Willa Riggins – Hackerspace 2.0

Bio

Willa is the president of Orlando’s local hackerspace, FamiLAB, and currently works as an internal penetration tester for $BIGCORP. She assisted in the reboot of the local DEF CON group, co-lead OWASP Orlando for awhile, and recently defied the laws of biology through ardent application of science and medicine.

Technical subject matter expert with over 9 years of experience across the application development, information security, and communications domains. Experienced with the entire software development lifecycle from several viewpoints due to prior work as system engineer, software engineer, security engineer and customer for several software, technical documentation, and communications projects. Focused on mission success and the broader scope of change.

Specialties: Application Development, Technical Writing, Requirements Gathering, Customer/Developer Relations, Information Security, Penetration Testing, Systems Engineering

Abstract

Hackerspaces are popping up all across the country, but a space is just a space until there’s a passion to fuel the community. How do you foster that fire without burning out and taking your space with you? The answer is balance, but there’s a lot of variables in that equation.

We’ll talk about the origins of FamiLAB, a hackerspace here in Central Florida, its awkward growing phase, on through its future as a driving force in the community and the core values that have sustained our space over the past 4+ years.