SPEAKER SUBMISSIONS FOR THE CIRCLE OF HOPE ARE NOW OPEN

Speaker submissions for The Circle of HOPE are now open! That means if you have an idea for something you'd like to present at HOPE this year, we're ready to hear your ideas. Unlike most other conferences, we're very open to considering non-established voices and brand new ideas. This is what we've become known for over the years. Our community is an open one and we move forward by listening and sharing our knowledge.

Of course, we will also have many presentations from established experts with extremely impressive backgrounds. That is the magic of HOPE - the mixing of ideas and experience levels in the hacker community.

If you want to be a speaker this year, your presentation ideas should be submitted with a synopsis of your topic and a short presenter bio. Speakers will be chosen by peer review, based on topics and relevance. Seminars, panels, fireside chats, tutorials, debates, interviews, and other types of presentations are all welcome. Most presentations will be given 50 minutes.

HOPE includes a very wide variety of topics, limited only by our collective imagination: cryptography, copyright, telecommunications, new technologies, research, experimentation, surveillance, countersurveillance, privacy, anonymity, censorship, hardware hacking, programming, democracy and law, education, social engineering, digital protests, hacking society, and even more. We are also looking for innovative subjects and presentation formats. At a HOPE conference there isn't just a right to explore, there is a mandate to cross boundaries. Come show us what you've got!

Submissions should be sent to speakers@hope.net and include speaker names (or aliases) and email addresses, with the title and a description of the proposed presentation. Also include a *brief* biographical statement.

We will start letting people know their talks are approved on a staggered schedule beginning as early as next month. Notifications will continue through June. Timing is based on many factors including strength of presentation, number of similar talks, overall relevance, and more. But even if you don't get an acceptance notification, we will have an unscheduled track at the conference that's open to everyone in addition to a couple of lightning talk rounds. You may also be asked if you'd like to do a last minute fill-in. At a HOPE conference, anything is possible. But part of the magic is to take that first step and put forth a brand new idea.

The Circle of HOPE will be taking place July 20, 21, and 22, 2018 at the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York City and will feature over 100 talks ranging from highly technical to socially provocative, but all connected in some way to the wonderful world of hacking. In addition, we'll have a huge floorspace for all kinds of hacker projects and displays.

For continuing updates, visit www.hope.net.