If you know me, you know I’m always saying: trust but verify. Validate everything. If there is one thing I love about The 101, it’s that it’s a natural place for the digital forensics community to come and do this. Two weeks in, I want to share why I’m loving our expanded 101!  

1. The resources are second to none. Location questions, timestamp questions, artifact questions. In this field, they come up every single day. Even when you’re 99.9% sure of an answer, you still want a gut check, and that’s exactly what The 101 gives you. The tip sheets and mini blogs are constantly updated by the team, and the level of research behind the answers is phenomenal. I recently saw a location data question get a response so thorough it broke down exactly how a few minutes of drive time can change your findings. That’s the kind of detail you can build a case on. I even noticed someone post the exact same question in the SANS 585 alumni channel at the same time they posted it in The 101. They wanted answers from both places, which tells you everything about the caliber of expertise people expect to find here. It’s become my validation check: a place to confirm answers are forensically sound before they go any further.  

2. It’s a safe place to talk. Threads out in the wild can be overwhelming, and worse, unpredictable. You never know who’s reading or how a simple question could be used against you later. The 101 is different. It was built specifically for this community, so it’s easy to navigate and focus on specific discussions, not noise. You can ask a real question and get a real answer without wondering if it’ll come back to bite you. 

3. It gives you time back. I’m doing a million things at once . “My Discussions” has genuinely changed how I keep up: it shows me exactly what I’ve commented on and what I’ve created, all in one place. I love external threads in theory but find it so overwhelming that I mostly only check it once a year, during CTF (which, by the way, is coming in November)! The 101 is organized in a way that lets me focus on what I actually care about instead of getting buried. 

4. The camaraderie, and the trends, are real. One of my favorite things is watching what’s trending. A location data question Ian and I answered picked up 47 views and got marked “hot.” Someone else’s post hit 136. It’s a window into what the community cares about and where they’re getting stuck, and honestly, that visibility is a gift, especially for people newer to digital forensics. Seeing that even seasoned examiners have open questions helps heal imposter syndrome. Add in the sub-communities for investigators, newcomers, or anyone figuring out where AI fits into their lab, and you’ve got a place where everyone actually belongs. 

The 101 is Cellebrite’s first purpose-built global digital community, and it’s already proving what happens when experts and examiners have one real place to connect. Join us: https://community.cellebrite.com/s/101