Nota Bene

I keep a tally of the countries and cities I have the pleasure of visiting (for the first time), and just the other week I had an interesting +1 in Southeast Asia – the Philippines: my 105^th country. And Manila was, oh – I’ve lost count; it was around my 320^th city in the world I’ve now been to.

We were lucky this time: we had a long weekend there before the business part of the trip, so we decided to check out the beautiful islands of El Nido and also the Mount Mayon volcano. And since island hopping in the Philippines takes quite a while on scheduled commercial flights, we opted for the much quicker option: helicopter! ->

Read on…

With conference season still in full-swing, I’ve been busier than a bee of late. Just recently I only had two days at home and it was back on the road again. This time though it was a domestic business trip – albeit it a thoroughly important one …

It was for CIPR in the city of Nizhny Novgorod. CIPR?…

CIPR is a transliteration from the Russian ЦИПР, which stands for “Digital Industry of Industrial Russia”. That was a direct translation that came out clumsy in English (curiously due to the fact that there are two words for industry/industrial in Russian; only one in English:), but it’s now taken on the more modern and pertinent (in terms of content), and appropriate (in terms of English language sense) name of “Digitalization of Industrial Russia”.

CIPR: conference, exhibition, presentations, speeches, agreement signings, meets, greets, handshakes, chats. Never dull, and always a pleasure (it takes place yearly in Nizhny Novgorod – Russia’s sixth-largest city, 500km east of Moscow) ->

That fine historical building is where the talks and panel discussions take place, while the exhibition – needing a bit more room – is in the large, modern hangar-like building next door. That’s where we head first…

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I’d long dreamed of one day finally getting myself to the Philippines, and just the other week it finally came to pass…

I’ve been to other countries in the region plenty of times – with probably three dozen visits to both China and Japan, more than a dozen to Singapore, and more than once to South Korea, Vietnam and Indonesia. But for reasons beyond both my knowledge and control I’d never made it to the Philippines. I’d even planned visits to the country (many times) but each trip was eventually either postponed or cancelled – and not only due to the covid travel restrictions in 2020–2021. I’d wanted to get there to be able to check out the regional realities for myself and to get personally acquainted with our key business partners, etc.; after all, prospects in the country were (and still are) favorable: with a population of 120 million, the country is 30^th in the list of economies of the world. There was also the magical natural beauty of the Philippine countryside I needed to check out, which I’d been told so often about by folks who’d already been. And now I’ve been, I can say for sure that my great expectations were not only met but exceeded! Here’s some photographic evidence:

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Hi folks – from sunny thunderous Thailand!

Been a while, I know – but I’ve been busy (as always). Of course I have – for it’s our partner-conference (both regional and global) season. We’ve already had Italy and Hungary; now it was Thailand’s turn…

After landing, we head on over to the venue, which turns out to be the same hotel where we put on another conference (SAS) late last year. Small world, and déjà vu, as they say…

But back to this year’s conference: it was the partner conference for the ~Middle Eastern and African regions, aka META (Middle East + Turkey + Africa). But enough already with definitions and demarcations! Let me simply tell you the conference was a 10/10!

• Guests: 135 (140 were planning to attend, but five didn’t get their visas in time; we’ll take this into account for the future)
• Countries represented: 24
• Partner companies represented: 65

But enough of stats already! Let me simply repeat that the conference was a 10/10 :)

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Hi folks!

After Budapest, next up – Istanbul. Out the window of my hotel room – a nice view, with the weather bearable ->

Nice bridge; not nice traffic:

I was looking forward to some tourisms the following day as it was a weekend; would the weather hold out?…

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The next stop on our whirlwind Euro-April-2024 tour – Budapest…

We’d had our Italian Partner Conference days before – in Milan, as mentioned (and the press loved it). Now it was time for our Global Partner Conference in the Hungarian capital. As per, we had guests fly in from every continent apart from Antarctica (of course) and also, alas – Australia (due to the geopolitical situation). The rest of the world however was in full attendance :) ->

…But I’ll come back to that topic. First, we needed to get from Italy to Hungary…

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When you find yourself in Milan with a weekend to fill with non-work stuff – what do you? That is, if you’ve been there plenty of times in the past, the city’s parks and downtown highlights have all been strolled, and the top of Milan Cathedral has been climbed up to? When you fancy checking out Paternkofel in the Dolomites but the April weather just can’t be trusted – especially given the poor forecast (we attempted such a thing in 2021 and failed). Well, there are a few other options…

…One being – Lake Como! ->

And not just the lake, but the charming small towns along its shores too:

And that was that: decided. Time to rent a car and head on over there…

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Our next overnight stay on our Yakutsk-Tiksi-Yakutsk road trip was in Ust-Nera. As you can see on that Google Map – that’s a long way: 560 kilometers, which should take around 10 hours (!). However, all those 10 hours were to be spent on the Kolyma Highway, so, we were like: yes, bring it on!…

I’ve told you plenty of times already – this isn’t just a fascinatingly beautiful road-route to be taken through the deep-frozen Siberian countryside, this is a candidate for one of the most beautiful road-routes in the whole world! Yes, that is a bold statement; but it’s not as if I haven’t driven on some of the other contenders for that title around the world; therefore, I’m sticking with my boldness. I mean – just look! ->

Still need convincing? How about our decision to drive along Kolyma Highway already a third time in as many years? Still need convincing? Read on…

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On our recent business trip to Dubai for our first global Cyber Immune conference, we chose probably the most unusual of places to stay out of any business trip I’ve been on. So unusual was it that it deserves a whole post to itself…

As the title of this post indicates, we stayed on the Queen Elizabeth 2 – or, as everyone refers to it, the QE2. But, what were we doing “staying” on a British cruise ship in UAE? We were staying on “her” as, since 2018, she’s been a converted hotel – permanently docked in Dubai!…

It was the first time I’d step foot on a cruise ship; probably the last too, since cruises are not me thing at all. But here, we weren’t cruising!…

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Despite the extraordinarily uncharacteristic weather in Dubai, we still managed to hold our first ever international Cyber Immunity Conference there; hurray!

So, what is Cyber Immunity? (In case you don’t know; sorry if you do.) It’s our approach to building cybersystems that are secure-by-design and, as such, resilient against hacker attacks.

Actually, there’s a lot of talk about what it is. There’s talk about programming needing to be accurate and secure, and that we need secure processes of program code development, multilevel testing and cross-checks, and other such nonsense. But we believe that the main thing in security-by-design is the basic architecture of the operating system; specifically, its ability to protect even untrusted and vulnerable components/modules/applications, or, rather – block their abnormal behavior. We’ve lots more detailed information here, and those who want to dive even deeper into it are welcome to contact our experts, who can be reached at the same link.

As we hurtle ever deeper into the cyber-era, it’s clear that Cyber Immunity will be our savior. Alas, it’s still only one side of the coin in that cyber-era, for there are still the ever-increasing professionalism and numbers of hacker attacks from the other side of the barricades. However, I firmly believe that, out of the two, one side has no long-term future. Guess which one ). But for that scenario to materialize we need to learn how to build cybersystems that are secure-by-design to be able to fend off hacker attacks. That is the future of the cyberworld. And the other week, when we were down in the UAE, it was of course highly fitting to be able to talk about the cyberfuture in Dubai’s Museum of the Future ->

All righty. Off we pop to our conference…

Read on…