The audience at this show has grown over the years. But are the people who are attending the show any different from the people it first attracted 15 years ago? Yes and no. Ten to 12 years ago, it would have been largely cryptographers and technical people. They are still here. But the crowd is much larger. We are now attracting more business people, chief security officers, project managers, CIOs. We attract Wall Street investors, venture capitalists and a whole host of other people including government people. So the audience is much larger, but we still have that core group of cryptographers.

So what's driving the diversity?

First of all, the topic of security continues to be raised in prominence each year. Second it is more mainstream. When you see Bill Gates, John Chambers and Scott McNealy all on the same program you know that security's time has come. The awareness around security has caused the show to become more popular.

How much of the show is about technology?

I think the keynote addresses and the tracks themselves have a fair amount of practical vision in terms of what needs to be solved as opposed to just throwing technology at people. In the Exhibit Hall there is a lot of technology but most companies are smart enough to package it in the form of solutions solving a problem. But, yeah, there is a heck of a lot of technology that is discussed during the course of the week as well.