Well here we go one of a couple posts describing my OOW experience, I apologize if I miss anyone or anything or get the times mixed up but it was a hectic week.
11-10-07
I flew into Oakland airport and take the BART over to San Francisco, I'm always amazed at how smoothly BART usually runs and this time was no exception. So I march up to the King George Hotel (why is everything in SF always uphill?) and proceed to checkin. Feeling a tap on my shoulder I turn around and it's Dimitri Gielis APEX SIG vice president and co founder of Apex Evangelists and we decide to meetup for a couple early night drinks. Now at this point I need to apologize to Dimitri for 2 things.
1. When I say couple it's not a couple as in two. It is a couple as in more than one and less than a dozen.
2. Being from Las Vegas early night means something slightly different than people from other places.
Suffice to say I think we both slept very well.
11-11-07
So Oracle World for me started with the APEX SIG meeting, so I got up early got my coffee and proceed to get registered and find where the SIG meeting was, after a bit of detective work I meet up with David Peake (APEX PM) and head out for the meeting. The other panel members where Dimitri , John Scott , Tony Jedlinski and Patrick Wolf. I have meet Dimitri, John and Tony before but was the first time I've meet Patrick in person so it was really nice.
One of the coolest things about OOW is being able to finally put names to faces.
Now I work from home and while I absolutely can talk with the best of them , it is usually to a few people at most and over the phone. Sitting up there in front of a ton people is fairly intimidating, but I was using it as practice for my session on Tuesday.
Of course the first question directed at me was from Dietmar Aust and was a stumper, it's one of those things that sure you can build around it but it really calls for a new feature to be added, which it will be.
So we were answering questions, it all kind've blurs together what was asked but I do have lots of notes to go through this week, but a question about SQL Developer comes up and some guy in the corner yells out "I'll take that one" and it's Kris Rice who leads the SQL Dev team. If you didn't know our teams are closely tied together which both products having features to take advantage of the other product , and Kris used to be my boss. So it was nice to catch up with him and to have him sit in on the session.
Then I sat in some APEX sessions.
John's Debugging APEX session which was very good and I learned some stuff I didn't know.
Tony's APEX and Mobile Application session which was an eyeopener of where we are causing people some pain in the mobile application development and I have copious notes on this and am implementing some features right now that will greatly help with creating these types of applications.
And the final APEX session of the day which I now term 'The Raj Show!'
Raj Mattamal used to be one of our product managers but he's now out in the world using APEX to make money and he had a session on APEX Security, which is usually a pretty dry subject, but not when Raj does it!
Jumping/running around on stage, waving his hands around, talking a mile a minute and absolutely making sure that everybody knows, everything they can about security given an hour, and you know what, it worked and worked well. I learned a ton about APEX security, I usually don't have to deal with it but I now know easily 500% more about security than I did before, and I know other people in the audience did as well, there is just no way you could have been in that room and not learned something.
So then Raj, Patrick and I went off to Larry's keynote and where soon joined by Sergio Leunissen, another former PM now doing a ton of cool Linux stuff and Joel Kallman director of APEX development and more importantly my boss.
What can I say about Larry's keynote that other people can't say better, it is just an absolute event, and the story of Oracle's beginning's till now was awesome, as with most stories it's not what the story is about but how you tell it, and it was told masterfully.
Other parts of the keynote where a little less impressive, but hey at least they tried, Saturday Night Live folks were as funny as they always are, and that's not a compliment, and there was a band to tell everybody to get out which I hope was what was intended because that's what happened.
So after that I took of with Raj for a couple drinks , see description above, and was soon joined by Scott Spadafore at which point we took over the end of a nice Irish Bar and proceeded with the business at hand, until the lights came on and we had to leave.
The next day was when the demo grounds opened which at least for me is where I have the most fun at OOW.
Next post ( the demo grounds and my session)
11-10-07
I flew into Oakland airport and take the BART over to San Francisco, I'm always amazed at how smoothly BART usually runs and this time was no exception. So I march up to the King George Hotel (why is everything in SF always uphill?) and proceed to checkin. Feeling a tap on my shoulder I turn around and it's Dimitri Gielis APEX SIG vice president and co founder of Apex Evangelists and we decide to meetup for a couple early night drinks. Now at this point I need to apologize to Dimitri for 2 things.
1. When I say couple it's not a couple as in two. It is a couple as in more than one and less than a dozen.
2. Being from Las Vegas early night means something slightly different than people from other places.
Suffice to say I think we both slept very well.
11-11-07
So Oracle World for me started with the APEX SIG meeting, so I got up early got my coffee and proceed to get registered and find where the SIG meeting was, after a bit of detective work I meet up with David Peake (APEX PM) and head out for the meeting. The other panel members where Dimitri , John Scott , Tony Jedlinski and Patrick Wolf. I have meet Dimitri, John and Tony before but was the first time I've meet Patrick in person so it was really nice.
One of the coolest things about OOW is being able to finally put names to faces.
Now I work from home and while I absolutely can talk with the best of them , it is usually to a few people at most and over the phone. Sitting up there in front of a ton people is fairly intimidating, but I was using it as practice for my session on Tuesday.
Of course the first question directed at me was from Dietmar Aust and was a stumper, it's one of those things that sure you can build around it but it really calls for a new feature to be added, which it will be.
So we were answering questions, it all kind've blurs together what was asked but I do have lots of notes to go through this week, but a question about SQL Developer comes up and some guy in the corner yells out "I'll take that one" and it's Kris Rice who leads the SQL Dev team. If you didn't know our teams are closely tied together which both products having features to take advantage of the other product , and Kris used to be my boss. So it was nice to catch up with him and to have him sit in on the session.
Then I sat in some APEX sessions.
John's Debugging APEX session which was very good and I learned some stuff I didn't know.
Tony's APEX and Mobile Application session which was an eyeopener of where we are causing people some pain in the mobile application development and I have copious notes on this and am implementing some features right now that will greatly help with creating these types of applications.
And the final APEX session of the day which I now term 'The Raj Show!'
Raj Mattamal used to be one of our product managers but he's now out in the world using APEX to make money and he had a session on APEX Security, which is usually a pretty dry subject, but not when Raj does it!
Jumping/running around on stage, waving his hands around, talking a mile a minute and absolutely making sure that everybody knows, everything they can about security given an hour, and you know what, it worked and worked well. I learned a ton about APEX security, I usually don't have to deal with it but I now know easily 500% more about security than I did before, and I know other people in the audience did as well, there is just no way you could have been in that room and not learned something.
So then Raj, Patrick and I went off to Larry's keynote and where soon joined by Sergio Leunissen, another former PM now doing a ton of cool Linux stuff and Joel Kallman director of APEX development and more importantly my boss.
What can I say about Larry's keynote that other people can't say better, it is just an absolute event, and the story of Oracle's beginning's till now was awesome, as with most stories it's not what the story is about but how you tell it, and it was told masterfully.
Other parts of the keynote where a little less impressive, but hey at least they tried, Saturday Night Live folks were as funny as they always are, and that's not a compliment, and there was a band to tell everybody to get out which I hope was what was intended because that's what happened.
So after that I took of with Raj for a couple drinks , see description above, and was soon joined by Scott Spadafore at which point we took over the end of a nice Irish Bar and proceeded with the business at hand, until the lights came on and we had to leave.
The next day was when the demo grounds opened which at least for me is where I have the most fun at OOW.
Next post ( the demo grounds and my session)
