Thursday, October 9, 2008

My Delayed Review for Open World

Well dear readers, sorry for the delay. I caught a sinus infection on the return flight home to San Diego and took me a week to recover. That and things have been hectic for me.

This year's OpenWorld conference was amazing. Since it was my very first time at OpenWorld as well as speaking at the conference, I had a great time. I want to give thanks to the hundreds of folks who attended my session. Below is a link to my session if you wish to download it:


But first, some photos from the OpenWorld conference.

And Oracle definitely knows how to throw a party with this year's Appreciation event on Treasure Island in San Francisco. I did enjoy the sushi and later on the music from live performances by Seal, Psychedelic Furs (which I remember from high school!), UB40 and Alan Jackson.





The massive Oracle Ferris wheel at the event entrance for the fun Appreciation event was incredible.

Even more amazing and since I love bright neon light shows was the gigantic stage and light show. Reminds me of the city in the sci fi classic movie Blade Runner:



The big news of the event was that Larry announced that Oracle was entering the hardware and storage business called the Exadata database server with HP. I have mixed views on this offering but it should prove interesting! Some details on it:

Here is a photo of the new beast from Oracle and HP:




Of course, no keynote from Larry would be complete without an introduction to his new super trimaran yacht as Larry has a passion for sailing and racing! Alex Gorbachev whom I had the pleasure to meet at the conference posted a nice little video of Larry's new racing boat

All that I can say is wow: I would love to have the chance to be on the racing boat and try to see if I can sail that ship.

Now the best part for me anyways was meeting new colleagues, business contacts and new friends!!!! After all, its really all about the people and sharing tips, tricks and camaraderie. I was fortunate to meet Tim Hall, Arup Nanda, Tom Kyte, Cary Millsap, Lewis Cunningham, Mark Williams, Greg Rahn and many other top Oracle experts at the conference. Poor Tim Hall got ill the last day of the conference and I hope that he is feeling better now. I have enjoyed his Oracle-Base website chock full of Oracle tips and scripts. And not to mention, it was fantastic meeting colleagues from ITC especially my collegues from Buenos Aires, Argentina office.