Thursday, September 23, 2010

OOW 2010: Day 3

I'm skipping Day 2 altogether...not really, as I did release a 1.5 version yesterday.

Last night, or the other .5 which made up a full day 2, was fun, as usual. Jake has introduced John and I to a host of people, essentially our guide to all things Oracle.

Oh yeah, and Jake got caught by the shoe shine con on the way back from the Moscone center.



Rumor has it, Jon Mead got caught by the same con today, no pictures however.

I skipped breakfast in order to catch up on some sleep, waking up around 10. I got to actually talk to my wife without having to rush through the call, which was nice.

I then headed down to the Moscone Center, without my sherpa, and managed to make it without getting lost. My goal today was fairly simple, find Jeff Smith, aka @hillbillyToad, in the exhibition hall.

After arriving and not not finding Jeff at his station, I accused the Quest folks of lying to me, saying that Jeff wasn't really in San Francisco, that is was all a big ruse..."he's at lunch" didn't fly with me. My investigative side smelled a rat...

Sadly, my investigative side isn't very good, and he was in town, only at lunch, at Chevy's. So I joined him and some of his co-workers for some lunch, only I had water.

I then headed over to the Thirsty Bear, where Oracle. Closed. World. was being held. I had been searching for it for 2 days and now I had a great lead. Somehow I talked my way into this who's who of Oracle super stars, scoring my new favorite T-Shirt ever.



The lineup there was pretty awesome. I finally got some more details on a session I attended on Monday which severely disappointed me (concerning a recent Exadata implementation). Then Chen Shapira gave a great presentation on the NoSQL "database". Filled with facts and humor, she delivered an exciting look into the awesomeness of NoSQL databases...and then she slipped up, multiple times. See, Chen has something of an accent, and when she started saying "fax" and "faxing", me and my 12 year old self, had to point out that when she said "fax" it sounded a lot like a fun curse word. I wasn't completely rude, because it seemed the entire audience was hearing the same thing I was.

It most definitely had nothing to do with this:



Next up, Guiseppe, aka the datacharmer, who gave a short talk on MySQL, completely off the top of his head. Apparently no one, in their right might, should ever use MySQL's procedural language (their version of PL/SQL).

Somewhere in there, I actually filled my belly with food. I hadn't eaten since the night before, so those 2 beers were...ummm...affecting my judgement.

Kevin Closson was up next. Seriously smart dude, who talked about nothing that I could possibly understand, but did so in a way that was still fun. I now know a few more ways I can be dangerous by offering up advice that makes me sound smart.



That puts the time around 4:30, also known as nap time. But I had to persevere, as the blogger meetup was in an hour.

I'll add more stuff later...my connection sucks and I can't post all the pictures I want too. You can still check out all the pictures I have taken since arriving in San Francisco though, top right corner of the page...until then.

1 comment:

Bradd Piontek said...

So the exadata session on Monday was a disappointment? I was wondering how it went. The devil is in the details. I was hoping this particular presentation would e full of details (unlike the webinar that I attended a month or so ago)