Friday, September 30, 2016

Oracle Open World 2016 Afterthoughts

So I went to Oracle Open World again. For me this year it was partly vacation, networking, and inspirations for work. I went on my own, to a few sessions, spent a lot of time on Oak Table World, hanging out in the OTN Lounge, socialising, and at meet-ups.

On my way home I put down some of the takeaways:

  • There were a lot of clouds, but it didn’t rain.
  • There are a some speakers who manage to go back to stuff I’ve seen before, yet inspire me with new ideas.
  • Some presenters are so inspiring that I went to sessions that I thought were almost irrelevant for me.  It happened more than once that I had a “Huh, this is cool!”-moment.
  • I am thankful for being part of the ACE program, and it is a great privilege to meet more or less likeminded people from all around the world. To stay inside it, I have to keep learning and share with the community, another good motivation for a better career.
  • OOW, despite being one of the most commercial conferences I go to, is the best opportunity to meet all these people, I’ll do the same next year.
  • Again I met some very helpful people from Oracle, people I like to talk to about everything, from Apocalypse to Zookeeper.
  • These people reminds me that Oracle is more than a machine, and the software I work with every day is made by both smart and nice experts. Next year, join the biking on Saturday, or the running over the bridge on Sunday to see what I mean.


OTN which is responsible for the ACE program does a lot of cool stuff like the IoT workshop, and much more. I hope the team do understand they have many friends around the world. Some of us plan to show this in near future, check this blog post by Tim Hall aka Oracle-Base: https://oracle-base.com/blog/2016/09/28/otn-appreciation-day/

Next year, October 1.