At this year's shmoocon keynote I shared the new DARPA approach to cyber that I helped create and, perhaps more importantly, the new program efforts I was pushing forward to enable funding of boutique security researchers and hackerspaces.
http://m.youtube.com/watch?desktop_uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DrDP6A5NMeA4&v=rDP6A5NMeA4&gl=US
A key component of the latter was to make it a painless and quick enough process that the cottage industry parts of this community, and individuals, can play (as opposed to just the large corporations).
The effort is called Cyber Fast Track, and while requiring a great deal of major muscle movement to pull off, will be available and running in time for BSides. Who would have thought that the government wouldn't want to remove the difficulties of doing business with them because that would mean more work. But it looks like we did it anyway - Ha! :)
Another key driver is that the people doing the research efforts keep the intellectual property and rights to commercialize it (a win-win in my book).
So, what I would like to do is present how and why I put this effort together, what type of security research efforts will be considered for funding, and how to go about getting funding.