Rational Survivability

As it goes in football, so it goes in life…

I delivered the closing presentation of the InfoWorld Executive Virtualization Forum in San Francisco on Monday.  The title of my presentation, which I will upload soon, was "
  Addressing Security Concerns in Virtual Environments."

The conference was a good mix of panels and presentations giving some excellent perspective to senior-level managers and executives on virtualization and its impact.

The night before was obviously the Super Bowl and InfoWorld hosted a get-together complete with beer, snacks and a big screen for us to watch the Big Game.  Most of the InfoWorld staff are out of the MA area, so except for a few Giants fans, it was a room packed with Pats fanatics. 

Ultimately, sad, depressed, and shocked Pats fanatics…

So the next day after having to listen to the fantastic keynote from David Reilly, Head of Technology Infrastructure Services, Credit Suisse — an Irishman who grew up in England and now lives in New York — bleat on about "his beloved Giants," I thought it only appropriate that I take one last stab at regaining my pride.

So, when it was my turn to speak, I slipped a borrowed Randy Moss jersey over my silk shirt and took the stage to stares of bewilderment and confusion.

I explained my costume and expressed my disappointment with the team’s performance in one fell swoop:

You may be wondering why I’m up here presenting in my beloved Patriot’s uniform.  Well, this *is* a security presentation, so I thought I could give you no more spectacular illustration of what happens when you fail to execute on a defensive strategy than this (pointing to the jersey.)

Further, I find it completely amusing and apropos to be standing here in a virtualization conference talking about security *last* in the order of things because that’s exactly the problem I want to talk about…

The crowd seemed to enjoy those couple of opening shots and the rest went quite well — I try to make stabs at involving the audience.  I always gauge the success of a show by how many people come up and talk to me at the podium and afterwards.  By all accounts, it rocked since I spent the next 45 minutes talking to the 30+ folks that engaged me between the podium and the beer stand.

Adrian Lane was kind enough to blog about my performance here…

I very much enjoyed the conversation that ensued with some really interesting people.

Looking forward to the next one in NY in the November timeframe.

Hope to see you there.

/Hoff