OOW07 Day 1: Sessions + APEX Meetup

Monday is traditional the big start of Oracle Open World, all 44.000 people are there, queues are getting bigger, sessions going on in all rooms ...

I was awake quite early, so I thought to go downstairs to sit in the lobby, looking who would pass by. In the King George Hotel a lot other Oracle bloggers are staying, so I thought there might be a change of recognizing someone. Andrew Clarke (APC) and Wilfred van der Deijl were already in the lobby and a bit later Doug Burns joined us. I already met Andrew and Wilfred at previous events, but it was my first time to meet Doug. They are all such nice people to be with, they have so much Oracle knowledge and even more important they are some great personalities. Andrew, Doug and me went a bit later for breakfast where we had some great chats. Thanks guys! Really enjoyed it.

My first session was "Creating Dynamite Applications That Deliver" from Kathy Hunsicker, Washington Mutual. This wasn't a technical session, but the experience of a Financial Institution started with Oracle Application Express. Kathy did well, in 30 mins she talked about the struggles they have with Excel and Access and their search for something else. Finally they chose for APEX. Where in the beginning they mainly used to replace the desktop tools, APEX became the development environment for the bank. She had a lot of questions afterwards (+30 mins) so there were a lot of people interested in what she was saying.

After lunch we had a meeting with a customer and talked with Rich Niemec, Tim Hall and some other less "known" people. Time flies when you're talking so I missed some sessions I had in my schedule.

I did see Brad Brown's Advanced APEX presentation in the "UnConference" space. That's something new from this Open World. There's a whiteboard and everybody can put a post-it note on it with a presentation they want to give. The presentations were not scheduled before, so this presentation wasn't that well attended. I already saw that presentation at a previous event, but it was good to catch up with Brad afterwards.

At the APEX demo grounds I met Scott Spadafore for the first time. "He's the man!" some say, and I must confirm. Such a nice person, a great guy! Scott makes also part of the APEX development team. He's specialized in security and a frequent poster in the APEX forum.

Together with Scott and Marco on the picture:
In the evening we had the APEX Meetup where we had around 30 people who joined us. We had a couple of drinks in the Fourth Street Bar & Deli and would go to the OTN Night, when Mike Hitchwa invited us all for dinner (Thanks Mike!). It was a nice evening and good to meet other APEX lovers in a more relaxing environment. Below some pictures of the evening.

The jetlag took over later that night, so I went to bed right after the Meetup.