My week Monday 27 August to Sunday 2 September 2012 was spent in San Francisco, and as I write this on their Labor Day holiday Monday I’m still there. Here. Whatever.
Podcasts
- Patch Monday episode 152, “Geo-engineering: fixing climate for just US$6 billion?” A conversation with Dr Caspar Hewett, visiting researcher at the University of Newcastle in the UK, and Danish author and political scientist Dr Bjørn Lomberg, director of the Copenhagen Consensus Centre in Washington.
Articles
- VMware uses Aussie experience to storm Asia, ZDNet Australia, 30 August 2012.
- How VMware hacked iOS security (allegedly), CSO Online, 31 August 2012.
Media Appearances
- On Tuesday night I did another regular Balls Radio spot with Phil Dobbie, this time talking about Apple versus Samsung and the billion-dollar settlement.
- Also on Tuesday night I spoke about Apple versus Samsung on 2SER’s The Wire.
- On Friday I participated in a talkback about names and nicknames on ABC Radio National’s Life Matters.
Corporate Largesse
VMware’s VMworld was such a large bunch of stuff that it deserves its own section.
- VMware covered the travel and accommodation, including flights Sydney to Los Angeles to San Francisco, and back again San Jose to Los Angeles to Sydney. A car is being provided for today’s drive from downtown San Francisco to San Jose airport. Four nights accommodation was provided at InterContinental San Francisco.
- Food ranged from the truly frightening breakfasts in the conference’s media rooms Monday through Wednesday to gorgeous canapés and cheese platters like the one pictured above at the evening cocktail parties. The latter were held at the InterContinental on the Sunday before this week commenced, the St Regis Hotel on Monday, and the Temple Club on Tuesday.
- On Tuesday night I also went to the Sourcefire cocktail party at the Marriott San Francisco. That’s their cheese platter pictured above.
- The big VMworld party was Wednesday night and featured Jon Bon Jovi, but I didn’t go because I was exhausted and the last thing I needed was to be in a room with 15,000 drunk nerds. Sorry.
- The conference backpack contained a VMworld-branded t-shirt, hardcover notebook and ballpoint pen, along with a sheaf of sponsor-related crap on paper. Pretty much all of the latter was thrown out.
I think I gained about 20kg in weight, 75% of which was my liver.
Also this week:
- On Friday night I had cocktails and dinner at Chez Papa with Jon Callas courtesy of Silent Circle.
The Week Ahead
I leave San Francisco on Monday evening. That’s tonight. The limousine is scheduled collect me at 1745 PDT to take me to San Jose airport for a 1945 flight to Los Angeles, from where I take the 2250 Qantas flight to Sydney. I arrive in Sydney at 0740 AEST on Wednesday morning and will be heading straight to my hotel to collapse.
Wednesday night is the conference dinner for the ACCAN National Conference. I’m speaking at that event on Thursday afternoon.
Symantec is launching the Norton Cybercrime Report at Sydney’s Justice and Police Museum at 1100 Thursday morning, and I plan to be heading to that.
The rest of the latter part of the week will be full of an awful lot of writing, I imagine.
[Photo: Cheese platter at the Marriott San Francisco, courtesy of Sourcefire.]