Postcard From The Edge...Of Collaborate 07 - Wednesday

Wednesday was another great day at Collaborate. From my perspective, some of the highlights included:

• Oracle laid out the roadmap for their content management product line, which seems to have benefited greatly from last year's Stellent acquisition. If I understand the roadmap correctly, several components of the content management product line will find their way into Fusion Middleware over the next year.

• The OAUG Support Council Panel was even better than I anticipated, as Oracle Support shared their latest performance metrics. It was interesting to see how Oracle Support measures their own performance.

• I understand that Tim Dexter's XML Publisher session was outstanding, especially in terms of laying out the differences between the XML Publisher and BI Publisher brands. Although I personally planned to attend, I found myself pulled into a business meeting that conflicted with Tim's session. It was disappointing, as I not only have interest in the subject matter but also hoped to finally meet Tim face-to-face. On the up side, the sign of a good conference is the need to make difficult choices about allocating your time...

• I also spent quite a bit of time exploring the worlds of RAC and Grid. I don't know as much as I should on either of these subjects, so this was a great opportunity to start getting up to speed. In the near future, I'll write on what I think I know regarding these two subjects and why they are important.

• The raffle portion of the OAUG General Membership Meeting was pretty entertaining. This year, each OAUG attendee received a flash drive as part of registration check-in. The flash drive contained a file entitled "coupon" with a unique six-digit number - I understand that around 4000 flash drives were distributed. So when the raffle began, a random number generator determined the winning raffle numbers - the winning number for each prize was projected onto a huge screen on stage as it was generated. All of this led to a very entertaining situation: the random generation logic seemed pretty good for the first two digits, but the last four appeared to be unlimited. Well, all the possible 4 digit combinations with a digit range from 0 to 9 comes out to much more than 4,000 possible combinations. It took quite a few tries, mixed in with lots of good-natured humor, to come up with winning numbers for the three prizes. As the process ran on, Steven Hughes (OAUG's Executive Director and the Master of Ceremonies for this event) joked that he hoped we finished the raffle before next year's Collaborate (which is April 13-17 in Denver, Colorado).

• I understand that the OAUG Member Appreciation bash was also outstanding. Personally, I passed on the bash in favor of spending an evening with some old cronies from my Oracle days - we try to get together at every Collaborate and OpenWorld. It was nice to wrap up the day with this group.

While there is another day of Collaborate yet to go, I do recognize that the conference essentially wrapped up tonight for most attendees. Many folks will be working through the logistics of departing Las Vegas and heading for home. And that's a real shame. I consider this to be the best Oracle user conference in years (and you don't want to know how long I've been attending these things). There is an energy behind this year's conference that separates it from earlier events. Maybe it's due to all the changes in the works, the location, or some other cause. I only know it's been great, and those that depart early are cutting short a valuable experience. I recognize the need to get home, but it's still a shame to cut short such a great event - it's like leaving a Springsteen concert before the 1st encore.