I Trump Jayson Blair (Part Two)

As I noted previously, there have been two recent cases in which Twitter users requested information from their friends to cite in blog posts they were composing. I was happy to oblige, which led to mentions of my name (well, my alias) in posts by Geoff Livingston (see previous post) and Doug Haslam.

Specifically, Doug Haslam requested examples for use in his blog post Twitter: Where's it @ for Business?. Let's start with Doug's explanation of why Twitter and its 140 character "limitation" is important for business.

Twitter’s limits: 140 or fewer characters per message, stripped down functionality, feed into its strengths: ubiquity, and an easy source for quick responses.

Doug then notes Twitter's ability to allow people at conferences to connect:

[P]eople at conferences have been able to connect with each other and more importantly, with those who cannot attend. More important to event organizers than the live-blogging conversational, community aspect of this (which I wrote about previously on Media Bullseye) is the promotional side. Attendees let people know the best of what’s going on, and spread that information beyond the previously self-imposed borders of the event.

One great example sent to me from Twitter was from a man who likes to be known as “Ontario Emperor,” who took part in the Twitter group set up around Oracle Open World, an “Unconference” that the software giant established for its community. You can read the results on the “oow” Twitter page.

One minor point of clarification to the casual reader - Oracle OpenWorld itself was not an unconference but, as Justin Kestelyn noted at the time (see The Beginning of the Long Tail), there was a lot of user-generated content that was associated with the 2007 conference, of which Eddie Awad's @oow tweet aggregator was but a single example. If you want to see how this aggregator helped to collect comments on Larry Ellison's keynote, see my November 18 post on the topic.

But back to Doug Haslam's post, which talked about a number of other examples of Twitter business use. Identification of potential employees and contractors, word of mouth advertising, brand establishment - those are a few of the examples that Haslam's friends cited of the business benefits of Twitter. And it goes without saying that Doug used Twitter to gather all of this information in the first place.

To find out how to make Twitter work for you, read the rest of Doug's post.

[mrontemp business] | [mrontemp politics] | [mrontemp technology] | [mrontemp del.icio.us tags]

Sphere: Related Content

mrontemp post 1445 - how a song gets stuck in my head

I was reading Scott Beale's blog and noticed that he referenced two parody videos that appropriated the Billy Joel song "We Didn't Start the Fire" (kind of the '80s version of "American Pie," if you ask me).

Anyway, Scott mentioned JibJab's review of 2007, as well as that Richter Scales video that resulted in that unfortunate Lane Hartwell episode, which I probably would have discussed if I weren't so busy trying to dig into Marianne Maestas' brain.

So old Billy Joel pops up in this blog - again. The last time that he appeared was when I mentioned Billy Joel's introduction of Larry Ellison at Oracle OpenWorld 2007.

The other mentions had to do with my tendency to confuse Billy Joel and Billy Idol, so they don't count.

So, in recognition of this promotion of Billy Joel, I gave Scott Beale a Tweetgift. And we know what happened after that.

So I got to thinking about Oracle OpenWorld 2007 again, and my reaction to seeing Billy Joel on TV (I was watching Ellison's keynote from a separate location). Frankly, I wasn't exactly overwhelmed. In fact, my loss of the admission bracelet to Joel's concert during Oracle OpenWorld didn't worry me in the least, since I wasn't really interested in seeing Joel. Or Fleetwood/Nicks.

In fact, there's only one thing that I regret missing at Oracle OpenWorld. And that's why I have a new song stuck in my head right now.



(English Beat, "Mirror in the Bathroom.")

[mrontemp business] | [mrontemp politics] | [mrontemp technology] | [mrontemp del.icio.us tags]

Sphere: Related Content

Oracle OpenWorld 2007 - A Look Back

This will be my 68th - whoops, my 70th (forgot to tag the Thirsty Bear pictures) - post that tangentially relates to Oracle OpenWorld 2007 in some way, shape, or form. The other 67 posts talk about everything from new Oracle Database 11g platform releases to...well, lunch and stuff like that.

This is the third Oracle OpenWorld that I have attended, and the first time that I have been able to stay for the whole week. So, if I may steal a format, here are my top 10 - no, 11 - key memories of this year's Oracle OpenWorld:

1. Despite the fact that I was in San Francisco, I was unable to participate in the Unconference, I heard good reviews from those that did. And the little bit of planning apparently helped.


2. Twitter ended up being a useful tool in certain instances, but seemed to function best when the tweets of several people were aggregated.


3. The Schedule Builder seemed to be OK (although some disagreed, and it worked better for some than for others, though things worked themselves out in the end), especially when you consider how many sessions were loaded into the schedule. If I can think of some concrete improvement ideas, I'll pass them on.


4. While I did spend some time in the Oracle Technology Network (enjoying a beer before Andy Mendelsohn's keynote, for example), I actually spent more time in the Oracle PartnerNetwork lounge. The latter was a better place to watch keynotes because it was somewhat isolated from the outside noise.


5. Oracle apparently prefers not to make specific announcements for every single platform release for Oracle Database 11g, and the announcement that mattered most to me was made before Oracle OpenWorld 2007 even began. I can understand Oracle's reasons for this strategy, but it's a helpful thing to know if you're waiting for a release on your preferred platform.


6. Hashtags (specifically, the openworld07 hashtag) were somewhat publicized and somewhat used. I believe that this will be a helpful tool for all events as time goes on (I posted some "#malibufire" tweets over the weekend, for example).


7. Oracle OpenWorld Connect was very helpful for pre-conference preparation.


8. The weather outside was delightful, which is not always true in San Francisco.


9. Registration was a breeze, if you timed it right. The only drawback is that I set all my stuff down, including my wristband for Wednesday night. Guess what I forgot to pick up?


10. My hotel was pretty good (not perfect; the ethernet connection was on the opposite end of the room from the desk) and centrally located.


11. Which leaves just one point for the conference itself, including the Secure Backup session, Rich Niemiec's session, Andy Mendelsohn's keynote, Mark Hurd's keynote (which I didn't see), Larry Ellison's keynote, Tom Kyte's session, the Thirsty Bear blogger meetup, and everything else that went on that week. Truly a firehose.

Which brings me to my small claim of fame for this year: namely, my mention in Eye on Oracle. It formed the basis for a conversation about whether Oracle OpenWorld is just too danged big. However, I don't think that Oracle would want it any other way.

[mrontemp business] | [mrontemp politics] | [mrontemp technology] | [mrontemp del.icio.us tags]

Sphere: Related Content

I've waited so long to post the infamous Tom Kyte post that Ellison is probably already talking about Oracle Database 11m now

Yes, I have a little unfinished business.

Many eons ago, I mentioned the fact that I was tweeting during Tom Kyte's Oracle OpenWorld presentation "The Top 10 - No, 11 - New Features of Oracle Database 11g."

I also mentioned (two or three times) that I would subsequently write a more detailed post on Kyte's top 11. I reiterated this at the end of my Ellison post.

Since Kyte's presentation, several things have happened:

• Nathalie Roman posted a detailed account of Kyte's "No Slide Zone" appearance on the same topic. (Kyte gave the presentation in a no-slide format, which Roman and Tim attended, and in a slide format, which Eddie Awad and I attended.)


• Tom Kyte himself commented on the two presentations.


• Kyte has posted the presentation in the downloads section of asktom.

So, if you haven't seen the list, here it is. I'm using Kyte's presentation as a source, rather than my own notes or tweets.

1. Encrypted Tablespaces


2. Cache More Stuff


3. Standby Just got better


4. Real Application Testing


5. Smaller more secure DMP files


6. Virtual Columns


7. Partitioning just got better


8. The long awaited pivot


9. Flashback Data Archive


10. Finer Grained Dependency Tracking


11. OLTP Table Compression

It should be noted that Kyte did not attempt to rank these features or order them in any way, so the numbering of the 11 items is not necessary significant.

I can add a few items here.

Encrypted tablespaces were not only mentioned in Tom Kyte's presentation, but in a previous presentation given by Roy Swonger and Carol Palmer on the Oracle Database 11g Data Pump. Supported methods include 3DES168, AES128, AES192, and AES256. I'm not sure if this is affected by export restrictions. More information here in this excerpt from the Oracle Database Administrator's Guide, 11g Release.

The third point was a discussion of Active Data Guard, which was also discussed in the Andy Mendelsohn keynote. Oracle's web page on Active Data Guard is here.

The partitioning point discussed interval partitioning, which was also discussed by Rich Niemiec and Andy Mendelsohn. Here's a faq page on Oracle's interval partitioning. Meanwhile, someone is requesting the same feature from the competition.

As mentioned above, Nathalie Roman discussed these and many other items.

I feel like it took me forever to finally get this post out, but truth to tell, the presentation took place less than two weeks ago.

However, in the technological world, two weeks can be an eternity.

[mrontemp business] | [mrontemp politics] | [mrontemp technology] | [mrontemp del.icio.us tags]

Sphere: Related Content

A sense of accomplishment - Oracle OpenWorld trip report completed

Remember how some people thought I tweeted too much during Oracle OpenWorld 2007?

Trust me - I was restraining myself enormously.

I just prepared my Oracle OpenWorld 2007 trip report that I'm submitting to my boss and others, explaining about the firehose that is Oracle OpenWorld.

The trip report is 32 pages long. And it only includes one picture.

Now you understand how I can call my blog posts "succinct." Compared to what I usually write, they are.

[mrontemp business] | [mrontemp politics] | [mrontemp technology] | [mrontemp del.icio.us tags]

Sphere: Related Content

Explaining an Unconference

My company is in the initial planning stages of our annual conference, for which the agenda is primarily dictated by the users themselves. This is a formal agenda which is set months in advance.

For various reasons, I am proposing that the users consider an unconference as an add-on to the main conference itself. This would be a replacement for a series of semi-structured brown bag lunches (Lunch 1.5?) that we tried in our last conference.

Obviously, the precedent that I will consider for a parallel unconference would be the recent experience at Oracle OpenWorld 2007. Ironically, I didn't attend the unconference myself, but all of the reaction that I heard was positive.

As I introduce this to the user executive committee, one item that might intrigue them would be the ability to user attendees to propose topics. Much of the formal agenda of our conference is based upon user presentations, but perhaps we are missing some potential user presenters who have just never been asked to put on a session.

I have no idea whether this will take off, and I'm not even sure if I endorse the idea myself - we may build upon the lunch concept instead. However, it's interesting to see how events that take place in one location can influence other events.

References:

• Justin Kestelyn's announcement of the Oracle OpenWorld 2007 Unconference


• My September 17 post on the same


• My del.icio.us tagged material on barcamps and unconferences (back when I was still using del.icio.us)


• The Oracle Wiki page on Oracle's Unconference (seems to have a good explanation of an unconference that functions within a conference)


• My October 19 post on the same


• Timothy S. Hall's review of his own unconference session, from which I quote below

I went on to my Unconference session called The Oracle DBA… A dying breed? The provocative title did it’s job and the turnout was quite good. This was more of a discussion about the role of the DBA, rather than a presentation. It’s kind of hard to judge the success of this type of session, but the fact people started to join in means it couldn’t have been too bad. Myself and a few others continued the discussion in the OTN lounge for a while afterwards. One of the Oracle guys added some session notes to the page. In the next couple of days I’m going to add some more stuff and try and summarise the opinions voiced. Once I’m done and you can see the form of the discussion, feel free to add to it. There is no reason why the subject has to end with the session.

And there's also Tim Bonneman, Evangelist 2.0.

[mrontemp business] | [mrontemp politics] | [mrontemp technology] | [mrontemp del.icio.us tags]

Sphere: Related Content

Stove Top, 20 November 2007

Still wading through my shared items, and I haven't even gotten to my Tom Kyte post yet. (And I hope you're not breathlessly waiting for it; it will probably only be 11 lines long.)

In the meantime, here are some other goodies that I fished out of the ether(net):

• Anne Zelenka of GigaOM wrote about Oracle OpenWorld, blogger press credentials, Oracle's wiki, Oracle Mix, Connect, and the possible future connection of Connect and Mix. Basically, the article was a way to attach the magic number "2.0" to Ellison's ever-expanding empire.


• George Trujilo, also from Oracle OpenWorld, wrote about the changing role of the DBA. And no, the new tools won't make the DBA's job easier; on the contrary, DBAs will need to expand their skill sets.


• In another post, Trujilo spoke about an Oracle Database 11g expert panel in which he participated.


• I missed the Cow Palace, but Jason Jones didn't.


• OK, let's switch gears. I still have a ton of OpenWorld stuff in the queue, but let's see how, and why, UK Twitter users now have limits on outbound SMS, according to TechCrunch UK.


• Laura Foy talked with Will Wright.


• Wired Pig noted that Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, has shut down two television stations that were critical of the Pakistani government.


• Vaspers talked about taking a critical look at your website. (Heaven knows mrontemp could use one.)


• Switching back to Oracle for a moment, Lutz Hartmann praised a book on Automatic Storage Management. Incidentally, one of the co-authors (Richard Long) was highly praised by a couple of people at the blogger meetup at the Thirsty Bear a week ago.


• Slashdot cited a survey in which 90% of IT professionals have concerns about Vista, 44% are considering switching away from Windows, and 9% are already moving away.


• Finland for Thought noted that the nurses' threatened resignations resulted in an agreement.


• Extreme Mortman noted that the Baltimore Sun now has a pro wrestling blog.


• Nicole Ferraro at Internet Evolution warned that Big Brother Steve Jobs is playing Gollum while watching Apple iPhone users (collected information is being filed in "My Precious").


• In a comment to the above, James Johnson reminded us of Apple's "1984" commercial.


• Despite Nelson's statistical evidence, some people believe that Barry Bonds just exercised a lot over the last few years. (And they also believe that Michael Jackson is just Peter Pan and nothing else.)


• The Ontario (California) Chamber of Commerce shared a feel-good story about Thanksgiving crowds.


• And, last (for now) but certainly not least, Oracle ACE Floyd Teter shared his final thoughts on Oracle OpenWorld 2007. (I'll get to mine someday.)

[mrontemp business] | [mrontemp politics] | [mrontemp technology] | [mrontemp del.icio.us tags]

Sphere: Related Content

Correction to my fusion post

I'm on my mobile phone at the moment, so for now I can't edit my previous post (link to be supplied; here it is) on Larry Ellison's keynote.

So I'll just note here that I've found one error in that post. So far.

The VMware presentation was NOT, as I said, "subsequent" to Larry Ellison's keynote; it actually preceded it. Byun was reacting to Charles Phillips' keynote, not Larry Ellison's.

(But "Sunday Night Live" DID occur on Sunday. I think. Unless you were on European time.)

We now return to our abnormal programming.

Sphere: Related Content

The Long-Unawaited Fusion Post (with some observations on collaborative tweeting)

(Warning - this post may not be succinct. And it's technically not all-encompassing. So sue me. Or not.)

Going into Larry Ellison's keynote presentation on Wednesday, November 14, there was a lot of speculation regarding what he would say. Mark Brunelli captured the pre-speech speculation sentiment:

What is Oracle founder Larry Ellison’s big announcement going to be when to takes to the stage for his keynote address later today?...

Ellison likes to drop major bombs whenever he gets on that stage. Last year he announced that Oracle would undercut Red Hat Linux, which was a pretty big deal.

This year, a story written by my colleague Barney Beal...quoted Chuck Rozwat, Oracle’s senior vice president of application development, “…we clearly said we would begin shipping Fusion applications in 2008. Stay in tune the next couple days; you’ll here more about that.”

But before Ellison took the stage, we got Billy Joel:

For the final Oracle OpenWorld keynote, singer Billy Joel, part of the evening entertainment lineup, introduced Larry Ellison, who is celebrating 30 years at the helm of the company he co-founded.

Incidentally, several of us were tweeting throughout the entire keynote and echoing our tweets to the oow Twitter account. Here is how the Twitterverse documented the arrival of the Piano Man:

Radu43: was expecting Larry and I get Billy Joel. 01:44 PM November 14, 2007 from web

momktg: gotta love billy. 01:44 PM November 14, 2007 from web

kitson: Watching Billy Joel make a surprise intro for Larry "Big Red" Ellison. 01:44 PM November 14, 2007 from web

oemperor: billy joel? 01:44 PM November 14, 2007 from web

oemperor: and then they play lenny kravitz when ellison enters 01:46 PM November 14, 2007 from web

After talking about Unbreakable Linux, Ellison transitioned to a discussion of the previously-announced Oracle VM, noting that Oracle was previously supporting the Red Hat product, but now was branching out and supporting something that Red Hat did not support.

And Oracle VM was clearly from Oracle:

kitson: Anyone counting how many times Larry refers to Oracle VM with the phrase, "We put a lot of engineering into this"? I'm up to 4 a ... ... 01:52 PM November 14, 2007 from web

And what else did Ellison say about fusion? Back to Brunelli:

The first set of Oracle Fusion Applications are called Sales Prospector, Sales References and Sales Tools, Oracle founder Larry Ellison told a huge crowd at Oracle OpenWorld 2007 today.

Ellison said the three salesforce automation applications, which are based on existing Siebel tools, are coming out as planned during the first half of 2008.

And they are standards-based:

eddieawad: Larry: fusion apps r built on standards-based middleware with SOA 01:58 PM November 14, 2007 from web

And there was a differentiation between the old and new (or, if you will, 2.0) sales force applications, with Ellison noting that old applications could be used for forecasting, while claiming that new applications would actually let you sell more.

And what about getting these applications to work with existing applications?

The company will also release pre-built integration packs for connecting the applications to existing Oracle systems, according to Ellison....

Ellison repeatedly stressed that users of Oracle's existing product lines will not be forced to migrate to Fusion because the company plans to make it easy to integrate the new applications. "If you continue with Oracle E-Business Suite for five years, it doesn't mean you can't use Fusion Applications," he said.

Justin Kestelyn offered some additional comments at the Oracle Technology Network blog:

The keynote included a nice demo of the Sales Prospector functionality that will be the centerpiece of Oracle Fusion SFA, one of the first three Fusion apps to be released. Oracle Fusion SFA features social networking functionality that allows salespeople to select and build presentation content based on shared experience (eg, a given preso may be highly rated by the community based on its effectiveness in a given scenario).

The demo, by the way, was not performed by Ellison himself, which led to something which was only evident to people in the keynote hall itself. I was watching the keynote on a TV in the Oracle PartnerNetwork Lounge, and therefore missed out on one item that was reported by the Twitterverse:

kitson: Hundreds of people walking out before the end of Larry's keynote. 02:16 PM November 14, 2007 from web

momktg: Larry left and people start leaving. 02:16 PM November 14, 2007 from web

In essence, all of the people that left missed the demo - and also missed Ellison's question and answer session afterwards. And these people missed a very nice user interface, as momktg, eddieawad, Radu43, and planspark noted. (As for me, I haven't seen any sales force applications, so I didn't know whether this was any better or worse than any other.)

But Lewis asked a question after the fact:

[T]he OVM announcement kind of caught me by surprise. I mean, why? Why does Oracle need a VM?

Lewis received a number of possible answers:

gamyers writes: 11/15/2007 #

...Customers want support for the stack, and Oracle can only give that if they can fix the source code in the stack....

Mikael writes: 11/15/2007 #

...Oracle now can support [its] software on a VM. Oracle has not previously certified any software on any virtual environment. This alone should be reason enough for any Oracle customer....

Vincent McBurney writes: 11/15/2007 #

...They want to prove that Oracle is cheaper to run and support than the competitors and that's easier to do if they control the operating system (unbreakable linux) and the VM software....

But there was another response that intrigued me, and frankly I need some more understanding before I can comment on this:

Marcelo Ochoa writes: 11/16/2007 #

...Oracle VM is based on Xen Paravirtualization which differs from VMWare, Virtual Box and MS Virtual PC approach in the level of OS interception.

It requires guest operation system modification, but AFAIK with this technique the overhead is only around 0.1-3.5% compared to 10-15% of VMWare for example.

I'm not a Xen Oracleist, however, so I'll leave comments on Xen to others.

So what does this mean for VMware? Turns out Peter Griffin attended the subsequent (WHOOPS, PREVIOUS) VMware session that I attended, but Griffin caught the nuances of VMware's position (I admit that I was not up to date on the whole fusion controversy thingie):

Presenting to a room packed with IT managers at Oracle OpenWorld yesterday, VMware’s vice-president Brian Byun did his best to remain diplomatic. He said numerous VMware customers were running Oracle, which supported VMware in its “software stack” and stressed the savings that virtualisation in general can provide for companies suffering from “server sprawl”.

And Brian Byun said more on Thursday:

The problem, VMware says, is not Oracle's apparent pulling of support for its applications on virtualisation platforms other than their own Oracle VM, which it announced on Monday, but its unwillingness to reform its software licensing policies, which would force customers adopting virtualisation to pay many times more.

"Customers are not trying to pay less, they just don't want to pay eight or ten times more," said Brian Byun, vice-president of global partners and solutions for VMware, in an interview on Thursday. "That's the larger issue at hand."

For instance, a company that runs an Oracle database in a VMware virtual machine and wishes to port that single instance from one physical server to another would technically be forced to buy an additional Oracle license for each physical server used, Byun said. Or if an application in a VM is apportioned to use only 1 out of 4 CPUs in a server, the company would still have to buy a license for an entire server.

"That doesn't make sense," he said.

But the new Oracle applications aren't ready yet, and Om Malik noted a possible hurdle that Oracle will have to overcome:

VMWare, the server and PC virtualization company that went public this summer, is hiring all the engineers it can find. Ann Winblad, a general partner at venture capital firm Hummer Winblad, recently quipped:

“As much as we all love [VMWare CEO] Dianne Green, we have to figure out a way of stopping VMWare from hiring all the engineers in the Valley.”

More on Winblad's comments from Tom Foremski, who was on the panel with Winblad:

This is something I have heard from others too over the past few weeks. VMware's thirst for engineering talent seems to be unlimited as it continues development of its hugely successful virtualization software.

A POSTSCRIPT: As you may know, I have been experimenting with the use of Twitter as a business tool, and performed some massive tweeting in three separate sessions. However, in retrospect, it appears that a collaborative approach to such coverage works better, especially if the session being covered is a high interest session receiving inputs from several people. In addition, it definitely helped that all of the coverage could be accessed from a single Twitter source (in this case, the @oow account). My "lesson learned" from this is that the best way to cover an event via Twitter is as follows:

• Set up a Twitter account to the event itself.


• Set up a mechanism to allow individual Twitter users to contribute to the account.


• Read the feed, and enjoy.

But, as usual, I am not trendy in realizing this. If you are interested in this topic, I strongly urge you to read the following:

Dennis Howlett, Redefining relationship through a collaborative Twitter project

Jeff Nolan, Twitter Thoughts

Andrew McAfee, Sharp Responses to Flat Communities

A SECOND POSTSCRIPT: I still have one more Oracle OpenWorld post banging around in my head. I still want to dig in to the eleven points that Tom Kyte made in his presentation.

[mrontemp business] | [mrontemp politics] | [mrontemp technology] | [mrontemp del.icio.us tags]

Sphere: Related Content

For the pizza delivery drivers - odds and ends from Oracle OpenWorld

Here's a few random items from the recent Oracle OpenWorld 2007.

Vinnie Mirchandani talked about blogging by walking around. Apparently he doesn't believe in the mighty beanbag. Nevertheless:

Apologies to Tom Peters, but I have been Blogging by Walking Around at Oracle OpenWorld. The conference is intimidating in terms of choice of sessions and exhibits and as I fretted before Oracle did not have a clear agenda for bloggers.

Oracle doesn't provide a clear agenda for anybody, which is why I refer to Oracle OpenWorld as a firehose. Even with my limited technological background and my laser interest in a particular portion of Oracle's product line, I had to make some difficult session attend/non-attend decisions, especially in the first days of the conference. As a result, I missed the entire Unconference; there was too much Conference stuff going on. Add to this all of the private meetings, and it's impossible to have a clear agenda. Mirchandani was one of the bloggers who was invited to speak with Charles Phillips, and because of this I'm sure that he missed several interesting sessions because of that one meeting.

More evidence of Oracle OpenWorld's breadth - because I am a baby seal clubber, I did not avail myself of the Al Gore snail darter-loving electronic version of the Oracle OpenWorld 2007 Agenda and Show Guide. As a result, I am now the proud owner of a 440+ page telephone book-size document. No way to have someone provide a clear agenda from THAT.

Anyway, I have one thing in common with Vinnie Mirchandani - both of us were unable to blog the whole conference at the time of the conference.

Moving on, I lost my wristband and therefore missed the Wednesday night concert, but nearby residents didn't miss it at all:

Phone calls from angry residents poured into both San Francisco and Daly City police departments.

"All I can tell you is we're busy and we're getting a lot of calls about the music," said a Daly City police dispatcher.

When San Francisco resident Judy Einzig, who lives in Glen Park, called police, she was told there was nothing anyone could do about it. She would have to put up with the music until 1 a.m.

That's because Oracle got permits from Daly City to throw its Oracle OpenWorld Appreciation Event....

San Francisco police said the noise doesn't seem to be as big a problem near the Cow Palace. But it's carrying - and sounds louder - about two or three miles away.

And Oracle and BEA have not yet agreed on anything:

[T]he middleware giant’s surprisingly good financials announcement suggests that it could stay hale and hearty even without several billions of dollars from under Larry Ellison's mattress to cheer up shareholders.

Profit ($56 million) and revenue ($384 million) were both up sharply for the quarter that ended...on 31 October....At Oracle OpenWorld... [Larry Ellison] said that if Oracle were to come back for BEA it would be at a lower price. BEA CEO Alfred Chuang insists the company is worth $8.2 billion, compared to Oracle’s $6.7 billion bid.

[mrontemp business] | [mrontemp politics] | [mrontemp technology] | [mrontemp del.icio.us tags]

Sphere: Related Content

Oracle Wiki stats flash

Just got an email from Wetpaint - a "stats flash" for the Oracle Wiki (at the http://wiki.oracle.com/ URL). According to the email, my contributor rank was 80 out of 782. Even though I realize that they're ranking quantity and not quality, it's embarrassing to see my contributions ranked so highly - especially since my understanding of Oracle's "Linux first" strategy isn't exactly rocket science. Presumably entries from technical content contributors will pick up after everyone recovers from this week.

Sphere: Related Content

All we are saying is give lunch a chance...

Today's protest picture is sans protester, because it was taken at the Marriott. The hotel is apparently too classy to have protesters like the ones I saw Tuesday (link here now) and Wednesday (link here now). Instead, a group of five people were standing on the second floor, only one of whom was required to take my ticket. There's an efficiency lesson in there somewhere....

My Oracle OpenWorld experience is winding down. After one more session, I'll go back to my hotel, get my bags, catch a shuttle to Oakland Airport, and fly back to Ontario. From there I'll type up a trip report for my employer, based upon 30+ pages of notes plus various blogs and tweets. (You may not believe it, but I was severely editing myself while I was on Twitter.) I also hope to write at least two additional blog posts: one on Tom Kyte's 11 features presentation, and another on Larry Ellison's keynote.

Now I'll finish my Lunch 1.0....

Sphere: Related Content

The crux of the biscuit

So what am I doing on my last morning in San Francisco?

Listening to the hit parade from 30 plus years ago in Goshen, Virginia. Yes, Frank Zappa's "Stink-Foot" was the definite hit at Boy Scout camp. (Courtesy last.fm.) Not that we appreciated the streaming wordplay...

Still have packing, Google Reader catch up, sessions, notes for my employer, conceptualization of a possible 11 bullet post (yeah, the Tom Kyte-derived one)...and oh yeah, a flight down south.

P.S. Last.fm is now playing "Toxic." Michael Hanscom doesn't have the corner on eclecticism....

Sphere: Related Content

Proving the point

People who have read my "wisdom" over the years know that I like to use the phrase "I am not trendy." Well, I'm waiting for a presentation called "Performance 2.0." And it's in the much-discussed "no-slide zone." Kewl, d00d?

Uh, no. The no-slide zone is 3 days old and is now passe. Unless all of the participants are beta-testing Sales Prospector.

P.S. It's so passe that they're playing a remake of "Gone Daddy Gone" in the zone. The original Violent Femmes version has been on my last.fm playlist for, like, forever - at least a week.

Sphere: Related Content

What do we want?

LUNCH!

When do we want it?

NOW!

Sphere: Related Content

No-Slide Zone

Didn't make it inside yet; not sure if I will.

Sphere: Related Content

What we have is a failure to consume televised content, so I am relying on other views of Mark Hurd

I planned to listen to Mark Hurd's Monday keynote live, but had to keep a separate appointment instead.

OK, so it was an appointment with a beanbag. But as anyone at Oracle OpenWorld knows, these things happen.

So, until I get around to finding an online copy of the presentation (here's a clip), I'll rely on the wisdom of others. Apparently I missed a gimmick:

It's hard to know if Hewlett-Packard chief executive Mark Hurd was briefed on the video-taped questions that were thrown at him on the stage at OpenWorld yesterday, but he made the most of the opportunity to reflect on the computer-maker's place in the technology ecosystem.

Dan Farber notes:

The engaging Hurd was ready for softballs, including whether one questions should buy a Dell or HP PC and whether he beats Oracle CEO Larry Ellison at tennis....

For the crowd of OpenWorld attendees he stated his view the root of successful IT implementations. Great use of IT starts with him, the CEO, he said, supported by process and only then by technology. Nonetheless, HP, IBM, Sun, Oracle, SAP and a host of others will be fighting for the chance to deliver the technology to customers.

Vinnie Mirchandani would have asked some tougher questions. Here's a sample:

You and your CIO Randy Mott proudly talk about HP's own data center consolidation and other IT spend reduction - almost in half. When can your customers expect to see similar reduction in their HP and Oracle spend?

Ouch...

[mrontemp business] | [mrontemp politics] | [mrontemp technology] | [mrontemp del.icio.us tags]

Sphere: Related Content

I missed a little excitement on Sunday

I've previously noted that the benefit of all of this blogging at Oracle OpenWorld is that if you miss something, you can hopefully find someone who wrote about it.

Well, I was at the Four Seasons early Sunday evening, so, in addition to missing Sunday Night Live, I missed this. And I'm glad I did.

An Oakland teen was shot an killed tonight at the Metreon after getting into an argument with other teens. Apparently the altercation happened between the front entrance on Mission Street and the ticket counters where he was shot at around 7:00pm.

[mrontemp business] | [mrontemp politics] | [mrontemp technology] | [mrontemp del.icio.us tags]

Sphere: Related Content

How to lose followers and disinfluence people

As you may have seen, I've been tweeting some selected sessions at Oracle OpenWorld 2007 - generally just for my own Twitter followers, but occasionally for those who are following the @oow feed.

Even when using Twitter, which is the most casual sort of blogging by far, my mind still craves organization, an outline. Therefore, when Andy Mendelsohn announced during his keynote that he was going to introduce five customers, I was in heaven. Presto! Outline.

Tom Kyte made my job even easier. Even before the session started, I knew that the title was "The Top 10 - No, 11 - New Features of Oracle Database 11g." That made it Staples:

@oow #openworld07 at moscone south 103 for tom kyte 11g session-long standby list-tweets (at least 11) @oemperor

So I started tweeting - while taking notes by hand, trading tweets with another person in the same session (Eddie Awad), and receiving two telephone calls. I won't reproduce the tweets at this time - I hope to use them as an outline to dig into Oracle Database 11g in a more organized fashion some time later, but a couple of examples will suffice to show what I was doing.

#openworld07 5 smaller more secure dump files (data pump compression encryption)

(Note that this ties in with a whole session on Oracle Data Pump that I attended earlier in the day, in which both compression and encryption were discussed. When I hear things a couple of times in Oracle OpenWorld sessions, they even penetrate MY brain. Maybe.)

#openworld07 10 finer grained dependency tracking (fewer invalidations)

Anyway, after that, I suddenly got this tweet from @arnold:

stop oemperor

So, after I typed Kyte's 11th point, I replied:

@arnold that was last one-at least until oracle database version 12 comes out :)

But I was happy to hear that my informative notes from Kyte's session meant something:

I like how you spoke about Oracle's encrypted database dump. =)

If Twitter had a dumpster like Truemors does, I'm there, d00d.

[mrontemp business] | [mrontemp politics] | [mrontemp technology] | [mrontemp del.icio.us tags]

Sphere: Related Content

Thirsty Bear

From a stair.

Sphere: Related Content