The Public Record
What we built, when we built it, and the one thing that broke. The full story lives in The Stack case study on CyberAdX — this page is the timeline.
The full write-up of what five months of building actually looked like — the coalition sponsor model, the NFC chip system, the campaign engine, the 61 registered security leaders, and exactly how the funding collapsed 25 hours before check-in. No spin, published on our network partner’s events page.
Read the case study on CyberAdX →Every registrant and every sponsor got the honest account within a day of cancellation — plus one ask: the three sponsors shipped real hardware across two borders on trust. Buy from them. They came through.
Meet the coalition →Two anchor sponsorships collapsed late in the run, and a venue contract miscommunication couldn’t be resolved in time. We chose to cancel rather than run a compromised event. That decision, and everything behind it, is in the case study.
NovaCustom takes 1st place (the NUC), Nitrokey moves up to 2nd — “The Pocket” — plus final-table and mini-game sponsorship, and PortSwigger, our earliest sponsor, holds 3rd with a year of Burp Suite Professional. Early commitment got rewarded, publicly.
Custom NFC-enabled poker chips went into hands for the first time — 27 unique devices tapped through to tracked pages on hand-out day alone. The chips, trophies, and feltIQ table surfaces all survive for event two.
How TAP works →A 5-part careers series, dedicated sponsor reviews, vertical features, and podcast episodes — 18+ articles across 8 publications and 6 episodes on cisoinsights.show, including dedicated Nitrokey and NovaCustom deep-dives and “The Stack” event episode.
Sponsor and event flights run across 13 security publications — 133,000+ sponsor impressions and 1,000+ tracked clicks by event week, with premium placements converting at 20–60× typical display rates.
Live network stats →Open-source security hardware joins the prize pool — eventually 38 units including a NitroPhone and a crate of hardware keys, shipped from Berlin on trust.
A year of Burp Suite Professional, committed before the venue was even locked — 96 days of sponsorship, the longest run of the three.
An invite-only Texas Hold’em night for security leaders — no badge scans, no booths, no pitches. Application-gated seating, a coalition sponsor model, and a date in the gap between Black Hat and DEF CON.
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