Show up, sit down, say the thing you can’t say at work.
An open table at a coffee shop, every week. Whoever turns up, turns up — analysts, sysadmins, career-switchers, maybe an occasional CISO in a hoodie. No slides, no name badges, no vendors with clipboards. Just the interesting stuff.
Loyalty card
non-transferable
61 coffees
0 sales decks shown
How the grind works
Three steps, none of them a webinar.
1
Just turn up
Same coffee shop most every week. No ticket, no seat number. If you’re running late, we’ll be there.
2
Bring the scary questions
“Our EDR has been in alert-only mode for a year.” Great – that’s the conversation. Nothing leaves the table with your name on it.
3
I write it up
Anonymised simple summary, mostly for the blog. Don’t want it up there? Just say the word!
Next three tables
The guy with the beard
Twenty five years of “it’s probably fine,” and it was almost never fine.
I’ve created tabletops for submarine builders, been the entire security team at a startup, and spent MANY a night rebuilding servers. Somewhere in there I noticed the useful conversations rarely happened in meetings – they happened with friends over brews.
So now that’s part of my gig. I take over a table in a café, and whoever wanders in can join the conversation.
25
years in IT and 10 in security and vCISO roles
61
coffees so far
14
cafés, one loyalty card
0
things repeated outside the table
Questions I get before people show up
Are you selling something?
I’m not selling anything. There’s truly great value in just chatting over coffee about things we enjoy, especially in a no pressure environment.
I’m not technical enough for this.
Half the people who turn up aren’t. Office managers who got handed “IT,” founders, a dentist once. Come anyway. Think about how much you could learn!
Will you write about me?
Only the idea, never you. No company names, no roles, no dates. If you don’t want anything at all written just say so. Zero pressure.
Can we do it over video?
Occasionally, but honestly the coffee is doing a lot of the work. I may have some guest speakers over video in the future though.
Tuesday, 8:30am, corner table.
No signup, no name badge. I’ll be there either way.