After a super delicious Thanksgiving diner at Saju, I had to prepare myself for my trip to Vienna. In Vienna I joined the ISC2 ISSMP (Management Professional) Review Seminar. This certification is an extra concentration to the CISSP exam I did earlier. Although I don’t expect to prepare for a 6 hour exam, it will still be a heavy course and exam.
ISC2 recommended a small and simple hotel just 2 blocks away, The Homestead Suites. After a pretty long drive from Dulles Airport I arrived. All seemed well, indeed a small and simple hotel, but it looked clean and ok. I dropped my bags, and went out to look for some diner. First it looked very quiet on the streets, just a few restaurants and nothing to fancy. I had some diner at Olive Garden, nice Italian food but again…the American way. After diner I went of to find the local Starbucks. I found the Mall, it looked like 3 giant stores. When I found an entrance and went downstairs, I found the Mall. There were 3 big stores on top, but maybe even a hundred underground! This was a huge American Mall, in the middle of a small village. Later on I heard many people drive from Washington to go to this mall during shopping seasons.
The next day I woke up with a strained back, this bed was terrible! Well I had to find the ISC2 building now, I expected something modern and something that would be easy to spot from the streets. So I started walking towards the address I got from an employee because I didn’t receive the official invitation. After an hour and a half searching, I went back to the hotel to see if the address was on the website. So I found out they gave me the wrong address, the number they gave me didn’t even exist. I went over quickly so I wouldn’t miss to much, just to find out the even started an hour earlier than I expected. So my advise to ISC2: Don’t stop working with your old system, if it takes 4 months to setup up the new one. If you need help on this, read your own books and have a look at tha chapters about Business Continuity and Change management.
Oh well, although the hotel was terrible to sleep and they clean just once a week, I searched almost 2 hours for a non existing address, and due to lacking communication I missed a few hours of training, I did indeed enjoy it, and I met some new and interesting people.
After a long but interesting second day I left just in time for Dulles Airport to fly back to New York!