And… we're back from London

The Email Innovations Summit in London was a good conference. Much smaller than Vegas, but with a number of very interesting talks. I got to meet a number of folks I’ve only known online and we had some interesting conversations at the conference and at the pub-track in the evenings.
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I had so many grand plans for doing some work while in London. So many plans. And then I actually mostly disconnected and ignored anything I “should” be doing.  Instead, Steve and I did some touristing, some relaxing, some family time and some connecting with his college friends. We also (over)heard a lot of conversations about the US Election. One night at dinner every table around us was talking about our candidates and what they thought of them. It’s always interesting to hear what non-Americans think about our country.
In addition to missing two debates, it seems we missed some online news, too. I think the biggest thing was another large DDoS attack against that took out many major websites. I’m starting to see some comments that spam levels were down during the attack, too, but haven’t dug into that yet.
I did have an article published in the Only Influencers newsletter last week: Marketers Can’t Learn from Spam. All too often marketers think spammers are better at unboxing because they see spam in their inbox. But spammers are just more criminal and spend a lot of effort trying to bypass filters. These aren’t lessons marketers can learn from.
Unfortunately, due to our London trip, we are going to miss M3AAWG in Paris, which starts today. Two weeks between conferences was exactly the wrong time for going to both. Never fear, many folks will be tweeting what they can using #m3aawg38.
We’re both slowly getting back into the swing (and timezone!) of back to work. Blogging will pick up over the next few days. And I have new castle pictures to share.

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Back from Vegas

Had a wonderful time at the Email Innovations conference last week. Got a chance to see some familiar faces and meet a lot of new ones.
There is so much new and interesting and exciting stuff going on in the world of email. I think we’re hitting another period for real growth and innovation that’s going to change what we see in our inboxes and how we use email.
 

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Q1 2016: Upcoming events

While we’re working on a Speaking Schedule page for my upcoming events, I’ll just update the blog. My schedule for Q1 and Q2 is coming together.
M3AAWG 36: San Francisco, February 16 – 18th. I’ll be up on Monday afternoon. No official speaking at this one, just sitting in the audience and listening. But stop by and say hi!
Email Evolution Conference: Hosted by the EEC, New Orleans, March 30 – April 1. I’ll be on the panel Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Email (But Were Afraid To Ask) with some of my favorite colleagues.
Email Innovations Conference: Las Vegas, May 18 – 19th. Understanding Your IT Department: What Non-Technical Brand Managers Need To Know about Email Security, DMARC, ISP’s and Delivery.

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Whirlwind that is M3AAWG

It’s been a great conference, and it’s only about half done. As is common at these conferences, I write down lots of things we should do and need to publish. The difference is now that we are growing I may have the time to put the polish on them and get them published.
Today’s keynote discussed the economics of botnet mitigation. Michel van Eeten from Delft University of Technology presented information compiled from some different datasets about botnets.
Good news
Botnet infection rates are relatively stable. They’ve not spiraled out of control like some people were predicting.
Interesting news
More than 50% of bot infections are contained on 50 ISPs in the entire world.
Bad news
Centers set up specifically to fix botnet infections don’t really have a big impact on infection cure rate.
Good news
ISP actions and walled gardens do have an impact on infection cure rates.
The biggest take away from the session is that ISPs are critical in both protecting from infection and helping users cure infection once it happens.

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