I am sitting in the Microsoft security summit in Philadelphia, and I wanted to provide some thoughts on what has happened so far. The keynote address was given by Bret Arsenault, Microsoft’s Strategic Security Advisor Team Lead. During his presentation, he showed one slide with resources for security information. The last item on the list was, “Security Blogs”. The image on the screen was of an ASP powered blog with the Syndication and orange XML icons visible – neither was mentioned. In fact, Arsenault’s quote was, “and lastly, Security Blogs – I’ll leave it at that. I hate the term blogs.” That was it. That was all he had to say about the benefits of weblogs related to security for the attendees. What a collosal lost opportunity. I hope Robert Scoble reads this and gives Bret a hard time when he is back in Redmond next week.
I would have loved to see Bret mention the syndication capabilities of RSS/XML on weblogs that allow people to follow developments, like security issues. I would have loved for him to mention that there were blogs being written by many of the teams at Microsoft that write the programs we all use every day. I would have liked for him to mention that many webloggers are among the most well informed on the Internet regarding any number of issues, including security issues relating to specific applications.
What this type of thing shows us in the community is that we have a LONG way to go in evangelizing the usefullness and applicability of weblogs, even to the IT industry.
I’ll give him heck.