It is a very early Sunday morning in a San Francisco that has turned red! In every street there are banners and posters, half of the busses are Oracle tagged, there are billboards – and all are announcing the Oracle Open World 2006 event. The biggest conference to ever hit town. San Franciscans (is that what they are called?) are astounded – primarily because a street has been blocked off for this conference, to allow the 42.000 participants to eat lunch. 
The Moscone center and the other venues combined can not hold that number of people. Blocking off a street in downtown SF apparaenly is indicative of an earth shattering event (hmmm, maybe not the best choise of words right on top of the San Adreas fault). San Francisco is somewhat in awe of what OOW 2006 entails. On the outside.
Apart from the metrics, which are huge, there is going to be a lot going on on the inside as well. First there are all the people I will meet. Actually already started meeting. Funny how out of 42.000 people of which perhaps I know some 100 I ran into the first familiar face (Dimitri) minutes within arriving in the Moscone Center. Well, actually even before that, the plane from Amsterdam felt like half full with OOW visitors. Later today I have several meetings/events where I hope to meet new and known people – first the Oracle Regional Directors for Fusion Middleware get together and later tonight – if jet-lag has not taken me over by then – the Oracle ACE dinner.
In between preparing and executing my three presentations – and wondering why the heck one was not enough – I hope to learn a lot as well. About the BI Enterprise Edition (pka Siebel Analytics) for example. And the 11g Release of the database (Marco – my AMIS colleague and I are invited for the 11g Beta meeting in some somewhat secret location), the SOA Suite, Fusion – both middleware and E-Business Suite. And what else cross my path.
I will try to keep you informed from what I learn around here. For now that is primarily the vastness of the event. And the energy that is in the air. It is a thrill to be part of it. More later.
