I think I met my entire blog readership last week in New York City, so I wanted to say how great it was to see you all, and how nice it was that you mountain and pacific time zone people did me a favor and met me out east.
Since I left NY, it's been pedal to the floor. I arrived home in Brussels at 2pm Monday last week, after the usual routine of planes tranes and automobiles. I started on the subway in Queens, NY, and used public transport all the way to the metro stop outside my home here (eat it, Al Gore). I got a couple hours of sleep, and then got up to get ready for the party for Holly, who was leaving Brussels to return to Tacoma, WA for good. Holly was Rob and my patron when we arrived in Brussels, putting us up for 3 weeks, so it was the least we could do to have her sendoff party at our place. We had 10 or 12 people over in our small apartment, and Alabama Dan made ribs. We'll all miss Holly, and her love of dragging us to crappy dance clubs until 4am.
As the party went on, I realized I was in a room full of lazy students and was the only one who had a job to go to the next morning. At 12:30am, I told everyone "I love you all, but get the f*** out of my apartment." They look pretty surprised, but did just that. The next morning was the beginning of the big push to finalize the details of one of the largest events my company puts on each year: the Cyber Conference. I put in my 40 hours of work in the next four days getting ready for the big day. I had never fully adjusted to NY time, but still was jetlagging a bit all week until Saturday when I finally got to sleep in until 2. Monday was a public holiday in Belgium, but we still worked until 8:30 pm getting things ready and printing handouts.
Tuesday was the big Cyber Conference. (Personally, I think the word "cyber" is a bit dated, but I suppose the the outdated nomenclature underscores the diconnect between the general reliance on modern technology in day-to-day life and the policies developed by governmental institutions, which was a point of the conference itself.) We invited people from the EU Commission, the EU Parliament, NATO, representations of member states, as well as people from industry (Microsoft, Symantec) and some larger consulting firms who were sponsoring the conference. We got a pretty good turnout, considering it was the day after a 3 day weekend, but it took working the phones pretty hard to make it happen. The conference was held in the EU Commission's Charlamagne building in downtown Brussels, which was state-of-the-art and quite gorgeous.
I wish I had more time and energy to explain the conference since it was quite interesting and I'm considering doing my disseration on this subject. But today I will give just the highlights. I met Robert Bell (http://photos.state.gov/libraries/nato/225685/Bios/Bell_Robert_001.pdf), who is Sectretary of Defense Gates' top guy in Europe, and NATO Ambassador Gabor Iklody, who I kept calling General Iklody for some reason (so many damn things to remember) but he seemed ok with it.
As the conference was up and running there was less to do, and then my coworker Wiebke came in and said that French President Nicolas Sarkozy was in the building. So we snuck out and went upstairs to another (bigger) conference room that was lit up with news cameras. We walked in to hear EU Commission president Barroso (basically the President of Europe) giving a speach on commodities in French. I couldn't see Sarkozy in the mess of people, but he was there somewhere, and all it took to get in was a fancy suit and a name badge from an unrelated conference (Wiebke snuck out again and went upstairs to hear Sarkozy talk later in the afternoon while I was taking care of bidness).
The night ended up at 8:30 or so. The conference was a great success, and the sponsors were happy. My boss, the owner of the company Christoph, took us employees out for dinner and beers as he related all of the complements he received, including one peer that said that this conference put his firm in "another level." He was understandably beaming.
The next day, Wednesday, we hosted a follow-up workshop in the Estonian permanent representation to the EU (a sort of embassy). It was exhausting but interesting, as we had invited technical cybercrime experts from around Europe to give presentations. The Estonians seemed happy with how it turned out.
Today we had a debriefing meeting over breakfast. There were few errors or mistakes to go over, it was mostly a resounding success. Christoph says that the day of the conference is the first day of the next conference, in terms of lining up new business, and he was flooded with business cards. I got a couple of cards myself, including one from a software consultancy in D.C. if I ever end up there, which is possible.
Now It's 4pm and I am drinking a glass of wine in bed. My adrenal glands are totally shot (I left work at 3), even though I slept 8 hours last night. I'll watch the 4th season of "30 Rock" tonight and put in 7 lazy hours of work tomorrow, then have the weekend to catch my breath a little.
