Showing posts with label 2010. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2010. Show all posts

Monday, October 18, 2010

OOW 2010: Blogger Meetup - The Winner!

After waiting for Vanessa to get back from either OOW Detox, vacation, or just life, the winners of the Apple TV have finally been announced.

Sunil Ranka, this guy:



Won one (yes! more than 1) of the Apple TVs with his post Mapping the Maze, Online Bloggers to Real World Faces : Pythian Blogger Meetup at OOW10.

Guess who won the other one? Go ahead, take a moment.

Part I - Part II - Part III - Part IV - Part V

You know when the teacher says, "I need a one page paper on George Washington" and one of your classmates turns in 10 pages, like, the week before it's due? Apparently I'm that guy.

I may have scared off a few people from writing about the event. That wasn't my intention, but apparently I did want it.

So, my first Apple product (wifey does have an iPhone). It should be interesting, I'm sure I'll report back here once I figure it all out.

Thanks to Pythian, HP and OTN for supporting the event. Thanks to Pythian for giving away the Apple TV.
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Sunday, October 3, 2010

OOW 2010: The Appreciation Event

By: Anonymous Unicorn
This post started as an email from a friend of mine (yes, I have one or two), who is also my unicorn (someone who has worked with me and would consider it again, there are so few). I thought it was funny and asked him immediately if I could post it, he agreed, but wanted to expand a little bit.

I did not attend the appreciation event, I gave my ticket away. At the Blogger Meetup, I looked at the lines to get on the buses and I didn't want any part of it. I gave my ticket away.

At the OpenWorld appreciation event they split out their 6 bands on two stages going simultaneously all night. They went all out...there was a carnival in the back where the rides and games were free. Of course with 41,000 people attending OOW the obvious drawback would be transportation, so being on the most popular bus route meant the better part of an hour standing in line both to and from the event. That was expected, but it was the food situation that stuck in my mind.

When we arrived, we swam through masses of people, Berlin playing on the outside stage, and English Beat playing inside a sound stage next door. Not having eaten in 7 hours, the goal was food and drink. After examining the two stages, and seeing no signs of food and drink, I had to get out the map. Everything was in the back, so away we headed following the masses. We got to the food tent...huge tent, nicely decorated inside and out. No food was visible, but we could see clusters of people surrounding what appeared to be circular table configurations, looked like a shark feeding frenzy. Must be food! We tried to lean into one of the feeding stations, and while we realized it was in fact food, being 5 people deep, I couldn’t identify what was there.

Fortunately a server came by and said there were 23 food stations in two tents and the second tent was less busy. We quickly retreated and shuffled amongst the heavy crowd, out of one tent and into the next. This one had 4 long buffets and a handful of feeding stations. While we could actually see what was being served here, the problem was everyone in this tent queued up and lines were LONG.

I stood in one line for a bit and realized that no one else knew what was going on either, they just got in line because that seemed to be the thing to do. These are all highly paid professionals acting like carnal beasts in one tent or lemmings in the other, men, women, old, young, no difference. To me both options were ridiculous so I went over to see what was actually on the table... it wasn't even food...just hors d’oevres like cheeses and grapes! Starving, I cut in real quick (which didn’t affect the stagnant line) grabbed a small paper plate and put a spoonful of couscous on a plate with a few grapes and stood off to the side devouring it within 6 steps as I scanned for the real food.

There it was! Small ribs, fancy spaghetti, can’t even remember what else was there because I never got the opportunity to eat it, but I decided to try by finding the end of the line... I kept walking until I realized I’d rather starve than stand in a line that long. I calculated each 4 table station is supposed to serve as many as 2000 people, and understood what the real situation was: survival. I took my small, but at this point, very valuable plate, and cut in for a few small ribs and decided to go watch Berlin until the lines died down. For now the immediate hunger had simmered down.

I watched Berlin for a few songs, shuffled in to see a few Don Henley songs in the sound stage, then reversed right back out to get in position for the Black Eyed Peas (because they decided to put their two best acts on at the same time). I suppose I made the mistake of trying to get close but standing on the floor and being less than 6’4” tall, all I could do was watch the otherwise very nice screens. A girl all of 5 foot tall stood between me and the stage holding up a stuffed dog as high as she could and made it dance with every song... it was all she could do because I’m not certain she could even see the video screens... great show, and worth the effort to come. When it ended at 11:30pm I made a beeline back to the food tents. I was alone at this point because it was 2:30am eastern time.

Mistake. Both tents looked like apocalyptic wastelands with tired people trudging along table to table, tent to tent to find food. People were tired and in much fewer numbers. Some were collapsed at the few tables around the edges, and scavengers were picking scraps off the feeding stations, still in lines, and many lines had more people than food. The whole thing was surreal. There was actually some couscous left, but since last time they had introduced a few plates of brownies and cookies here and there. When you’re hungry, cookies just don’t cut it, so I dove in for some more couscous and a couple brownies, and after scanning both tents realized it was a cookie or nothing. One table left, a couple plates of cookies, no line.. it was like heaven!

So I’m pretty thirsty by now... and no, there were no drinks in the food tents that I ever identified. Fortunately the beverage booths around the carnival were still well stocked and hardly any lines at this point. I got a half-can of sierra mist (I guess it exists because it fits nicely in a cup with ice) and tried to figure out what to do next. Lots of people left, but apparently the carnival games are free, and unlike the food lines, these lines were moving ok. I can’t leave without trying can I? I decided to try 1 game, chose the game with the biggest prize and stood in the 4-line basketball game for 20 minutes watching hundreds of shots, most of which didn’t hit the rim or even the backboard. One girl won in my line, which I thought was awesome, because it’s actually possible to win. The guy in front of me talked a lot of trash and spent a lot of time plotting his strategy only to brick it like the others. Two shots each, my first shot was a brick too....second went right in! It’s true those rims barely fit the ball, but it is possible! That large stuffed animal forced me to check in a bag on the flight home, but my daughter loved it.

I caught several Steve Miller songs on the way out... it was awesome, I forgot how blues oriented he is, but I knew I had very little sleep ahead of me, so I had to cut out early and back to the buses I went. Lucky #13 bus line was 5 times as long as any other bus line and in retrospect I might have been better off being dropped off somewhere in the middle of San Francisco 3 miles from my hotel at 1am than to stand in that line... but like a good lemming, I stayed, knowing that not many hours later is my next session, and the next night would be spent on a plane rather than in a bed, heading back to the East Coast. But it was worth it.
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Sunday, September 26, 2010

OOW 2010: Blogger Meetup - Part V

Part I - Part II - Part III - Part IV - Part V

Alright, this is it. I think 5 posts is enough and I'm sure you're quite sick of it.

This was the first time (at the conference) I had met Alex Gorbachev, I asked him to do his Heisman pose for me. He looked at me like I was nuts. You know the one...



Normal Alex looks like this:



For whatever reason, I thought he would be a giant. Perhaps it's the name, I don't know.

That happened quite a lot; I had created mental images of everyone that I had never met, some matched, many didn't. Someone told me they thought I would be a lot shorter (maybe because I'm kinda round). Anyway.

Martin Paul Nash is up next. He owns one of my favorite named blog sites, ORAganism. We met on Sunday at the Exadata SIG in true geek/nerd style:





I almost left the first picture out, you know, courtesy and all that. But what the heck?



Here's a much better one of him with George Woods, though I'm not sure exactly what he's doing



George is from Tennessee (cue Rocky Top song) but I did not find out if he was a Vols fan or not. George created the list for Oracle OpenWorld attendees who are on Twitter here.

Next up, Tim Hall and Tariq Farooq. Tim is the one signing, Tariq is the one with the beard and no shirt (DQ'd right?).



Tariq was my second favorite at the event behind Jason Arneil. He came up and gave me this giant bear hug when he saw me or realized I was that guy.

Tim Hall is always at the top of my list. He gets the award for most frequent wearer of the oraclenerd T-Shirt. Check it out:
I'm pretty sure that covers at least 3 different conferences. I have another one, which I promised not to post, which has Tim...well, let's just say it came out funny.

Despite telling me I don't know how to count, I will not post the picture of her from the meetup. Eyes shut (blinding flash) and so on. I'll be nice a put this one up:



That's her, Stanley and Dan Norris there on Saturday.

I've had a run in with Stanley before...and it wasn't pretty, for Stanley that is. Can you say "fat guy in a little coat"? Poor Stanley.



Sadley I didn't get any information on Philip Mwai, other than that he was the current president of Kenya. He's in the middle there.



Flanking him are his 2 security guards. I'm guessing this was near the end of the event.

In the image below, you have Vanessa Simmons, Chen Shapira, Alex Gorbachev, Jason Arneil, Paul Vallee (maybe, it was the hair that gave it away if so), and quite possibly a Sheeri Cabral sighting. You'll note that I offended Miss Cabral the other day by thinking she was someone else. I'm sure she'll get me back someday.



Have I talked about Chen yet? Oh wait, I did.

How about Roel Hartman? I have no pictures of this guy, he scared me a little bit. On Sunday evening, he jumped out of some dark corner and attacked me. That's how it seemed anyway. Roel and I were supposed to meet at COLLABORATE, but he was foiled by the Ash Cloud. I taunted him from Vegas I'm sure which probably prompted him to scare me like that. We ran into each other again on Tuesday night as I happened to be at the same bar as the APEX meetup. I don't think he jumped out at me there. I guess we were even.

David Haimes? What, no pictures? I was slacking near the end or most likely trying to save my phone from dying. We didn't talk much at the meetup, but we ended up together for (more) drinks and dinner. For some reason I thought he was from Nebraska...but he had a funny accent, I think it was British. Apparently he's Mr. Fusion Financials (if there is such a title, if not, I'll make it one as I'm wont to do).

Sunil Ranka whom I met at COLLABORATE this year and appears in quite a few photos, though none at this event. He's an OBIEE dude and an Oracle ACE. He's also a showoff as seen here.



I'm pretty sure that's some other award he was "rubbing my nose" in (yes, I am allowed to make whatever I want up here...my blog).

I did get Mr. OTN, Justin Kestelyn to sign my shirt, but we didn't get to talk much. He seems to be in high demand.

Tim Hall introduced me to Sve...Sve...Svetoslav Gyurov. Sve I'm not going to ever say your name right, so I'm sticking with Sve. He came all the way from Bulgaria and he had actually read my blog. He was super tall as well. I asked him how often he heard, "How's the weather up there?" and no sooner did he finish did someone walk up to him and ask him that exact question.

Vanessa Simmons...have I talked about her yet? I told her from the start that she was cheating. Knowing me, it may have been completely inappropriate, so I won't rehash it here. ($10 (canadian) says she laughs when she reads this though).

Editor's Note: I just realized I left out Espen Barroso-Gomez. We didn't get to talk as long as I would have liked, but he did share with me that he loved the Yo Gabba Gabba links I put up. Or maybe it was just one of them. The one of the Banana song by the Aggrogolites. His kids have to hear it every morning! I did forget to ask him, after finding out he was from Oslo, if he knew someone from Bergen...but there have to be more than 3 people there right? I hear there's quite a rivalry between Oslo and Bergen though, so it's probably best I didn't ask.

Last, but certainly not least, were my compatriots during this week of fun. John Piwowar (author of the "PeeVoVar Challenge") and Jake "don't punch me in the kidney chet" Kuramato. John graciously allowed me to stay with him this week and didn't kick me out after the first night, like Lewis Cunningham did. I could tell you all kinds of secret info on John, but I signed an NDA...sorry.

As for Jake...that would take forever. DO NOT WANT! is the T-shirt he is wearing. I just looked it up because I was too lazy to ask him. He probably would have chided me too. I seem to have this nasty habit of answering all of Jake's rhetorical questions. So, if you get the chance, answer one of Jake's rhetorical questions and watch the fun ensue.

Oh yeah, he's a picture of Jake goosing me. It was quite shocking. I think he muttered something about "When in Rome..."



Summary
Yeah, I bet you thought I would never stop. I have. A whopping 5 part series on the Blogger Meetup alone. I'm not that good of a writer, nor am I succinct. Besides, it just felt normal to write all this.

I had an absolute blast at Oracle OpenWorld and the Blogger Meetup specifically. It was a great experience to put the names to faces...and I just don't want to forget.

Thanks again to HP, Pythian and OTN for making this possible.
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OOW 2010: Blogger Meetup - Part IV

Part I - Part II - Part III - Part IV - Part V

Here's the exhaustive list that I have compiled of people I know where there. I do know that I did not meet everyone, so if I left you off, let me know and I'll add you (with a note from your doctor of course).

You can all thank me later for this list. It has taken hours to get all these links for all these people. At least next time, I won't have to do it. Plus, as I told John, I need this so I don't have to go looking someone up each and every time I want to link them up. I had a partial list before Oracle OpenWorld started, but it's now much more complete.Part I - Part II - Part III
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Friday, September 24, 2010

OOW 2010: Blogger Meetup - Part III

Part I - Part II - Part III - Part IV - Part V

Also known as the Wall of Shame edition.

OK, I'm going to switch it up a little bit. I've written quite a bit already in the hopes of winning that Apple TV, or not, but it's been a good exercise to help me remember everyone that I met; I win either way.

Wall of Shame
What follows is my list of those who attended Oracle OpenWorld (or some derivation there of) but didn't attend the Blogger Meetup.

Some of these people may have been there...it was a long day for me which included multiple adult beverages. If you were there and I didn't see you, just let me know and I'll remove you from the Wall of Shame.

I know there was a lot to do and many of us had to actually do some work while there.

If you know someone else who was in town, but didn't show up, let me know and I'll add them. :)
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OOW 2010: Blogger Meetup - Part II

Part I - Part II - Part III - Part IV - Part V

First, a little backstory to the event.

I finally found Oracle. Closed. World. on Thursday, or at least a schedule of events. I ran into Cary Millsap outside of Chevy's and we headed over together...we talked about performance...of the Rays and Rangers and the fact that he was going to hold me to getting him playoff tickets if the 2 played in Tampa. Fair enough.

We were the first to arrive, so I ordered a water. Then others showed up and started to order beer. I didn't want to disappoint, so I ordered one as well. Then another, and another. (How does anyone survive these events? I know I am a rookie, especially in regards to some of these people, but...goodness, it will take me a year to detox). Did I mention that I had yet to eat that day? Important point. Fortunately for me, food was eventually served...but the damage had already been done. It was 3 PM and I was quite, umm, happy.

By 4:30 or so I had left and met Jake at the 4th Street Bar crashing his party of 2. I had a beer with them...then John showed up and we headed over to Jillian's for the meetup.

Let's start with Sheeri Cabral [blog|twitter|LinkedIn]. I'm waiting for confirmation from Sheeri, but I think I now know who she is/was that day (that's why I gave the backstory). I have a shirt with her signature, twice, right-side-up and upside-down. There were 3 women at the meetup. Vanessa was one and Chen/Gwen Shapira was the other. She had to be the 3rd.

As I am piecing together the events of that day, Sheeri (again, if confirmed) was at Oracle. Closed. World. as well. You see, I have an ID10T problem. Sadly I didn't talk to her that much, I have been reading about her for years and always wanted to meet her. So, Sheeri, I apologize for that. Perhaps next year I'll do better.

Editor's Note: Sheeri was not the one I had thought she was, though you would think I would have remembered seeing "Pam from The Office" look-alike. Like I said, adult beverages.



On to someone I can confirm with 100% certainty...as much as someone with multiple beverages consumed can be 100% sure of anything.

Brian "Bex" Huff [blog|twitter|LinkedIn]. Like Dan, I met him last year at COLLABORATE. He's got a hot wife who I believe works for Oracle. He does UCM type stuff, similar if not the same as the kilted guy, Billy Cripe (who was like the mythical unicorn this year).



You may also remember Bex from this great Superman shot (no offense Jason):



Now on to Greg Rahn [blog|twitter|LinkedIn]. Same as Sheeri (if confirmed), he was at Oracle. Closed. World. Fortunately for me, he may have had at least one beer as well. I initially thought Greg was in the wrong place...way to young and good looking to be as accomplished as he is. (Editor's Note: This may be the "best looking bloggers" post). He's also got a wicked tongue and thankfully I was not (yet anyway) on the wrong end of it (boy, that just doesn't sound right).



How about the TalentedApps crew? Amy Wilson [blog|twitter] and Meg Bear [blog|twitter] (which I keep thinking is just her handle, and not her real last name). I'm pretty sure I gave them both a hard time about never replying to my comments on their site. They promised to do better in the future. Did I mention I had one-to-many adult beverages?

Oh yeah, Amy's husband Paul has a hilarious blog on being a stay at home dad, called Big Daddy Paul. Check it out, good stuff.

Sorry guys, no pictures of Amy or Meg.

Editor's Note: Amy left a comment and told me I don't know how to count, which shouldn't shock too many people. She also sent me a picture of herself and Meg. Amy is on the left and Meg is on the right. Thanks Amy!



I have to be really nice here...as this person already suspects, or believes, that I am evil incarnate. Chen (pronounced more like Gwen) Shapira [blog|twitter|LinkedIn|company]. She was the inspiration behind the "faxing" meme. She thought I was only incorrigible online, but I proved otherwise. Chen signed my shirt "Gwen faxing around" to prove that she has a great sense of humor.

I don't believe I'm even close to finished, but I will call this one a wrap.

To be continued...
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OOW 2010: Blogger Meetup - Part I

Part I - Part II - Part III - Part IV - Part V

There appears to be some kind of competition as a result of this years Oracle OpenWorld Bloggers Meetup. The prize is an Apple TV, which me thinks would be nice to have.

This year's event was sponsored by OTN, HP and Pythian (for the 2nd year in a row I believe).

Here are the 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!

This year's title:



So, something of a story huh? I should be able spin a yarn here.

I met Leighton Nelson [blog|twitter|LinkedIn] on the first day of the conference. We had been trading tweets for a few months now, and most recently I helped him find the Oracle client version installed on a machine by using tnsping. Twitter FTW! He's also from Jamaica and despite common perceptions, he does not have dreadlocks. Apparently not everyone from Jamaica has dreadlocks...go figure. Here's Leighton signing Dan Norris' shirt where I believe Leighton had just stabbed him...or not.

Since I just mentioned Dan [blog|twitter|LinkedIn], I might as well go on to him. I met Dan IRL last year at COLLABORATE. Nice guy who has a penchant for warm cheese curds (yuk?). He signed everyone's shirt "Dan The Exadata Man" or something along those lines. I'm pretty sure he had a beer in hand, what kind, I don't know. I do know that he likes a good glass of scotch at the end of the night...as we seemed to be together every single night. He honored me one night be wearing the offical v2 oraclenerd t-shirt and he also seems to have some kind of crush on me, or he was just aghast at the size of my skull.



Next it was Jason Arneil [blog|twitter|LinkedIn]. You may know Jason from his avatar:



This is him in real life, down at the far left:



Hopefully this isn't a Superman thing where I just gave away his true identity.

I was especially happy to meet Jason as he came up to me and told me how he admired and appreciated my postings on katezilla. It's really hard for me to express how much that meant to me...for this guy that only knows me online to share that with me...pure faxing awesome. Hopefully one of these days I can make it over to the UKOUG and meet up with him again. Thanks so much Jason.

OK, this post is running long...so I'm going to do a multi-part series. I wonder if that will count towards the Apple TV? Who cares. Writing this all down helps me cement the great people I met.

Part II - Part III
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Thursday, September 23, 2010

OOW 2010: Memes

1. If you asked me where I was from, I probably said "America's wang" this week. That's a nod to Homer Simpson. I keep trying to get LC to say that too.

2. John came up with "biological imperative" - it was repeated often.

3. Kidney punch. I "punched" Jake in the spine on Sunday evening and said "I just punched you in your kidney" - he then gave me a hard time about that for the rest of the week (I may have been drinking at the time)

4. I asked Jake where John was 42 times in one hour on Monday or Tuesday. I was annoying. I tried to do it as often as possible the rest of the trip.

5. Chen Shapira and "faxing" - awesome.

6. My fight with Stephen Hawking.

7. The IT Crowd. Some time ago, Jake posted These Are Our Users. It doesn't look like I left a comment, but I did send him an email about it. There was an episode where Roy and Moss play a joke on Jen, telling her the internet is this little black box. Anyway, watch the video.

8. The Piwowar Challenge - I had no idea how to say John's last name prior to meeting him in person. It was quite different from what I expected. Apparently the "w" is pronounced as a "v". Who knew? Next thing we knew, people were parrotting the PeeVoVar Challange. Awesome. Not quite sure who started it.

That's all I can remember right now. Feel free to remind me of others, as I'm sure I forgot a few.
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OOW 2010: Faxing Awesome!

The title? You should say that in your best Chen Shapira accent. :)

I tend to post this video about once a month on twitter.

It's not a new commercial/video, but it's funny.



I love the guy at the beginning who asks about the jar and then says "F***ing awesome." Then drops a quarter in the jar. I just like the way he said it.
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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.
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Tuesday, September 21, 2010

OOW 2010: Day 1.5

Very difficult to wake up this morning. Lots of walking, plus lots of eating and drinking and of course lots of information being crammed into this giant noggin.

Went to breakfast with Jake and John and was met with another...well, male tramp stamp:



Seems to be a recurring theme around here. Last night it was just plain old ass crack:



After breakfast, we headed over to the JavaOne demo ground, where I met my first, um, not nice person. Bumped into him in a crowded hall, I turned and apologized and then he barked at me. Classy dude.

After the demo ground, we had close to 2 hours to kill before my first scheduled session, and I just crashed. Could not figure out how I was going to keep myself awake. Back to the hotel to take a nap before the session...and of course I slept right through it. All the way until 1:40, I missed the session. Sad for me, as it was Cary Millsap's Thinking Clearly About Performance.

But I did have time to make lunch with the incomparable Floyd Teter, so I headed on down to the 4th Street Grill and Bar. It was a fairly small group, John, Jake, Rich and Anthony and then Ted Simpson and Mike Knect joined us near the end.



Now I am sitting in the AppsLab session, Web Center: A Web Developer's Playground. They are the original creators of Oracle Mix (public) and Oracle Connect (an internal Oracle application). Rich and Anthony are very smart and passionate, I may not now what they are talking about all the time, but passion is hard to ignore.
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OOW 2010: Day 1

I don't know if it is Day 1 or Day 2, I'll leave that up to you.

I started out the day having a nice breakfast with Jake and John. Tomorrow hopefully I'll have a picture of how John eats his pancakes, including an awesome explanation of why he eats them the way he does.

John and I then headed down to Moscone North, the press/blogger area specifically. We figured we had to check out the accommodations. Not too shabby, it was nice and quiet with both power and a hardline. There seemed to be much more serious folks in there...in comparison with us anyway.

John finally left for his session, I can't remember what it was and then I left for mine, picking up Lewis Cunningham [blog|twitter] on the way.

My first (and only) session of the day was Implementing Oracle Exadata: An IBM DB2-to-Oracle Exadata Case Study. I'm in the midst of the same type of conversion and was hoping that I could pick up a few tips. Unfortunately for me, it was mostly surrounding Exadata, which I don't have much involvement with at this client.



But it was interesting...I had interviewed with LinkShare a few months ago, simply because I was trying to find a way to stay home more often. Things didn't work out for that particular job, which was OK as my current gig has lots of opportunities to learn.

I did have a session scheduled following that one, but I apparently went to the wrong place. Which makes perfect sense, since I didn't have my sherpa with me.

So I headed back to the press room where I got to talk to my family, which was nice. This is the longest I have been away from home, ever. Painful for all of us.

Next up I was planning to head on over to the OTN Lounge at the Mason Street tent to see Dan Norris speak about Exadata when I saw this tweet from Dan:



That made it super easy to head on over...it was 6:00 EST, so I was well within my rights to have a beer.

When I arrived, I found Dan and Justin in some nice studio setup at the "top" of the lounge (the lounge is a tent along Mason Street, naturally, but it's also a hill, which made it...interesting to navigate).



About that time I ran into Jake again, with his teammates in tow, Rich Manalang and Anthony Lai. I have been reading about them for a couple of years now, but had never gotten to meet them.

The 4 of us headed over to Puccinni and Pinetti to wait for John and our dinner reservation at Morton's. While there, Anthony commandeered my phone and decided to (semi)root it, I can now tether my phone! I think Anthony was a little nervous...he didn't want to break anything, but I had been having problems with the phone, so I let him do his thing.

When John finally showed up, we walked up to Morton's. A few hours later with great conversation and great food, we headed back to the Urban Tavern to meet up with Dan Norris. Jake's kidney hurt from multiple body blows, so he bowed out early, but not before I was able to catch this shot, the oraclenerd T-Shirt, v1 and v2:



Finally, Dan then spotted this wonderful scene:



At which point it was time to leave...

Tommorrow should be interesting, I'm on a quest to find this thing called Oracle ClosedWorld.
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Monday, September 20, 2010

OOW 2010: Fun with Pictures

On Saturday night John, Ben, and I ran into Dan Norris at the Urban Tavern, the bar in the Hilton. After scaring away the rest of his team, we sat down (or did I sit down first and then scare them away?).

Soon after Joe Leva showed up, spotted us through the window actually. I asked if he saw my ORACLENERD hat, he said no, that it was Dan's squared off conservative haircut that gave us away. Apparently Joe and Dan worked together at Piocon.

I've been re-introduced to Joe recently as someone at my client site worked there as well. Anyway...

I was trying to take a picture of Joe and John, and apparently he was taking a picture of Dan and I at the same time.





Please note the admiration that Dan apparently holds for me...I am quite honored.
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OOW 2010: Day 0

Today was the official start of Oracle OpenWorld, JavaOne and Oracle Develop. 41,000 some odd people descending upon the city of San Francisco...madness.

John and I were up early (relatively speaking of course), but I think John was up like 3 hours before me. I am surprised he didn't punch me in the kidney or something to wake me up.

With my new found sherpa (I am navigationally challenged), we headed down to register in the hopes of beating the crowd. That didn't work out so well. Lines were long. Fortunately both of us have blogger credentials and they had a special line for us (FTW!)...we were in and out in 5 minutes.

We then headed over to the Exadata SIG, which was a pretty informal gathering of customers, implementers and some Oracle representation (Anita Jackson and Phil Stephenson specifically, with a special guest appearance by Dan Norris).

After that, John and I split up. He's an UPPER( 'dba' ) and I am not. I was interested in the BI offerings, specifically the latest release of OBIEE 11g.

At this point (4:41 AM EST), I don't remember exactly what I attended, but I will try and recall what I can.

First up I believe was a session by the esteemed Jon Mead [blog|twitter], of RittmanMead fame (but not quite the Person of the Year). This was basically the life cycle of a BI/DW implementation in the retail sector on top of Exadata (v1). Of course I had to ask questions...specifically around the methodology they employed. Specifically, I wanted to know what tools they used (Trac Wiki, Subversion, etc) and how they used them.

In between sessions, I got to run into old friends and meet some new ones. Let's see, I met Christian Screen of BICG, Pete Scott of RittmanMead, Sunil Ranka, Jon Mead (naturally), and quite a few others. This is the part of this event that I really like, the opportunity to meet some of the industry leaders, people I can really learn from. I received an Oracle ACE designation last November, but I still feel like I am way out of my league...

Speaking of Oracle ACEs, I went on a dinner cruise this evening with Oracle ACEs and Oracle ACE Directors. I would call it a booze cruise, but that might not be politically correct. Who cares?

Got to meet Dan Vlamis, Roel Hartman, Cary Millsap (who I got to talk quite a bit about baseball with...a nice departure from the regular technical talk), Marco Gralike and some others for the first time. Also got to see some others that I had met previously like Ian Abramson (former IOUG President), Mark Rittman (of course, but he wasn't sporting his person of the year credentials)...and probably I few I have forgotten (they were serving beer and wine at this event).

Overall, Day 0 was awesome. I got to talk to so many people and learn a few new things. Asked questions, lots of questions. This is why I love these events.

Oh yeah, I met my unicorn, you know, the one person in the world who has worked with me in the past and would actually consider working with me in the future. :)



If you have never been to OpenWorld, Kaleidoscope, COLLABORATE, you must go to one of these events. Not only for the people that you meet but it invigorates you and gives you a greater sense of purpose (and also makes you feel pretty small).
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OOW 2010: Sunday Keynote

What follows are my notes from the event. I had no connection so I opened GEdit and wrote a bunch of stuff down.

Editor's Note:
Arrived about 5 minutes before the keynote started. Met up with Leighton just outside and we both managed to get pictures in front of the Iron Man suits.

Since I was late (read, not early), I have no wifi and just barely got power, otherwise I'd be writing this entire thing on my phone. I'm just posting my notes as this is actually a tape delay.

Keynote Start
Judy the Marketing lady started us off. 10 tips on enjoying a better OpenWorld/Oracle Develop/JavaOne.



Safra Catz
Safra Catz now on stage presenting the Oracle Excellence awards to the CIO winners.



Partner Award Winners:

Database: TriCore Solutions
Middleware: Accenture
Applications: Deloitte
Server and Storage: Netcentric Systems LLC
Industry: Fujitsu
Independent Software Vendor: SIV.AG
Midsize: DAZ Systems, Inc
Embedded: Nokia Siemens

Ann Livermore
HP Executive Vice President



Modernizing Data Center.

12,000 Oracle Specialists Worldwide
140,000 Joint Customers
1,000,000 Oracle Users Supported

40% of the Oracle licenses running on HP systems.

Market Leadership:
#1 or #2

Servers
Storage
Networking
Management Software
Services
Printing

300K employees

56% share of the blade server market

Editor's Note:
Rumor had it we would be front row or close to the front row. I know what they say about assuming...We're more than halfway back with not enough chairs for the press, bloggers and analysts. Thankfully Leighton [blog|twitter] and I got power, just no internet. Better planning (I swear I don't develop like I plan trips).

Converged Infrastructure

Editor's Note:
Pretty much just waiting for Larry's keynote at this point. Mrs. Livermore has nothing to say that interests me.

Dave Donatelli from HP
Converged Infrastructure.

The Data Center of the future.

Current:
Server Silo. Netowrking Silo. Storage Silo. Management Silo.

Future:
Develops own storage, own server, own networking and own management processes.

Building from common parts.

Sea of Sensors: Real time measurement of a bunch of stuff, heat and power. Enables you to provision power on the fly allowing greater capacity.

Virtual Connect
Married networking into servers. Virtualized. Make changes without having to reboot.

Infrastructure Security:
Tipping Point

Common Management

Business Technology Optimization

Value Added Services

Editor's Note:
Please, make this end. Not personal, I just want to see Iron Man. This HP stuff is really boring. Besides, there are people watching this from the Mason Street tent with beer!

The misery has ended...HP is finally off the stage.

Now we're watching what seems to be the longest intro of all time. America's Cup and Larry's love of the sea....

Bring on Iron Man!



OK, I'm leaving...I'll have to watch the replay. I got a (booze) cruise to attend.
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