In my last post several weeks ago, I stated that I was on a cruise and was planning on taking a short break from blogging. Well, the break lasted a little bit longer than I thought! So it’s time to play catch up a little bit.
After the cruise, I came back home for four or five days and then headed off to the Middle East. Flew to Dubai to speak at the GISEC Conference, which was amazing. It was my first time being in Dubai and at that conference, and I honestly didn’t realize how big it was. They said they had about 25,000 people there, and basically if you’ve ever been to Black Hat in Las Vegas, it was like the vendor area of Black Hat, maybe a little bit bigger – that’s kind of what the entire conference was like. There were talks, but they were kind of mixed in with the conference, for the most part just kind of like little offshoots off of what would be the vendor area at Black Hat.
I gave 2 talks on day one and then a third talk on day two. For day one, it was kind of bananas – I was on a round stage surrounded by people in every direction, and there was a little Tim Hortons in the room! It was really kind of a little bit of a surreal experience, and honestly I can’t wait to be back.
After 6 days in Dubai, I headed over to Doha for two days. We were going to have a short layover there anyway, so we extended it by 2 days and just really enjoyed Doha. I hadn’t heard much about it, but it was very nice – it was very clean, and I enjoyed my time there and cannot wait to go back.
I’ve got other things to catch up on, but this will be fine for a first blog post. Looking forward to getting back in the groove!
