OOW2K7: Non-fake tales from San Francisco

One of the things at OpenWorld which continues to astonish me is the rudeness of people in the audience. At the UKOUG we start each session with a reminder to switch off mobile phones, or at least silence them. Here, people not only have their mobile phones on, they actually take calls whilst the presenter is talking. This is not an isolated event: it has already occurred in three out of the seven sessions I've attended so far. Also people conduct conversations during the presentation, and not in whispers either. This is particularly strange given that, outside of the conference hall, Americans are generally far more courteous and better mannered than most English people these days.

Another thing which is shocking to the out-of-town visitor is the sheer number of beggars on the street. One guy I saw yesterday was holding a sign which said I need a girlfriend. I'm not quite sure what he was expecting to be dropped in his cup. There was another guy playing a drumset improvised out of buckets and plastic containers whose sign included his e-mail address. I didn't catch whether it had a PayPal number too.

This year OpenWorld is a green conference. This primarily means that we could choose to have the conference directory as a thick book or a lightweight USB drive. The catch is we need to have a device which takes a USB drive. For those of us who left our laptop at home the dead-tree option is the appropriate technological choice. However I have seen a couple of people attempt to plug their OOW pen drive into a laptop in the Conference internet villages; unsuccessfully, because these babies are totally locked down. The other interesting green initiative is the opportunity to pre-order an Oracle-branded messenger bag which will be made out of recycled conference material. This item will be even more fashionable than that Sainsburys carrier bag because of the absolute coolness of the Oracle logo.

The OTN team are giving away T-Shirts in the OTN lounge. The front features a SQL statement:

SELECT Java, Linux, PHP, DotNet, Python, Ruby
FROM  OTN
WHERE Self BETWEEN 'Newbie AND 'Expert'

So, apart from the fact that it doesn't mention PL/SQL and the fact that the statement is invalid due to the missing quote, it's a pretty good attempt.

Gavin Newsom, the mayor of San Francisco would like us all to explore more of the city than a two-block radius of the Moscone Centre:

"You can continue on the F line to Pier 45, walk into the back and experience the fish processing, which is totally frenetic and interesting. Why not see and experience another side, which is the fact that San Francisco remains the largest fish processing center on the West Coast."

Why not indeed.