The Brazilian Embassy has this description posted on their home page:

III International Congress of Free Software and Government. CONSEGI is an important space to promote the exchange of experiences and information among Govemment Institutions, Society and representatives of partner countries. Lectures, panels and workshops will take place in the 2010 edition that will be marked by discussion on the topic “Cloud Computing”.

CONSEGI is held in Brasilia, Brazil each year (photo by me):

It would be an understatement to say I am super impressed with the energy, skill and expertise of computing in Brazil that was found at CONSEGI. Another American at the conference, who travels constantly for work, commented to me there that many in the US are unaware of many amazing developments happening outside our country. It is easy to see why he would say this. Surveys show technology adoption rates now skyrocketing in Africa and South America, yet it is Asia and Europe that still dominate the “international” section of tech news at home.

We should avoid thinking this as a language barrier. Portuguese may be less common but the CONSEGI conference ran smoothly with attendees speaking Spanish, English, French and even Korean. I found myself wondering why real-time multi-lingual translations are not an option at Black Hat or RSA. Have I missed something? CONSEGI offered it as standard and I was very grateful to be able to attend sessions with language options using some cool technology.

Paola Garcia Juarez presents in Portuguese, a mathematical model to estimate trust and security of Cloud Computing services (photo by me):

Actually, I was more than grateful. After I played around with a “translation box” I had a discussion at lunch with a brilliant executive from a major Linux distribution. We covered details of infrared wave technology, security and economics. It was a real change from the RFID focus (kind of like laser focus, but not) I usually find at conferences. Since US Army deployed massive amounts of RFID for military operations in 1992 (Somalia) it seems RFID has dominated the American perspective. That brings me to my second point.

We also should avoid thinking of this as a cultural barrier. Disparity in culture and aims actually is a benefit. The topic of the conference was Cloud Computing. A panel of eGovernment experts representing countries of the Southern Hemisphere (hint: there are five Portuguese-speaking countries in Africa) quickly brought to the table universal technology advantages and challenges, from very different perspectives. Ten minutes into just one of these sessions would probably blow the mind of most IT managers that are used to hearing only one perspective. The resourcefulness and creativity of people with diverse backgrounds working together created a rich source of new information.

The Cloud Camp was another highlight of the conference. Topics such as security of virtualization, best practices in cloud compute memory and storage management, and how to evaluate providers all were discussed in detail by attendees.

Technical labs were organized around the conference and it was cool to see them packed full of students learning their P’s (e.g. Postgress, Python, PHP, Perl).

Meetings and sessions ran smoothly, the weather was superb, live musicians were very talented and attendees represented a very wide range of ages and cultures. CONSEGI is a world-class event that should not be missed by anyone interested in global technology. I was honored to present this year on Digital Forensics and Investigations in the Cloud.

Amãpytuna? It is a word from the Tupi area of Brazil and the title of a book on cloud computing that came in the registration packet. Just one example of the many details not to be overlooked; keys from a wider perspective that could help find solutions in the future of information security.