Days 10 and 11 were both spent in San Francisco. Unfortunately, days 10 and 11 were spent either in conference rooms or laying around feeling sick. (I took an exciting conference room photo, below.)
A Big Convention
The conference is good because it’s amazingly huge. Some 45,000 people are here in San Francisco to hear Oracle talk about the software it makes and how to use it to best effect.
I attended this conference last year. I don’t think it run quite as smoothly as last time. I do think the sessions I’ve attended are better than last year if only because I’ve encountered fewer product managers or had to hear them yip and yap about The Future while giving disclaimers that nothing they say is a promise.
Money to Travel
While walking around, I hear almost as many people speaking a non-English language as I hear English. This got me thinking, especially having just come from Paris where I was the non-French speaking person in the room. Such a number of foreign visitors got me thinking…
Oracle makes “Crazy Expensive and Absurdly Complicated” software that runs gigantic corporations. These are corporations that can send people thousands of miles for a conference. By my estimate, travel costs can easily tally to $1500 per person. Conference costs for the full-ticket are around $2000. Some companies send a dozen or more people to this conference.
The software on display here allows corporations to organize thousands of people and manage complex business relationships. Spending $100,000 or more on conference costs is justified because the software manages billions of dollars in transactions per year/month.
So when I think about it, this place is about money and power.
I’m not sure what to do with that thought, yet, but it seems meaningful.
San Francisco Photos
Because of the conference and because I am sick, the only photos I got this time in San Francisco were the ones I could take while moving between the hotel or conference buildings. So here they are, limited as they may be:
      |
Related posts:
