Today I’ve decided to skip the morning’s keynotes and went for the Unconference. I’ve never attended an Unconference before, but have heard many good things about it from fellow bloggers. And yes they’re absolutely right!. Today’s morning session is the “What’s New in Eleven … Dot Two (that Oracle won’t be talking about)” conducted by Oracle ACE Director Daniel Morgan. (You can’t not go just by reading that session’s subject.) 😉 The informal atmosphere and a smaller number of participants encourage more interaction which is very great. Daniel is a great resource. His web site – Morgan’s Library has wealth of information about Oracle especially new features in 11g both R1 and R2 (see New in 11gR1 & 11gR2 tabs from his site). I’ll definitely go back for more of Unconferences.
On a lighter note, I (and a lot of people) came to one of the evening sessions 5 minutes late. But somehow the way seats were arranged, it made it very difficult to get into the empty chairs so most people including myself ended up standing in the back of the room. I would assume that in a conference room setting, they would arrange to have at least the access in the middle and on both sides. This way people can get in/out more easily. May be the facility folks thought that if we added more chairs on the sides (leaving no room on the wall side), we would be able to accommodate more people. Brilliant! Ha? This good intention backfired because even though there are more chairs in the room, now there are more empty seats (less utilization) because of less access. Um… I don’t know where I’m going from here. But somehow I feel there is a lesson learned here that good intentions are not enough to accomplish a task, a good design is needed too.
