OOW – Day 4 – The Rest

The afternoon went a bit pear-shaped, but first of all, something I forgot to mention from the Round Table session.

Greg pointed out that Oracle run all of their customer benchmarks on ASM and have done for some time, which re-assured me a little over any potential performance issues and challenged my assumptions that it can’t possibly perform as well as more mature solutions. He also stated that you should give ASM whole disks where possible because, as it scatters data over disks, the picture could become confused if some of the seperate ‘disks’ are actually hypers that reside on different parts of the same disk. It also uses the disks in such a way as to use the fastest parts first.

Anyway, after that session I went on a mission to find some food. Although the lunches look lovely here, they’re not really to my extraordinarily limited tastes. I tracked me down a burger. Yum! 😉

I decided the best place to watch Larry Ellison’s keynote was the OTN lounge so I grabbed a little bit of floor-space. However, I still find keynotes a bit of a bore and when Billy Joel stepped out to make the introduction, it didn’t help much! What I got from the presentation was my first proper encounter with Twitter feeds, so I moved away from the TV and followed it via comments from the likes of Eddie Awad. It’s perfect for an event like that. I liked this article about the keynote, too. I haven’t watched the Q&A yet so don’t know if it’s being too harsh or not.

Then I remembered that Richard Foote was presenting at the Unconference and I was keen to hear him speak because I probably won’t get too many opportunities with the inter-continental distances involved! He was every bit as good as I expected. Top notch material and I can spot someone who does a lot of training a mile off 😉 They have a certain delivery which is honed from long experience. It doesn’t always lend itself to jazzy presentations, but you certainly learn something. It’s teaching, as opposed to presenting.

Soon after that I was scheduled to attend the Quest booth with my T-shirt on to enter the $10000 prize draw! But, no, having been extremely impressed with Mary-Ann Davidson’s blog on disclosure, and with the focus on security at my current site, I thought a Meet The Experts session might be a better bet. What a disappointment it was. I know the PA was temperamental but I wish she’d followed Justin’s gentle encouragement to use a microphone. I know it was a small informal group and she doesn’t like using one, but it was virtually impossible to follow the conversation. Seriously, it just p*ssed me off completely because it showed a disregard for the audience. I walked off in a huff.

Only to pass Laurent Schneider heading back to the conference to attend Lutz Hartmann’s ASM presentation. I paused and considered going back myself, but by now I was working on a performance problem with a friend in the UK with emails firing back and forwards, so I went for that instead. Good fun and it flushed out some common issues that it might be worth blogging about later.

By the time that was done, it was off to the Hilton to wait for the bus to the Cow Palace. I stood with a small crowd as full bus after full bus drove straight past, so thank goodness Dimitri came out of the hotel and pointed out that the bus stop was round the corner! That would be why they were all full when they reached me, then.

A short bus ride later and I was walking into the type of event that occurs when Oracle throw a pile of cash at something. The problem was that, because I paused at the entrance to finish my smoke, I lost contact with the Apex crowd and so ended up alone for the next couple of hours! Not good for staying sober if there’s no-one to chat too. The food was ok, but it was a nightmare laying my hands on any because of the crowds.

The one band that I thought I might enjoy was (and look away now, Andy C) En Vogue. I’m a pop/soul boy at heart and they rocked, believe me. I was surprised how good they were actually and that was the best part of the event for me. Then I just wandered around for a while, getting drunker by not being in a group. Then things *really* went pear-shaped. Lenny Kravitz came on. I listened to one number, watched the crowd go wild for him and then I got my coat, so to speak.

Don’t get me wrong, it was an impressive event, but understandably crowded, shockingly ropey music and I should have made proper arrangements to meet with some mates and stuck with them.

I was glad to get to bed.