Heh, I gave a talk last week on cryptography at the St. Louis "Gateway Open Technologies Expo." I was a keynote speaker there, along with Rick Berenstein, Chairman of Xandros.

Here's a review from the Missouri Linux Users' Group:

] About this time Elonka Dunin gave an excellent speech on
] classical cryptography, Kryptos, and the solving of
] Cyrillic Projector. If you missed this speech, you have
] my deepest sympathies. Her passion for solving
] inscrutable puzzles infected the crowd to the point where
] Christine finally had to force everyone out of the room
] to set up for Rick's presentation and Rick announced a
] new rule, he will never follow Elonka at a speaking
] engagement, ever!

LOL! I'm flattered. Berenstein was using the analogy that he felt like a guy with a gazoo who was scheduled to go on stage immediately after a rousing performance by the New York Philharmonic playing "Stars and Stripes Forever." ;)

To his credit though, I found Berenstein to be a charming and intelligent man who is a very entertaining speaker, himself. He had many of his own stories, such as the one about how he helped with getting a green card for Linus Torvalds. And Berenstein's talk on Xandros was interesting and informative. I've even now got a fresh new Xandros Linux partition on my laptop. :)