I'm not complaining about the fact that I can't see what I'm typing. I understand and laud that feature, because I don't want someone looking over my shoulder at the password I'm typing, and this even applies when I'm at home. I love my children, but I certainly don't want them knowing the password to my bank account!

No, what I'm bothered by is how a typical password text box behaves on a form that may incur multiple post-backs before it's finally submitted. If you use the built in ASP.NET TextBox control, it purposely does not repopulate the password text, which means if you press a button on the form that performs a post-back, or if you have a multi-page form that posts back on every step, that password disappears, and the user typically has to re-enter it. You could solve this with liberal use of ASP.NET Ajax UpdatePanels, but that adds its own complexities. I wanted a simpler solution.

So I did a little research to see what others had discovered about this problem, and I ended up deriving my own custom control from TextBox to make a much more user-friendly (and developer-friendly) TextBox control. I called it PasswordTextBox, and it acts just like a TextBox in password mode, but it retains the password while still giving the user the same level of protection the standard TextBox supplies.

My PasswordTextBox operates very simply: it stores the password in control state, and renders a series of fixed characters (with the same length as the actual password) into the text box so that it "looks" like the user's password has been rendered. Since control state is part of view state, and since view state is stored in a hidden field on the form, I encrypt the password before putting it into control state.

The result is quite nice - the user can post your form back as many times as she needs to, perhaps moving back and forth across wizard steps or tabs, and when she finally presses the "Finish" button (or whatever you call the last step of your input form), your code will be able to read the password by simply accessing the Text property on the PasswordTextBox. The user will believe that her password is sitting there on the form while she's working, as the same number of obfuscated characters will show up in the field as she typed in originally (what she doesn't know is that those characters aren't her real password anymore, but what she doesn't know won't hurt her!)

Note that to keep this simple, I used DPAPI to encrypt the password, which suited my purposes. But if you have a web farm, that won't work well at all if you don't know which machine the user's going to post back to, so you'll want to replace that with something more robust. I could see looking up the <machineKey> for entropy, as that tends to be sync'd already across the farm, but I've not yet spent the cycles to go down that road, since unfortunately all of the code for generating keys based on that config section are off limits in ASP.NET (most of the useful stuff is marked internal). I don't think it'd be that hard to do though.

Anyway, without further ado, here's the code, which you'll see is quite simple. I'd love feedback, especially if you see any glaring problems with the idea or the implementation!

public class PasswordTextBox : TextBox
{
    // unlikely that a string of these would be used for a password
    const char PasswordPlaceholderChar = '}';

    string password; // stored encrypted in control state

    protected override void OnInit(EventArgs e)
    {
        base.OnInit(e);
        Page.RegisterRequiresControlState(this);
    }

    protected override object SaveControlState()
    {
        byte[] encryptedPassword = ProtectPassword(password);

        object baseControlState = base.SaveControlState();
        if (null == baseControlState)
            return encryptedPassword;
        else return new Pair(baseControlState, encryptedPassword);
    }

    protected override void LoadControlState(object savedState)
    {
        byte[] encryptedPassword;

        Pair pair = savedState as Pair;
        if (null != pair)
        {
            base.LoadControlState(pair.First);
            encryptedPassword = pair.Second as byte[];
        }
        else encryptedPassword = savedState as byte[];

        password = UnprotectPassword(encryptedPassword);
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// This control always uses TextMode=Password
    /// </summary>
    public override TextBoxMode TextMode
    {
        get
        {
            return TextBoxMode.Password;
        }
        set { }
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// TextBox doesn't render value attribute for TextMode=Password
    /// So we add code that renders a placeholder text instead
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="writer"></param>
    protected override void AddAttributesToRender(HtmlTextWriter writer)
    {
        base.AddAttributesToRender(writer);

        string text = Text;
        if (text.Length > 0)
            writer.AddAttribute(HtmlTextWriterAttribute.Value,
                GetPlaceholderPassword(text));
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// TextBox doesn't save the "Text" viewstate in
    /// TextMode=Password and we don't want our behavior to break
    /// if ViewState is turned off so we store the password in
    /// Control State, encrypted with MachineKey
    /// </summary>
    public override string Text
    {
        get
        {
            return password ?? string.Empty;
        }
        set
        {
            // this prevents us overwriting the actual
            // password with a placeholder
            if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(password) &&
                value.Equals(GetPlaceholderPassword(password)))
                return;

            password = value;
        }
    }

    private string GetPlaceholderPassword(string realPassword)
    {
        int length = 12;
        if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(realPassword))
            length = realPassword.Length;

        StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
        sb.Append(PasswordPlaceholderChar, length);

        return sb.ToString();
    }

    public byte[] ProtectPassword(string password)
    {
        if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(password))
            return null;
        byte[] cleartext = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(password);
        return ProtectedData.Protect(cleartext, null,
            DataProtectionScope.LocalMachine);
    }

    public string UnprotectPassword(byte[] ciphertext)
    {
        if (null == ciphertext)
            return null;
        byte[] cleartext = ProtectedData.Unprotect(ciphertext, null,
            DataProtectionScope.LocalMachine);
        return Encoding.UTF8.GetString(cleartext);
    }
}

Traveling towards VMworld 2008

I, along with thousands of others, wended my way through a vast dimly lit cavern of a place helped along by the strangely surreal sight of ushers in black waving wispy red flags to guide us not to the empty seats in front of us, but to the ones 50 yards on. (Ah Vegas, my feet hurt already.) Perhaps the point was to live in the moment, soak in the pre-rock concert atmosphere complete with a hip and cool soundtrack ripped off from Apple commercials. (Do they all use the same ad firm?) A better way to build the anticipation for, yes, the kickoff keynote session at VMworld 2008. (photo credit: lodev)

To the sounds of Hey Ya (Shake it like a Polaroid picture), we shifted forward in our uncomfortable temporary seating placed, as at all tech conferences, too close for all but the skinny girls. The moment was here – one of those videos started playing on the dozen or so huge monitors floating above the convention crowd. You know this video; you’ve probably seen it before from HP or someone like that. One of those videos with instrumental Coldplay music in the background with time lapse/speeded-up video of people in motion and floating captions dropping into the images that leave you with a slight smile on your face as you “get” the relationship between image and text. (Do they all use the same ad firm?)

And here he is, announced like a Vegas headliner, Paul Maritz, the new CEO of VMware. Hmm. After all that hype, I rather expected someone in a black turtleneck and jeans to come out. Instead here’s this guy with pleat-front pants and an admittedly cool accent (New Zealand?) who looks a little like Al from Home Improvement. Not that there’s anything wrong with that – everyone likes Al.

And then the real fun begins.

• 30 years ago, Paul Maritz started off his business career as a developer
• 10 years ago, VMware was founded by Diane Greene and Mendel Rosenblum (BTW, 10 seconds spent showing a slide with cartoon-ized images of the founders, “thanks for what you did for the company for the past 10 years”. 10 seconds after 10 years…but maybe more would have been hypocritical…)
• a retrospective of centralized vs. decentralized computing initiatives from the 1960’s to today
• of course VMware milestones from 1998 to today
• and then an analyst-ready diagram showing the product roadmap (to be delivered in 2009) with, you guessed it, finally a connection between VMware and cloud computing (remember Maritz’s cloud-computing company was bought by EMC just a couple of years ago and that’s the section he headed up at EMC before being brought into VMware).

Forward Looking

2008 (and probably much of 2009) will be a very busy year for VMware. If you believe the roadmap, VMware seems to be taking on the management of everything – from chargeback and capacity planning to virtual storage and virtual networking (more to come on just what the planned vStorage and vNetwork will deliver) – but all of it VMware-centric. As we said in an earlier post, they’ve moved away from “defending” the hypervisor business proposition to focusing on management services on top of their own hypervisor platform. Revenue pressures must be excruciating – who wants to be a public company these days?

The best part of that new “Virtual Data Center Operating System” diagram/roadmap was the addition (and I mean addition) of something called Cloud vServices. (Did anyone else find it odd that Cloud vServices is kind of on its own in the Infrastructure vServices area? AND, I’ll have to get the other version of the diagram/roadmap I actually saw at the show because that one shows an inexplicable 4^th box in the Application vServices area titled “…”. Really. Maybe to balance out the addition of Cloud vServices?)

What was clear is that the move from VirtualCenter to vCenter –and the new vServices for rolled-up management of virtualization components/capability to span multiple VirtualCenters (or future vCenters) for reporting, monitoring and management at scale – has been in the works for a bit (but in tech time, that could mean 6 months), but the cloud stuff…not so much.

Beyond the very high-level speak appropriate to a keynote (100+ service provider partners for off-premise cloud…suspended VM’s that you don’t have to pay for until you need it), the details are uber-fuzzy. There was a session that Dave went to which was supposed to shed more light, but when questions were asked about how it really works, the answers seemed to be TBD. Does anyone know more? If VMware really has figured out practical cloud computing for enterprises, kudos to them. But I fear they’re like everyone else (except maybe AT&T) and are still working out the details.

When you use a declarative data source to perform a parameterized update that contains string parameters, consider setting ConvertEmptyStringToNull='false' on your <asp:Parameter> elements, because it's true by default! In other words, if a text field contains an empty string, it'll be sent to your declarative data source not as string.Empty, but as null.

Now I don't know about you, but I don't like dealing with nulls if I can avoid it. Especially strings. Unless there's a clear need to have a null state, I avoid them like the plague not only in my database designs but also in my XML schema designs. Hopefully this helps somebody out!

...doctored photographs are the least of our worries. If you want to trick someone with a photograph, there are lots of easy ways to do it. You don't need Photoshop. You don't need sophisticated digital photo-manipulation. You don't need a computer. All you need to do is change the caption.

The photographs presented by Colin Powell at the United Nations in 2003 provide several examples. Photographs that were used to justify a war. And yet, the actual photographs are low-res, muddy aerial surveillance photographs of buildings and vehicles on the ground in Iraq. I'm not an aerial intelligence expert. I could be looking at anything. It is the labels, the captions, and the surrounding text that turn the images from one thing into another. Photographs presented by Colin Powell at the United Nations in 2003.

Powell was arguing that the Iraqis were doing something wrong, knew they were doing something wrong, and were trying to cover their tracks. Later, it was revealed that the captions were wrong. There was no evidence of chemical weapons and no evidence of concealment. Morris's mockery of the sweeping interpretations made in Powell's photographs.

There is a larger point. I don't know what these buildings were really used for. I don't know whether they were used for chemical weapons at one time, and then transformed into something relatively innocuous, in order to hide the reality of what was going on from weapons inspectors. But I do know that the yellow captions influence how we see the pictures. "Chemical Munitions Bunker" is different from "Empty Warehouse" which is different from "International House of Pancakes." The image remains the same but we see it differently.

Change the yellow labels, change the caption and you change the meaning of the photographs. You don't need Photoshop. That's the disturbing part. Captions do the heavy lifting as far as deception is concerned. The pictures merely provide the window-dressing. The unending series of errors engendered by falsely captioned photographs are rarely remarked on.

One of the more interesting session I went to yesterday was a talk by Chris Hoff called "The Four Horsemen of the Virtualization Apocalypse."  (If you've never read Hoff's blog, you should check it out at http://rationalsecurity.typepad.com/.)

I thought I was keeping a close eye on security and virtualization issues, but this talk illustrated how wide and varied the topic really is.  This was not about Blue Pill and it wasn't about having security monitors in the hypervisor - instead he focused on how virtualizing physical devices (e.g. switches, systems) will cause lots of problems for security architects and administrators.

Briefly, here are the four horsemen:

• Conquest - Translating your physical capacity planning implementation to virtual devices probably won't work.
• Death - Virtualized networks lack several physical attributes assumed by security applications and high-availability devices today - you'll probably have to re-architect it all to get the same functionality, which might not even be possible in your new virtual world
• War - Adding security VAs takes away precious resources that could have been used to dynamically add VMs.  It is a war of resources.
• Famine - With all of the redesigning and accommodation happening, security costs are going to eat into any savings you make on server consolidation.

Now, if you want to read the much more thorough version, see Hoff's original post here.

Okay, how does this all relate to the title of my post?  Not much.  However, much later on day one, things really started rolling.

After being crowded out of the Shadow Bar, a bunch of us ended up over at Casa Fuente (A cigar bar in Caesars forum).  Five minutes after arriving, someone spilled a drink in my lap, big fun!  It turns out that it was Stepto's birthday, and Hoff makes sure everyone has a drink and we all sing happy birthday to Stepto.  Check out part of it, courtesy of Jack Daniel:

Immediately after the toast, Jennifer Jabbusch knocks over a table, falls to the floor and begins having a seizure. Stepto rushes over, trying to help, and just about that time, she flips over and starts laughing - total fakeout! Everybody bursts out laughing.

Shortly after that, they closed for the night and kicked us out and we all headed over to Cleopatra's Barge. There weren't enough seats or tables for us, but I noticed that the "reserved" barge seating was empty. Drawing upon a clever technique (i.e. sometimes called "asking") I social engineered a waitress into letting us have the reserved area. Within mere minutes, several security geeks are on the dance floor, doing us proud.

This leads me to the Four Horsemen of Cleopatra's Barge.  (Though I was out there too, I am excluding myself since simply because I can.)

• JJ, for leadership
• Hoff, who owned the dance floor.
• Ryan Naraine, for getting low, low, low
• David, for letting his hair down.

Though our collective dancing does not signal the end of the world, it certainly capped an excellent day

The first post described the problem: ASP.NET wasn't reporting inner exception stack traces.

The second post described my solution.

This post shows the code I used to solve the problem: a custom email provider for the Health Monitoring system in ASP.NET. Enjoy!

Here's the provider. Note that I opted *not* to build a buffering provider to keep things simple:

public class MyMailWebEventProvider : WebEventProvider
{
    string to;
    string from;
    string subjectPrefix;

    public override void Initialize(string name,
        NameValueCollection config)
    {
        base.Initialize(name, config);

        to = GetAndRemoveStringAttribute(config, "to", true);
        from = GetAndRemoveStringAttribute(config, "from", true);
        subjectPrefix = GetAndRemoveStringAttribute(config,
            "subjectPrefix", false);
    }
    public override void ProcessEvent(WebBaseEvent raisedEvent)
    {
        SendMail(raisedEvent);
    }

    private void SendMail(WebBaseEvent raisedEvent)
    {
        string subject = ComputeEmailSubject(raisedEvent);
        string body = ComputeEmailBody(raisedEvent);

        MailMessage msg = new MailMessage(from, to, subject, body);
        new SmtpClient().Send(msg);
    }

    private string ComputeEmailBody(WebBaseEvent raisedEvent)
    {
        WebRequestErrorEvent errorEvent =
            raisedEvent as WebRequestErrorEvent;
        if (null != errorEvent)
            return ErrorEventFormattingHelper.FormatRequestErrorEvent(errorEvent);
        else return raisedEvent.ToString();
    }

    private string ComputeEmailSubject(WebBaseEvent raisedEvent)
    {
        StringBuilder subjectBuilder = new StringBuilder();

        // surface some details in subject about error events
        WebBaseErrorEvent errorEvent = raisedEvent as WebBaseErrorEvent;
        if (null != errorEvent)
        {
            Exception unhandledException = errorEvent.ErrorException;

            // drill through reflection exceptions to show the root cause
            TargetInvocationException invocationException =
                unhandledException as TargetInvocationException;
            if (null != invocationException)
            {
                Exception innerException =
                    DrillIntoTargetInvocationException(invocationException);
                subjectBuilder.AppendFormat("{0}",
                    (innerException ?? invocationException).GetType().Name);
                if (null != innerException)
                    subjectBuilder.Append(" (via reflection)");
            }
            else subjectBuilder.Append(unhandledException.GetType().Name);
        }

        // if we've not got anything better
        // just show the event type in the subject
        if (0 == subjectBuilder.Length)
            subjectBuilder.AppendFormat("Event type: {0}",
                raisedEvent.GetType().Name);

        if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(subjectPrefix)) {
            subjectBuilder.Insert(0, ' ');
            subjectBuilder.Insert(0, subjectPrefix);
        }
        return subjectBuilder.ToString();
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// Reflection often hides exception details, so we try to drill down
    /// through the plumbing exceptions to find a likely cause
    /// </summary>
    private Exception DrillIntoTargetInvocationException(
        TargetInvocationException outerException)
    {
        Exception innerException = outerException.InnerException;
        TargetInvocationException innerInvocationException =
            innerException as TargetInvocationException;
        if (null != innerInvocationException)
            return DrillIntoTargetInvocationException(innerInvocationException);
        else if (null != innerException)
            return innerException;
        else return null;
    }

    private static string GetAndRemoveStringAttribute(NameValueCollection config,
        string attributeName, bool required)
    {
        string value = config.Get(attributeName);
        if (required && string.IsNullOrEmpty(value))
            throw new ConfigurationErrorsException(string.Format(
                "Expected attribute {0}, which is missing or empty.",
                attributeName));
        config.Remove(attributeName);
        return value;
    }

    public override void Flush()
    {
        // nothing to do - this is not a buffering provider
    }

    public override void Shutdown()
    {
        // nothing to do here either
    }
}

Here's a helper class that formats the error messages the way I want to see them. Note that I've omitted some fields that I personally didn't care about, and I've reordered things a bit, so you might want to tweak this if you're going to use it in your own system.

internal static class ErrorEventFormattingHelper
{
    internal static string FormatRequestErrorEvent(
        WebRequestErrorEvent errorEvent)
    {
        CustomEventFormatter formatter = 
            new CustomEventFormatter();

        formatter.AppendLine(string.Format(
            "Unhandled Exception in {0}:",
            WebBaseEvent.ApplicationInformation
            .ApplicationVirtualPath));
        formatter.Indent();
        EmitExceptionAtAGlance(formatter, 
            errorEvent.ErrorException);
        formatter.RevertIndent();

        formatter.AppendLine();
        formatter.AppendLine("Exception stack trace(s):");
        EmitExceptionStackTrace(formatter, 
            errorEvent.ErrorException);

        formatter.AppendLine();
        formatter.AppendLine("Event information:");
        formatter.Indent();
        EmitEventInfo(formatter, errorEvent);
        formatter.RevertIndent();

        formatter.AppendLine();
        formatter.AppendLine("Application information:");
        formatter.Indent();
        EmitApplicationInfo(formatter, 
            WebBaseEvent.ApplicationInformation);
        formatter.RevertIndent();

        formatter.AppendLine();
        formatter.AppendLine("Process/thread information:");
        formatter.Indent();
        EmitProcessInfo(formatter, 
            errorEvent.ProcessInformation);
        formatter.RevertIndent();

        formatter.AppendLine();
        formatter.AppendLine("Request information:");
        formatter.Indent();
        EmitRequestInfo(formatter, 
            errorEvent.RequestInformation);
        formatter.RevertIndent();

        return formatter.ToString();
    }

    private static void EmitEventInfo(
        CustomEventFormatter formatter,
        WebBaseEvent theEvent)
    {
        formatter.AppendLine(string.Format(
            "Event code: {0}",
            theEvent.EventCode.ToString(
            CultureInfo.InvariantCulture)));
        formatter.AppendLine(string.Format(
            "Event message: {0}", 
            theEvent.Message));
        formatter.AppendLine(string.Format(
            "Event time: {0}", 
            theEvent.EventTime.ToString(
            CultureInfo.InvariantCulture)));
        formatter.AppendLine(string.Format(
            "Event ID: {0}", 
            theEvent.EventID.ToString("N", 
            CultureInfo.InvariantCulture)));
    }

    private static void EmitApplicationInfo(
        CustomEventFormatter formatter, 
        WebApplicationInformation appInfo)
    {
        formatter.AppendLine(string.Format(
            "Application domain: {0}", 
            appInfo.ApplicationDomain));
        formatter.AppendLine(string.Format(
            "Application Virtual Path: {0}", 
            appInfo.ApplicationVirtualPath));
        formatter.AppendLine(string.Format(
            "Application Physical Path: {0}", 
            appInfo.ApplicationPath));
    }

    private static void EmitProcessInfo(
        CustomEventFormatter formatter, 
        WebProcessInformation webProcessInfo)
    {
        formatter.AppendLine(string.Format(
            "Process ID: {0}", 
            webProcessInfo.ProcessID.ToString(
            CultureInfo.InvariantCulture)));
        formatter.AppendLine(string.Format(
            "Process name: {0}", 
            webProcessInfo.ProcessName));
        formatter.AppendLine(string.Format(
            "Account name: {0}", 
            webProcessInfo.AccountName));
    }

    private static void EmitRequestInfo(
        CustomEventFormatter formatter, 
        WebRequestInformation webRequestInfo)
    {
        string name = null;
        if (webRequestInfo.Principal != null)
            name = webRequestInfo.Principal.Identity.Name;

        formatter.AppendLine(string.Format(
            "Request URL: {0}", 
            webRequestInfo.RequestUrl));
        formatter.AppendLine(string.Format(
            "Request path: {0}", 
            webRequestInfo.RequestPath));
        formatter.AppendLine(string.Format(
            "User name: {0}", 
            name ?? "[ANONYMOUS]"));
        formatter.AppendLine(string.Format(
            "User host address: {0}", 
            webRequestInfo.UserHostAddress));
    }

    private static void EmitExceptionAtAGlance(
        CustomEventFormatter formatter, 
        Exception exception)
    {
        formatter.AppendLine(string.Format(
            "Type: {0}", 
            exception.GetType().Name));
        formatter.AppendLine(string.Format(
            "Message: {0}", 
            exception.Message));
        if (null != exception.InnerException)
        {
            formatter.Indent();
            formatter.AppendLine("-->Inner Exception");
            EmitExceptionAtAGlance(formatter, 
                exception.InnerException);
            formatter.RevertIndent();
        }
    }

    private static void EmitExceptionStackTrace(
        CustomEventFormatter formatter, Exception exception)
    {
        formatter.AppendLine(exception.StackTrace);

        if (null != exception.InnerException)
        {
            // no point indenting
            // since stack traces typically wrap like crazy
            formatter.AppendLine();
            formatter.AppendLine("-->Inner exception stack trace:");
            EmitExceptionStackTrace(formatter, exception.InnerException);
        }
    }
}

And finally, here's a helper class that manages indentation levels for the output email message:

public class CustomEventFormatter
{
    const int TabSpaces = 4;

    StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
    private int indentLevel;
    private bool startingNewLine = true;

    public void Indent()
    {
        ++indentLevel;
    }

    public void RevertIndent()
    {
        if (indentLevel > 0)
            --indentLevel;
    }

    public void Append(string text)
    {
        if (startingNewLine)
            EmitIndent();
        sb.Append(text);
        startingNewLine = false;
    }

    public void AppendLine(string lineOfText)
    {
        if (startingNewLine)
            EmitIndent();
        EmitIndent();
        sb.AppendLine(lineOfText);
        startingNewLine = true;
    }

    private void EmitIndent()
    {
        sb.Append(' ', TabSpaces * indentLevel);
    }

    public void AppendLine()
    {
        AppendLine(string.Empty);
    }

    public override string ToString()
    {
        return sb.ToString();
    }
}

Build this into a library application and reference it in your config file. Here's an example:

<healthMonitoring>
  <providers>
    <add name="mailWebEventProvider"
         type="MyMailWebEventProvider"
         to="web-fault@fabrikam.com"
         from="website@fabrikam.com"
         buffer="false"
         subjectPrefix="[WEB-ERROR]"
       />
  </providers>
  <rules>
    <add name="All Errors Email"
         eventName="All Errors"
         provider="mailWebEventProvider"
         profile="Default"
         minInstances="1"
         maxLimit="Infinite"
         minInterval="00:01:00"
         custom=""/>
  </rules>
</healthMonitoring>

I recently spoke with a friend who left the DC region for a position in Silicon Valley. When I asked what he thought of the move he said, “Well, you have the same giant buildings with technology company names on the outside rising out of nowhere. You have the same high quality of engineer, but it seems that the difference is in DC, everyone wears a suit or a tie and looks down upon you if you grab a drink at lunch, or unwind like a younger person would.” 

I thought long and hard about his comment and decided that I would have to find out for myself. Is the DC area high tech community really that stuffy? Do people really not enjoy a good stiff drink after a long day? 

Last night, I attended the Twin Tech party, a sponsored happy hour with the worthy goal of “mixing up our vast, and somewhat fragmented technology culture here in the greater DC region”. I can officially say, the DC tech scene is changing and it’s changing fast.

Let’s start with the venue, instead of holding this event in the suburbs (McCormick & Schmicks anyone?) or at a large hotel bar, they chose to have the event at a trendy up-and-coming part of town in what can be best described as one of DC’s hottest bars, Local 16.  Not only that, because of the overwhelming response to attend, they had to rent out the bar next to it as well. 

I expected that I would arrive and find the place mostly empty and have a few suits there chatting over a drink or 2.  Instead I found myself at the overflow bar with a number of young up and comers in the space.  It was impossible to get into the original venue, and the second venue was packed as well!  Amongst all the people I found a friendly, happy, open vibe that allowed for great conversation, and interesting discussion about new technologies and the ideas people had about using and building the future. 

It was the best of both worlds for a young technologist.  I was able to discuss the topics and issues that were most facilitating and relevant (Social Networking from a corporate perspective, new blogging ideas, how new media is helping old media, etc), while still having a great time, and allowing myself to be properly refreshed for a hot DC summer night.

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