One of the best pieces of advice I've ever received applies to both personal and professional situations:

Write immediately, react later.

When something is frustrating or provokes any type of big emotion response (even a positive one!) and you feel like you need to act now. Write it down. This can help clarify your thinking and then wait a while (hours/days, not minutes) before reacting.

Use the journaling and time to reflect and let that reflection guide your actions.

I was able to get back on stage and deliver a talk at AtlSecCon in Halifax, NS this week—Security is a service business…one star. AtlSecCon has always been one of my favourite events. The community around it is amazing and it always feels a little like heading home to meet with old friends.

Tons of great talks this year, lots of amazing discussions. I really enjoyed the experience (no surprise there) and have a lot of ideas bubbling to follow-up on. 

One really positive shout out, there was a lot of first time speakers this year. That's a wonderful thing and a great sign for the future of the community. What can we do to encourage more first timers and younger folks to get involved?

I'm close to launching the updated version of this site. I'm tweaking the styles and importing older content. As a part of that effort, I've been reformatting some old posts.

As I read through them, I'm reminded of the experiences I've had delivering that content around the world. It's striking how a particular post brings up picture sin my mind of various conferences, cities, or friends from that time.

The new design highlights that work by design, but I will call out this keynote talk, "Are We Setup to Fail?"from 2018 at SecTor in Toronto. 7 years later and I'm still immensely proud of this talk and the conversations it started.

Technologies and services come and go. As the web grew from it's infancy into the ubiquitous presence it is today, we've seen a lot of fun ways of sharing your ideas. I have fond memories of the early days of GeoCities, blogrolls, and the rise of microblogs.

It was my fondness for the idea of a tumblelog that prompted me to create this section of my site. This area will host smaller posts that don't quite merit a full essay, but still provide the reader with some insights into an idea or perspective.

Stay tuned!