The future has been decoded

Graham Cluley
Graham Cluley
@

 @grahamcluley.com
 @[email protected]

I had the great honour of delivering a keynote speech at the Future Decoded conference in London yesterday, discussing why we need a trustworthy internet, security and privacy concerns with the internet of things, and what we need to do about it.

I didn’t take any photos, but fortunately some other folks did and shared them on Twitter.

There were some firsts for me as a public speaker:

  • I’ve never spoken to as many people at once (The photos don’t really express the size of the room at the ExCeL centre. There were estimated to be thousands in the audience, a few of whom appreciated my jokes about Bing and animal husbandry).
  • I’ve never seen such a large LCD screen.
  • I’ve never slept so little the night before a talk. Not because I was nervous, but because my website was suffering from a DDoS attack. :(

An interesting thing about social media is that as soon as you walk off the stage you can find out whether you did a good job or not.

In fact, you can even receive tips *during* your talk.

I was fortunate to have such a positive audience with nice things to say. Well, apart from the bloke who was so inspired by my mention of adult TV channels and rudely-defaced electronic billboards that he tweeted me a picture of his ■■■■. Does Twitter really allow you to have that as your avatar? (And no I’m not linking to that one).

Special thanks to those people who saw me pottering around the conference later in the day, and were kind enough to come up and say that they enjoyed the talk.

They included this friendly chap, Benet Uwalaka, who asked for a selfie. Well, who was I to decline?

I’m particularly tickled by the expression of the guy photobombing us in the background.

Thanks to the guys at Microsoft for inviting me to speak. I had a great time.

If you want to catch me at my next public speaking gig, be sure to attend the Insight Technology show in Manchester on 17 November.

Otherwise, check out my other upcoming speaking engagements.


Graham Cluley is an award-winning keynote speaker who has given presentations around the world about cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. A veteran of the computer security industry since the early 1990s, he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows, makes regular media appearances, and is the co-host of the popular "The AI Fix" and "Smashing Security" podcasts. Follow him on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads, or drop him an email.

4 comments on “The future has been decoded”

  1. Aidan O'Hara

    Thanks for sharing the account of your speaking engagement with us, Graham. So frank and charming! I am not at all surprised that people were so positive afterwards and had nice things to say. I rely on your regular posts by email to be kept up-to-date, and am grateful for that. Keep up the good work, and congrats on a successful presentation yesterday.

  2. David L

    Hi Graham,

    Glad your speaking engagement went very well. The tweet about your laces,struck me funny especially. But what I really want to know about,is the DDoS on your site,and what you did to mitigate,if anything. Or,was it your isp that solved it.

    Was it just a random attack,or an effort to block your articles on the latest ransomware?

    1. Graham CluleyGraham Cluley · in reply to David L

      I wrote a little about the attack here: https://grahamcluley.com/cluley-ddos-attack/

      It's probably not the right time to say more, as at the time of writing the site is still being attacked.

  3. JUK

    Graham, is there any video where we can see your presentation anywhere online at all?

    Regards JUK

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