So what happened to September? Not a single September post on the Stephen Cobb Blog? That’s right, I was busy settling into my new job here in San Diego at ESET North America. I’m part of the research team and, as it  says on my business cards, my job title is Security Evangelist. But I did blog in September, seven times on the ESET Threat Blog.

Working a blog with multiple contributors is one of the many things I’m loving about this new position. Another nice thing about the job is San Diego itself. I’m sure that San Diego has “issues” that I will encounter (and blog about, right here). No city is perfect, but sometimes a city can feel like a perfect match. For someone who loves to travel–like me–San Diego is both a great place to come home to, and a great place to travel from. I can look out the window and see cars, trains, boats, and planes. Okay, so sometimes these are noisy cars, trains, boats, and planes; but like all modes of transportation, they create this great sense of possibility, of going places.

And sunsets. San Diego has amazing sunsets. Friends and relatives are already getting tired of me emailing them my San diego sunset pictures, so I decided to illustrate this post with something else that is very San Diego: water bowls for your dog. Such bowls are a common site outside San Diego stores and restaurants (many of the latter welcome dogs in the outside eating areas, of which there are many). This particular eatery caught my eye because they had thoughtfully provided bowls in a range of sizes to suit different dogs.

So, in San Diego you can walk your dog to the local restaurant, enjoy great food in the open air, plus canine companionship and, let’s face it, watch a great sunset nearly every day.

“Home for the holidays? December arrives to find me and Chey and Layla comfortably settled into Little Italy, a great neighborhood in California’s second largest city, San Diego. My blogging is now very security-oriented, mainly on the ESET Threat Blog but also SC Magazine’s Cybercrime Corner. But I’m still spreading the word about hemochromatosis, here and on the Celtic Curse blog as well as the Hemochromatosis Facebook page. Of course, all views expressed on cobbsblog.com are mine and not those of my employer.

Phew, looks like the blog is fixed. Thanks Jason! Links were not working for a while.  Please enjoy some examples of the more than 1,300 blog posts I’ve penned since 2006:

Jeremy Dean’s Back to the Futurama: A moving art project rolls from Hummers to horse carts.

How Was Your Presidents’ Day? My first post on the new Monetate real-time marketing blog.

As you can see from the lack of recent posts on Cobbsblog, things have been particularly busy this month. My November started out with a trip to a trade show in New York called ad:tech. This event brings together a very interesting mix of companies that are in some way or another related to digital marketing.

Digital marketing is one way to describe what my work for Monetate is all about, so I was at the show checking out the digital marketing scene and looking to learn whatever I could. (Quote du jour: “A real expert always looks to learn more and does not always try to look like he’s learned everything.”)

Judging by the huge crowds, digital marketing is doing well these days. For all our sakes I am hoping that the larger-than-expected attendance bodes well for the economy in 2010.

Shortly after I fought my way through the check-in lines and gained entrance to the exhibit hall I was interviewed for WebmasterRadio by marketing guru Bryan Eisenberg. Here is a link to the interview. (I apologize for sounding out of breath but I had to shout to be heard above the crowd–the sound engineers at WebMasterRadio did an amazing job of filtering out background noise but they couldn’t change the fact that I was shouting.) Oh, and here’s a link to Bryan.

Anyway, if you take a listen to the interview you will get an idea of what Monetate is about and what my role as “evangelist” for the Monetate technology involves. (If you can’t listen to the audio right now, the short answer is that my role as an evangelist is to get people excited about what the technology can do.)

I carry out my role by communicating across multiple media, most of which don’t charge for participation. Over the years I have learned how to do this out of necessity, often working for startup companies that did not have a marketing budget to speak of (or we had a budget but it got eaten by engineering, or product delivery, or something else that was deemed a priority over marketing at the time).

Starting from back in the days when this type of thing was called guerilla marketing, I have pioneered the idea that if you offer up free content that is also valuable content, people will find that content, consume that content, and give some respect to the content creator. So when I created a web site back in the mid-nineties that was full of high quality computer security information, people who had read the content would call up looking for security advice, which we sold as security consulting, creating a blue ribbon client portfolio that became very valuable and was eventually snapped up by a much bigger company that paid us a premium for it.

A dozen years on and I am working on marketing a marketing product, finding that a lot of people have twigged to this strategy, so things are not quite so easy. But the strategy is still sound and I will keep persevering, adding new tactics like social media (an umbrella term for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and blogs) to my arsenal. And of course, radio interviews whenever they present themselves.

I got a nice nod last week from Norwich University in an article about Wiley’s soon to be launched 2,000 page behemoth: “Computer Security Handbook, 5th Edition.”

It turns out that 37 of the 80 chapters are by people with Norwich connections. That includes me (Chapters 4, 7, 15, 20) and Chey (Chapters 15, 41, 73).

Although I got interviewed for the article, to highlight cooperation between Norwich professors and students, I kind of wish they had also mentioned Chey. She wrote a lot of the curriculum material for the original Master of Science in Information Assurance at Norwich. And I think she and I are the only couple to work together on a chapter in the new opus (Chapter 15: Penetrating Computer Systems and Networks, also with Mich Kabay).

On the whole, David Corriveau did a good job with the article. Hopefully, my comments conveyed the fact that Mich Kabay should get the credit my collaboration with Corinne LeFrançois at the NSA. It was a classic electronic encounter. Pure email, we never met in person. (It is worth noting that I also met Mich online, about twenty years ago, while I was living in Scotland and he was living in Montreal. That was back in the days of CompuServe.)

Mich is the one is the thread that runs through all of this, the MSIA program and the Computer Security Handbook, both CSH4 and CSH5. And with that, we wish the best of luck to “Computer Security Handbook 5th Edition” and all who sail in her!

Yesterday was the “official” release date for the retail DVD of Dare Not Walk Alone. This DVD is something of a milestone for those of us who worked on this project. It comes a staggering 5 years after Jeremy decided to make the film and about 4 years and 3 months after Chey and I got involved. Jeremy is now married and no longer in his twenties. Chey and I are still married (and still in our fifties).

We are all extremely grateful to everyone who pitched in at various stages of this long and winding road. If this film beats the odds (again) and suddenly becomes “an overnight sensation,” we will be able to say, in all honesty: “That was a very long night, but totally worth it.” What follows is the press release that went out through erelease and PRNewsire.

BROOKLYN, N.Y., Nov. 11 /PRNewswire/ — Dare Not Walk Alone, a feature-length documentary about little-known events in America’s civil rights struggle, is now available on DVD at Wal-Mart and other stores. The film clearly illustrates what President-elect Obama has called “the gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.” While documenting Dr. King’s heroic campaign to end segregation, the film also paints a disturbing portrait of lingering inequality, some 40 years later, in one community where that campaign was waged.

The Dare Not Walk Alone trailer can be seen at the film’s web site: http://darenotwalkalone.com.

Created by Brooklyn-based artist and director Jeremy Dean, Dare Not Walk Alone has been hailed by critics as “a powerhouse of a picture” and “important filmmaking.” However, making the film was an uphill battle, according to executive producer Stephen Cobb. “The director insisted the film go beyond documenting the bravery and brilliance of Dr. King’s victorious strategy of non-violence to explore the aftermath of that victory,” said Cobb. “But a lot of people thought this approach was too radical for a mainstream audience.”

Yet this is one small-budget independent documentary that beat the odds and achieved DVD distribution through major stores like Wal-Mart, Target, FYE, Movies Unlimited, and Amazon.com. The film’s distributor is Indican Pictures.

“When Indican told us Wal-Mart ordered DVDs,” says Dean, “we were thrilled, but also stunned. That’s almost impossible when you’re an indie project with no star backing.”

Although the DVD is not on the shelves in every Wal-Mart yet, the retail giant is shipping from Walmart.com, according to Cobb.

“Our hats are off to both Wal-Mart and Indican,” said Cobb. “We’re delighted with Indican because they have moved us closer to our goal of giving everyone in America a chance to see this film.”

The DVD features interviews with Ambassador Andrew Young and the late James Brock, owner of the motel in St. Augustine, Florida, where Dr. King was arrested. There is also an interview with Dean who is currently on a campus tour, most recently appearing at Notre Dame University’s WorldView Film Series.

About Dare Not Walk Alone

Featuring rare archival footage, the film also contains recent interviews with participants in the campaign to pass the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The project began in 2003 when director Dean was still in his twenties. After post-production work at Atlanta-based Crawford Communications, the final cut debuted in 2007 and was quickly signed for distribution by Indican Pictures. Theatrical screenings in New York, Los Angeles, and Portland garnered praise from critics:

“Powerful slice of roiling American history.”
– Los Angeles Times

“Has great potential to do real good in the world.”
– Boxoffice.com

“Minutely attuned to disparities of class and race … a triumph of outrage and empathy.”
–Willamette Week

“Deserves to be seen.”
–New York Times

“Packs a punch.”
– Village Voice

Contact:
Jeremy Dean, writer and director
347-429-2427
email: info@dnwa.info
Web Site: http://darenotwalkalone.com