I'm baaaaack
Well....as many of you can probably figure out, I've been remiss in my blogging as of late. Of course, there's no good excuse, except to put this in the context of "travel + content prep".
Regardless.....I'm in fact back. This week is an interesting one. I'm actually up in Ottawa, Ontario for the Microsoft Canada Security Summit. The event is being held right next to Parliament Hill at the famous Fairmont Chateau Laurier.....which bets the heck out of a Holiday Inn (even with a Holidome). After the even yesterday, I came downstairs last night for our Speaker Dinner (thank you so much Tina and Galaxy for arranging this). When I got to the lobby, there was a whole Canadian Police Tac Squad deployed in the lobby. As you can guess, I was pretty happy (since I'm a former Special Ops guy myself, I do so love to see the newest toys from Heckler & Koch). I also noticed that there were two plain clothes executive protection guys standing by the elevators. Now I'm extremely pleased!!! I could barely contain myself....but who....who is the "security principal" that is responsible for all the attention?! Well, at that moment a motorcade shows up.....and guess who steps out?
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger!!! Arnie!!! The Govenator!!
...that's right....he is up here this week meeting with the PM from Canada and he is staying at the same hotel as I am. My first reaction was "If there's any public official who can probably take care of himself...I'm guessing it's Arnie." He was extremely gracious to the staff and the admiring fans, but of course his protection detail quickly whisked him away to his suite. I tried to get a picture, but my camera phone doesn't really work with well when trying to capture photos of CyberDyne Systems T-800 Model 101 (I'm sure that was corrected in the newer T-1000 systems). I really thought Gov. Schwarzenegger would have stopped to say hello to us Americans staying at the hotel or to come explain the importance of "cyber security" (Get it? Cyber-Security....see he was a cyborg sent back in time to....forget it...go watch the movie again.) I felt a bit slighted, and thought maybe I'd call up and have like 200 pizzas sent to his room. By the way: He really IS that big.
The conference was really terrific and Microsoft Canada's newest Chief Security Advisor, Mary Kirwan is doing a fantastic job of ensuring that the attendees find value in the event. I'm going to try and get her to do a podcast with me, to help kick off my CSO Podcast Series, which are going to be 15-minute podcasts dealing with security management and executive issues. Should be fun.
I'll be heading off to Tech-Ed 2007 in a couple of days, so look for some interesting posts from that HUGE event! I'll be blogging from sunny Orlando, so stay tuned.