My thanks to Peter for sending this through. Hopefully he’ll keep up the good work throughout the conference, but he’s unlikely to keep up with Mark Rittman’s dedicated blogging 😉 (Peter, it’s a war – you have to report back in the middle of the night!)
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Yes, hot, humid, affluent, excessive. The Gaylord is said to be the seventh largest hotel in the world. The price one pays for this is a slightly less than ideal personal service. Register, then one is handed a colourful map of the place with annotation indicating ones’ room – after that its up to you to find it! With 3000 rooms, that can take some doing. Ask Debra Lilley and myself, as we stumbled from corridor to corridor, all of which looked absolutely identical.
The conference opened today, and I attended immediately from 8.45. No names, because I was seriously astonished at the poor quality of some of those I attended – not of the content, but of the presentation. Seriously, PowerPoint screens chock full of text, with reduced font size to ensure even more text could be included. And then worst of all – that same text was READ to us!! It didn’t get any better, with some people using SQL scripts in the usual small Courier font, which could not possibly be read from the back of the room. And again – questions from the floor (usually from the front) which were not repeated by the speaker, thus depriving folk at the back from ever knowing what the question was that was being answered.
Attended a couple on Regular Expressions, including one from Kevin Loney. Rock solid, as was to be expected. Good presentation from John Garmany, too.
The trade exhibition is huge, larger than UK, and larger than any previous IOUG that I have seen over the past five years (excluding last year). Due of course to the joint involvement of IOUG, OAUG and Quest.
I had the same experience before with sessions at IOUG. That is why I don’t attend it anymore.