I have done some background reading before heading off to SXSW to look into what I might need to bring (still need to make up new business cards). But I've taken the advice of one blogger and decided to get a VPN connection for my access while I'm at the conference.
Apparently, the Austin Convention Center is totally wired for the conference, allowing everyone to use WiFi to access both each other's machines and the Web. Naturally, since there isn't any individual protection under WiFi this concerns me just a little. So I subscribed to HotSpotVPN yesterday. There is a tendency, I think, at these birds of a feather (BOF) conferences to think everyone is "nice" but I suspect that some people will lose some information this weekend that they would rather not because of bad actors in the crowd (or sitting outside with a good antenna).
It cost me $6.88 for a week (covering the whole conference) and now I have a Virtual Private Network between my laptop and their servers over the ACC WiFi connection. Of course, one has to presume that their servers are secure but since they are a commercial enterprise I'll take the risk.
I'll report on its ease of use during or post-conference. But for right now, I'll sleep a lot easier knowing that I can read my email (or make a post to this Weblog) without having my packets sniffed.
Posted by artandscience at March 10, 2005 06:57 AMStefan, I found your site via your replies to my post in the SXSW forums. I may be moving to WA state next year, and would love to talk to you about what it's like to live there, what the job market's like these days. If you see me before I see you, please say hi.
Posted by: Susanna King at March 10, 2005 07:15 PMI'm in Room 18a, Saturday at 5pm if you want to look me up.
Also on Rendezvous (iChat).