As I think back to last week, there are a few (okay, maybe more than a few) specific things that come to mind, but not in any particular order.
- Larry‘s laugh during his hour-long monologue on Sunday night
- Meeting Jake from oracleappslab.com
- Meeting Eddie Awad
- Seeing Mark Rittman again
- Meeting Michael Armstrong-Smith
- Chance meeting of Morgens Norgaard and Anjo Kolk
- Seeing Michael Mesaros from Oracle’s IdM Product Management team again
- Seeing Mike Schrock from F5 again
- Spending lots of time with Matt Topper
- Doing a co-presentation with Matt Topper
- Playing the “Oracle Conclave” sketch from Saturday Night Live on the big screen in one of the session rooms before a presentation
- Talking with the product manager for Oracle Adaptive Access Manager (OAAM) in the Demogrounds
- Meeting Rey Ong…twice!
- Meeting David Kemp in person
- Seeing friends from IT Convergence, some that are still working there, some that have moved on
- Chatting with Dan Morgan about his upcoming training offerings
- Having a lot of people show up at my HA Options For Oracle DB session on Sunday
- Seeing quite a few people at my RAC For Beginners session on Monday afternoon despite attempts by Oracle to hide me in the last room at the end of the last hallway at the Hilton
- Having great attendance at the RAC SIG events on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday
- Seeing the RAC SIG board again
- Meeting with the IOUG team for dinner and for business
- Seeing En Vogue (they still look good!), Billy Joel (for a little while), and Lenny Kravitz on Wednesday night
- Learning how Twitter works and why I should care
- Meeting with Debbie M again to talk about future opportunities
- Chatting with my buddies at good ol’ TUSC
- Meeting Andrew Clarke, Tim Hall, skirt 2.0 wearing Billy Cripe, Rich from oracleappslab.com, Justin Kestelyn, Emily Yip, Vikki Lira, Laurent Schneider, Kutsal Berberoglu, and Chris Muir, to name a few
- Chatting with Arup Nanda, Jeremy Simmons, Eric Broughton, Matt Vranicar, Eric Camplin, Eric Noelke, Bill Callahan, Jake Van der Vort, Lisa Cowles, Stephanie Trailer, Frank Ryan, Christine Scano
- Seeing Shaun O’Brien in his new job and uniform
- Cheering on Piocon as they win their first Titan award (look for another next year :).
These are just some of the things I remember. I have to say that I also attended more sessions this year than I have for the last 2 years combined and learned quite a few interesting things. However, I found the people much more interesting than anything I learned and made some connections that I expect to last far into the future. This was definitely the “people” year for me and the coming year should be very exciting!
Ok, I am curious, what’s the scoop behind Larry’s laugh?
Dan and I were texting back and forth during the keynote and for some reason Larry was giggling the entire time during the presentation. At some point I suggested it would be great to have a Larry laugh ringtone. For some reason we both thought it was hilarious. We’re odd, we know.
Was he drunk?!? That is one of the most absurd laughs I have ever heard. And from *him*!
Good question, Charles. My first reaction was to say “of course not,” but you got me thinking…maybe he was?! That might explain how he didn’t realize tiring it was for the 43,995 of us that weren’t mentioned in his Sunday night speech. Then again, when you burn $100s to heat your home, maybe you don’t need to worry about it :).