4 Score & 4 Years Ago: How A Community-Built Fund Could Transform Digital Evidence Education

We outline a concrete plan to fund the Paul F. Compton Scholarship for Excellence in Digital Forensics and map how DME Resources will evolve to support stronger education, accreditation, and community leadership. We share structural options, potential university partners, and ways listeners can help.

• Launching GoFundMe with a $150k year-one goal
• Considering social purpose structure vs nonprofit
• Seeking Marshall University to administer awards
• Expanding DME Resources with new community leadership
• Building industry support and accreditation momentum
• Integrating multimedia forensics into degree pathways
• Re-enabling Patreon and centralizing updates on Twitter
• Committing proceeds above $10k to the scholarship

All proceeds above 10,000 will be donated to the scholarship program
All proceeds from the GoFundMe campaign will be donated to the scholarship program

Chapters

• 0:00 Scholarship Launch And Goals
• 0:31 Nonprofit Vs Social Purpose Path
• 1:37 University Partnership And Administration
• 3:03 Community Leadership Shift At DME Resources
• 3:51 Industry Support And Accreditation Push
• 5:13 Growing Multimedia Forensics In Curricula
• 6:02 Updates: Twitter, Patreon, And Funding Plan
• 7:27 Gratitude And Next Steps

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Hey man, how's it going? Larry Compton again. Got some more rambling to do, I guess. Still on vacation, but some great news on the progress with the scholarship and DME resources. So I have uh created a GoFundMe for the Paul F. Compton Scholarship for Excellence in Digital Forensics. Target goal of$150,000 in the first year. And I donated$100 myself to it to get it started. So I'll have links to that in the description. I hope you'll consider donating. On the DME Resources site, some interesting news for members and in the community there as well that I can share a little bit of. So there's several things that are kind of several balls up in the air, just so you understand. One option is me uh just becoming a nonprofit organization. I've always operated as a sole proprietor. I have a federal EIN and state, you know, all of that business is all in line. However, this is being, you know, the nature of this scholarship, I had looked into a nonprofit status, of course. And Washington State has another uh status other than corporate, you know, limited liability corporation or a nonprofit, I could become what's something that's called a social purpose organization, which retains, you know, I would be able to retain complete uh control. Whereas in a nonprofit, you know, uh I give up control of the entire organization to a board or, you know, uh the you know, the better uh group of individuals that I probably would, you know, help appoint that sort of thing. But in any case, all of that aside, my goal has been to get an institution, ideally Marshall University, to adopt the scholarship program itself, administer the scholarship, dole out the funds uh from the scholarship that that I collect. And I'd like to promote this scholarship. I'd like to continue to collect funds and manage the funds for the scholarship, dole uh the annual report. All of that I'm willing to do, continue the DME resources community website itself. And however, in regards to that, I am gonna step back a little bit on DME resources. I have reached out to a colleague some time ago to see if he'd be interested in taking over admin capabilities. Excuse me. Speaking a little fast here because I'm all worked up. But I reached out to a friend several months ago, or weeks ago, I believe, you know, asking if he'd be willing to take over DME Resources admin responsibilities, essentially becoming moderator for the DME resources professional community, rather than me being the sole uh moderator of the community. He would be in charge of the community. I'd be in charge of the back-end capabilities of the site, as well as my podcast and promoting the site and my podcast and the scholarship. So that that's you know an ideal situation that I'd like to see fold out, you know, out in the next year or two years. But there are a lot and a lot of options and a lot of balls in the air because we've got uh agencies already interested in, you know, providing some sort of moral support for the scholarship, both federal and organizational agencies such as have reached out to the International Association for Identification, as well as others. I hope to uh speak with SANS forensics if you're not familiar, as well as a few others. And if Marshall's unable or unwilling to help, it doesn't mean we can't, you know, award scholarships to Marshall's program because I really believe in their program. And I I think it's and it has been, you know, awarded uh and rated one of the best in in the world, in the country for sure, in the area of digital forensics and their masters in digital forensics. Now, Professor Josh Brunty, I had on the show, is the one uh kind of you know poking around. He was very honored to be for this, and that that was exciting for me. Exciting enough, you know, for me to know that there's an interest there, even if it's just a seed scholarship to begin with, we can grow this with all of our contacts in the industry, corporation-wise, so on and so forth. We can grow this scholarship to really, you know, uh whatever uh lengths and heights we'd like to. And I think that could be extremely big in promoting accreditation of digital forensic certifications, regardless of whether they're public or private certifications. I think there should be accreditation in regards to certifications, and I fought for that a large part of my career. So it's one of the purposes of the scholarship is to promote education in that area as well as obviously promote and help uh students get to some of these uh world-class institutions. I'd also like to promote getting uh multimedia forensics in the basic, you know, BS degree programs and even an you know uh uh introductory in into uh community college uh programs, more community college programs. And I'm I'm aware of several friends and colleagues, and I've taught classes at some as well, but what I'm saying is I'd like to see more formal programs adopted. And I know, you know, with my contacts and some of my friends' contacts, we have the ability to uh get that framework at least in place, you know, to have a real lasting effect on the future of digital evidence. And that's what I've been really excited about. So it can go in a number of different directions. We don't know which direction it's gonna go right now, but I can tell you this, it's gonna continue to move forward. And it's been really exciting for me to get uh the little feedback I've had already while on vacation and supposed to not be dealing with any of this stuff. So I am going to try and cut it off after this. Uh a brief update for you, and uh stay off from my site. I did create a new Twitter account for the uh site as well as the podcast and the scholarship. So it's a you know one one Twitter account for all type of thing at DME resources if you're interested. I'm not reading any tweets on there or anything, other than uh a few key individuals, and but I will occasionally be posting you know weird and mo helpful information at times as well, depending on my mood and uh that sort of thing. So I hope you'll follow, follow us on Twitter. I'm also going to go ahead and re-enable the Patreon community that I had started. If Patreon will have me back, I believe we can re-enable that community and continue to accept you know$2 and above you know donations through Patreon as well. I I just came to the decision that, hey, you know, I've got a lot of posts there, I'd have to manually move them over to my site, and why not just I pulled the trigger too soon, uh, deleting the community. And I really believe in Patreon and hope they'll have me back. So look for that as well. Check out the links to the new GoFundMe program. All proceeds above 10,000 from DME resources will be for the 2021 calendar year. All proceeds above 10,000 will be donated to the scholarship uh program. And also all proceeds from the GoFundMe campaign will be donated to the scholarship uh program as well. So stay tuned for more information on that in the coming weeks. And thank you so much, everybody, for everything, for all of the support over the years, the concern here recently with my manic episodes and uh, you know, hospitalization, etc. I really appreciate everyone concerned about me and caring, and I'm looking forward to changing uh the the way that uh people are trained in digital evidence going forward with you. So thanks again. Enjoy your evening, and I'll be back soon. Take care.