I suppose I should start with day zero, and not day one...

Michelle and I landed, but the hotel didn't have our reservations on file. Great... and on the one day we decided to not print out the confirmation letter. Michelle scoured her web-email using the computers behind the reservation desk... in the meantime a few Oracle employees came in and were initially confused as to why she was working behind the counter... Anyway, the clerk looked through their list of who was checking in that day, just to see if our names were spelled incorrectly.

We were there of course: as Brian and Michelle Hugg. Lovely. Yeah. We'll live that down.

Later I had drinks with some folks I hadn't seen in a while (like Dan Norris and Matt Topper), as well as folks I heard of but never met (like Jake Kuramoto and Paul Pedrazzi). The Oracle ACE Director dinner was good. I love finding out what other ACEs are up to, and what technologies they are interested in. The buzz these days seems to be all about Hyperion... just when I started learning about BI Publisher and Real-Time-Decisions!

Keeping up on enterprise technology is a constant struggle...

The first day of IOUG Collaborate 2008 was pretty good... I hung out at the Enterprise Content Management conference-withing-a-conference a lot to chat with other ECM folks. I gave a well-recieved talk about why ECM projects fail, which was essentially an extension of the AIIM list from last year. It wasn't just a rant, it had some practical advice of what typically goes wrong, and what you can do about it. Cliff Cate and Tom Tonkin presented their war stories and advice as well.

Here's a tip: very few enterprise software failures have much to do with bad software... its almost always poor communication.

I wasn't able to attend many sessions after that... not the exhibit hall, not even the keynotes. I did check out the hands-on lab about Oracle Text, hoping for a deep dive... but it was pretty basic. Attending a conference is more fun when you're not a presenter. I had to go to my hotel early to put the finishing touches on my Tuesday presentation... so I skipped all the festivities.

I have another session on day 2, after which I'll be able to relax, attend more sessions, and network more.