Usually, you schedule out your trip and haul a bunch of stuff across the country and cope with jet lag, an unfamiliar bed, continental breakfasts and long lines to everything from registration to shuttles. You spend 3-5 days traveling, scheduling and sitting in sessions. Typically you walk what seems to your unsuspecting arches and heels hundreds of miles and sleep little either due to what you picked up probably on the airplane over or from being hosted by eager sales reps hoping to influence you into agreeing to the next big sale for the next quarter. Inevitably there is a moment one morning where you wake up and realize you are not sure what city you are in but you are sure you had a few drinks too many last night. Finally, when all this is done and over you need to get back into the rat race and likely are expected to deliver a report over what happened and catch up on all the work you missed while you were gone.
Well now there is a solution;
Oracle OpenWorld Live!
Actually, Oracle has really embraced social networking and messaging technology in an unprecedented way.
You can live stream a video feed and watch sessions from any decent internet connection. You can Tweet with attendees and fans about the feed and other events. You can even join a
Facebook group for Oracle open World fans. Not to mention integration and links with
Linkedin,
YouTube,
OracleMix and RSS feeds.
After the show, popular presentations can be viewed by attendees by simpy logging back into the Oracle Open World site and for those that could not attend, they can access the presentations for a small fee and receive full access to all the recorded presentations.
So why attend the conference at all? Well, the truth is that there are still many reasons to continue attending the show in person, but for those of us that can't. This is much better than waiting another year or getting second hand stories of what happened from your peers and reading Blogs. There is still no technology that replaces the human need to connect completely. This is pretty close though and definitely effective. I plan to go back and sit in on the sessions I missed and a few that I liked to make sure my notes are complete and accurate.
A sign of what is to come with more and more conferences and such. I promise, I'll still be there even when it's considered "old school" to attend in person when at Oracle Open World 2025, Larry announces
Oracle's latest acquisitions. Quite possibly something like the Moon itself or Air. We will all cheer since everyone attending will be an Oracle employee anyway and drinking
Kool-Aid will be encouraged since it's an
Oracle product. This will be announced as the final death blow to SAP by finally executing their strategy and refusing to
Post Optionssupply Air to SAP and it's users and not allowing them to flee to the moon since we own it too. Check mate SAP in 2025.
