Here we reach the end of my brain dump on last week's RSA 2012 (see my two previous posts here and here). These are mostly odds & ends - nothing overly well formulated. So, please, forgive the randomness.
This conference was HUGE. There were rumors of attendance being around 20,000 (I never did hear a final number). That's a lot of people. In fact, another related rumor is that the conference has grown so much that they may be expanding into Moscone West as early as next year in order to add more tracks.
As per usual, I didn't make it to as many talks as I wanted to, but I did see a couple, and they were great. I also got to see the Flash Talks (PechaKucha), which were all good. Especially funny were the talks by Mike Rothman and Hugh Thompson (Hugh's being the best - his timing was impeccable!). If you ever get a chance, then please go see the Flash Talks as they were great!
It was awesome catching-up with so many people, meeting so many new people, and just generally being surrounded by people from the industry. Last week was by far the busiest conference week I've experience, and yet - as exhausting as that was - it was enjoyable and survivable.
A huge "thank you" is owed to David Spark and Tripwire for doing a bunch of great interviews again this year. You can check mine out - Are All These New "Risk" Tools Actually Risk Management Tools? - below.
I very much enjoyed the closing session. Hugh's guests Dan Gardner and Frank Luntz were interesting - especially Luntz, who wrote the book Words That Work: It's Not What You Say, It's What People Hear, when he spoke about the messaging the security industry should be using with customers, speaking to their (the customers') desire for "peace of mind."
Lastly, former-PM Tony Blair was also an interesting speaker despite being out of his depth on the topic. I didn't feel that he was quite as good as former-President Bill Clinton was the previous year (Clinton covered lots of economic stats), but otherwise he was very solid. His Q&A with Art was especially impressive (way better than Clinton's). Despite not having any depth in the topic, I think he had a solid implicit understanding of things, which came through with solid comments.
It's time to close the book (mostly) on this RSA and start thinking about next year (already!). Let's hope 2012 is as productive as I feel like it can be right now given all the positive energy coming out of the conference.
Update: I can't believe I forgot to mention one very important session! Hands-down, the most important session I saw during the week was on burnout in the security industry. The studies have just started, and there's more yet to do, but it was very interesting. For more info, please check out www.secburnout.org.
