANG engineer, and Board of Director MATA.
• Dakshesh Kaki will provide the Gen Alpha perspective. He’s a TED Talk speaker, multiple FBLA award winner recognized by the CEO of Publix, and he’ll bring his generational lens to the future of work.
• Your Truly will be the Gen X representative.

Each of us has their own take and tactics for the era of AI. Come watch this online show and learn!

Find out more and register here.

Wednesday, May 13

Thursday, May 14

Thursday at 6:30 at Wild Rover Brewery (Tampa): It’s time for another Lean Beer for All Things Agile!

This long-standing Meetup group is all about promoting knowledge sharing and networking among professionals with a passion for Agile Product Development. Whether you’re a Scrum enthusiast or just curious about Agile practices, this is the perfect platform to exchange experiences, network, vent, and foster your Agile knowledge. All this while drinking beer together!

Find out more and register here.

Friday, May 15

Saturday, May 16

Saturday from 8:45 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. at USF Marshall Center (Tampa): It’s that time again! BSides Tampa 13 is happening, and it’s Tampa Bay’s largest cybersecurity conference!

With 7 tracks (“The Cursed Track”, Leadership, AI/ML, Compliance, Defense, Offense, and Career) along with an all-day Capture the Flag and badge challenge, BSides Tampa is a community-driven cybersecurity conference run through the ISC2 Tampa Bay Chapter, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Every part of it is organized by the BSides Krewe without paid staff, and without a corporate agenda.

If you want to learn about cybersecurity — and you really should, especially in an era where we’re giving increasing amounts of control to machines — you’ll want to attend BSides Tampa!

Find out more and register here.

Event name and location	Group	Time
Bsides Tampa 2026 USF Marshall Center	BSides Tampa	8:45 AM to 5:00 pM EDT
Kissimmee Toastmasters Hart Memorial Library 2nd Floor	Toastmasters Division E	9:30 AM to 11:00 AM EDT
Saturday Chess at Wholefoods in Midtown, Tampa Whole Foods Market	Chess Republic	9:30 AM to 12:00 PM EDT
Coffee & AI @ Hashtag Cafe: No Tech Skills Required Hashtag Café	EveryDay AI Learning & Social Meetup Group	10:00 AM to 11:00 AM EDT
EZ Stock (Stock, Options, Market) 2079 Range Rd	Tampa Bay Technology Center	10:00 AM to 12:00 PM EDT
Charlie Coffee – Coffee Chat	Palm Harbor late 20s early 30s Coffee Chatters	10:00 AM to 12:00 PM EDT
Come and hang out. Panera Bread	Windermere Writers Group	10:00 AM to 12:00 PM EDT
Welding basics	Makerspaces Pinellas Meetup Group	12:00 PM to 2:00 PM EDT
Youth Dungeons & Dragons Saturdays (Ages7-12) At Conworlds Emporium Saturday, May 16 · 2:00 PM to 5:00 PM EDT	Tarpon Springs Community Fun & Games	1:00 PM
May Book Club Saturday, May 16 · 1:00 PM to 3:00 PM EDT	Tampa Bay Women’s Book Club Meetup Group	1:00 PM to 3:00 PM EDT
FREE Fab Lab Orientation Faulhaber Fab Lab	Suncoast Makers	1:30 PM to 2:30 PM EDT
D&D (5e) @ Black Harbor Gaming (FULL) Black Harbor Gaming	St Pete and Pinellas Tabletop RPG Group	1:30 PM to 5:30 PM EDT
Wild Beyond the Witchlight (5e dnd) Coliseum of Comics	Adventurers of Central Florida	2:00 PM to 6:00 PM EDT
Saturday Chess @ Cozy Kava St. Pete Cozy Kava	Chess Republic	2:00 PM to 5:00 PM EDT
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (Stories) by Raymond Carver New World Tampa	Tampa Book Club – Award-Winning Books	3:00 PM to 5:00 PM EDT
Game Project Therapy (Virtual) Online event	Tampa Games Developer Guild	4:00 PM to 6:00 PM EDT
NATIONAL BARBECUE NIGHT — FIRE UP THE FUN! Saturday, May 16, 2026 Saturday, May 16 · 4:45 PM to 9:30 PM EDT	Tampa (Citrus Park Area) Games Meetup Group	4:45 PM to 9:30 PM EDT
Parrish (Bradenton) Game Night (3rd Saturday of each Month 5 – 9 PM) Hawk’s House	It’s All Fun & Games Seminole, Clearwater, Pinellas, & Largo	5:00 PM to 9:00 PM EDT
Warmachine Journeyman League Battlebrush Games	Battlebrush Games: Paint Minis & Play Warhammer/Warmachine	5:00 PM to 9:00 PM EDT
Pathfinder D&D (Beginner to Experienced) Descent Into Gaming	Bradenton Roleplaying Games (RPGs) Meetup Group	5:30 PM to 6:30 PM EDT
Community Hang-out Night Online event	Nerdbrew Events	6:00 PM to 9:00 PM EDT
Blood on the Clocktower Conworlds Emporium	Tarpon Springs Community Fun & Games	6:00 PM to 10:00 PM EDT
Tampa AI Builders Meetup – Casual Meet & Greet	AI Wealth Builders of Tampa	7:00 PM to 9:00 PM EDT
Tropical Luau Game Night Park Shore Condos – Community Rec Room	Groupies Got Games	7:00 PM to 10:00 PM EDT
Yu-Gi-Oh Evening Tournament Sunshine Games | Magic the Gathering, Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh!	Sunshine Games	7:00 PM to 11:00 PM EDT
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Sunday, May 17

About this list

How do I put this list together?

It’s largely automated. I have a collection of Python scripts in a Jupyter Notebook that scrapes Meetup and Eventbrite for events in categories that I consider to be “tech,” “entrepreneur,” and “nerd.” The result is a checklist that I review. I make judgment calls and uncheck any items that I don’t think fit on this list.

In addition to events that my scripts find, I also manually add events when their organizers contact me with their details.

What goes into this list?

I prefer to cast a wide net, so the list includes events that would be of interest to techies, nerds, and entrepreneurs. It includes (but isn’t limited to) events that fall under any of these categories:

• • Programming, DevOps, systems administration, and testing
  • Tech project management / agile processes
  • Video, board, and role-playing games
  • Book, philosophy, and discussion clubs
  • Tech, business, and entrepreneur networking events
  • Toastmasters and other events related to improving your presentation and public speaking skills, because nerds really need to up their presentation game
  • Sci-fi, fantasy, and other genre fandoms

• Self-improvement, especially of the sort that appeals to techies
• Anything I deem geeky

The post Tampa Bay tech, entrepreneur, and nerd events list (Monday, May 11 – Sunday, May 17) appeared first on Global Nerdy.

Let me say this as someone who’s spent a few years in cybersecurity and the last couple of weeks elbow-deep in OpenZiti: the AI systems that we’re implementing are built on a network model that was designed before any of this stuff existed, and that network model hasn’t kept up with what we’re doing today.

That was the gist of my coworker Philip Griffiths’ talk at day one of the DoW Zero Trust Symposium a couple of weeks ago. As I said, Philip works with me at NetFoundry as the Head of Strategic Sales, and his talk is titled Why Traditional Networking Fails Agentic AI: Identity-First Connectivity Matters for Zero Trust. You can watch it for free (and better still, without having to register or provide any contact info!) here.

The core argument that Philip makes in his presentation is one I think every developer working on agentic systems needs to internalize, regardless of what they’re shipping on top of:

The traditional internet model lets you connect first and authenticate second. Agentic AI breaks that model so badly that we can’t pretend anymore.

Let me walk through why.

The exploit window has collapsed, and AI is the reason

Philip opened with this knowledge bomb: the median time-to-exploit for newly disclosed vulnerabilities has dropped from days to hours.

AI has joined the Red Team. There’s AI-assisted reconnaissance, AI-assisted fuzzing, AI-assisted exploit synthesis, and more. Every part of the attacker’s pipeline is getting the same productivity boost the rest of us are getting from Copilot and Claude. The asymmetry is brutal. Defenders have to be right about every service they expose, while attackers only have to be right about one.

The LiteLLM supply-chain incident is a useful recent example. An exploit got injected upstream, and because the compromised library ran in environments where it could see them, attackers walked off with SSH keys, Kubernetes tokens, cloud credentials, and the rest of the usual environment-variable buffet. None of that would’ve happened if the service running LiteLLM wasn’t reachable from the place the attacker was sitting. Reachability was the precondition for everything else that went wrong.

In most “AI security” conversations, the talk is about the model: prompt injection, jailbreaks, output filtering, runtime guardrails, and so on. These issues matter, but there’s a much more “boring” question that’s worth asking…

Can the attacker even get a packet to your service in the first place?

If the answer is “yes”, all the model-layer controls in the world are working with their hands tied.

Reachability is the problem

Here’s the structural issue Philip kept circling back to, and it’s worth stating plainly because we’ve all just internalized it as how computers work:

The traditional networking model allows connectivity before authentication.

In your standard server application, you open a port. Clients, including ones that have no business knowing the server exists, sends SYN. The server completes the handshake, and then it asks the client “Who are you?”

By the time a malicious client is answering that question, the people behind it have already fingerprinted your TLS stack, learned your server software, probed for known CVEs, and maybe even identified an exploit they’d like to try.

This is fine for, say, a public web server that genuinely wants to be discovered by anyone. It is wildly inappropriate for an internal MCP gateway, an LLM endpoint scoped to a specific agent, or an A2A flow between two services that should have no business talking to anyone but each other.

There’s a reason bouncers check for ID while you’re still outside the nighclub.

Philip’s metaphor for this is…Hogwarts. Because of course it is.

Imagine if any random Muggle could walk up to Platform 9¾, see the magical world clearly visible behind a flimsy enchantment, and start poking at the bricks to figure out which sequence opens the wall. The whole point of the wizarding world’s security model is that Muggles don’t even know it’s there. Reachability is the threat. Once something is known to exist, it’s only a matter of time before somebody works out how to get in.

Most of our infrastructure today is like Hogwarts with a “Muggles Keep Out” sign on the gate. Everyone can see it. Everyone can probe it. We’re hoping the lock holds.

The identity-first approach

The inversion Philip proposes is something that NetFoundry’s OpenZiti project actually implements. It’s straightforward to describe and surprisingly hard to undo once you’ve seen it:

1. Strong cryptographic identity comes first. Every agent, every service, every endpoint gets a unique, attestable identity. Not a shared secret. Not a long-lived token someone copy-pasted into an env. An actual cryptographic identity tied to the workload.
2. Authentication and authorization happen before any data plane exists. No TCP handshake. No UDP packet. No DNS resolution that even confirms the service is real. If you don’t have a valid identity for this specific service under the current policy, there is nothing on the network for you to interact with.
3. Reachability is granted, scoped, and revocable. A policy says that identity X can talk to service Y for purpose Z. Change the policy, change the reachability. No firewall ticket. No VLAN reshuffle. No RMF package update.

Here’s the phrase that Philip used:

Connectivity should be an outcome of policy.

It shouldn’t be a prerequisite. That’s the difference:

• In the traditional model, the network is a thing you build first, and then layer controls on top of it.
• In the identity-first model, the network only exists between identities that have been explicitly authorized to see each other. Everything else is dark.

For agentic systems specifically, this matters because the topology is insanely fan-out. An agent may need to call three LLMs, four tool servers, two vector stores, and a partner organization’s API in a single workflow. Each of those is a trust boundary:

• In the traditional model, every one of those flows is a potential firewall rule, a potential exposed endpoint, a potential lateral-movement path if something upstream gets popped.
• In the identity-first model, each flow is a policy, and only the policy-permitted flows have any network presence at all.

The developer-velocity argument

Sure, the security argument is the headline, but if you’ve ever worked anywhere with a serious change-management process, the velocity argument might land harder.

Philip mentioned someone he’d recently spoken with who was building a new service. The platform supported outbound 443. The service needed thirty different ports. Each port change was a firewall ticket. Each ticket was an RMF update. The math on that timeline is grim, and it’s grim in commercial environments too. Anyone who’s tried to get a new outbound rule through a Fortune 500 change board has stories.

In a network where reachability is governed by policy on top of identity rather than by plumbing at OSI levels 3 and 4, that whole category of friction collapses. You’re not asking the network team to change the network. You’re updating a policy that says “this identity can now reach this service.” The underlay (your VLANs, your security groups, your jump hosts) doesn’t have to know or care.

Oh, and in case you don’t remember your OSI levels, here they are, illustrated with cats:

(Layers 3 and 4 are the network and transport layers.)

The downstream effects compound:

• Telemetry gets quieter. When the only traffic that exists on a path is authenticated, authorized traffic, your SOC stops drowning in scan noise from the open internet. The signal-to-noise ratio on alerts goes way up.
• Credentials simplify. No more shared service tokens that everybody on the team has a copy of. Identity is per-workload, scoped, and revocable.
• The underlay becomes boring (and in security, boring is good). You can run the same workload across satcom, LTE, hotel Wi-Fi, and a hyperscaler VPC, and the security posture doesn’t change. The overlay handles it.

That last point matters more than it sounds for AI work specifically. Agents don’t sit in one tidy network segment. They reach across clouds, across organizations, across SaaS boundaries. Trying to enforce zero trust by keeping all that traffic inside a controlled underlay is a losing battle. Enforcing it at the identity layer means the underlay can be anything.

Where’s this going for agents?

In his talk, Philip mentioned Cloud Security Alliance work, building a reference architecture for agentic systems on top of identity-first connectivity. It’s taking on this shape:

• Foundation: cryptographic identity and attestation. Every agent proves what it is before any path exists.
• Reachability: policy-driven, identity-scoped, no ambient network presence.
• Authorization: agents see only the tools, models, and data their policy permits. No tool discovery for things they’re not allowed to touch.
• Governance: human-in-the-loop for high-risk actions, audit trails tied to the cryptographic identity that took the action.

The thing I like about this stack is that the Foundation layer fixes the boring-but-fatal problem (reachability), which lets the upper layers actually do their jobs without being constantly undermined from below. You can have the world’s best prompt-injection defenses, and they don’t help you if your tool server got pwned because somebody port-scanned it from the open internet.

What you should take away if you’re a developer

It’s the middle of my third week at NetFoundry, and I’m still in the “drinking from the firehose” phase, where I’m interalizing these things:

• If your threat model says “we’ll catch them at the application layer,” update your threat model. The exploit window is too short for that to be the only defense.
• “Is this service reachable from where the attacker is sitting?” is the first question, not the last. If the answer can be “no,” make it “no.”
• Identity-first is not a product category you buy. It’s a property your architecture either has or doesn’t. You can get there with OpenZiti, with various commercial overlays, with SPIFFE/SPIRE for the identity piece, with combinations. The label matters less than the property. (But hey, I’d love it if you went with OpenZiti, and double if you tell NetFoundry you heard about it from me!)
• The biggest unlock isn’t security, it’s that you stop spending your week filing firewall tickets.

Philip closed with a line that I think is the right one to leave on, paraphrased: any sufficiently advanced security model looks like magic. In this context, magic means the thing you’re trying to attack isn’t there. That’s the bar. Not “well-defended.” Not “hardened.” Not visible at all unless you’ve already proven who you are.

For agentic AI, where the speed of attack and the fan-out of the topology are both moving in directions that make traditional networking less viable every month, that bar is starting to look less like a nice-to-have and more like the only model that actually scales.

If you want to dig in: the OpenZiti project is open source and a reasonable place to get hands-on with what identity-first overlay networking actually looks like in practice.

More soon — keep an eye on this space!

The post Notes from Philip Griffith’s talk: Why Traditional Networking Fails Agentic AI appeared first on Global Nerdy.

Just days before the trial started, Elon Musk tried to settle his lawsuit, which alleges that under Sam Altman’s direction, OpenAI abandoned its mission to serve as a nonprofit making AI to benefit humanity.

According to a Sunday court filing from OpenAI, Musk messaged OpenAI President Greg Brockman two days ahead of the trial to “gauge interest” in a possible settlement. Brockman promptly responded, suggesting that “both sides” drop their claims. But Musk refused, then appeared to grow threatening enough that the court may allow Brockman to testify on the message as evidence supposedly revealing Musk’s true motives for pursuing the litigation.

“By the end of this week, you and Sam will be the most hated men in America,” Musk responded to Brockman’s suggestion that all claims be dropped. “If you insist, so it will be.”

OpenAI clearly did not accept the settlement terms, as the trial started last week with Musk as the first witness. On the stand, Musk stumbled several times, perhaps weakening his case by making concessions, growing hot-tempered, backing off claims that AI risks may quickly become existential, and admitting his ignorance when it comes to AI safety at his own company, xAI.

In short, it’s classic Muskrat moves: make threats, dilute said threats, get huffy, admit ignorance in a field where he claims expertise, repeat.

The post Elon threatens to make OpenAI leaders “most hated men in America,” a topic where he’s a subject matter expert appeared first on Global Nerdy.

Business card

It’s been a while since I’ve had an honest-to-goodness business card, but since NetFoundry makes them available to employees and since a good chunk of my job is about making myself available to the public, I placed an order and received two boxes containing a few hundred cards in total.

These days, I tend to simply display my LinkedIn QR code on my phone when exchanging contact details with people, but I still like the old-school feel of giving someone a card (which just so happens to contain my LinkedIn QR code).

Book: Developer Relations Activity Patterns

Another thing that arrived on Saturday was my copy of Developer Relations Activity Patterns, written by Ted Neward, Scott T. McAllister, David Neal, and Chris Woodruff, and published by Apress, which is now an imprint of Springer Nature.

I know a couple of the authors. Way back in 2016, Ted reached out to me after I’d landed a developer relations job with SMARTRAC and wanted to see how they did developer relations. I also know David from my time at Auth0, because shortly after I joined, Auth0 merged with Okta, where David worked. In fact, to prepare for my technical interview with Auth0, my primary resource was David’s 2019 article in the Okta Developer blog, An Illustrated Guide to OAuth and OpenID Connect.

Since I’m now pretty much Supreme Developer Advocate at NetFoundry (I’m the only one; it’s a small, scrappy company that punches above its weight class), I figured the book would be useful.

Also, I have a policy of buying books written by people I know, as illustrated in the meme below:

You may have noticed that I bought the dead-tree edition instead of an electronic one. This also follows a rule of mine:

1. If the content is ephemeral or likely to be outdated in a couple of years (or a couple of months, given the pace of change these days), get the electronic version.
2. If the content is likely to be longer-lasting or seems timeless, get the paper version.

Also, it’s nice to get away from screens from time to time. I’ve carved out a little time each day to sit on the rocking chair on our front porch and read paper books, and  Developer Relations Activity Patterns will be one of them.

Teeny-weeny hard drive

Between the RAMpocalypse brought about by AI data centers hogging all the storage chips and the war in Iran blocking off access to a large chunk of the world’s helium (it’s a key part of making high-end chips; see my earlier article for an explanation), SSD prices are climbing.

Fortunately, there was a very short-time deal for a two-pack of 2TB Lexar SL500 SSDs for about $400, so we placed an order so that Anitra and I could each have one. They arrived on Saturday, and they’re about the size of my business card!

The post Stuff that arrived over the weekend appeared first on Global Nerdy.

AI Salon St. Pete/Tampa (Wednesday, May 6)

@ spARK Labs / ARK Innovation Center • 5:30 – 8:30 p.m.

This AI Salon will feature Chad Mairn, Professor and Founder of the Innovation Lab at St. Petersburg College. It’ll feature the this format: keynote → startup pitches → open mic → networking.

Find out more and register here.

TEKsystems’ Meet and Greet (Thursday, May 7)

@ TEKsystems offices • 6:00 p.m.

Ready to level up your network? Connect with industry-leading recruiters and fellow tech professionals at TEKsystems, one of the world’s premier IT staffing firms. Whether you’re looking for your next role in Web development, Cloud, Data Science, or Cybersecurity—or just want to be proactive in today’s shifting economy—this is the place to be.

Find out more and register here.

The Save the Kids Gatsby Gala (Friday, May 8)

@ The Orlo House & Ballroom • 6:00 – 11:00 p.m.

Organized by Disrupt the Bay, this is a Roaring ’20s-themed charity event in Tampa, FL, dedicated to raising funds for pediatric cancer research, particularly targeting ATRT. There’ll be a premium cocktail hour, live entertainment, curated dining, silent and live auctions, and powerful stories showcasing the real impact their support makes for children and families. It’s not just a gala—it’s an experience where purpose meets style, and generosity fuels life-saving breakthroughs led by Save The Kids Foundation.

And hey, you’ll get to hang out with this guy:

Find out more and register here.

BSides Tampa 2026: Unlucky 13! (Saturday, May 16)

@ Marshall Student Center, USF • 9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.

BSides Tampa, a cybersecurity conference that brings in 2,000+ attendees and held right here in Tampa Bay, returns for its 13th year on Saturday, May 16! It’s a full day with…

• Great keynotes and presentations across seven tracks: keynotes, red team, blue team, cloud security, GRC and privacy, appsec, and AI and emerging
• The exhibitor hall, where they don’t scan your badge, which means that you won’t get spammed as a result and they won’t sell your info
• Interactive villages: malware, social engineering, IOT, network, lockpicking
• A chance to meet the technology and cybersecurity professionals in the area, including these two…
  

Find out more and register here.

SOF Week (May 18 – 21)

@ SOF Week campus (see map below), May 18 – 21

SOF Week (“SOF” being short for “Special Operations Forces”) brings the international Special Operations community together for one focused week of collaboration, learning, and capability development. Jointly supported by U.S. Special Operations Command and the Global SOF Foundation, the event serves as the central gathering point for SOF Operators, government leaders, and industry partners working to advance the mission. There’s a fair bit of overlap with the technology industry (including SOFWERX).

Find out more and register here.

poweredUP Tampa Bay Tech Festival (Wednesday, May 20)

@ Duke Energy Center for the Arts – Mahaffey Theater • Starting at 11:00 a.m.

One of the largest technology conferences in the Tampa Bay region returns on May 20, bringing together hundreds of technology leaders, innovators, entrepreneurs, and students for a full day of learning, insight, and connection.

This year, poweredUP Tampa Bay Tech Fest introduces an exciting new format designed to give attendees both the big-picture view of where technology is heading in our region and the practical knowledge they can take back to their teams.

Find out more and register here.

The post It’s gonna be May in Tampa Bay! appeared first on Global Nerdy.

The post Saturday picdump for Saturday, May 2 appeared first on Global Nerdy.

This list includes both in-person and online events. Note that each item in the list includes:

When the event will take place

What the event is

Where the event will take place

Who is holding the event

This week’s events

• Monday, May 4
• Tuesday, May 5
• Wednesday, May 6
• Thursday, May 7
• Friday, May 8
• Saturday, May 9
• Sunday, May 10

Monday, May 4

Tuesday, May 5

Tuesday at 9:00 a.m. at Entrepreneur Collaborative Center (Tampa): Entrepreneurs Learning and Growth Hub presents Preparing Your Business for AI Automation.

Many businesses attempt to automate too early and struggle with broken processes, unreliable results, and increased complexity. This session focuses on how entrepreneurs can properly prepare their business for AI automation by building the right foundations first.

In this session, you’ll explore what needs to be in place before introducing AI so automation supports growth instead of creating operational risk.

Find out more and register here.

Tuesday at 10:00 a.m. online: Computer Coach / Tech  Success Network presents LinkedIn Master Class: Being Found In The Crowd.

Standing out on LinkedIn takes more than just having a profile. It takes intention, clarity, and the right approach. This live webinar is designed to help professionals cut through the noise and get noticed by recruiters, hiring managers, and industry peers. Led by the Computer Coach Career Services team, this session breaks down how LinkedIn actually works and how to use it as a tool for visibility, connection, and career growth.

Find out more and register here.

Tuesday at 5:30 p.m. at Entrepreneur Collaborative Center (Tampa): Tampa Bay Biotech presents Building Agentic AI Assistants: A Tutorial for Everyone.

Join Tampa Bay Biotech for a practical and engaging introduction to Agentic AI — the new generation of AI assistants that can reason, plan, use tools, and complete multi-step tasks. This session will explain how agent-based AI differs from traditional AI and standard prompt-response systems, then walk through the core architecture behind intelligent assistants, including LLMs, memory, tools, planning, execution, and orchestration.

Find out more and register here.

Wednesday, May 6

Wednesday at 5:30 p.m. @ spARK Labs (St. Pete): The St. Pete / Tampa AI Salon is back with Chad Mairn, Professor and Founder of the Innovation Lab at St. Petersburg College. It’ll feature the this format: keynote → startup pitches → open mic → networking.

Find out more and register here.

Wednesday at 6:00 p.m. at Vaco (Tampa): Tampa Bay Product Group presents Product Builders & Bingo: Casual Networking Social Hour.

Get ready for a networking experience that trades awkward silence for a little friendly competition. We’re turning the standard “so, what do you do?” small talk into a low-stakes scavenger hunt with our interactive Networking Bingo. Each attendee will receive a custom bingo card packed with a mix of product-focused prompts and lighthearted personal fun facts. Your mission is simple: strike up a conversation, find someone who matches a square, and have them sign your card. It’s the ultimate icebreaker designed to help you connect with as many local product peers as possible in a relaxed, pressure-free environment.

While you hunt for those winning rows, we’ll keep the energy high with plenty of fuel for your conversations. Food along with both alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverage options will be provided to keep things casual. Beyond the networking, we’ll also have exciting giveaways throughout the night for those who participate in the quest. Whether you’re a seasoned product leader or new to the field, come for the community, stay for the prizes, and leave with a whole new set of local connections.

Find out more and register here.

Thursday, May 7

Thursday at 6:00 p.m. at TEKsystems (Tampa):

Ready to level up your network? Connect with industry-leading recruiters and fellow tech professionals at TEKsystems, one of the world’s premier IT staffing firms. Whether you’re looking for your next role in Web development, Cloud, Data Science, or Cybersecurity—or just want to be proactive in today’s shifting economy—this is the place to be.

Find out more and register here.

Thursday at 7:00 p.m. at The Neon Temple (Tampa): The Neon Temple presents Ouroboros of TPRM, is your TPRM actually working anymore?

Come join The Neon temple as D4B05H drops some knowledge-bombs about TPRM (Third-Party Risk Management). Understanding how the landscape has changed, and with the rise of AI, how effective actually is your current TPRM program? Some lessons learned from building an effective vendor TPRM program and how you can learn from their struggles.

Find out more and register here.

Friday, May 8

Friday at 6:00 p.m. at The Orlo (Tampa):

Organized by Disrupt the Bay, this is a Roaring ’20s-themed charity event in Tampa, FL, dedicated to raising funds for pediatric cancer research, particularly targeting ATRT. There’ll be a premium cocktail hour, live entertainment, curated dining, silent and live auctions, and powerful stories showcasing the real impact their support makes for children and families. It’s not just a gala—it’s an experience where purpose meets style, and generosity fuels life-saving breakthroughs led by Save The Kids Foundation.

And hey, you’ll get to hang out with this guy:

Find out more and register here.

Saturday, May 9

Sunday, May 10

About this list

How do I put this list together?

It’s largely automated. I have a collection of Python scripts in a Jupyter Notebook that scrapes Meetup and Eventbrite for events in categories that I consider to be “tech,” “entrepreneur,” and “nerd.” The result is a checklist that I review. I make judgment calls and uncheck any items that I don’t think fit on this list.

In addition to events that my scripts find, I also manually add events when their organizers contact me with their details.

What goes into this list?

I prefer to cast a wide net, so the list includes events that would be of interest to techies, nerds, and entrepreneurs. It includes (but isn’t limited to) events that fall under any of these categories:

• • Programming, DevOps, systems administration, and testing
  • Tech project management / agile processes
  • Video, board, and role-playing games
  • Book, philosophy, and discussion clubs
  • Tech, business, and entrepreneur networking events
  • Toastmasters and other events related to improving your presentation and public speaking skills, because nerds really need to up their presentation game
  • Sci-fi, fantasy, and other genre fandoms

• Self-improvement, especially of the sort that appeals to techies
• Anything I deem geeky

The post Tampa Bay tech, entrepreneur, and nerd events list (Monday, May 4 – Sunday, May 10) appeared first on Global Nerdy.

On Saturday, April 18th, Anitra and I attended Tech in Full Effect, a gathering of Tampa people in Tampa’s tech scene who also enjoy ’90s hip-hop and R&B, and we had a grand time!

Organized by Jordyn Short and Tiffiny B., it took place at Gaspar’s Luxury Estate in South Tampa, a large house and property that can serve as a vacation place for a large group, or in the case of Tech in Full Effect, a lovely party venue.

They had DJ Will spinning ’90s classics…

…’90s hip-hop/R&B-themed drinks…

…and opportunities aplenty to catch up with old friends and make new ones:

While many of the guests were local, a number came from way, way out of town, including from Jacksonville, Miami, Atlanta, and even San Francisco.

I had lots of conversations, and some of the topics were…

• What am I doing after Tampa Bay Tech Week? My answer: “Get up to speed on the new job, keep cranking out the Tampa Bay tech events list, touch base with the new connections I made, try and find a venue for an upcoming Tampa Bay AI Meetup.”

• My favorite current hip hop? Tkandz and Relaye. None of the “mumble stuff.”

• Did we buy a Mac Mini to run OpenClaw? No, Anitra and I got his-and-hers M5 MacBook Pros as our main devices and are turning our old M1 MacBooks into to agent machines.

• So what’s my new job? Senior Developer Advocate at NetFoundry, and it’s starting in two days (Tech in Full Effect took place on the 18th; my first day was on the 20th).

• How did my presentation at Arc of AI go? My talk about writing documentation and sample code for AIs went well, and the slides are available for you to peruse!
• Is that a real accordion? Can you play that thing?

(I try to bring both Steve Urkel and Stefan Urquelle energy.)

All in all, it was a great event with great people, great conversations, and great food and drink in an unusual setting for a Tampa Bay tech event. My thanks to Tiffiny and Jordyn for putting it on — and please let us know when and where you’re holding the next one!

The post Scenes from “Tech in Full Effect” (Saturday, April 18, 2026) appeared first on Global Nerdy.

The post Seems legit appeared first on Global Nerdy.

Last week was my first week at NetFoundry, where I’m the Senior Developer Advocate. It was fun, and it was also like drinking from a high-tech, encrypted firehose!

To mark the occasion, I sat down with NetFoundry’s Head of Developer Experience (and also developer; he does a lot!) Clint Dovholuk for my first episode on Ziti TV. We spent an hour diving into the “meat” of Zero Trust, networking architecture, and why your traditional VPN might be the “castle and moat” that finally (and unintentionally) lets the invaders in.

If you’re a developer who has always viewed networking  infrastructure as someone else’s problem (and as a recovering mobile developer, I’m certainly guilty on that charge), here’s the deep-dive breakdown of what I learned in my first week on the job.

Notes from the video

Zero Trust

The term “Zero Trust” is everywhere. You can’t throw a rock on the tech internet without hitting a marketing department claiming they’ve “solved” it, and Clint and I joked about the “eye-roll” factor of the term.

Clint said that Zero Trust might be better understood if you called it Explicit Trust. In the old “Castle and Moat” model, if you’re in the castle, you’re trusted. In the OpenZiti model, we assume the network is already compromised. You have zero privileges until they are explicitly granted based on:

• Authentication: “Who are you?”

• Authorization: “What are you allowed to do?”

A lot of resources will authenticate and authorize you through some kind of sign-in process. Clint describes OpenZiti as moving the process out by one layer into the network so you can’t even connect to an OpenZiti-protected resource without being authenticated and authorized first.

Or, to quote Clint:

With OpenZiti and Zero Trust, if you have a service that’s protected by OpenZiti, you first need to authenticate to the OpenZiti overlay network, and then you need to have an authorization that permits the operation you’re trying to perform.

OpenZiti also uses a Zero Privilege approach. Once again, to quote Clint:

The whole idea is that you have no privileges until you are granted privileges, and only then are you able to take whatever operation you want.

“Jay double-you tee” vs. “Jawt”

Apparently we’re on different sides of this debate. Clint prefers referring to JWTs as “Jay double-U tees,” while I prefer to call them “Jawts.”

OpenZiti and NetFoundry: How are they related?

OpenZiti is the network overlay project, and NetFoundry is the company behind OpenZiti.

The “Open” in OpenZiti comes from the fact that it’s an open source project. This is in keeping with the philosophy that a cybersecurity product should be open source because making source code publicly visible enables a community of developers, analysts, and other experts to audit, test, and improve it.

If you have the time, tech skills, and inclination, you can use OpenZiti and run your own overlay network at zero cost — if you don’t count the cost of said time and tech skills. It’s all up for grabs here.

However, if you’d rather spend your time and technical expertise elsewhere, especially once your needs get up to scale, such as on your main line of business, NetFoundry is here to provide you with a managed OpenZiti platform.

It’s easy to run one controller and two routers on your laptop. But when you’re an enterprise managing a fleet of routers, handling upgrades, and monitoring metrics, you’re suddenly in the “overlay business” instead of your actual business. NetFoundry is the “Easy Button” that manages OpenZiti for you [19:10].

The quickstart

Clint then gave a quick demonstration of the OpenZiti quickstart, which creates a fully functional OpenZiti network overlay on your system in a couple of seconds. This overlay has both a router and a controller, and each has a specific job.

Controller

The OpenZiti controller [24:36] serves as the brain of the overlay network. It’s the authority responsible for managing the state of the environment and ensuring that all connections are secure and verified before traffic ever flows.

Its responsibilities can be broken down into several key functions:

1. API surface and management

The controller surfaces several critical APIs that different components of the network interact with. These include:

• Edge Client API: Used by SDKs and tunnelers to authenticate and discover services.

• Management API: The interface used by administrators (often via the Ziti CLI) to configure the network, such as creating new identities or defining service policies.

• Fabric and OIDC APIs: Used for internal mesh communication and identity provider integration.

2. The authority on explicit trust

The controller is the primary decision-maker for the two pillars of Zero Trust security:

• Authentication: It verifies the identity of any user, device, or “workload” attempting to connect (answering “Who are you?”).

• Authorization: It checks configured policies to determine exactly what that identity is allowed to access (answering “What are you allowed to do?”).

Unlike a traditional network where a firewall might be open by default, the controller ensures the network is dark by default. No connection is permitted until the controller has explicitly authorized it.

3. Bootstrapping trust, a.k.a. enrollment

The controller is the starting point for bringing new devices into the fold through a process called “Bootstrapping Trust”.

• It issues One-Time Tokens (OTTs) (essentially signed JSON Web Tokens) that are delivered to users.

• When a client initiates enrollment, the controller validates the token and facilitates a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) exchange.

• The end result is a strong, cryptographically verifiable identity that the client uses for all future secure communications.

4. Orchestrating the mesh

While the controller does not actually handle the data traffic (that is the job of the routers), it provides the “map.” It coordinates with the edge routers to broker data channels, ensuring that when a client “dials” a service, the routers know how to steer that traffic to the correct destination.

Router

The OpenZiti router [26:09] is the workhorse of the network. While the controller acts as the brain and makes policy decisions, routers constitute the data plane: the actual infrastructure that moves bits from point A to point B.

According to Clint, the router’s job can be broken down into these core functions:

1. Forming the mesh overlay

The routers are responsible for creating the “mesh overlay network”. Unlike a traditional hub-and-spoke networking model, these routers connect to one another to form an interconnected fabric. Even if you start with just one router, you can deploy many others to extend this mesh.

2. Brokering data channels

The primary job of a router is to broker data channels. When an application wants to send data, the router facilitates the creation of a secure path. It effectively “steers” the traffic through the mesh to ensure it reaches the intended destination router and, ultimately, the target service.

3. Serving as the entry point for clients

Everything in OpenZiti is technically an SDK client, whether it’s a standalone app or a “tunneler.” These clients connect directly to the routers to form the necessary channels for communication. The router acts as the listener that accepts these connections once the controller has given the “okay.”

4. Shuttling the actual data

The router is where the heavy lifting happens. It is the component that actually sends your data from one side to the other. While the controller handles the logic of authentication and authorization, it never touches the application data itself. That task is handled entirely by the routers.

5. Enforcing the “dark network”

By acting as the only point of entry into the mesh, routers help enforce the “dark by default” philosophy. Unless a client has been explicitly authorized by the controller, a router will not broker a channel for it, effectively keeping the protected services invisible to the public internet, and by extension, unauthorized and malicious parties.

The coolest part for a developer? You can spin this all up on your local machine in about seven seconds with a simple ziti edge quickstart [23:00].

Why not just use a VPN?

One of my questions was the one every developer asks: “Why can’t I just use a VPN?”

Clint insists that an OpenZiti overlay actually is a VPN [34:05] in the broadest sense, in that it’s a virtual network that’s closed off to unauthorized parties. It just functions much differently than the “one big mush” of traditional VPNs, which are open by default, and once you’re in, you can see everything.

On the other hand, OpenZiti is dark by default [35:45]. If you have a server on the open internet, it usually has an open port (such as port 22 for SSH or 443 for HTTPS). With Ziti, you close those ports entirely. The service becomes “dark,” and the ports are invisible, and you can’t attack what you can’t even find.

The “magic dance” of bootstrapping trust

I’ll admit, when I first tried to set up a client and server, I got a little lost in the “magic dance” of certificates. Clint called this process bootstrapping trust [38:47].

It starts with a One-Time Token (OTT), which is a signed JWT, and the process goes like this:

1. The admin creates an identity on the controller [41:09].

2. The client uses the token to find the Controller’s URL [43:11].

3. The handshake takes place, where the client verifies the controller’s certificate, and they exchange a CSR (Certificate Signing Request) [44:43].

4. Strong identity: The result is a JSON file containing a key that must be protected like a secret.

AI Agents and the MCP Gateway

We also took a detour into Agentic AI. Clint has been using MCP (Model Context Protocol) Gateways to let Claude interact with the Ziti CLI.

The breakthrough here is efficiency and security. By using an MCP Gateway, you don’t have to give your raw credentials to the AI [57:02]. Plus, by using a targeted MCP server, you can strip a massive 100k data object down to a 10k summary, saving a fortune in tokens [59:12].

Real-world use: From blue bubbles to drones

I asked Clint who is actually using this in the wild. The “Adopters” list is growing, including projects like Blue Bubbles (the tool that brings iMessage features to Android) [50:33].

But the stakes get higher. We discussed Zero Trust Drones and secure communications on the battlefield [52:12]. When you’re in a high-stakes environment like Ukraine, having secure, “dark” comms is a necessity, not a luxury.

More coming soon!

This was the first of many Ziti TV livestreams featuring Clint and Yours Truly. The next one’s scheduled for Friday, April 30th at 11:00 a.m. U.S. Eastern / 8:00 a.m. U.S. Pacific / 1500 UTC, and you can view past livestreams in the Live section of the OpenZiti YouTube channel.

Watch the full replay here: Ziti TV: Explaining OpenZiti to the New Guy

The post Ziti TV: Explaining OpenZiti to the new guy (and that’s me!) appeared first on Global Nerdy.

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This list includes both in-person and online events. Note that each item in the list includes:

When the event will take place

What the event is

Where the event will take place

Who is holding the event

This week’s events

• Monday, April 27
• Tuesday, April 28
• Wednesday, April 29
• Thursday, April 30
• Friday, May 1
• Saturday, May 2
• Sunday, May 3

Monday, April 27

Tuesday, April 28

Tuesday at 5:30 p.m. at the Rialto Theater (Tampa): Join TEKsystems and Gold’s Liquor for an evening of craft spirits, connection, and community impact as they raise funds for the March of Dimes organization!

This ticketed tasting event brings together members of the local business and professional community for a relaxed, social evening in support of the health of moms and babies.

All ticket purchase proceeds go towards their fundraiser for the March for Babies walk 2026.

Find out more and register here.

Tuesday at 5:30 p.m. at the Hidden Springs Ale Works (Tampa): Join Tampa’s tech pro on Tuesday, April 28th, for the monthly meetup event, TampaTech, Taps & Tacos!

• Tech: Connect & network with tech industry peers
• Taps: Enjoy 15% off your tab as a tech attendee
• Tacos: A full taco bar… who doesn’t love tacos?!

No speakers, no presentations – just great conversations and a raffle (because that’s way more fun!)

Find out more and register here.

Tuesday at 6:00 p.m., online: The Mission: From “Hello” to “Welcome Back.” The biggest limitation of most AI apps is that they have “Goldfish Memory.” Every time you open the app, it’s like meeting a stranger.

At this meetup, this all changes. You’ll build an agent that uses Gemini 3’s 2-million-token context window and a new Memory Skill to create a truly personalized experience. Your app will remember that you hate cilantro, prefer 15-minute meals, and that you scanned an onion three days ago.

Find out more and register here.

Wednesday, April 29

Thursday, April 30

Thursday at 2:00 p.m. at CoHatch West Tampa (Tampa): Join Tampa RHUG to explore cutting edge solutions for IT modernization.

They’ll dive into RHEL 10 Image Mode, a new deployment methodology that is a game changer for system security and administration. You’ll also see how Ansible Automation Platform simplifies VM lifecycle management and automates OpenShift Virtualization, a critical topic for those facing virtualization strategy changes.

Find out more and register here.

Thursday, starting at 4:00 p.m. at American Legion Post 138 (Tampa): You’re invited to participate in a MacDill and Tampa wide Orange Call!

Please feel free to spread the word to all communicators, guardians, and enablers past and present, as well as DoD Civilians. Their purpose is to gather and network amongst fellow communicators, guardians, and enablers of all ranks, titles, and experience levels, share resources, and seek professional development. They’ll conduct a round table meet & greet and discuss MacDill communicators and missions, including the increasing role of cyber and the importance of defending our nation’s networks.

Find out more and register here.

Friday, May 1