Tag: 2006

This mornings “Meet and Greet” went really well. I must have given away about 20 books and was asked to sign most of them. That’s my 15 minutes of fame, well 30 minutes I guess. I think people are a little surprised to see you present some technical information at an exhibition stand, rather than a sales pitch. More information to come!

Cheers

Tim…

I was totally stitched up in the “Meet the Experts” session with Tom Kyte. Tom got the times mixed up and arrived a little late, so I spent the first few minutes taking questions from a bunch of people who really came to see Tom. I was a bit nervous, but anyone who knows me knows I can talk the hind legs off a donkey, so I managed OK. Of course, when Tom turned up I didn’t manage to get a word in edge-ways. 🙂

It’s really interesting hearing Tom answer questions. He doesn’t just answer a question, he does a complete brain dump on the subject. It’s very impressive to witness. Certainly something to aspire to.

Later on I did a “meet and greet” at the Texas Memory Systems stand. This involved a 15-20 minute presentation on PL/SQL tuning and then just chatting to people and signing books. It’s quite wierd doing this sort of thing because you essentially have to start presenting before people will sit down. I started presenting to 1 person, but as soon as I started talking other people came and sat down. It was good fun. I’ve got two more of these today (11:00 and 16:00), then that’s my official duties over for the week.

I attended the a session by John Kanagaraj called, “Using ADDM, AWR, ASH, and Database Metrics with Oracle9i and Oracle8i Database”. His company manages lots of 8i and 9i databases, so he has looked at some of the monitoring features in 10g and “backported” bits of them to 8i and 9i. Some of the ideas were quite neat. It’s certainly worth taking a look at his paper if you are using older releases of the database.

In the evening I went out to the Oracle Technology Network party. There was food, drinks, a quiz show, dancers, contortion artists and some artificial camels. What more could a guy want?

While I was there I bumped into John Scott. We had a bit of a chat about being new ACEs. Nice guy!

Cheers

Tim…

Day 1. OK, so it’s not really day one for me, but you get the idea. What’s my mission I hear you ask? I’m going to try and get through the rest of OpenWorld without getting any more photos taken of me. Tom Kyte already got a snap of me at dinner last night, and I think Eddie Awad has one of me also. From now on I’m in stealth mode!

I managed to do a Helicopter tour of the city yesterday. It went all round the city, over and under Golden Gate Bridge and over Alcatraz and around the coast. Pretty cool!

I’m on a “Meet the experts” panel with Tom Kyte in about 1 hour. If he gets out his camera he’s history! 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

It was a long flight, via Amsterdam, but I eventually got to San Francisco. The city is very busy. The place if full of people going to OpenWorld and this morning the streets are full of people about to start the San Francisco Marathon. If only I’d brought my trainers… 🙂

Yesterday was a long day. It started at 4:30 and with the 8 hour time difference, I ended up going to bed about 26 hours later. This morning I woke up at 5:00 local time and went to a 24 hour diner for breakfast. Life is good… 😉

The plan this morning is to go and register at OpenWorld, take a look around and decide on a plan for the day. I might check out Alcatraz. I’ve got the Oracle ACEs and Oracle Magazine Editors Choice awards dinner tonight, so whatever I do I have to be back in time for that.

I bumped into Mark Rittman and Andrew Clarke yesterday so we went out for a drink and some food. Mark insisted on taking photos on his mobile phone, so I’m sure you will soon see more pictures of me which I’ll moan about. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

I’ve got a few obligations at OpenWorld, including a few dinners, but for the most part I just intend to wander around for a few days and let my feet take me where they want to go. I’ve not planned a schedule of presentations I want to see. I’ll just go along to anything that grabs me on the day, provided the queue isn’t massive. More than anything I just want to see what it’s like, talk to people and try not to take it all too seriously. 🙂

Of course, my biggest concern at the moment is the weather in San Francisco at this time of year. What do I pack? 😉

Cheers

Tim…

I’ve registered for OpenWorld, reserved the hotel and paid for the flights, so it looks like I’m definitely going 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

PS. On my way home last night I saw a man with a long beard and a top hat riding a penny farthing. It quite freaked me out 🙂