We had all been missing the first Tuesday club by Information Security Solutions during its couple of months hiatus so were really pleased when it announced this month’s event would be going ahead.

There was a new sponsor in Arxan who did a fine job doing active tours and trying to talk to everyone without a sales pitch, particular credit goes to their tech (I have his card but am not publishing his name, it is a security meet up after all) who worked his socks off handling the huge variety of questions that were fired at him while only drinking water 🙁 , on a side note I had not even heard of Arxan before this meet up despite coming into contact with both their clients products and having mobile security issues which they could have really helped with, this was defiantly a “Ooooo” moment and exactly what the 1st Tuesday is for (I spent the trip home reading their web site)

As normal conversations varied wildly from the minutiae of users rights to privacy on a corporate network in various different countries through to Gandhi’s life and achievements (especially comparing his self sacrifice compared to modern leaders), though that makes it sound far more high brow than it was,

I had a great time as normal and this was an excellent night for learning new stuff and meeting one of the serious players in the mobile security.

(Yes I always take a picture when people are facing away)

After helping a client Project manager with a cheap long term “snapshot” style of backup involving some western digital Green Hard drives, some Rsync commands and the very nice anti static drive cases by Wiebetech I find this email in my in-box

On my desk this morning that was hardly clean,
The miraculous hard drive fairy has been,
And in the middle of the night,
Left a gift of tera bytes.
How thoughtful of the kind fairy to think,
Of the need to use the superb rsync,
To provide the back-up strategy I craved,
Means all my data will now be saved.

Sometimes even PM’s can be cool

My God you are still reading even after a title like that, well let me explain further.

After you have been a tech for 5 to 10 years, you start to realise that is is not quite enough, yes you have experience, yes you have seen it all and know the root of many technologies so the new stuff that comes out is mearly variations that don’t take long to learn, but you are starting to look a bit long in the tooth to the upstarts graduates, there are lots of ways of dealing with this, from the odious PM to Manager route (Spits!), to the serious tech head (time to grow a beard that you can keep squirrels in), I chose the architect route, now that means I have to be bloody good at a certain line of business as well as the tech that supports it.

I chose Insurance, it’s not the most glamours or the highest paying ( good Insurance business knowledge adds £100 – £150 to your daily rate vs the £200 – £300 for investment banking) but it is far less stressful and I have found the people to be very friendly (something that matters to me)

But even insurance has its levels, from the simple hi-lo (high volume – low value) types such a car and personal liability which fit on one sheet on paper to the very serious “International Property” and “International Marine” (Blue water) which take days or even weeks to do one policy with the help of serious computing power, at the top end of these complicated polices is the joy of Reinsurance which is basically a way of split a large risk amongst lots of companies.

From an IT point of view its hard to get a business grip on this and see it as the brokers and underwriters do even if you deal with the tech side of it every day, and lets face it, its not something you just chat about in the average pub, but there is a book on it to help, well there are quite a few books on it but many of them are out of date. this one however is considered one of the best AND has just been updated

Its Called Reinsurance: the Nuts & Bolts written by Keith Riley and I have to say it’s bloody brilliant, I don’t just mean on its coverage of a complex subject or on the fact the author has produced a technical book on insurance that does not have you slitting your wrists ever 5 mins, I mean that every couple of pages I had a “oh so that’s why the data looks like that”, it gives real insight in a friendly manner and helps you distinguish yourself for other Techs when it comes to dealing with the business. Format wise it feels very much like a “for dummies” book back when such books addressed tricky subjects. Very definitely well worth the investment

Sometimes with both large clients and multiple small clients, you are though no fault of your own faced with tons of simultaneous jobs at once, all of which are somehow the most important thing since the big bang, containing clients and managers both trying to see who can scream the loudest with you in the middle having to decide which one of the multiple tasks that all have to be done simultaneously you are actually going to do first.

If you tell anyone that someone else’s item is more important than theirs they tend to have a melt down, so the way I have personally found to deal with at least some of it, is a simple important/not important decision,

Important Problems

1. Ones that cost or make money for a client.
2. Ones that affect a client’s reputation with the wider world.
3. Ones that would mean a state of compliance or none compliance with a legal or government office.

Unimportant Problems

1. Everything else.

Amazingly I have not found manager at a large client that has ever taken me to task for taking a decision on this basis of this logic, so I can recommend it if you are in a pinch and don’t know which way to turn 🙂

OK, better late than never, but here is the report form this years UKICON a awesome fun affair which may be the last of its kind, now that IBM are apparently pulling back on the sponsorship of such (a truly insane plan if you want my option), even knowing that everyone was fired up and I got good audience participation which makes it worthwhile.

Now this was my first conference were IBM Connections was the main order of the day, I was luckily enough to be able to present with Gab see Here for her blog entry (for me it was like being allowed to present with GOD!!)

Mine and gabs slide decks are below

Now this year I got nominated for an IBM champion (the fact that it was accepted just shows that someone at IBM has a very sick sense of humour), but I suspect the naming of my solo presentation is not going to help that cause much (ah well)

everything at the conference was organised perfectly, and for me it was all a swirl of groovy people, cool tech, panicky presentations and vodka, a most excellent time.

As always a great thank you to Warren and Kitty (not to mention the rest of the helpers over the years)