Security Summit Plans - what do you think?

Currently were in planning for next year's Security Summit event - likely to be March 2007. I have some ideas Id like to bounce off you to see if you think they are relevant.

We havent fully thought about the content yet though the structure is important to make sure that people attend and see relevancy of the content.

 

Assumptions

1. The majority of technical people cant make it during business hours to a Microsoft technical event because they either are on billable time and cant get the time from their company to attend or they are the only IT person supporting their organisation and all hell would break loose if they attended a technical training event!

2. Even if you could attend, you wouldnt because in your opinion its all marketing content anyway and stuff you can find on the web etc etc.

 

Initial thoughts

1. Timing: We make the event start at about 8:30am and run it for 3 hours maximum to minimise time out of the office or billable utilisation time

2. Relevancy: We style the content to focus deeply at the architecture of the technology or solution (no overviews) - to give you the jump start to getting hands on yourself and answer most of the questions youre likely to encounter in building it yourself.

3. Takeaways: Once you know how the solution works after we've showed it working and how the core functions are configured we give you the setup document and some preinstalled images for you to learn on and configure yourself.

4. Followup: We provide an online web forum/chat for you to be able to ask questions - post the event with further questions on the content or clarification on solution config etc.

 

 

So what do you think? Interested in your thoughts on what would make you attend. Write a comment or send me an email

Comments

• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  The more feedback the merrier Dugie! We are meeting today to discuss this and I will be using the feedback Ive received as comments and as emails to show the support for this style of event. Thanks to those that responded!

• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  In my last post on this topic I discussed some ideas we were toying with around the Security Summit.

• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  Agreed and great feedback here. I hate the overviews! I welcome more comments and any other ideas to help us shape these events into something that helps you succeed in your workplace. Really need a strong answer to the timing. Will the early morning timing help you get to the events better and justify the time to your boss?

• Anonymous
  November 20, 2006
  I think this is a GREAT idea. I would like to see a "pre-show-primer".  It could be an e-mail or a webpage with a couple of short sharp webcasts or articles covering the assumed knowledge.  That we we can skim over them and be doubly sure of the content covered on the day.  Level 200 or even better level 300 content. Preinstalled images would defiantely be appreciated.

• Anonymous
  November 21, 2006
  Michael, I think the take-away labs are a great idea. Too often I go to an event where the content is great but then it is to time consuming to build a test lab yourself to have a play. Enough overviews lets get down and dirty with the content!

• Anonymous
  November 21, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  November 24, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  November 27, 2006
  I like initial thoughts (2, 3, and 4). I think the downside to #1 is... people that need to travel to the summit (3+ hours), the actual time of the summit hardly seems worth the drive. In general I perfer all day events, cough I can get out of work for an entire day. my 2 cents.