Oracle Technology Day - Milwaukee

Today I am participating in Oracle Technology Day in Brookfield, WI.  Brookfield is a suburb of Milwaukee and closer to my house than work so the commute was better than normal.  Those of you that participate in these regularly know that it is an opportunity for Oracle to buy us breakfast and lunch, and in return, they get an opportunity to tell us about their technology.  We also get an opportunity to network with several people from the area and find out what others are doing.  Meeting others from the are is the best part of these days.  The technology discussions are interesting, but most of it is somewhat of a repeat from OpenWorld.  So far I have seen about ten people that I have met somewhere in my career history.  This is also why I am involved in IOUG because I get this kind of interaction regularly.

Right now is an update on Oracle Technology keynote.  We are currently going over the history of the database and leading into where we are now.  This is an interesting story to think of going from Oracle 4 back in 1984 to 11gR2 running in a Grid environment now.  Add to that where we are going with Cloud Computing and it makes for a very interesting story.  Today includes information on Exadata, Security, Fusion Middleware, BI, GoldenGate and much more.  I will be jumping around among the three tracks because it all is very interesting and we have things going on in all areas at work and at IOUG.  I like to use these days to find out more about what we can be getting to our members.  It's funny how all the topics that are covered today are the same topics we hear that our membership is interested in.  That is partially due to the User Groups giving Oracle feedback about what our members want.  Oracle has done a good job recently with allowing the User Groups to have advocacy back into Oracle and allow us to get the message out.  Of course, we still like to talk about what doesn't work and what the products really do which is why we stay independent.

I'm looking forward to hearing more about Fusion Middleware and BI opportunities.  Also talking about IT Sprawl and better management of the data center should be good topics.  These will be helpful as we grow our current RAC environment and start to consolidate databases onto it.  I probably will skip some of the Exadata stuff since Larry talked so much about it at OpenWorld and my current company really doesn't have the volume to warrant that kind of investment.  It still sounds very cool though!  Again, I'm mostly looking forward to lunch and being able to catch up with people I know and meeting some new ones.  Everyone has a different technology story and you never know when you might pick up something you can use.  I'm already looking forward to April and Collaborate.  That story sharing is a daily thing at Collaborate.  Registration for Collaborate opens next month.  Make sure to check it out and come share your story.  Watch for updates at http://collaborate11.ioug.org.

Hopefully, I'll have some new information to share after Tech day today.  I'm sure I will at least have some new contacts and stories!