Monday, September 20, 2004

Some comments on Oracle OpenWorld London

This post contains some general comments on Oracle OpenWorld London recently held at the Excel Conference and Exhibition Centre.

I had the pleasure of attending Oracle OpenWorld London which took place on the 6th - 8th of September 2004. On this site over the next few days, I will be discussing some of the things I did and saw at the conference. One of the first things that always intrigues me when registering is the conference bag. It’s kind of like those lucky dip packets you get from Father Christmas when you’re a kid - lot’s of goodies in side. I’m amazed at the different types of goodies and gadgets they come up with every year (most of which serve no useful purpose) as well as the different designs and types of conference bags that are distributed. I’ve been attending these conferences for many years now and I have a collection of about 6 or 7 bags in my cupboard - not one of them is the same! These bags tend to be nice for carrying laptops but my existing laptop has a 17 inch monitor and won’t fit in any of them. Still I always manage to find some use for them.

The conference was held at the ExCel Conference and Exhibition Centre, which is in the heart of the London Docklands on the East side of London. The conference centre and the facilities were really good. This Conference centre is quite similar to the San Diego Convention Center where I have attended various Oracle Appsworld and OAUG conferences - the feel of these two centres is very much the same since the SCC is right on the San Diego Harbour and the Excel Conference Centre is right next to the Thames.

The first thing that struck me about this conference was the sheer size of it as the attendance at the conference was very high. I’m not sure of the actual numbers but think I can safely say there were more than 5,000 people in attendance. I thought I would certainly bump into people I new, but finding people in the sea of faces proved to be very difficult. The speakers at the sessions I attended were really good (will be doing write-ups on these sessions in a day or two) and the DEMOgrounds and Exhibition Hall had some interesting stuff to take a look at. You can download conference presentations and white papers which are organised according to the following Focus Areas: -

• Industries
 
• Automotive
• Communications
• Financial Services
• Healthcare
• Pharmaceuticals
• Professional Services
• Public Sector
• Retail
• Trade and Wholesale
• Transportation Utilities
• Line of Business
• Business Intelligence
• Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
• Financials
• Human Resources
• Manufacturing
• Projects
• Supply Chain Management
• Oracle Services
• Small and Midsize Enterprises
• Technology
• Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing
• Oracle Application Development Tools 10g
• Oracle Application Server 10g
• Oracle Collaboration Suite
• Oracle Database 10g
• Oracle E-Business Suite Technology

If you missed the conference and are interested in seeing some snapshots of the event you can find them here. Keynotes can also be viewed online.

It’s always useful to compare an event with other’s I’ve attended. Being an avid Internet surfer and having a laptop with in built wireless support means I like to use this feature as often as I get the chance. All the big conferences I have attended in the States had wireless hotpots and you could essentially access the Internet from anywhere within the conference building. This did not hold true for the London Conference - I could pick up a few wireless networks but access to them was restricted. To access the Internet you had to stand in a queue to have get on to a PC - hopefully it will be different next time. I also felt the DEMOgrounds were a bit small, it was really difficult to get to see anything as there were so many people wanting to take a look at the new stuff coming out (despite this I did get a chance to take a look at Internal Controls Manager which I will be doing a write-up on shortly).