I’m interested in hearing from those members who attended Oracle Open World 2006 regarding your thoughts on future locations for Oracle Open World.  This year’s conference has seen record numbers as far as attendees, and although the conference seems to be going fairly smoothly I’ve found that I’m not the only one wondering if the conference would be better off being held in another location such as Las Vegas.  Another option would be to break it down into smaller events (technology, applications, etc.), much like it was years ago.

Any comments on your 2006 Open World experience would be welcomed.

Regards,
Michael Siebert

This time the conference was very well organized.
Howard Street was blocked and lunch was served in tents.
This saved a lot of traffic between the Moscone Center locations.
The sessions were spaced with sufficient break timings (except for the last day)
The exhibit hall was also extended to Moscone West and hence the congestion at the exhibit hall was not unbearable.
The only negative was locating conference sessions in nearby hotels like Marriot and Hilton.
Except for the die-hards, who would walk to the hotels away from the buzz at Moscone?
The Openworld Shuttles were running throughout the day and hence transport was very well taken care of.
To host a conference of this size, and with so many Oracle employees participating, I think San Fransisco is a permanent location for the conference.
One would assume it’ll be a logistic challenge to host it in any other city.
Las Vegas is indeed a great host city. Collaborate’07 is being hosted there.
It seems that Oracle has figured that its most economic to host a mega event than smaller events.

Valid points.  Thanks for your feedback.  It took me a while to get used to the logistics, but the congestion issues seemed to resolve themselves by Tuesday.  I agree with your comments about the sessions at the hotels.  I was willing to make the effort most of the time, but I’d suspect the different locations kept others from attending all the sessions.

~ Michael