My first OOW experience was a memorable one. I also managed to be fighting migraines most every mid-day, so I missed out on so many amazing sessions I wanted to be at. While I was hiding away in my room with the shades drawn, I polished my own session slides. I also may have had some interrupted sleep from dreams/nightmares of missing my own session. :) Despite my own sabotage, I had a fantastic time and hope I get to return in the future. Now, I want to share some of my favorite moments.
Arrival and Oracle ACE Dinner
I started my journey at 3 am to fly to San Francisco. After getting checked into my hotel (with a great view) on Sunday afternoon, I had just enough time to get my badge before heading over to Parc55 hotel. There I joined a busload of people over to Pier 39 for the Oracle ACE dinner. It was rather chilly and windy on the Pier, but I got to see sea lions, ships, and many people I’ve been twitter stalking for years! Dinner was a great time visiting with many people, and I headed back to the hotel on the early 9pm bus.
Oracle ACE WIT Breakfast
I was invited to a great breakfast at the top of the Marriott Marquis in The View. It was the best sunrise I’ve seen in … a long time. Plus the presentation by Iridescent was inspiring and I was absolutely not crying. It was dusty. The networking was great and I hope you please look into supporting Iridescent if that is your sort of thing.
Sessions I attended
I attended several sessions. I even managed to remember to take a picture of a few of them. :)
Jeff Smith’s What’s New in Oracle SQL Developer.
Mark Rittman’s Data Warehouse Like a Tech Startup with Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse Cloud.
And I managed to get into one of Hermann and Yasin’s repeating Hands on Lab Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse: From Zero to Data Insight in Minutes - BYOL.
My own session
I had a great time presenting my session Active Directory and Single Sign-On with Oracle Analytics Cloud (OAC). The room was packed, the audience was interactive and asked great questions, and I definitely ran out of time. Thank you to everyone who came to listen to me. I’ve posted my slides on slideshare and will have another blog post next week on how I setup my lab I used in my videos for the presentation.
Pic curtesy of Kurt Witt
ODTUG Meetup and Us-Analytics sponsored Concert
I briefly stopped by the ODTUG meetup and really wished I could have stayed longer. I had great conversations with Mark Casazza, Chris Saxon, Not-Jason (AKA Dan Gagnon!), and many others in passing. Sadly I had to jet over to my company US-Analytics sponsored event down the street that was rocking!
Keynotes
I did get to sit in the two keynotes that Larry Ellison did. Even though the main entrance line was all the way around the block, I went across the street to The Exchange and there was an under the street entrace as well. Both times this allowed me to get in and get a seat without the insane lines. Secret for next year!
The first keynote announced Oracle Cloud 2.0.
The second keynote was more interesting to me, with a live demo of 3 clicks and less than 3 minutes to take a full live demo of Fusion Apps and spin up an Autonomous Data Warehouse on top of it. It rolls through building subject areas and analyses while you watch for a minute. Fully functioning reporting within barely any time at all.
And my tweet showed up on the keynote screen in the scrolling twitter feed which was neat to see.
The HUB and The Exchange
The last things I’m going to cover, but certainly not the least, are the super amazing and cool areas called The Hub and The Exchange.
The Hub was where Oracle Groundbreakers, Oracle ACEs had a lot of things going on. There was a place to meet the experts, Professional Profile Headshots being done, blockchain-managed craft beer testing, 360 degree camera setup for superhero shots, and so many other things, I can’t even begin to say how cool it was. I even have my own professional profile picture now.
photography by Bring Into Being
The Exchange was where all of the vendor booths were. And more importantly (to me at least) this was where Oracle Product Managers set up shop with Demo booths of every Oracle product you can imagine. I spent some time here pestering the Analytics folks like Mike Durran.
The End
I’d like to say thanks to ODTUG and US-Analytics for the opportunity to go to Oracle Open World this year. It was amazing and I truly feel lucky to have gotten to go.