Reflections on Oracle OpenWorld 2011
Ron Kelley and Dave Litzenberg at the IIS booth
I always look forward to traveling to San Francisco in the autumn of each year for the Oracle OpenWorld conference. San Francisco is a beautiful city, but with the added fanfare of the OpenWorld conference, the city is absolutely electric. The taxi drivers sometimes seem a bit annoyed by the blocking of Howard Street between Moscone North and South with the huge Oracle tent, but otherwise the city seems to be very welcoming of everything Oracle.
- Catamaran at Oracle OpenWorld 2011
After getting a good night’s rest at the historic Westin St. Francis, I headed over to Moscone West to get registered and check out our booth. As an OpenWorld Alumni, I still love getting registered so that I can see how many ribbons I get on my badge and I also love getting the new bag of the year with all of the goodies inside. And as an extra added bonus, I got a new Alumni jacket again this year. Very cool. By the way, did you know that you could fit a full-size racing catamaran inside the convention center? Yes, you can.
Footprints lead the way to the IIS booth at Oracle OpenWorld 2011
As I made my way into the Exhibition Hall, I found these very useful footprints that took me right to my booth. Oh, and look at our sign right above the door. LOVE the power of advertising!
Once my associates (Kelly Rindler, Dave Litzenberg, Ron Kelley, and Craig Randall) and I got all set up in the booth, we were ready for the show to open and we were absolutely thrilled to see the mad rush of customers enter the exhibition hall. We had all we could do to keep up, which is a good problem to have! Talking with customers and giving product demonstrations is a great way to spend the day! Ron Kelley also gave a great presentation on AP Automation – The DocuSphere Difference in the Scene and Be Heard Theater.
The IIS exit banner in Moscone West, Oracle OpenWorld 2011
And what’s a convention without some giveaways? We held a raffle each day for these nice little Fujitsu ScanSnap portable scanners. Here are a couple of our winners (posing with their prize and our very own Dave Litzenberg). Very exciting!
Kelly and I attended lots of educational sessions to make sure we are keeping up with the ever-changing applications of Oracle E-Business Suite and JD Edwards EnterpriseOne and World software. Of course, we were also peeking in on as many Fusion Applications sessions as we could. The big themes this year for all applications boiled down to improved user interface, mobile applications, ease of upgrade, lower total cost of ownership. Good stuff and especially good to know that DocuSphere is also on the right track.
Ron Kelley at the Scene and Be Heard Theater
Meanwhile, over at the Westin St. Francis where the JD Edwards sessions were going on, Joe Links was manning our kiosk in the JDE Pavilion. Did you get one of our cool, personalized JDE Alliance luggage tags?
If you did not make it out to San Francisco for the conference, or you were there but missed some things, be sure to visit the Oracle website. You can view all of the Keynote sessions and download session content here.
This was an exceptional year at Oracle OpenWorld! We will be back next year hanging out again at Moscone West in booth 3736. Save the date: September 30 – October 4, 2012. You can even register now with big savings.
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