.:Computer Defense:.

One of the coolest booth prizes at RSA had to be from an appliance builder that was having a draw for a free prototype appliance ($2000 value). Thinking this would be an awesome win, i quickly filled out the form and placed it in the fish bowl. That was the last I heard of this until yesterday. I came into the office and had a voicemail from last week. It went something like this (close approximation):

Hi Tyler, it's Ed ******** calling from MBX Systems. I just wanted to let you know that we drew your name for the RSA drawing and it would be great if you could give us a call back to go over the details.

Now at this point I'm rather excited... I've got plans for this win. I'm thinking ComputerDefense.org appliance installed in a rack somewhere instead of a hosted page for this blog. I call back and end up having to leave a voicemail. After a brief game of phone tag, I finally get Ed on the phone. He does some standard sales guy talk and then asks how he can meet my needs, and since I just want my free system that I won, I ask how it works. At this point I'm informed that someone else won the free prototype... I've won a free eval! W00T! Stop the presses... a FREE eval! Needless to say the phone call quickly ended.

This was, to date, the sneakiest trick I've seen to get someone on the phone. At this point I may not be directly involved in appliance purchasing but I'm a big fan of the vendor space and who knows where I'll be in 1, 5 or even 10 years. I do, however, know who I won't be doing business with.

You know, if I'd won and their systems were half as good as their marketing material claims, I probably would have written up a blog post praising them... at the very least they would have gotten positive mention just because I'd won it. Since I didn't win, they could not contacted me or gone with a standard sales call and I wouldn't have had anything bad to say about them, at least I'd know the name should I ever be in the position to purcahses appliances in the future. Instead they took this sleazy approach and now I'm going to always know who I'm not doing business with.

Note: this was a series of posts following RSA but some personal issues delayed this and now I'm posting a single post on the subject.

This was my first year at RSA, and via the wonder of blogging, I had a press pass.  I also, unfortunately, had an exhibitor badge. That isn't to say I didn't want to be at the booth (I actually love being at the booth -- although, while many people walked by and loved our shirts, I wasn't a huge fan... just a huge pumpkin ), it just meant I had less time to use the press pass. I also didn't have a lot of time to post while at RSA, so now I'm doing my blog posts... based on a few notes and lots of foggy memories.

I have an interesting flight story to share, but I feel as thought it might be better sent to the consumerist, I'm not entirely sure yet.

Anyways, day one I met with a few interesting people. First I meant with some people from Commtouch to discuss their technology and what they do. It sounded rather interesting and I look forward to testing it out at some point in the future. Following that, I met with Michael Sutton from Zscaler, who'd I'd met once previously. I really enjoyed this discussion and think we'll see some really cool things out of Zscaler in the future.

I spent the morning at the nCircle booth and expected to see masses of peopel everywhere after hearing about the number of people last year. I later heard it discussed that there were fewer people, so that might explain it. Working the booth is something I really enjoy. Being an engineer leaves you with few chances to interact with customers, something I love doing. The booth over the three days that I was there lead to some very interesting discussions with intriguing contacts.

Tuesday afternoon was spent walking the booths. A few vendors said they'd send me samples of their hardware to play with and review, however I've had no contact from them yet. This is disappointing because I was really looking forward to seeing some of the hardware in action.

Wednesday was the day that I was really looking forward to. The Securosis breakfast, the WASC meetup and the Security Bloggers Meetup. All three of these were amazing and they gave me a chance to finally meet up with the people that I talk to and hadn't be able to connect with at past conferences. I also had the opportunity to do a video interview with Martin McKeay, which I'm eager to see... I just hope it was shot in wide screen so that Martin can fit in the frame next to me .

Thursday brought more of the same with booth duty and visits to other booths. It also brought dinner at Basil Thai which was incredible. Ever since I was in San Francisco last year, I'd looked forward to returning to eat at Chevy's (which I just learned is a chain), which I managed to do twice but Basil Thai was even better. I'm already excited about my next trip to San Francisco just to go back.

Friday was my final day in San Francisco (I was flying back on the red-eye). Friday also held the highlight of the week -- the Mythbusters. It was incredible and my only complaint was that the moderator was too chatty.

Anyways, shorter than I wanted it to be but I had to mention that I did enjoy RSA and I'm eager to attend again next year.