I will not be attending Infosecurity Europe this year.

I will not be attending Infosecurity Europe this year.

I have instead elected to recreate the experience at home, for accuracy and cost control.

This morning I laminated my own name onto a piece of card and hung it from my neck. I have not removed it. I will not remove it for three days. By Thursday it will have fused to my sternum and I will understand the industry on a deeper level.

At 11am a man I have never met will corner me by the kettle and ask if I'm "currently happy with my detection and response posture." I have hired him. He starts Monday. His only job is to follow me into rooms.

I have filled a tote bag with stress balls shaped like things that should not be stress balls. A padlock. A brain. A small cloud, which I am told represents the cloud, and which I now squeeze whenever I feel a migration coming on.

For the authentic networking experience I have begun drinking warm white wine from a plastic flute at 4pm while a stranger explains zero trust to me with the confidence of a man who has never been told no. I am that stranger. I am also the man being told. We are not getting along.

At no point will anyone offer me a quad-copter drone in exchange for a thirty-minute conversation about my "current spend." I have to be honest — that's the part I'll miss.

The genuinely offensive vendor interaction has been the hardest to replicate. I've been approximating it by reading my own sales emails aloud in a slightly too-loud voice until I feel something. It's working. I feel it. It's contempt, and it's for me.

Anyway. If you are at ExCeL this week: stay hydrated, trust no booth that has a magician, and remember that the badge scanner is not your friend. It has never been your friend.

I'll be here. Squeezing the cloud. Posture unknown.