OOW - Wrap up

Thursday was the last day of the Conference and there were no keynotes scheduled other than sessions. The exhibit halls opened at 10 and closed 3 hours later at 1 pm. Most attendees were all checking out of their hotels and getting ready to go home, some will stayed and enjoy playing tourists.

The highlights at OOW for me are:

the release of E-Business Suite Release 12 with its new look;

the announcement of Oracle Unbreakable Linux, basically wiping 17% off of Red Hat's stock price the next day;

the roadmaps for Oracle products including Fusion Applications and Server 11;

the Elton John concert;

the keynotes; and

last but not least, the Bloggers Meetup.

All the keynotes are available for download in almost all formats. The sessions notes will be ready for download within the next 4 weeks or so. With over 1600 sessions, well, it's gonna take a while so I've decided to order the Conference DVD/CD set instead.

Next year's conference is scheduled for Nov 11th although the venue is in question as it seems that OOW has grown so much that it might be too big for the Moscone Centre. Rumours are Vegas or Orlando being places with big enough convention space. Me, I'm betting that it will still be in San Francisco as the revenue is something that the city would probably do not want to lose.

In closing, this year's last day saw some drama where some of the street folks managed to get hold of attendee badges (probably from the trash after the attendees had discarded them) and got into the building. One wandered around the second level of Moscone West picking up empties. If he had gone up one level, he would have been able to get his hands on the rest of the refreshments being wheeled out at 2:45pm. Another was seen dashing out with an army of security personnel in tow. Now, he was still holding onto a cup of coffee but I doubt that it was a cup of coffee that initiated the pursuit. So, bit of advice for next year; if you are going to discard your attendee badge, put the pocket guide into the recycled bin, the plastic badge holder with the badge can be left at the Registration desk. I kept my badge as a souvenior.