CHES 2017 was held September 25th - 28th in Taipei, Taiwan. This being my first trip to CHES, I was glad to see a mix of academics and people in industry whom had ties with cryptographic hardware on embedded systems. Although I have a limited frame of reference, I feel the standard of the conference was quite high - the presenters all knew what they were talking about in great detail, and were able to accurately describe the contribution they had made to their respective fields. My favourite tal