Guest Post: PGP Keysigning at SCALE 9x

From our guest blogger Phil Dibowitz (SCALE Co-Founder and Tech Committee Chair Emeritus):

Last year I - along with a few others - put some thought into how to make the PGP keysigning experience better. After 8 years of parties, I felt there was room for improvement.

The first thing we did was get rid of RSVPs by allowing people to submit fingerprints with their registration. Then we printed that fingerprint on their badge for easy verification for anyone who couldn't make it to the event itself.

The results were obvious: the largest SCALE keysigning party by more than triple our previous record. The event had to move to the hallway for the conga line, ran two hours, and caught the attention countless people who didn't sign up but wanted to know how they could be there next time.

It wasn't perfect though. Many people have two keys - one for work and one for personal use - and could not submit them. Also, more than a quarter of attendees had missed a few characters when copy-and-pasting their fingerprints during registration. So this year we've added format-checking on the fingerprints as well as made it possibly to register two keys!

I'm proud to once again be hosting the SCALE 9x PGP Keysigning Party! I hope this year is even bigger and better than last year. See you there!