MGG - 5.21 - HWYD - DECUS Symposium

I suppose I need to explain DECUS.

The Digital Equipment Computer Users Society was the user group for those with PDP 8, PDP 10, PDP 11, and Vax, computers.  These were all mini-computers: the transition between the mainframes of IBM and it's ilk, and the microcomputers of Apple and the IBM PC.  Before the advent of the microcomputer, and, in many cases, well into the period when microcomputers were starting to make an impact, mini-computers still held sway in small and medium size businesses.

As usual, it was doing technical support for an enterprise that got me in contact with DECUS.  It was first in a government department, which had a Vax mini-computer, but also a Rainbow, DEC's entry into the PC/microcomputer market, that got me connected.  Someone in that office, prior to my arrival, had joined DECUS, and was getting the newsletters, for both the Vancouver Local Users Group (or VANLUG), and the Rainforest Review, which was a local user group for Rainbow users.

(I was writing some early material on viruses at the time, and there was a fax number for the editor of The Rainforest Review.  I faxed him one of the articles that I was writing.  This surprised him greatly when it showed up on his desk because it was the first unsolicited, undemanded, and unhounded article that he had ever received.  And so it was a it was a big deal.  That was my introduction to Vern, and Vern and I have remained friends do this very day.)

I started submitting articles, and, shortly thereafter, with a switch to the company where I was managing the technical support department, got more closely involved, since this company's product was a terminal emulator software, specializing in the VT100 terminal which was the preferred terminal for Vax users.

As I say, I became more involved with the organization, and, shortly, was on the Leadership Committee for DECUS Canada.  In this regard, the DECUS Canada office asked me to start up some SIGs, or Special Interest Groups, to add to the LUGs, or local user groups, which were common across the country.  I undertook the task, but then found that there was absolutely no documentation about how to start a SIG, or, indeed, what a SIG was.

In some frustration, communicating by mailing lists with the rest of the Leadership Committee, I asked well, if I wanted to start, say, a security SIG, how would I do that?

I didn't get the answer I was looking for.  What I did get was a whole bunch of people on the Leadership Committee jumping up and saying, "Oh!  I'd join that!"

DECUS, both in the United States, and in Canada, put on an annual conference, called just Symposium.  The next Symposium was coming up shortly, and, as a member of the Leadership Committee, I was invited to come along.  I decided to try and form a security SIG at the next Symposium, in Calgary, and see what happened.  (This was also the first symposium that I attended, and the one where I got a pretty full house for my presentation, and the person after me didn't.)

We did advertise, and had a meeting, starting up the security SIG.  Predictably, everyone wanted me to be the president of the security SIG.  I refused, but, knowing something of the needs of a new group, I was willing to be the newsletter editor.  So, I took on that position, and started asking people what they wanted to see in terms of contents for the newsletter.

Everybody, universally, had the same answer.  They wanted a bibliography.  An annotated bibliography that would tell them what books were worth reading on what subjects.

So I started asking people if they knew of a bibliography.  Most didn't.  One did, and sent it to me.  It was pathetic.  It was simply a list of books.  No annotations about the topic, or whether they were any good or not.  But it did list the publishers.

So, hying to my local public library (one of my favorite places in all the world, you will recall), I found a guide to publishers, including contact information, such as mailing addresses, and fax numbers.  I then wrote up a boilerplate request for review copies of books, into which I had dropped lists of books, and sent all of this to the DECUS Canada office.  I asked them to get the begging letters typed up on letterhead, and send them to the publishers.  Hey presto, review copies started to arrive.  I started to review them.

More review copies started to arrive.  Many more books than I could review in each edition of the newsletter, even though I started to publish about half a dozen reviews.  In each edition of the newsletter.

So, I started publishing the reviews in relevant mailing lists and Usenet News groups, on the Internet.  I started posting the reviews on a website.  I started posting the reviews on any website that would allow me to.  And I kept reviewing as many review copies as I could.  And I kept, as I got notification of more security books, sending begging letters to the DECUS Canada office, with the request that they forward them to the publishers.

I published dozens of reviews in the security SIG newsletter.  But I published hundreds, and eventually thousands, on the Internet.

This was not quite ten years before I sat the CISSP exam.  By the time I did sit the exam, I had reviewed the majority of the books upon which the exam was based.  (When the questions for the exam go through the process, they have to have at least two references in the source security literature validating the answer that is the correct answer.)  That was one thing.  The other thing was that when the time came to write my own book, I knew publishers to contact that I knew would be interested in technical topics and had published in this field.  So that experience of creating the SIG, although it seems very minor, influenced a lot of what I did in my professional life, even though a direct correlation really wasn't there.  It's very similar to my experience with reviewing the antiviral software.  I never made any money out of that, directly, but in a secondary, roundabout way, I did.  Later we'll get to the patent trolls and all that legal stuff, and that work was all based on the fact that I had reviewed all of the software, and had retained copies of the software that I could provide as evidence.

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Introduction and ToC: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/10/mgg-introduction.html

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