Day: December 12, 2015

News Chum Forgotten on the Stove

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy

Observation StewThe ACSAC conference is over. I come home after a week commuting back and forth to the hotel, and what do I find? I left the news chum simmering on the stove. Let’s hope it didn’t get burnt or go bad…

 

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The Power of Theatre

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy

The Nigerian Spam Scam Scam (HFF 2015)userpic=acsacAs I wrote in the previous post, I just concluded a week as Local Arrangements Chair for the ACSAC conference. Part of my responsibility was to coordinate some form of dinner entertainment. Luckily, the Hollywood Fringe Festival made that easy, for it was there that I discovered The Nigerian Spam Scam Scam, the duologue based on a true incident.

Here’s the description of the show from the Fringe website, which is as good as the description I might write: ““Please help me transfer $100 million from Bank of Nigeria!” We’ve all gotten this e-mail. Writer performer Dean Cameron did something about it. After he received an email from a Nigerian con artist posing as the wife and son of a dead Nigerian leader, Cameron replied. Posing as a sexually confused Florida millionaire, whose only companions were his cats, houseboy, and personal attorney, Perry Mason. Cameron embarked on a 11 month correspondence with  the bewildered and tenacious Nigerian, impeccably played by co-star Victor Isaac. This hit duologue, taken from actual email threads, documents the hilarious relationship as it descends into a miasma of misunderstanding, desperation, and deception.”

That is literally the show. Two podiums and a digital projector. Dean Cameron (FB, IMDB) relates the story of how he baited along Nigerian spammers, with the ultimate goal of getting them to send him money. Co-star Victor Isaac (FB) provides the voices of the spammer side, from MRS MARIAM ABACHA to IBRAHIM ABACHA to DR DONALD ABAYOMI. The story itself is pretty much just condensed versions of the actual email dialogue, with hysterical side commentary and the occasional visual.

My purpose here is not to review the show again. Rather, I want to talk about something specific to ACSAC — something that made me learn the stresses a producer faces. What stress? Well, consider that in the audience for this show we had a Nigerian Senator (from the newly elected opposition government), and two representatives from the National Assembly Antimoney Laundering & Cybersecurity Coalition of Nigeria. Yes, it is a real organization. How would they react to this show? Would they find it funny? Would they sue us? What have I done?

So, Dean and Victor do the show. Many people are rolling in laughter (especially Gene Spafford, who wants to now book them for a phishing conference). The Nigerians? Straight-faces. They go up and talk to Dean and Victor after the show. Oh, what we would have given to be a fly on that wall.

It turns out that they were worried the audience would believe the actors were portraying real Nigerian officials, and that people might thing the government was behind the scam. We (including one Nigerian student) worked to convince them it was clear that wasn’t the case. This was a true incident, with the words as written in the emails, that was perpetrated by scammers who are running the good name of Nigeria through the mud.

We also worked to convince them that the best way to fight the problem was with the truth. If you read the linked article from the Nigerian News Service, it noted that the goal of the organization is to align Nigeria with the global initiative against terror financing, cybercrimes, currency trafficking and money laundering. The organization was born out of the realization that huge financial losses through such financial crimes had become a threat to the nation, and that the collaboration with strategic partners, particularly the central bank, was to discuss ways to align foreign exchange operations with international best practices. Lastly, in line with the anti-corruption drive of the president, the coalition aimed to meet the expectations of Nigerians to kick out crimes denting the image of the nation internationally.

The upshot of this is that the Nigerian delegation is interested in presenting a case study next year telling a major technical conference the work that Nigeria is doing to prevent crimes such as this, and other forms of fraud that hurt their country.

Step back now, and look at this in perspective: A show from the Hollywood Fringe Festival, presented at a long standing technical conference, has served to encourage a government to tell the world broadly that the image the world has of them is wrong, and that they want to be in the forefront of fighting this type of crime.

The power of theatre. As Dean says at the end of the show, “mic drop”.

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A Dinner Costs How Much?!?

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy

userpic=acsacFriday, the ACSAC conference ended for 2015. This year (and next year), the conference was in Los Angeles at the beautiful Universal City/Los Angeles Hilton; this meant that on top of my usual Training Chair hat, I was Local Arrangements Chair. That means I was the coordinator for the event: assigning the rooms, picking the dinner entertainment (more on that in the next post), and selecting all the menus. When I first saw the hotel menus, I was shocked at the prices: lunch prices between $40 and $50; and dinner prices even higher. In fact, when I got the end of day survey for the first day at the hotel, I had trouble answering the question: was this a good value for the price? How can you judge, when gallons of coffee are so expensive.

But as the week went on, I grew to understand the prices are so high. In many ways, this is the same reason that the prices are so high in well established and fancy restaurants. And, no, the reason is not “because they can”. The reason is service.

When you go to almost any restaurant, the bulk of the cost of your meal is not the food costs. Food costs, right now, are relatively low. Delivery costs to your location are higher, but even those aren’t the bulk of the cost due to the volume being shipped. The most significant factor in the cost of a meal out is the labor. In fact, the labor is so expensive they increase the size of the portion so you don’t feel guilty paying that price. [And, of course, we’ve all be taught to clear our plates and not waste food, and so you have one reason behind the growth in obesity. In fact, there might be an interesting statistical study in the correlation between the cost of labor, portion size, and obesity in society.]

In a hotel — especially in a hotel that focuses on service such as a ★★★★ hotel — that cost is magnified more so. Everywhere I turned around at the HUC (Hilton Universal City) there was someone from Banquets making sure that all our needs were met, someone from IT making sure the A/V was right, someone from … you get the idea. Who pays for that service? It isn’t room rental — often room rental is gratis if you make a particular number of room nights and a minimum food and beverage. In fact, the answer is in that sentence: it is in the room rates, and the food and beverage costs. A certain amount of labor can be absorbed by the room rates, but the hotel also must be competitive. The bulk of the labor is captured in the F&B costs.

So, let’s go back to the question: is it a good value? We had only compliments on the quality of the food, and the quantity was almost too much (must remember that for next year). Most importantly, there were no complaints about service or the meeting rooms. The hotel staff was there whenever we needed them, often going above and beyond (with no additional charges). So, looking back in retrospect, I think it was a reasonably good value.

(Of course, that still didn’t mean I didn’t wince a little signing the final event orders. Who wouldn’t? But I also now better understood why I was paying what I was paying).

By the way, this is something that the great unwashed public — and even Congress — doesn’t understand. We’ve all read of the DOD acquiring toilet seats that cost $200 each, when they are $10 at the hardware store. We get incensed about the price, without knowing that they have unique manufacturing requirements that prohibit volume manufacturing, that they have documentation and maintenance requirements for their lifetime, and that they have the overhead of the administrative employees at the corporation that manufactures them, which has much lower volume to spread that overhead across when compared to a bulk manufacturer. Similarly, we hear stories of conferences with the $15 muffin or the $45 rubber chicken, and think the government is wasting money. It isn’t: that money goes to all the people employed by the hotel, providing all the service, and spending that money in the community. Yes, there are some conferences with boondoggles, but most food costs are not the boondoggles. Now you understand.

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