Don't plug that in!

Back in the panel session after having to leave for 2 hours to do a telephone board meeting.

To my shame, the board meeting meant I had to miss Peter Cochrane's speech (sorry Peter) among others. However, Marit has it all on video.

Anyway - it gets worse.

On top of the 'http or nowt' attitude. You won't believe this.

We were asked to 'bring your stuff' (not sure what that meant - assumed it referred to WiFi enabled devices). No wiki as far as I could see having searched the sites connected to the event. Couldn't see any webcasting - went to the site and clicked . . . and clicked . . . and . . . .

We were also told "You can't plug your laptop in [to the electricity that is] unless you're speaking. When we asked why we were told it was for 'reasons of security'. " Yeah right. Like I've got serious and deadly viruses just waiting to leap out of my laptop (after negotiaitng from the chipset, through the onboard dc supply - woosh through the mains transformer and . . into the 240 VAC mains supply to interfere with a really valuable and sensitive . . . . .circuit breaker. No doubt speakers were subjected to rigorous checks - grrr.

Come on guys - it was a great event - the venue is awesome in terms of the facilities, but you blew it.

John did well, Lewis did well. But the Dana Centre blew it. We didn't have any access the the internet (fact) - we had throttled http access to the web. Not the same - as any of your techno-geek friends will tell you.

Now, you might be tempted to think - well it's the Science Museum and they have to be careful . . ..

Well - at one time, I was responsible for the IT infrastructure of one of the UK's most conservative and cautious merchant banks. Took me 6 months to get my Board to agree to external e-mail and internet access. Over 130 of the most confidentiality sensitive and twitchy corporate finance people. Don't talk to me about risk. Of course we protected what needed to be protected.

It's not on. Security is not about stopping people doing things on your network. It's about letting as much freedom and access in as possible to network assets and only interfering if people start to do stuff that compromises that trust.

And finally (apologies for the rant) it occurs to me that the bandwidth we were denied access to is 'ours' - the public's - we pay for it - and we should have access to it as a right for the public good - especially for events like the Cybersalon/Open Spectrum Free Wireless!