Mark Whybro says yes

Hot off the press we've just learned that Mark Whybro, Chief Superintendent for New South Wales Fire Brigades in Australia, will be joining the Government Technology Forum's panel discussion on emergency planning. I met him last year, and we interviewed him for the March issue of Public Sector Technology & Management.

I'm pretty pleased, as it's a major coup to get such an experienced security planner to make the long trek from Sydney for our two day meeting - which now means he'll be joining Manju Hathotuwa, CEO of ICTA in Sri Lanka on the same panel. Manju oversaw the deployment of applications on the fly to cope with the immediate aftermath of the Indian Ocean Tsunami in December 2004.

Mark mentioned that I was lucky to get through - apparently NSW Fire Brigades' IT department automatically blocked my initial email because of the reference to 'Asian Security Review' in the signature. As he said "Proof that you can have too much security!"