I attended my first MAAWG meeting this week in San Francisco. If you’re not familiar with the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group and play in the messaging industry, I would highly recommend looking into the organization. While I would love to tell you about all of the interesting revelations, news, and techniques discussed at the event, the group goes by the Vegas motto — “what goes on in Vegas, err, a MAAWG meeting, stays in the meeting.” However, while the rules require that members do not write about or share information presented or discussed at the meetings, I can at least introduce you to the organization, as well as describe how you can benefit from the working group.
In short, MAAWG is a forum where e-mail producers, consumers, and innovators meet to tackle the challenges associated with messaging abuse. Unlike some of your typical conferences, the working group concentrates on solving problems, not vendors selling products. The best and the brightest technical people from message senders, ISPs, and messaging product companies work together to create industry best practices, share forensic data to improve anti-abuse measures, and discuss advances in technology and ongoing research. I was impressed with the level of information sharing between those on the front lines despite the fact that outside of the event, many are direct competitors. It was nice to see that collaboration for the greater good.
Beyond the presentations and committee meetings, I thought the “hallway track” provided tremendous networking opportunities. Senders can address issues with ISPs directly with the people responsible for mail flow at the ISP, complimentary message product representatives can discuss ways to work together to improve their offerings, etc. As you can see by the MAAWG Members Roster, you have direct access to people from most of the major ISPs, messaging providers, and message product vendors.
Additionally, if you are an enterprise, you are probably dealing with message abuse in one way or another and will benefit from the information sharing at the working group. Take a look at some of the best practice reports MAAWG publishes which can be used to improve your messaging infrastructure.
As you can tell, I enjoyed my first MAAWG experience and think there are many benefits to those that want to participate in the future. If you’re in the messaging space (message sender, ISP, mailbox provider, or solutions provider), I recommend reading more about what MAAWG does and consider joining, attending meetings, and participating in the committees.
In my next few posts, I’ll share more insights from the meetings (things that have been published publicly) as well as give an update on one of my previous postings based on what I learned at MAAWG.
