BillCan's Place : Tech Ed

And then the rains came...

BillCan — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 00:30:00 GMT

It's 5:30pm on Wednesday and it's been pouring down rain for the past 2 hours or so. This was bound to happen; after all, this is Florida! I'm hopeful that we're getting this stuff out of the way so that we'll have nice weather for the attendee party.

Successful side meeting today

BillCan — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 00:09:00 GMT

Today I conducted what I would characterize as a very successful side meeting at the Peobody hotel. The side meeting was focused on secure collaboration, and ran about 2 hours. We got about 60% of the RSVPs that attended which seems to be about par for the course.

Generally speaking, the things we were thinking about are also on our customer's radar screen. We did gather some interesting new information that was a bit different than what we suspected. For instance, some of the interesting findings were that the customers seemed much more worried about strong authentication than I expected them to be (now that I think of it this isn't actually that surprising). In addition, they also seemed more open to CardSpace than I expected.

Coolest device of the show (so far?)

BillCan — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 21:32:00 GMT

On the way to lunch today, I was approached by someone with a small black device just a bit too large to fit in your shirt pocket. It turns out that it is an OQO, a device she billed as "the smallest Vista PC in the world". This thing was pretty amazing, featuring 1GB of RAM and a 60 GB hard drive, and a full keyboard in a really small package. I'm not sure how useful it would actually be to own and tote around, but it has pegged the Geek-Meter here at Tech Ed!

What I learned Day 1

BillCan — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 17:35:00 GMT

I managed to attend a few sessions yesterday. One was a session on ADFS "2". The speaker talked about how the new version of ADFS integrates with CardSpace and showed an interesting demo. Having spent some time in a past job looking at SAML, this was fairly familiar. On the other hand, I was never fully acquainted with ADFS 1, so I'm not sure how this product has changed...

I went to a session on Home Server that ended up being cancelled when the presenter never showed up! There were about 400 people in the room and I can tell you they weren't pleased... I assume the presenter had a big problem to 1) not make his own session, and 2) not be able to let someone know/fill in for him...

I attended a cool chalk talk on how ADFS and RMS work together, especially in the Windows Server 2008 time frame. The presenter talked about secure collaboration scenarios, some of which I'm looking at for my upcoming project. Several new features are coming for RMS in Longhorn. First, RMS is a server role in the new product, making set up much easier. In addition, whereas RMS had a web-based configuration previously, it is now configured through the standard management interfaces in the new server. Finally, it integrates much better with ADFS in this new version. I'm sure there are lots of other new features that I didn't pick up here, but it sounds much better than before. RMS is a great technology that just needs to get easier to deploy and use, and hopefully this new version will help make that happen.

Finally, I spent some time talking to the ISA/IAG guys about Microsoft's firewall product. I'm going to admit that I didn't know just how many people where running ISA. It apparently a lot more that I thought! Anyway, the IAG (formerly Whale) provides an SSL-based clientless VPN capability for internal web applications. This is pretty cool: I log into the ISA server that hosts IAG and based on my credentials, I get access to the appropriate internal sites. When I click on a site, I get taken to that site as if I were on the internal network. I've dogfooded this at work and it is pretty nice, and takes a lot less time to get connected to than our VPN. An additional capability is that you can install a bit of software and actually run thick client applications over the IAG-based VPN tunnel. When the application notices that you have a live connection to the IAG, it routes packets intended for the internal network to the VPN tunnel that IE has set up with the ISA server running IAG. (Don't quote me on the technical details, but this is generally what happens). Long story short, once you've used your browser to connect to the IAG gateway, you can run fat client applicaitons on your remote client as if you were logged in locally. It makes the VPN client much less complicated...

Anyway, those are some highlights from Day 1. I'll be back with more...

General impressions: Tech Ed Day 1

BillCan — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 17:27:00 GMT

Well, Day 1 is in the can and I've got some general impressions:

The convention center is more spacious than Boston, so it seems like everyone has a bit more room. On the downside, that could mean more walking...
It seems like it is easier to get to the breakout sessions this year than last. I'm not sure if this is really true, but it seems like it is the case.
The bag is a big hit, especially after last year's fiasco bag!
The disappointment this year is the pen they stuck in the pen holder on each badge. It is both a highlighter and a pen, but it is designed in such a way that you can't put the cap anywhere when using it as a pen. People are working the vendor booths hard to find replacement pens!
They had a live band at lunch this year. It was actually kind of nice, but if you happen to sit near the band while eating you can kiss any lunchtime conversations goodbye...

That's it so far. I'll be back with more from Tech Ed 2007 soon...

Chalk talk completed...

BillCan — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 21:51:00 GMT

The first thing I had to do at Tech Ed this year was a chalk talk on the Data Encryption Toolkit for Mobile PCs that I just finished. The session was pretty heavily attended, with all chairs filled and lots of folks sitting on the sides and standing in the back. Basically, I talked about the DET for about an hour, and fielded lots of good questions from the attendees.

It was cool to do a chalk talk instead of a breakout because it is much smaller and much less formal. In fact, you are not supposed to use slides at all for a chalk talk (I threw in a few... Come on, I'm a PM for cryin' out loud!).

For the rest of today and Tuesday I am an attendee, with no official responsibilities, so I will be attending sessions and taking in the show like everyone else. After that I'm really busy working at the booth (Security and Compliance), running my side meeting and doing other stuff, but until then I can just enjoy myself...

Collaborating Outside the Firewall (Tech Ed Side Meeting)

BillCan — Thu, 31 May 2007 04:40:00 GMT

I'm now envisioning my next project for the Solution Accelerators for Security and Compliance team. As a bit of background, my team provides prescriptive, tested guidance to help customers solve tricky security problems quickly. My new project is going to focus on collaborating securely outside the firewall. While this topic could be pretty broad, I'm thinking that Sharepoint will be involved, but that's not cast in concrete.

Anyway, that's where you come in: I am hosting a side meeting at Tech Ed next Wednesday to discuss this topic. If you are going to be there and would like to provide input on what problems you are facing related to secure collaboration, I'd love to invite you to meeting. Attending will give you an opportunity to have your specific requirements heard right from the beginning, and will allow you to help shape the solution accelerator that we deliver. Oh, and we will be providing munchies and maybe a bit of schwag as a thank you!

If you are interested, please use the email link above to get in touch with me: I will let you know the particulars. For those of you not going to Tech Ed, get in touch too. While I can't guarantee munchies, I would love to be able to bounce ideas off as many customers as possible!

Stop by and say "Hi" at Tech Ed

BillCan — Thu, 24 May 2007 04:44:00 GMT

If you are going to be at Tech Ed the week after next, I'd love to meet you. I'll be doing a TLC chalk talk session at 10:30 on Monday entitled "Your Customers' Laptop Data Is at Risk! Protecting Customer Data with the Data Encryption Toolkit for Mobile PCs" (SEC01-TLC). The rest of the time I'll be off and on at the "Security and Compliance" booth.

My next project is focusing on secure collaboration. If you have some thoughts on this topic, I'd love to hear them. If you really want to get talkative on the subject, we're doing a side meeting on Wednesday where you can fill me in on just what you need from Microsoft in this area.

See you in Orlando!

Beginner's Guide to TechEd

BillCan — Tue, 22 May 2007 05:41:00 GMT

Scott Dorman has created an excellent post on his blog called "TechEd for Novices". It has great information for first-timers to TechEd, but I think it can be useful for just about anyone.

Tech Ed Accomodations

BillCan — Sun, 20 May 2007 07:18:00 GMT

I leave for Tech Ed in 15 days. I'll be staying at the either the Swan or Dolphin Hotel. I'm not quite sure how it works as they are two different hotel buildings but you somehow find out which you're staying in when you get there. At least that's what I think happens, I never really know for sure.

As someone who used to travel all the time for business when I worked at Ernst & Young, it is amazing how little I tend to know about my travel plans when I head out for a trip. Sometimes I find myself heading to the airport with just a vague idea of exactly when the plane leaves! I generally get to the destination city with little idea how I'm going to get to the hotel, or even where it is in some cases. I never print anything out, assuming that I'll be able to find what I need on my laptop or by calling the travel agent. Now that I think of it, this is probably a rather risky way to travel!

Anyway, I know I'm leaving next Sunday for sunny Florida. It will be a welcome change from rainy Seattle (although to be fair the weather is getting nicer and nicer)!