Hotel experiences

For a lot of people, staying at a hotel is a pleasure event and normally is part of a vacation away from home. For me, I have stayed in a number of hotels both for pleasure and also for work as I have done quite a bit of travelling for work.

A hotel experience can really have a negative or positive experience, and lately I am finding that a number of hotels are resulting in a negative experience, which isn’t good. I recently was staying at a hotel for work and had asked for no feather in the room. This is a simple request, or so I thought because it means that housekeeping has a note about the room for when they are doing the cleaning the morning of my arrival. Upon arriving at the hotel and checking in the room, I discovered that two of the four pillows on the bed were duck feathers, which wasn’t supposed to be there. As there were two of us in the room, we walked down to the front desk and reported the issue and sure it was resolved quickly, but again it shouldn’t have happened.

So, the frustrating part of the pillow experience was the answer that we received from one of the staff at the front desk, his comment was “We were fully booked the night before, so the staff was busy, so it was missed”. A fully booked hotel should have meant that the pillows would have been addressed because someone would have had to clean the room the morning/early afternoon of our arrival. Also, there is a minimum 4-hour time between last check out and first check in, so if there have the right number of housekeeping people on staff, getting everything done would have been no problem.

Now I thought that was going to be the only issue at the hotel, but it continued with some lights in the room not working. So, one lamp was actually unplugged and couldn’t be plugged in because the plug was all bend. Two other lights one over the desk and one that lite an area of the room were also not working so that meant another report to the front desk of the issues. Maintenance did come and fix all three of these issues, but again another excuse was given “Oh, these two lights probably have a loose connection”. If there are loose connections that need fixing, say thanks for letting us know, and I will get it fixed.

how can I reach the pots and pans?

Hotels make their money ensuring that the guests are enjoying their stay and not having to deal with all of these issues. The other thing that made me laugh was where the pots and pans are, as this room has a small kitchenette included. The fridge is a normal size fridge, and the pots and pans are in a cupboard above that. Now is someone suppose to get these things out easier without having to stand on a chair. Thank goodness there is a stool in the room with a hard top on that can be used to get the items out of the cupboard if needed.

The hotel seems nice and clean which is one main thing and the staff in general are friendly, so now to see what the rest of the stay is like. I hope it is going to be better than this part, otherwise I am not going to be very happy.

IT Security Conferences

Going to various IT conferences you get to hear a lot of different talks and also get to meet a lot of different people which is nice. Recently we were at an IT Security Conference in Toronto and had a chance to help out at a booth for the two days of the event.

Now, working at a booth can be challenging because you can be extremely busy one minute and have no one around the next minute. This year it seemed so different because we were extremely busy on Tuesday, which is the first day of the show, but we were also busy on the second day, which was nice. Sure, we had sometimes where there weren’t a lot of people walking by, but I have to admit that it was great to see the number of people that stopped and chatted with us.

The booth was manned by four of us and yes, I was the female at the table, but that didn’t bother me at all. We were talking about a Security community called TASK (Toronto Area Security Klatch) and it was a great couple of days doing just that. Trying to show people that there is a strong community within the IT Security industry is always a lot of fun.

The four of us also get along extremely well, so it means that we work well together, and of course there is a schedule so that everyone knows where everyone else is. We also have the ability to text each other, so that makes it great so that if you are away from the booth and are needed, it is a quick message to find each other. This year what was nice was the number of times that there were three of us at the booth instead of one or two, and I have to admit that there were times that we really needed everyone to talk with the various people that came over to the booth.

During our time at the booth, a number of people asked us about the community and actually figured we worked for TASK instead of being community members. I am thinking that we need to figure out a way to show that we are community members that are at the event to explain what the community is all about. I know some people understood we were community members, but there were still a lot of people that figured it was a company that offered the community, not just a group of companies that sponsored a community.

IT Security conferences can be interesting to attend, and who you meet is also a lot of fun. You can be meeting with someone from a big business or someone that is just learning about IT Security and attending to gain an understanding. The IT Security community is a great community as most of the people are extremely friendly.