Take (virtual) care of yourself

[rslade]

I've been a bit surprised to find how difficult it is to get anyone interested in setting up or attending an online meeting or presentation. Someone else complained about it:

> Even CPE's won't get my coworkers to attend. I hear the response, "if I'm
> not being paid to attend, I won't attend." So much for learning, sharing
> knowledge and networking.

Part of the problem may be that everyone has gotten used to the low quality of "Webinars" that vendors put out--thinly disguised sales pitches with almost zero information content. Now we are seeing similar things happening to conferences: in order to maximize revenue/profit, conference organizers are signing up all the vendors they can, letting them give sales pitches as "presentations," and putting no effort (and leaving little time) for any actual presentations based on research or analysis.

There's also the fact that we, in security, unlike a huge proportion of the population, a) can work from home, b) are working from home, and c) in many cases are busier than ever (with fewer resources being provided by employers). With everybody "maxed out," I can see that meetings, presentations, conferences, and Webinars would be a lower priority.

The fact that everyone is busy is bringing another problem to the fore. I had a meeting this week with other security leaders, and a good chunk of the first part was taken up with stories or burnout, stress, the need to take time off, the need to *force* people to take some time off to get some balance back, etc. We probably need to take some care that we don't get too stressed and burn out.  That can be difficult.  Under stress, your analysis and decisions may be affected--including the assessment of how much stress you are under, and how it is affecting you.