The Buzz Begins

Having had a great week at Oracle HQ, I along with the other ACE Directors made our way into the city ready for Oracle Open World.

Two buses of people arriving at the Hilton, and mine was the last bag out the coach. Nice queue! When I got to the front finally, the guy says "you have a gold card, you should have walked up to the front". Perhaps I am just too British, but that wouldn't be fair to my friends.

Then it was off to a quick bite to eat, at 'Mels', the centre of the OOW Universe. I went with Richard Foote, Chris Muir, Dimitri Gielis and Alex Nuijten, it was a quiet meal most were still jet lagged, expect Richard who thought he was very brave calling me "Debbie" all night, but hopefully has the bruises today to prove it was not a good idea.

In bed by ten, I was up early to start my chores. These included trying to finish my presentations and paper, but the first 30 minutes was wasted trying to stop the bloody phone from flashing red. If I picked up the message it said I had something to collect from the front desk, but the computer was down so no one had any idea. However later I found out it was an excellent ACE Director bag, with ACE sweeties, OTN water and a great new ACE fleece. The fleece is awesome and far too nice to be a threat to Stanley.

I ironed all my clothes, ate my free Starbucks breakfast, and setled down to write my completely unstarted presentation I am giving tomorrow. Then I got a text from Dan Norris who had a break from building Exadata demos in Moscone. I went down to meet him for lunch and ran into Oraclenerd.

After lunch I went clothes shopping with Marcel and resisted the urge to buy too much for me, just one little, pair of shoes.

Quick walk down to the Marriot to meet with Mary Lou Dopart and met up with lots of other friends in the lobby. Mary Lou and I were looking at how the EMEA users group meeting which is only 3 weeks away should lookm and then sharing ideas for the global meeting in Jan. No rest for the wicked.

Then off to dinner with Nadia Benjedou, Steven Chan and Elke Phelps. This is the cream of EBS technicians, and I would normally be in awe of them, but Nadia has a wierd issue with her iPhone that none of them could fathom out. Me, the mere, mortal amongst them, solved the riddle. YES, I am worthy.

ELke wrote the 'Oracle Applications DBA Field Guide' and has just released the updated R12 version. I am so honoured to have a mention in her acknowledgements. Thank you Elke.

We had a great evening at Chez Papa and shared our 'what stupid things have you screwed up when travelling?' tales, turning up with no reservation at a hotel, or a day early at airport, or even getting a taxi from an airport and realising it was a connecting flight you needed.

Now back in the hotel, quickly blogging this and hopefully up really early to finish those pesky presentations.
The fun all kicks off tomorrow, breakfast with yet more friends, lunch with Ray Wang before his analyst event, my first presentation and then the big keynote before the ACE Director dinner cruise.
 And this was my day off!