Pike Creek’s BarCode won a 2021 People’s Choice Podcast Award

BarCode has everything you’d want in a podcast: cocktails, sketch comedy and special guests representing worldwide leadership and expertise in cybersecurity.

A plurality of the 8.2 million listeners who voted in the 2021 People’s Choice Podcast Award agreed, and honored it with the award in the This Week in Tech Technology category, beating out nine other podcasts, including The Vergecast, That Tech Show and Sit Down Startup.

BarCode host Chris Glanden created the podcast after the COVID-19 pandemic halted in-person networking events and happy hours.

“Before the pandemic hit, I used to go to conferences and there would always be happy hours where you would have informal conversations,” Glanden told Technical.ly in April. “From my experience, a lot of great relationships and ideas are built in that atmosphere, not in the conference room, where it’s more of a one-way conversation. So I try to transplant that feeling into a podcast. It’s not ‘drunken cybersecurity,’ it’s a relaxing mindset more than anything.”

Episodes kick off with a sketch featuring Glanden bantering with “bartender” Tony Marcozzi before the guest is introduced. Each episode features a drink recipe (usually a cocktail, sometimes an alcohol-free coffee drink), and listeners are encouraged to sit back and unwind as the show turns to a conversation with experts and influencers in the cybersecurity world.

Guests from around the world who have appeared on BarCode include Liverpool-based social engineer Jenny Radcliffe (aka the “People Hacker”), Have I Been Pwned? creator Troy Hunt and Metasploit Framework developer HD Moore. Local guests have included ChristianaCare CISO Anahi Santiago and Secure Monkey founder Stan Ivanov.

“Trust me, I’m going to continue to innovate new ways of delivering the message of cybersecurity through my podcast,” Glanden said in his acceptance speech.

You can watch the 2021 People’s Choice Podcast awards below; the Technology category appears at 47:06.