Good Morning, Arlington — OpenSSL Corporation at ICMC26
Magdalena Zdunkiewicz •
Field Dispatch № 026 · Arlington · 20 April 2026
A field report from the OpenSSL Corporation team — somewhere between a cloudy runway view, a very stubborn booth panel, and the oldest saloon in Washington.
05:47 · Room 1108 — DCA, Potomac, low cloud
| Conference | Where | When | Our role |
|---|---|---|---|
| ICMC 26 — 14th Annual | Arlington, Virginia | 20–23 April 2026 | Gold Sponsor · Booth open all week |
There is a particular kind of Sunday that starts with a cloudy runway view and a laptop already open to slide 47. A hotel desk with more cables than surface area. A KMIP version timeline quietly asking whether you really remembered what changed in v1.4. This, reader, is that Sunday — and it is a very good one.
01 / The prep — A hotel desk, converted
Command centre · 06:17
Because you don’t turn up to ICMC with rough edges. You turn up with rehearsed transitions, clean diagrams, and a strong opinion about entropy.
By the time the skyline showed through the window, the hotel desk had been politely but firmly converted into a Small But Functional Office™. Ultrawide plugged in. Slides open. Ten years of key management history stretched across the screen — v1.0 through v3.0, 2010 through 2024, TLS transport to PQC algorithms, every chapter of the story we’re here to keep telling.
Somewhere in the room, a coffee goes cold. Somewhere else, a correction gets made. The work before the work, being done quietly. This is the part nobody takes a photo of, so of course we took a photo of it.
02 / The build — Engineering, then duct tape
Booth 4 · Final stand-up
Backdrop panels, counter, TV mount, card holder, the whole pageant — and, because no trade-show build in the history of trade shows has ever gone exactly to plan, a quiet hero: duct tape.
If you ask our engineers, the team responsible for Transport Layer Security is the same team that will, without ceremony, reinforce a booth joint with whatever adhesive is nearest to hand. The standards are different. The mindset is identical: find the weak point, secure it, move on. Certify what you can. Tape the rest.
It is, we think, the correct metaphor. You build the cryptography properly because you have to — FIPS 140-3, formal verification, the long quiet hours of review. And then, on the day, you build the booth because the show opens at nine. Both get done. Both get done well. The tape is never visible by the time the lights come up.
./booth-build.sh --icmc26 --tape=on --verbose
step_01 › frame.tape() — [ TAPING ]
step_02 › lights.mount() — [ OK ]
step_03 › backdrop.raise() — [ STEADY ]
step_04 › ship_it() — [ DONE ]
› exit 0 · build complete · 4 steps · 1 roll of tape · 0 engineers harmed · 1 thumbs-up emitted
Post-quantum crypto. Pre-quantum duct tape.
— The unofficial booth motto · ICMC 2026
03 / The reward — Because we earned it
Old Ebbitt Grill · 675 15th Street NW · 20:47 EST — OpenSSL T-shirt count: 1 · Oyster count: undisclosed
Founded in 1856, Old Ebbitt Grill is Washington’s oldest saloon — which is to say, it has been serving cocktails to presidents for considerably longer than we’ve been releasing library versions.
We took a booth of a different kind — tufted leather, low light, a ridiculous number of empty oyster shells by the end — a few blocks from the White House, and settled the question of whether the only thing better than shipping cryptography is eating dinner after shipping cryptography. (It is. It’s not close.)
There is something deeply right about a 170-year-old saloon hosting a conversation about post-quantum algorithms. The building has seen a few transitions. One more will not frighten it.
Come say hi · 20–23 April
The booth is open. The tape is hidden. The team is caffeinated. Here is where to find us:
- Tuesday · Studio E — OpenSSL Roadmap with Tim Hudson, President, OpenSSL Corporation
- Wednesday · Salon 1–3 — PQC in the OpenSSL Library with Tomáš Vávra, Engineering Manager
- All week · Exhibit hall — Booth 4, with or without oysters
You can also book a meeting with our experts. More on our presence at ICMC26 on the event page.
OpenSSL Corporation — always prepared to go the extra mile.
