Insider’s Guide to a SANS Conference

This is the first blog post in a series, “Insider’s Guide to a SANS Conference”. It corresponds to my attendance at the SANS Phoenix Conference March 23-30, 2009.

As a disclaimer, this “Insider’s Guide” will not provide you confidential information.

Also, you should know that I am “nobody special” within the organization. This is the third conference I have attended, all through their work-study (volunteer) program. I have Mentored the wireless course and taught a wireless Stay Sharp course in Dallas a couple years ago, but that’s it.

The series is meant to be detailed description of my participation and to hopefully encourage others to attend. (I am a big fan!) I am taking the “Security Leadership Essentials for Managers” course, which is being taught by Stephen Northcutt – the CEO of SANS.

I am also “micro-blogging” about the conference via Twitter. You can find my updates with the hashtag #SANS_PHX …better yet, you can “follow me” on Twitter @wifijedi to see all the updates in your own time line!

Today the conference organizers & volunteers set up the conference. Since this is a smaller, regional conference, there are only 5 volunteers (one for each course they are running). Setting up consisted of the following activities:

Preparing name badges
Preparing registration folders
Recieving and sorting courseware (books)
Stuffing totes with courseware and other inserts
Sorting conference shirt by size
Placing signage throughout facility directing attendees to registration, classrooms, internet cafe, etc.
Setting up registration station
Preparing course evaluation forms & folders
A briefing regarding volunteer duties & expectations
Etc.

I am looking forward to seeing all the attendees at the registration booth from 7:00 – 9:00 AM tomorrow morning!