OOW2K6: In the rearview mirror

Back in the UK, all the leaves are brown and the sky is grey. Hmmm, that sounds like an idea for a song...

I survived my Meet The Experts session alongside Tom Kyte with my dignity intact. The relief that Tom recognised me was only slightly diminished by the fact that he confused my blog with that of Andy Campbell. To be fair a lot of people do. Still at least I managed to get a word in edgeways, which puts me one up on Tim Hall ;)

I also managed to get the six (six!) freebie T-shirts home without bursting my suitcase. It was only an hour in the queue to get through the security checkpoint. A minor spat broke out because the officials fast tracked some people whose flight was about to take off. The bloke who had been at the front got quite vocal and it was about to kick off: "Flip you!" "No, flip you!" (or words to that effect). Fortunately the staff calmed it down. But, really, picking a fight in a place where the cops are armed and on edge is just such a dumb idea.

With hindsight it was a really great conference. On Monday it seemed like the infrastructure might crack under the strain but the organisers had done a superb job. It rarely seemed like there might be forty thousand people in the Moscone Center - except possibly whilst queuing for lunch on the Wednesday before Larry's keynote. The conference seemed to lack a big idea. The announcements there had been on the Next Generation database seemed more like 10gR3 rather than version 11. All that changed with the Unbreakable Linux announcement. Suddenly it's penguins all over the place. So how does Oracle 11L sound?