NAP World Tour rocks RSA 2008 San Francisco

I was out all last week in San Francisco for the RSA Conference. Wow, what a week! I really love visiting San Francisco. Great weather, great food and amazing views. I wanted to share some photos and a video from the trip.

I arrived Sunday April 6th in the early afternoon. Trying something new, I took the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) directly from the airport terminal to just a few blocks from the W Hotel. It was only $5 and took about 30-40 minutes, you can't beat it!

As I just recently gave up daily coffee (gasp!), I went in search of a nice tea shop. I found Peet's Coffee & Tea. I got a nice rare jasmine and soaked up the view.

I checked in to my room at the W Hotel San Francisco. I had a direct view of the Moscone Center where the conference was hosted.

I had a nice early dinner in the XYZ Restaurant adjoined to the hotel. They allowed me to order something not on the menu. The hotel / restaurant service was impeccable for the duration of my stay!

Man, I do love a nice sparkling water with lime. They kept it coming. :->

Guess I should actually get to work. I headed over to the Moscone Center early on Monday morning to find the NAP Partner Pavilion (a separate booth from the main Microsoft booth that the NAP team ran) less than half complete! To my surprise, my 802.1x NAP showcase racks seen below were nowhere to be found! I quickly walked all over the show floor (it was huge) and located them next to the main Microsoft booth. Whew! Three weeks worth of effort, and I thought it might be lost.

The folks setting up the booth got on the biggest ladders I have seen (not on a fire truck) and put up our cool NAP World Tour banners. They are a very nice red, even though my iPhone shows them a bit orange-ish below.

We gave away around 6 Zunes a day at the NAP Partner Pavilion. Giveaways at tradeshows bring out a strange and interesting side of some people. If you know what I am talking about it, let's just say we had fun fighting off the wolves trying to get a Zune.

Ah, success! Everything is working by late Monday afternoon. I have 8 wired 802.1x switches below all working flawlessly with Windows Server 2008 NAP (HP ProCurve, Nortel, Juniper, Cisco, D-Link, Extreme, Enterasys and Foundry). It was an amazing educational experience to work with each switch. They are each a universe of configuration unto themselves. I am very willing to share config; if you are interested just shoot me an email!

The hippy hackers parked right in front of the W. I had to get a shot of this bus. The police ticketed it for some reason or other. I bet they never pay that ticket (and I bet the city "forgets" it ever issued one). :->

The show floor was packed. I learned a lot this show about how our NAP Partners are enriching the NAP/NAC ecosystem. Check it out below!

We hosted a "happy hour" in the NAP Partner Pavilion each day. We had free wine and beer "on Bill" as I told each person. Kara, seen below, ended up handing the bartending torch over to me. I have to admit, it was the best part of the show for me. :->

Goodbye San Francisco! I will miss you!

Getting closer to Seattle, can you tell? :->

Well, hope you enjoyed this post. It is MVP Summit this week on the Redmond Campus. I am speaking with three groups of MVPs about NAP today and tomorrow. Wish me luck!

Cheers!

{Jeff Sigman}{Senior Program Manager & NAP Hero}{Enterprise Security Group}
{NAP Blog, FAQ, Forum, MSDN, Site and my bloÿg}