The Smart Grid Summit finished up a few weeks ago, but good coverage is still being produced.

 

I wanted to focus here specifically about an ongoing series of articles and interviews that Mary Allen has filed with IT in Canada. It was great that she came down to Miami, and I’m pretty sure this was the only Canadian coverage we had. From what I can tell, her time was well spent, as she has filed three stories – and counting – and conducted several interviews with our speakers.

 

You may not be familiar with IT in Canada, but it’s a leading portal and resource for the Canadian IT market. Of course it’s great for local coverage, but the content is quite rich, and the broader topics – green IT, unified communications, data centers, etc. – would be of interest to anyone following IT, regardless of geography.

 

I’m summarizing her coverage here because it’s very good, and you likely would not come across it any other way. Of course if you like what you see, you can sign up for their RSS feeds, but for now, I’ll be the messenger. Mary’s first article was from January 25, just after the ITEXPO (News - Alert) East 2010 wrapped up. This write-up was as much about the ITEXPO as the Summit, it’s of interest to TMC’s overall readership.

 

Mary’s subsequent pieces have been solely focused on the Summit, with the next one running February 9. This was a lengthy reprise of the Modern Network Solutions panel, which featured speakers from Alcatel-Lucent, Alvarion, ADTRAN (News - Alert) and Spectrum Bridge. With four speakers from top companies, this was one of the densest sessions of the Summit, and they covered a lot of ground. Mary took good notes, and this is the best account I’ve seen about this session. If this topic is of interest – especially FANs – Field Area Networks – you’ll really enjoy her summation.

 

Finally, Mary ran a third article yesterday; this one focused on grid security. This is a hot topic for Smart Grid, and we plan to expand our coverage on it at the next summit. The article begins with some comments about John Bryan’s keynote. This was a good place to start, given that he’s heading up a new industry group in this space, the Secure Smart Grid Association. I was happy to see Mary note his mention of GhostNet, a huge cyber security story from 2009 that was uncovered by a team of researchers here in Toronto. I’m not a security expert, but found the story fascinating enough to blog about when it broke.

 

Moving on from John Bryan, Mary commented a bit on the Grid Security and Privacy panel. There was quite a bit going on during this session, including some interesting perspectives on personal privacy from the Ontario Information and Privacy Commissioner’s Office. I mention this only because their office was nice enough to share their White Paper (News - Alert) with us, and you can download it directly from the home page of our portal. Mary also references the paper in her article.

 

Aside from this, the balance of her article was an interview with Kurt Stammberger of Mocana (News - Alert). This provided a more detailed view of how Mocana sees security along with the key challenges utilities are facing to address it.

 

All told, Mary has covered the summit very nicely, and we appreciate the ongoing attention. I’m glad to see this coverage coming out of Canada, and we’re certainly looking get broader representation for LA, not just for speakers, but exhibitors and sponsors.