[Damn – lost my wireless connection so having to retype it. Time to prepare blogs outside of the Serendipity Admin interface]
Despite still feeling spaced out, I managed to have a quick stroll round this morning and attend my first presentation. I can see just how much things have grown since I was last here in 2000. First, I’m sure that Moscone West didn’t exist last time or at least I didn’t attend any presentations there. It’s the location of today’s User Group-sponsored presentations and the Unconference. It’s also where the truly enormous OTN lounge is located. Well it’s a hell of a lot bigger and more plush than the little place they had in 2000!
Thank goodness I registered yesterday when there were no queues at all 😉
The first presentation I attended was Dan Norris’ ‘High Availability Options for Oracle Database’. It was good and bad from a personal perspective.
First, the good. Dan’s an extremely listenable, accomplished speaker and his slides were great. There was also a pretty large attentive audience and it was one of the best introductions to the various options I’ve heard, so it’s difficult to mark the presentation down.
The bad news is that it was far too introductory for me and pitched way below what I already knew. In fact, Dan recognised the danger when he asked how many people were using clusters, saw a lot of hands and said something along the lines of ‘what are you guys doing here?’ I would have preferred to see fewer subjects covered in more depth but in the end, it was my bad choice because the presentation did what it set out to.
I ended up committing a major behavioural no-no and slipped out of the room at about the hour mark. A 90-minute presentation is a big mistake to make! I waited until people were discussing licensing, though, to try to minimise the disruption. Still, apologies to Dan if it did upset him 🙁
(Oh, and the question that was raised about licensing is answered very clearly in this handy PDF that I’ve linked to before.)
The weather is much better now and too hot for a Scot in a coat, so I came back to my room to drop that off. Fingers crossed for the other presentations this week. I might take a little more care choosing them. (I’m already getting worried about a 90 minute presentation on Parallel
Execution in a RAC environment. Maybe I should just read the paper?)
Hi Doug,
I hope I see you somewhere at OOW… Look forward to meet you!
Dimitri
Snap!
I must say, you looked rather more handsome in real life than your photos! LOL 😉
Sorry, I really didn’t recognise you. I thought … maybe …. but wasn’t sure
Hi Doug,
Thanks for coming–sorry it was a bit too basic for you, but as you pointed out, I was trying to cover a lot at a very high level. As I’ve done this presentation a few times before, I do plan to cut out the early options and do a deeper dive on the last few options as it is always where most of the discussion lands.
So, stop by next time you see this session and I guarantee it’ll be a more focused v2 🙂.
See you around!
Dan
Dan,
As I said, it was my mistake so I wouldn’t want to sound too critical. Looking at the abstract again afterwards, the presentation met the intention well. In fact, I could see it being very useful at several sites where I worked. It just wasn’t for me, I suppose.
In fact, I would leave the early stuff in – no problem at all in you mentioning exp/imp because it adds useful context. Maybe 90 minutes is just too short to ‘do’ HA without focussing on one area. But I am into this stuff, so maybe I’m not a useful target audience anyway.
Cheers,
Doug
thank you very much for the “software investiment guide” link, interesting.
cheers,
eric
Never! It’s the *rule* ….