Time-warped in Toronto

The reality tour took me to Ottawa, Montreal and Toronto last week. I was visiting with customers and partners like Avaleris and Itergy. On Friday, I had the opportunity to present to the "Federation of Security Professionals" in Toronto. The keynote speaker was Jim O'Donnell who is the CISO of the Royal Bank of Canada.

From Toronto

I was the second last speaker of the day and as I sat through the presentations - all of which were excellent - I began to feel like I had entered a time-warp. Back in 1993, my career forked from the mainframe world of my first employer to a new employer who wanted my technical evaluation of something called Banyan VINES. Fast-forward to Toronto and suddenly I am hearing, throughout the day, terms I have not heard in over 15 years...

• Daz-Dee (DASD) - Direct Access Storage Device - A mainframe disk drive.
  
• Vee-Talk (VTOC) - Volume table of contents - The "directory" for the DASD.
• Jez (JES) - Job Entry System for MVS.
• Emm-Vee-Ess (MVS) - Multiple Virtual System - The operating system for IBM mainframes.
• Rack-Eff (RACF) -Resource Access Control Facility. Security and access control system for IBM mainframes.
• Kicks (CICS) - Customer Information Control System. General purpose monitor for terminal-oriented and inter-system transaction processing in z/OS.

All those terms being thrown around made me realize that the mainframe was still very much alive and well, and I was old - but the worse part of the day was walking down Yonge Street (the longest street in the world) in downtown Toronto that evening and realizing that Sam the Record Man was closed down. For 60 years it was the place for records and now it's boarded up. Yonge Street is beginning to look more and more like Trafalgar Square or Times Square as the years go by. I'm not sure if that is good or not.

This week (Oct 5-7) I will be speaking at Digital Identity World 2008 in Hamburg, Germany. Will I see you there?

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