The conference dinner was its usual interesting affair. I’m not sure I’ll do the same thing next year, at least in terms of food. There was a lot of the buffet items left uneaten (especially the seafood paellia). I’ll probably do a plated meal.
The discussions, as always, were the most interesting part of the evening. I had my usual fun introducing people to other people (I feel that is one of my jobs at the conference). In this case, I introduced Hongxia Jin (who gave our broadcast encryption tutorial) to Deb Downs, as both have or had an interest in digital rights management. Looks like we may have a tutorial proposal on that next year. That’s about four tutorial proposals I’ve already solicited today.
Dick, as usual, was fishing for drink tickets :-). He actually won a large book on security during the book raffle… which he promptly auctioned off for 8 drink tickets. One person at our table won a book on security metrics. She was an MBA student there with her husband, which led to a fascinating discussion on risk management and how companies deal with risk and justifying the cost of security.
The student paper winner was local, from the University of Central Florida. This led to a discussion with Ed Schneider on state universities. I, for example, never knew that schools such as George Mason and William and Mary were state universities of Virginia. Evidently in Virginia the state universities don’t always have University of Virginia in their name. I know Maryland’s are all University of Maryland, and Missouri’s… well, I’ve discussed that bru-ha-ha in the past. So is University of Central Florida a state university? I have no idea, but an article in today’s Miami Herald makes me think so, as their schools don’t have consistent names. As for California, of course, there is University of California, xxxxx, and California State University xxxxx, unless it is xxxxx State (or the California Maritime Academy). I’m sure, by the way, that you can name all the UC and CSU campuses… can you? There are 23 CSUs and 10 UCs, as well as loads of ancillary locations and laboratories. However, there is at least one California University that is not in California.
Tomorrow is another full day technical program, after which the conference committee is going out for a committee dinner (Robert is pushing for Brazilian, although last time that was $$$). I’ll also have a sponsoring organization meeting (ACSA) at lunch.