Oracle Open World

I saw an advertisement in a magazine recently for Oracle Open World. It is being held in San Francisco from September 21 through 25. It has big sponsors such as Intel and HP. It also has smaller sponsors like Computer Sciences Corporation. However there was one problem with the ad. I was not exactly sure what this conference was about.

Sure it is somehow revolving around Oracle. But what does the “open” refer to? Is it open source? I doubt it. I went to the web site and found the conference covered applications, databases, middleware, and industries. This did not narrow the field down much. I also saw some information that I would be able to connect with both experts and peers at the conference. Unfortunately this is still pretty generic.

I did get the impression that this conference was not specific to Oracle developers. I really wish they had a buzz line for the conference. Something like “Oracle Open World – Running Oracle on Linux System” would be helpful.

Oracle has hopped onto the environmental trend by having a Green Program within the conference. They are going to review green components, if that makes any sense. There shall be a review of green practices in general. Their motto is to rethink, reduce, reuse, and recycle. At this point I cannot tell for sure. However I suspect this is really just a lot of lip service to capitalize on the popularity of the environmental movement.

The cost for Oracle Open World is between $2000 and $2500, depending on how early you register. I have an interest in the Oracle database. Our customer has huge amount of data stored in one. Some of our code is PL/SQL stored procedures. I might be a good candidate to attend this conference. The promoters of this conference have not done a good job of telling what exactly this conference is about. So they have lost at least one customer.