Sunday, October 22, 2006

OOW - Saturday - Registration

My first night in SF was short... Although I was exhausted from the flight, I couldn't sleep.

During the night I read some blogs and surfed the internet. When the sun rose I took my shower and went downstairs for breakfast. The breakfast was ok, but when I compare it to my honeymoon in Mauritius, this meant nothing.

I took the first Oracle shuttle to Moscone Center, where John and I would meet. In the bus I met some other Oracle enthusiast and we directly started to talk. The atmosphere is great in SF, we're all "Oracle" connected, maybe this is also called "FUSION"? ;-)
I can also understand Laurant Schneider, as he describes on his blog, I had almost similar feeling about the traffic in SF, although we didn't have an accident (but it was close to that).
On the way to Moscone Center you get literally Oracle brainwashed (although for me this isn't possible anymore, as I'm already 100% Oracle minded). The OOW logo is everywhere, busses are "Oracle" painted, buildings have the Oracle logo on it... it's pretty impressive!

We were lucky... We could register directly, no queue! This will be different on Monday!
The organization is amazing! The smallest detail is handled. I got a complete guide of OOW, some Oracle gadgets and magazines, a ticket to the Elton John concert on Wednesday, lunch vouchers and ... a 30Gb iPod! It was good ;-) I'm also part of "Club Oracle Gold" as I was one of the first 500 people registered for "Information Overload". This means some extra advantages as for ex. having a special area to have a drink.

John and I did a tour through the Moscone Center. It's nice to know somebody you like in the big city... we spent the whole day together. We had some nice chats and of course our second beer ;-)
It's amazing how "the same" John and I turned to be. For ex. we bought the same iPaq, the same Wireless Router and we're thinking about a lot of things the same way. We both are APEX promoters, so we also had chats about that and what we could do for the community... We've some plans... ;-)

In the evening we came together with the APEX panel (Steve Howard, Doug Gault, John Scott, Dimitri Gielis, Tony Jedlinski) of tomorrow, except for Tony Jedlinski, who couldn't make it.
We went to a nice and famous restaurant "Tadich Grill", Steve was knowing. The food was excellent. I can't remember the name of the plate I ordered, but it was a soup of seafood with garlic bread. I'll update this blog entry with the name afterwards.
We discussed about the APEX SIG and how we would do the APEX panel of tomorrow. They're all amazing people... I had a great time! Thanks guys!

1 comment:

Dimitri Gielis said...

more to know?
see also John's Blog: http://jes.blogs.shellprompt.net/2006/10/22/day-minus-1/

The last picture, from left to right around the table: Doug, Dimitri, John, Steve