OWASP Events Committee

DRAFT OWASP Events Committee Charter

Purpose

The OWASP Events Committee will support, guide, grow, and improve OWASP global, regional, and local events (in that order of priority).

The primary aim of the committee is to increase participation in, and the quality of, OWASP Global events by suggesting, supporting and fostering improvements to event structure and content to enhance the attendees experience; support the efforts by the Education Committee to grow our reach in providing education, training, and awareness; and increase funding opportunities to the Foundation.

The secondary aim of the committee is to extend this to Regional and Local events as relevant.

Goals and Outcomes

The goals of the Events Committee are to: mentor event leaders; promote and help create the conditions for more local- and regional-led events and activities; improve event guidance; and suggest process improvements to reduce event overhead, create efficiencies, and improve the overall experience.

Our target audience is developers, security practitioners, existing and future members, and participants of OWASP events, projects, and committees.

The committee aims to deliver outcomes for the following critical challenges:

• Improve the quality of content at the events
• Improve the quality of experiences at the events
• Improve event procedures and costs to increase attendance at the events
• Oversee Global Event Content and activities
• Develop and maintain “Events in a box” for local- and regional-led events
• Increase attendance by desired audiences
• Increase number of regional and local events and spread of locations
• Increase diversity of trainers, speakers, attendees, and other participants
• Increase profitability of events in the long term

Scope and Responsibilities

The Events Committee is empowered by the Board to collaborate with Event Managers, Sponsors, Media, and the Security community in the interests of the OWASP mission.

In particular, following are the specific responsibilities and authority delegated to the Committee:

• Maintain Events policy and propose updates for the Board as appropriate
• Global Events
  • Support Events Manager with venue selection and publicity
  • Manage and update the CFT/CFP forms and decide tracks
  • Decide with Events Manager on the CFT/CFP process and timing
  • Manage the Review team for CFT/CFP and guide reviewers
  • Make final CFP/CFT selections based on reviews
  • Select and invite Keynote speakers
  • Provide input on Event activities and schedule
• Local / Regional Events
  • Provide guidance and support for event organizers
  • Event in a box

All financial suggestions and requests by the committee will undergo the decision process led by the Board, and this committee shall have no direct budget or direct control of a budget unless specifically requisitioned and approved. All media communications originating from this committee will only be made public with the agreement of Event Managers, Executive Director, and/or the Board pursuant to OWASP policy.

The Events Committee will support Local and Regional events and chapters in an advisory capacity, and will not create rules or directions that might interfere with their own governance and local character, as well as not create any rules or directions that are not reviewed and approved by the Board.

Members of the Events Committee will not have any signing capability that represents OWASP or any part of the organization, and do not serve as representatives of their employers or institutions.

Suggested Activities

We will work with volunteers, the board, staff, and other committees to address the aforementioned challenges as follows:

• Improve the quality of events. Turn the current composition of events (training and presentations) into a more participative and community-oriented format with the addition of new activities that take advantage of co-location, in order to provide added value to attending OWASP members. This should start by focusing on Global Events and then move to looking at Regional and Local events.
• Improve event procedures for more well-attended events. Local and regional event organizers need assistance with planning and approving events more quickly than today.
• Oversee Global Event Content. The Events Committee should be the overall arbiter of what content is included in OWASP Global Events including keynotes (in consultation with the Board). They should also define and improve the processes for how content is chosen. If there is a local team who can handle this (as has happened at previous Global events) then the committee may delegate to them
• Develop and maintain “Events in a box.” The “Events in a Box” event handbook has partially existed for a long time. Still, it has never been completed, such as missing details for various sized events, and was significantly out of date until early 2021. The committee will take ownership of the Events in a Box, expand and complete guidance for different types of events, and ensure that it adheres to current event policies and is maintained. This should help to streamline processes and reduce overhead without offloading more work to the Foundation or event organizers. This can then be used as a basis for mentoring and guiding event leaders.
• Increase attendance by desired audiences. Events help our mission by assisting developers to become aware of how to secure their code, but most of our audience has been security practitioners. Promotion and attendance by desired audiences, such as developers and testers, is currently limited. We need to do better marketing to these groups. The committee will work to reach out and collaborate with other developer-targeting events to change this.
• Encourage variation of regional and local event locations. Events held in traditional locations are often difficult to access, especially if international travel and visas are required to access an event from a developing region or nation. We need to support more local and regional events throughout the entire world.
• Encourage increased diversity of trainers, speakers and other participants. There is currently a diverse pool of people in the CFP/CFT review committee for global events. At the same time the Events Committee should ensure that the content selected represents our community as it is today and the diversity of the community we want in the future, such as folks from under-represented and under-served communities, per our mission. The committee should also help regional and local events to achieve these goals. The committee may consider ways to encourage and support new speakers.