So how was *your* day?

["Rob, grandpa of Ryan, Trevor, Devon & Hannah" <rMslade () shaw ca>]

It's been a while since I got out to the trade seminars.  You know, marketing's 
traveling bumpf show, where they trot out the VP of sales, plus a "security 
evangelist" or somebody with some such title (who has a technical background, but 
likes schmoozing more than doing actual research).  I used to go to lots: it's a good 
way to get up to speed when you first enter a field, but the law of diminishing 
returns tends to set in real fast in terms of actual information.  

There were actually two that I signed up for this week.  SANS had one, and I've
never been to any SANS stuff, so I went to that.  Intel also had a real dog and
pony show, with extra associated vendors.  When I get home from these things, 
Gloria always asks me whether I'm glad I went.  

I'm glad I went to the SANS show.  Didn't get much out of the presentation itself.  
But the style of the presentation was intriguing: an awful lot of "cute stuff" 
demonstrated, without much actual information being relayed.  The attitude of the 
presenters was also interesting: they were definitely in it for the cash.  

I'm sorta glad I went to the Intel show.  The presentations were all pretty lame, 
and seemed to get worse as the day progressed.  However, a couple of the vendors 
were security related, and it was interesting to see some of the directions people 
are trying to go with desktop security.  (The event was supposed to have had a 
"trade show" component, but the arrangements made it nearly impossible to 
actually talk to the vendors.  Maybe that was by design: if you did talk to them, 
you got to the end of their knowledge base quite quickly.)  Intel has something on 
some of the new processors called vPro that has some kind of access control 
which various vendors are using for remote maintenance and so forth.  No details 
on how it works, of course.  I suspect it's left over from the old TCPI stuff.   

I also knew a fair number of people at the show, so it was nice to chat.  And 
thereby also hangs a bit of a tale.

So the first presenter of the day, Jason, gets up.  You always start by making a 
rapport with the audience, right?  And he's from Toronto.  So he's giving us this 
big song and dance about how, even though he's from Toronto, he actually grew up 
in Burnaby, so we should trust him.  And I lean over to Gord and mutter, "But he's 
wearing a suit."  

I shouldn't sit with Gord.  He's a bad influence.  He laughs, and says I should
say that.  So when Jason, up front, starts in for the third time about how he's
from Burnaby, I yell out, "But you're wearing a suit!"  The whole room laughs. 
Jason takes off his suit jacket (which is kind of a production, because, of
course, he's been wired into a lavalier microphone), and goes on with his
presentation.

(Apparently I started something.  Second presenter of the day comes up and 
elaborately takes off his jacket before he starts, the rest of the presenters don't 
wear jackets, except for the last one who claims that he promised his mother he'd 
wear a jacket.)  

So on a break I see Jason, and apologize for giving him a hard time.  I also tell him 
that, being from Toronto, he'll have a chance to come and heckle me when I 
speak at InfoSecurity Canada.  He looks at my name tag, and looks up, kinda 
stunned.  "Rob Slade," he says, in a disbelieving voice.  (I'm a bit surprised at this.  
I'm used to getting some recognition in tech crowds, but not among the marketing 
people who do these sales seminars: they don't read technical books or mailing 
lists.)  "I'm Jason Bremner," says he, and I'm thinking, yeah, I saw your name on 
the program, and then he adds, "from Keats."  

Keats is a little island, near Vancouver, that is recreational property.  My
parents had a place on Keats, and I grew up there, in the summers.  The Bremners
had a place as well.  The Bremner kids were all younger than I was, but all I
can say in my defence was that the last time I saw Jason, he was about ten years
old.  And he wasn't wearing a suit.

At these events, the major vendors get the minor vendors to come along by 
promising a big crowd.  And the way to get the crowd to stay, once they've showed 
up, is to have the prize draws at the end of the event.  So they are drawing for gift 
cards and things, and the draws from the minor vendors who came along, and 
everyone is waiting for the big draw of a laptop.  (I'm not too worried about 
winning anything: the biggest thing I have *ever* won is a fairly fancy chair that 
the grandchildren have turned into a piece of indoor playground equipment.)  And 
everyone at my table is just chatting, and I hear my name called.  And ask, "What 
did I win?" and nobody says anything.  So I go up, and it's kind of strange, and the 
guy hands me a sheaf of papers, and says something about they'll have to get me 
registered, and the name of the person coming with me, and I go and stand to the 
side and start reading and it's a prize trip: airfare, hotel, tickets to the Formula 1, 
spending money, and down at the bottom it says "Value of prize: $5,000."  And up 
at the top it gives the dates.  And I'm thinking:  This can't be happening.

Because I've got to present (three times, no less) at InfoSecurity Canada, and the 
dates conflict.

(Oho, I hear you cry, just change the tickets.  Montreal and Toronto aren't that 
far apart.  Yeah, right.  It took me two months to get the outfit running the 
conference to get around to travel arrangements, and said arrangement still aren't 
complete.  And other work has to be scheduled around the conference.  And both 
the airlines and prize giving people are extremely sticky about *any* changes: you 
practically have to have the authorities guarantee that you are going to be on 
those specific flights.  Unfortunately, I can pretty much guarantee that it wouldn't 
work.)     

I'm in shock, over both winning and losing $5,000 in the space of a few minutes. I 
probably should have waited until everyone had left, and *then* told them I 
couldn't go: that way I'd have been in a good position to trade the prize I'd saved 
them for something relatively meaningful.  As it was, I told them I couldn't go, 
they drew again, and the guy who won was young and had a shaved head, and 
looked like he'd just have a blast being at the race with the noise and the high 
powered machines and all.  (Hey, I'm a grandfather.  I can stand loud noise, but 
two full days of it would get old real fast.)

So I spend the rest of the day shaking from the adrenalin buzz and with an upset 
stomach: how was your day?


======================  (quote inserted randomly by Pegasus Mailer)
rslade () vcn bc ca     slade () victoria tc ca     rslade () computercrime org
If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?  - Abraham Lincoln
Dictionary of Information Security  www.syngress.com/catalog/?pid=4150
http://victoria.tc.ca/techrev/rms.htm
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