Decius wrote:

CMP Media, a marketing solutions company serving the technology, healthcare and entertainment markets, announced today that it has acquired Black Hat Inc., a producer of information security conferences and training that includes Black Hat Briefings and Conferences.

One fears the impact of this will be trouble... What is the association between CMP and Defcon?!

If this is the same CMP Media that bought the Game Developers Conference (and it looks like it), you can expect that (1) whoever "owned" Black Hat made a lot of money; (2) that the price of the conference is going to go up; and (3) that there's going to be a different set of standards in terms of how speakers are chosen, since this responsibility is going to transfer over to CMP instead of the original organizers (we've had a lot of complaints about that at the GDC).

My own question, now, about the transition, is whether or not Black Hat is an established enough "brand" that it will continue to draw quality speakers and attendees, regardless of who owns/runs the conference, or whether some other conference that remains privately-owned is going to become the venue of choice.