oracle openworld

Isn’t that that time of the year again? Yes, it is — it’s time for our annual Oracle Bloggers Meetup and of course Oracle is piggybacking OpenWorld with the meetup again! ;) What: Oracle Bloggers Meetup 2011 When: Wed, 5-Oct-2011, 5:00pm Where: Main Dining Room, Jillian’s Billiards @ Metreon, 101 Fourth Street, San Francisco, CA [...]

Like most at OpenWorld, I started the day a tad later than usual after yesterday’s Appreciation Party. I decided to be a little adventurous with my first session and see a non-database related session on Application Integration Architecture as I have an interest in the issue. It was all actually quite interesting with discussions regarding [...]

Thankfully after a decent night’s sleep, I approached Day 4 at Oracle OpenWorld with more energy than I did yesterday. I probably had the most productive morning of the whole conference when I visited the various Oracle product booths in the Exhibition Hall at Moscone South and spoke to many of the database product managers and [...]

  Started Day 3 waking up at 3am and staying awake until San Francisco decided to slowly light up. I have a feeling this summary will be a little briefer than previously … First up was my Unconference Q & A session at Parc 55 Hotel. Considering the overall “Javaness” of the venue and location, I was actually [...]

What a difference a good night’s sleep makes to one’s outlook on life !! Slept soundly until dawn for the first time since arriving to the US and boy, do I feel better for it. After a lazy morning, had a late breakfast at my favourite haunt, Louis Diner, for a breakfast that lasts me all day. The [...]

Yesterday started by me waking up at silly o’clock. The joys of international travel. At least I can see on twitter that I’m not alone.

ACE Director Meeting – Day 1

Since we are not allowed to talk about the content of the meeting, I’m only going to mention the opening talk by Thomas Kurian who gave an overview of the big announcements at OpenWorld this year.

Now you people out there know how cynical I am at times and how underwhelmed I’ve been about some of the previous years big announcements. Well this year I’m blown away. I’m genuinely excited about the events this year. I’ve read some of the press speculation and quite frankly they have all underestimated this years OpenWorld by several orders of magnitude. The press are going to be hit by a barrage of new stuff right across the company. I defy anyone who truly understands enterprise computing to not be impressed by the breadth and scale of the announcements this year.

The thing I liked most about Thomas Kurian’s talk was the passion he delivered it with. I’m not talking about that crazy Ballmer on crack football coach fake crap. I’m talking real passion for the products and the direction of the company.

From my own perspective, I think Oracle taking over Sun was the best thing that could ever have happened to Sun. I know a lot of the Sun fanboys would disagree, but let’s be real. Sun was terminally ill. They had lots of good people, lots of good technology, but were incapable of giving it any direction at all. They were a mess. The only way they were going to survive was by getting some vision. Enter uncle Larry. I must admit to not understanding Oracle’s motives for the Sun deal, but this year it’s all starting to make sense to me. I look forward to seeing the press frenzy.

Based on emails I’ve received, I know a number of you are keen to attend some of my sessions at Oracle OpenWorld this year so a few updates for your information. I’ll keep this blog entry as up to date as I can with the latest information as it comes to hand, so keep checking back [...]

Counting down. The details are finally organized — this year, we have not one, but TWO great prizes at the Oracle OpenWorld Bloggers Meetup.

1) T-shirt art contest on stylish Pythian designer t-shirts — one lucky blogger will receive an HP X310 Data Vault, generously sponsored again this year by HP.

2) For the best, most creative blog post about the meetup itself, Pythian is giving away an Apple TV. But, there are a few small rules:

1. the blog post must use as many names of people in attendance as possible.
2. the blog post must be readable. It needs to make sense to someone who wasn’t there. It must be a story and not a list.
3. the blog post must contain one other small tidbit of information about each individual that you’ll uncover during your “networking” as you weave your fascinating stories of the evening (like their blog name, a contact detail, favorite color, title, hobby, cat’s name, certification, what they were drinking, how much they had to drink…).
4. the entry must be posted by midnight on Sunday the 26th of September. Please reference this post in your blog and it should be automatically picked up by the blog engine and posted in the comment as a track-back (if it doesn’t appear in the comments for some reason — please do post the link in your comment!

Can you tell we’re trying to encourage a little more mingling? :)

And last but not least — all this couldn’t be happening without Vanessa Simmons who’s been orchestrating all of the fun this year. Thanks Vanessa!