More managerial stupidity

Rants
Yeah, I know, that's redundant. Management (of which I'm apparently a part of, as I have the title manager, but am not allowed to 'manage' anything important), has lost their friggin minds around my workplace.

See, I do computer security. Won't say for whom, or who our clients are, or where, since there are nosy little pricks in my group who love nothing more than to raise their status amongst the management by tattling on others. Apparently they don't have enough to do already, they have to be the Internet police for everyone else. We've already had one person who got grief for vague references to clients, so I figure better to be safe than sorry. But that does explain why the level of special projects is so much higher in the offices where little bitches like this don't work. I thought that I didn't have to worry about that once I got past 3rd grade, but apparently not. So be it.

So, a proposal was submitted to our management to speak at a technical conference where other computer security experts (and when I say experts, I mean like the people who WRITE antivirus software, anti-spyware stuff, etc, not like your standard security architect geek guy) are presenting stuff. We were given the opportunity to present at this conference. But since we are now micromanaged (after the reorganization), we have to run all speaking engagements past the "Speaking Engagement CZAR". Ok, that's not really his title, but close enough.
So, the person submitting this proposal filled out all the paperwork, like a good little minion, and submitted it, expecting that it would be a no-brainer.
Apparently, that's only half correct. The guy is a no-brainer, attending the conference was denied. Apparently reaching out to the Information Security community and getting our name out amongst the leaders of the field isn't enough of a motivation or "something we should spend time on or that it supports the (insert group name here) strategy". Yep, instead of actually showing our information security expertise to the people who matter most in our industry, I guess we should just shut up and do external penetration tests.

Man, I gotta hit the Lotto soon....