Update: Voting is now live, so please scroll to the bottom of this post to cast your vote for the best vendor T-shirt design of RSA Conference 2014.
One of the time-honored traditions of every trade show is scoping out the conference expo hall for the inevitable freebies that vendors provide in an attempt to entice show attendees to hear a sales pitch about their wares. The RSA conference is no exception to this rule, and I’m guessing that close to 100% of the vendors in the RSA expo hall will be giving out something of value.
One of the most popular staples of every tech trade show is the ubiquitous free T-shirt supplied by vendors, always adorned with a vendor logo and sometimes with an attempt at humor and/or distinction. Many are forgettable, some are noteworthy, and only a few feature something so clever as to enter the vendor freebie T-shirt hall of fame.
On the noteworthy T-shirt humor front, I have to tip my hat to a former employer of mine — Windows IT Pro — for having boxer shorts emblazoned with the phrase “100% uptime” that they gave out at an IT trade show many years ago.
So in the interest of giving you a one-stop location to peruse all of the best T-shirts from #RSAC, I’ve started this directory of some of the more noteworthy T-shirts being given out by vendors at RSA Conference 2014, listed in alphabetical order by vendor name. This list will be continuously updated, so if you know of a shirt that is worth including on this list please email me (or give me a shout-out on Twitter at @jeffjames3) and I’ll do my best to add it as soon as possible. You can also check out the best T-shirts of RSA Conference 2013 while you’re waiting for this list to get updated, or get more expo hall tips in our RSA Conference 2014 survival guide.
Note: At the end of the RSA Conference, I’ll encourage RSA Conference attendees to vote on all of the T-shirts depicted here to pick an informal winner which the vendor of the winning shirt can have bragging rights for. Voting will go live on Friday, February 28th on this web page.
Atredis Partners – ‘NSA Bsafe Toolkit’ T-shirt design, reward for #RSAC Twitter contest (design above). Shirt also featured in EFF fundraiser.
Barracuda Networks (Booth #1147)
Barracuda Networks – ‘Cloud Evolved’ T-shirt design (above)
Guidance Software (Booth # 1421)
Guidance Software – ‘Hunt or Be Hunted’ T-shirt design (above)
Ironkey (Booth # 1601)
IronKey – ‘PC on a Stick’ T-shirt design (above)
IronKey – ‘Survival of the Fittest’ T-shirt design (above)
LogRhythm (Booth #1001)
LogRhythm – ‘Live Log and Prosper’ T-shirt design (above)
NetOptics (Booth #1329)
NetOptics – ‘Keep Calm and Ensure Visibility’ T-shirt design (above)
NetOptics – ‘Keep It Inline’ women’s T-shirt design (above, complete survey at booth first)
Splunk ‘More Brains, Less Surgery’ T-shirt design (above, photo via Lise Feng)
ThreatSim (Booth #321)
ThreatSim ‘I Phish People’ T-shirt design (above)
Trace Security (Booth # 2314)
Trace Security ‘The IT GRC Revolution’ T-shirt design (Above)
Vormetric (Booths: South #515 and North #2614)
Vormetric ‘Defender of Data Samurai’ T-shirt design (Above)
Vormetric ‘Defender of Data Jet’ T-shirt design (Above)
What was your favorite T-shirt design of RSA Conference 2014?
So have you spotted any vendor T-shirts at the RSA Conference 2014 that deserve to be included in this list? If so, I’d love to hear from you. Drop me an email with a photo (or image file) of the shirt in question, or touch base with me on Twitter, Google+, or Facebook (see below).