RSA Conference 2014

docrice

Anyone attending the conference next month?

http://www.rsaconference.com/events/us14

I usually go for a couple of days to see the vendor expo and check out all the new over-hyped, over-marketed products and services. There are lots of demos and presentations which you can always tell are super-serious and legitimate because there's a big screen, a terminal session, black background, green text, and the speaker is talking about "cyber" and "threat analytics" with "next-gen" whatever.

I don't even bother to get the free t-shirts or blinky pens anymore (with some exceptions if I respect the vendor). It's mostly cheap swag anyway.

And then around 3 in the afternoon, long lines start forming at some booths, attractive women (who are not working as booth professionals) become more numerous, and you realize that the popcorn machines have converted into free alcohol dispensaries.

Master Of Puppets

I'd totally go if it wasn't that far away and at this time of the year. I'm sure I will enjoy some of the talks which I hope will be posted online again.

NightShade03

I deal with hyped up vendor nonsense on a daily basis....don't need to fly across the country to experience the same thing

docrice

Being an infosec professional and walking through the RSA Conference Expo is like window shopping at a mall which sells nothing but security products and services in addition to having forums, keynotes, and miscellaneous talks/presentations.

There's so much marketing hype and this year's buzzword bingo splashed all over banners and literature includes:

Next Generation
Cyber-[insert any word here]
Cloud
Compliance
Continuous
Big Data
BYOD

and much, much more. Nothing new about most of these, but after a while it gets tiring to see the same 'ol headline grab-phrases. In addition, there are so many vendors this year that for a good portion that I walked by I couldn't figure out what the vendor did just by looking at the marketing keywords on their booths. There's simply not enough time to stop by at each one and learn the playing field.

googol

I concur. buzzwords, if I can't tell what you do in approx 10 secs or less, I am moving along as I was skimming the rows. I talked to the vendors I knew had solutions to my projects or issues, or products I already owned and escalated support issues or other questions I had on them, such as better leveraging, scenarios, etc etc. It is quite good to get that face time with them and they can't drag you on and not answer it.

Next year they are booked for April in SF again apparently, but I will probably elect to go to a different conference and maybe revisit in 2016.

docrice

I only got to attend a few keynotes, but I thought Kevin Mandia's was pretty informative:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88o-uifbJSE