What I’ve Been Up To

Posted by on Jun 30, 2026 Time for an update on what I’ve been doing over the past year. Two projects were new adventures: some part-time teaching and a website focused on the U.S. rural broadband (a project I’ve put on hold). I also continued working with clients on a range of scientific and technical topics. Here are a few highlights: Ever since I encountered photonics some 25 years ago, I’ve welcomed any chance to...
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CyberConVA: Where CISOs and AI Took the Stage

Posted by on Feb 20, 2025 RVA Tech hosted its annual CyberConVA on Feb 6 at the Dominion Energy Center in Richmond VA. Subtitled “Where CISOs take the stage,” the conference did indeed feature a roster of chief information security officers (CISOs). But also taking the stage was machine-learning (ML)-based generative (Gen)AI, the technology du jour. (Or de l’année? du siècle?) The CyberConVA opening keynoter was Carsten...
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Five Takeaways from TechExpo 2024

Posted by on Oct 25, 2024 The SCTE held its annual conference and exhibition at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, September 24-26. It ended just as Hurricane Helene was slamming into Florida. That leads to a preliminary lesson: Check the weather. I hadn’t been following the news. It was only through exhibitors on the floor who were already talking on Day 2 about packing up that I realized Atlanta was in...
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Lighthouse Labs Rolls Strikes

Posted by on Sep 6, 2024 It’s nice to have a seed-stage business catalyst in town. On July 24, 2024, Richmond, Virginia-based Lighthouse Labs announced the 17th cohort of companies participating in its accelerator program. (I wrote about Lighthouse eight years ago in a post comparing Richmond and Silicon Valley.) On August 27, Lighthouse hosted a meet-and-greet for this batch of seven companies at River City Roll, a...
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Malone, Denver and Cable-Tec Expo

Posted by on Nov 7, 2023 Cable-Tec Expo 2023 is in the books. That’s the 24th consecutive Expo I’ve attended, many of those like this one in Denver, at the convention center with the Big Blue Bear. Twenty-four years, but I remain a relative newcomer, a third-generation observer at best. There are plenty of vendors and operators from earlier days who are still up and about, and engaged. Take John Malone, who was...
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RSA Cryptographers’ Panel Weighs Quantum Risk

Posted by on May 27, 2023 Several deadlines kept me from attending the RSA Conference last month in San Francisco. But having registered, I’ve been able to listen to recorded sessions, including ‘The Cryptographers’ Panel.’ Moderated as usual by Whitfield Diffie, co-founder of the Diffie-Hellman asymmetric key exchange, this year’s panel spent a lot of time on the threat of quantum computing. AI,...
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