Oracle OpenWorld

Oracle OpenWorld is our annual customer conference which takes place every fall in downtown San Francisco, a few miles north of Oracle HQ which is in Redwood Shores. This was the first year I attended and it is hard to imagine how big a spectacle the event actually is until you see it for yourself. 45,000 customers attended the event which sprawled for multiple blocks through downtown, encompassing all of the Moscone Center North, South, and West buildings as well as all the available space in the Hilton, Marriott, Hyatt, and a number of other hotels. They even closed off Howard street and erected tents over it for the week. I was fortunate enough to have booked my travel early but some last minute attendees ended up having to stay in Oakland because pretty much every hotel room in San Fran was booked.



I didn't have a camera with me most of the time but when I did I tried to take pictures of a few things I found interesting or amusing. Most of the fun or wacky stuff was contained in the GIGANTIC Exhibition hall where all the Oracle partners (HP, Dell, Intel, Deloitte, etc) set up their booths and do anything they can to get attention from the attendees. In addition to everything pictured below they had magicians, a contortionist, arcades, an oxygen bar, and Intel had even recreated the transparent screen from "Minority Report" and you could drag stuff around with your hand.



Scattered throughout the conference were 1,900 "information stations" that consisted of a computer hooked up to a 52 inch 1080p LCD HDTV. Below are a few of the "extras" or "backups" that they didn't set up. I wonder what will become of them after the conference???
There were all sorts of Oracle themed buses cruising the city, sporting ads for everything for "Unbreakable Linux" to "Fusion Middleware". My favorite by far though was the bus advertising one of our new products named "Beehive":

Also in attendance was "Team Oracle" which puts on acrobatic air shows with a stunt bi-plane painted with the Oracle logo. I was a little disappointed they didn't try to buzz the tower or anything:

There were also a number of stations where you could pedal a bike to generate power to charge your laptop or cell phone. Surprisingly, they didn't seem to be getting as much use as the nearby power outlets...
Once of the Oracle Partners had the Back to the Future car on display. very cool..
There was also a mechanical bull which had been decorated to look instead like a hard drive since the Oracle partner that was running the booth makes solid state flash memory drives. Yes, I signed the necessary waiver and rode it... twice actually. The second time I got thrown pretty good and was glad they had 2 foot thick padding surround it. They were pretty nice at that booth and actually let me run the controls for the bull for a while. It was hooked up to a mac which I thought was pretty funny.


Here are the obligatory pictures of Oracle HQ...

In the lake on Oracle HQ Campus is one of the America's Cup Yachts that Larry Ellison raced a few years ago

Speaking of Larry, here is a picture of just a small fraction of the crowd that attended his keynote address. People started lining up a full hour before the doors opened like it was a rock concert or something.