My security session went very well today at Interop. I think the audience got a lot out of it as there were lots of good questions. MediaLive is selling tapes to the session if you are interested. The vital stats are as follows: 60 people were in the room. About 50% of the audience has already deployed VoIP. 10% of the people are dabbling in WiFi telephony and only one person in the room is currently using VoWLAN today.

I stayed at Excalibur and he hotel lobby is nice and the rooms in tower 2 are acceptable. No smoking rooms smell like smoke for some strange reason. I got in last late very late and a line of about 40 people were in front of me. I noticed an automated check-in machine that no one was using. It worked flawlessly and I bypassed the line entirely.

Last night I noticed a prominent sign in my room said I was moth season and suggested not opening the windows. Today I saw a moth the size of a large hummingbird. Whether this sighting is a result of the nuclear waste facility located nearby or the moths in Vegas have always looked like they could star in an Alfred Hitchcock movie is not known to me as of this writing.

The hotel does something very interesting; they tack on a $1/day charge to all rooms for unlimited local calls. One assumes they make money this way and probably offset the lost revenue due to increased cell phone calls and subsequently lack of hotel phone calls.

I swear all the hotels in Vegas and Reno have their directional signs slightly skewed to keep you wandering around in the casino a bit more. I am sure there are sign placement consultants that get paid big bucks to keep us all like rats in a blackjack laden maze.

Still, my experience at the Excalibur was great overall and the tram to the Mandalay Bay was rapid and stress-free.

Interop is considerably smaller than it used to be and the move to the hotel venue was smart. Exhibitors told me traffic in the a.m. was good and the afternoon was slow. I give the show credit for holding on when every other large tech show died out. Comdex, Internet World, PC Expo, Cebit America, ComNet. I am sure I missed some.