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#S2Roadshow Recap – Week Nine

This week on the SecurityStudio Roadshow, we made the trip down to Scottsdale, Arizona to visit the people attending the ISSA Phoenix Q4 2019 Chapter Meeting. Of course, we got our fill of good BBQ too!

SecurityStudio Roadshow Summary

If you’re new, or you’re confused about this #S2Roadshow thing, start here (maybe).

Previous Week’s Recaps:

The purpose of the SecurityStudio Roadshow (#S2Roadhow) is to meet people and make partners. We want to meet people, understand their businesses, and help them grow using simple, fundamental, and compliant solutions (S2Score, S2Org, S2Vendor, and S2Team/S2Me).

Our mission is to fix the broken information security industry. Success requires collaboration, partnership, and transparency.

BBQ Reviews

In the spirit of transparency, we have a secondary mission on the #S2Roadshow. We eat as much BBQ as we can. After stuffing ourselves, I summarize our BBQ reviews at the end of each recap article (see below).

Scottsdale, Arizona

We arrived in Phoenix/Scottsdale on Wednesday (12/4), the day before the ISSA chapter meeting. After getting our sweet rental, a 2019 Dodge Charger Hemi, we drove straight to our first BBQ joint, NakedQ BBQ in Scottsdale.

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When you’re from Minnesota, a December trip to Scottsdale doesn’t suck. The weather was great. After BBQ, we were off to the hotel for some meetings and to catch up with work.

 

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Next was a dinner meeting with a good friend and partner from the area, and afterwards day one was complete. Four or five great meetings, some good work completed, and two BBQ visits. Not bad.

Day two started with, you guessed it, more BBQ, before we headed off to the ISSA chapter meeting. Three BBQ visits in less than 24 hours. Think maybe we’re overdoing this? I think not!

ISSA Phoenix Q4 2019 Chapter Meeting

We’ve been to more than a couple ISSA chapter meetings, and this was one of the best! Lorna Kertész, the chapter President does a great job running things. She was running all over the place making sure things went off without a hitch. Huge shout out to Lorna!

Overall, this was a fantastic meeting! The venue was top notch, the speakers were great, and the happy hour was very well attended. On a scale of 1 – 10 for chapter meetings, this one was a 10!

When John and I arrived, it was cool to know that there were some people who were expecting me. A couple people came up to tell me that they’d read my book, and a few mentioned that they’d attended the FRSecure CISSP Mentor Program. Feels like we’re making a difference.

The first speaker of the day was Rachel Harpley from Recruit Bit Security. She gave a very good talk titled “Yule be Sorry without Security Researchers”. Rachel is cool. She’s got some great things to share and her perspectives about information security are spot on (in my opinion). If you haven’t met her, or attended one of her talks before, you should! It was fun to visit with her for after her talk.

The next speaker was Dr. Paulo Shakarian CEO and co-founder of CYR3CON. This dude is smart! He gave a legit talk titled “Artificial Intelligence Research for Forecasting Exploit Usage”. We caught up after his talk and scheduled a meeting (week after) to discuss how his research can make the SecurityStudio platform better. The prospects of tying legit AI into SecurityStudio’s S2Org technical vulnerability scoring are very exciting!

My talk followed the talks of these two esteemed speakers.

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I gave a similar talk that I’ve given across the country now. Want the deck? Four topics in the agenda, housekeeping, meat, the dream, and call to action. The talk was well received, and the interaction with the attendees was super! Gave away three books, and had some wonderful discussions with people afterwards.Like I said earlier, this meeting was a 10 on a scale of 1 – 10. The only thing that would have made it better is if the guy next to me wouldn’t have gotten up and left his laptop unlocked.

I talked to him about it afterwards. We’re cool.

BBQ Reviews

You know how we roll, right?! BBQ man! As much as we can get, and yes, we (well I am) are gaining a few pounds along the way.

Three BBQ reviews this week; all three in Scottsdale. We expected good BBQ in Kansas City, but Scottsdale, Arizona?! Believe it or not, Scottsdale has some awesome BBQ joints! Here’s our take on the three we visited.

NakedQ BBQ – https://www.thenakedbbq.com/ – Overall: 8.25

  • Atmosphere – 7, the atmosphere for this place was OK. It was another one of those strip mall feeling sort of places.
  • Service – 9, Everyone was very pleasant and went out of their way to make sure you were satisfied. It’s great when people come out from behind the counter to see how you’re doing.
  • Portion/Value – 8, the price was better than I expected and the portions were generous.
  • Taste – 9, the food tasted great and you could tell it was made by people who know what they’re doing. The best brisket we’ve had in a while.

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This was really, really good BBQ. I had a 1/4 pound of brisket, jalapeno sausage, turkey, and pulled pork, and they were all great. It’s a tie between the brisket and sausage for my favorite.

The Thumb – https://www.thethumb.com/ – Overall: 8.5

  • Atmosphere – 10, the atmosphere for this place was one of the best yet. The restaurant is part of a gas station and a gift shop. Totally comfortable and cozy. My kind of BBQ joint to just chill and visit with friends.
  • Service – 10, Seriously, these people know how to serve and make you feel like you’re a king (or queen, as the case may be)! One of the few places where they offer you a sample before you order. Once we ordered, they brought the food out to us, grabbed an assortment of sauces, gave us some free goodies, and constantly made sure we were happy.
  • Portion/Value – 7, the portions were hefty, but the price reflected it. Better than average, I’d say.
  • Taste – Maybe my expectations were set too high after experiencing the super cool atmosphere and getting service reserved for royalty, but the food tasted OK. Not great, but good maybe.

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We met a good friend and business partner for dinner here. Overall, we had a great time and I’d visit this place again. Oh yeah, one more thing. This place was featured by Guy Fieri too. Some people think that’s pretty cool.

Little Miss BBQ – https://www.littlemissbbq.com/ – Overall: 8.75

  • Atmosphere – 9, this was a cool joint. It sort of felt like I was down south in the 70s. This is a order your food, grab your food, and sit sort of BBQ joint.
  • Service – 9, certainly above average. We arrived before the place was open and there was already a line around the corner. While we waited, a waitress walked the line offering samples of their home made sausage. While we ordered, the cook gave us a small cut sample of the pastrami brisket. After we ordered, we were assured that we had everything we needed to be happy.
  • Portion/Value – 8, very reasonable and worth every penny.
  • Taste – 9, We would have said “10”, but we use that number very sparingly. The brisket might have been the best we’ve had so far on the SecurityStudio Roadshow. It might be a toss-up between this place and Pecan Lodge (Dallas, TX in week #3). The taste of the meats here was incredible.

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This was the best BBQ we’ve had for a long time, if ever, on the SecurityStudio Roadshow. If you like BBQ and you are in the Scottsdale area, you have to visit this place. It’s amazing!

BBQ Summary

Three new BBQ joints to add to our list, and this makes 28 we’ve visit so far. This was a VERY good BBQ week for us, with all three BBQ joints easily making the top 10. The winner this week was Little Miss BBQ, but it was close. Pecan Lodge is still on top as the overall #S2Roadshow leader with a score of 9 (but we need to go back an validate this now), and Little Miss joins Bowlegged BBQ in the #2 spot. The current overall standings are listed below.

Overall Standings (at the end of #S2Roadshow Week Eight):

  • Pecan Lodge – 9
  • Little Miss BBQ – 8.75
  • Bowlegged BBQ – 8.75
  • The Thumb – 8.5
  • Divine Swine – 8.5
  • Naked Q BBQ – 8.25
  • Dinosaur BBQ – 8.25
  • Big Ed’s BBQ – 8.25
  • Mission BBQ – 8
  • Slaps BBQ – 8
  • Q39 BBQ – 7.75
  • Cousin’s BBQ – 7.75
  • Blackwood BBQ – 7.5
  • Broad Street BBQ – 7.5
  • Hard Eight – 7.25
  • Spring Creek Barbeque – 7.25
  • Redd’s BBQ – 7.25
  • RIBBRO BBQ – 7.25
  • Iron Horse – 7
  • Lucille’s Smokehouse BBQ – 7
  • Texas Bar-B-Q Joint – 7
  • Fire Breather BBQ – 7
  • Smoque – 6.75
  • Sweet Lucy’s Smokehouse – 6.75
  • Red Coal BBQ – 6.75
  • Bad to the Bone BBQ – 6.75
  • Unkl Moe’s – 6.5
  • Hambone’s Smokehouse – 6.25
  • Shakedown BBQ – N/A (wasn’t open when it was supposed to be, wasted trip)

Next Week’s #S2Roadshow

A couple of talks this week, one in St. Paul, MN and another visit to Dallas, TX. We’re visiting the Minnesota Government IT Symposium on Wednesday and we’re visiting the Dallas/Fort Worth ISC2 chapter on Friday. Looking forward to meeting a bunch of great people this week, and we’re looking forward to revisiting Pecan Lodge.

Stay tuned for next week’s #S2Roadshow updates. You can follow us on Twitter (@evanfrancen, @HarmonJohn, @StudioSecurity, and the #S2Roadshow hashtag) and on LinkedIn.

See you next week! If you want to collaborate with us, get in touch!