The First Miracle Open World: Gala Diner

I have already mentioned the 80/80 percent rule for the MOW, and I bet you suspect that 42% of “80% of useful stuff” was done after hours. And you’d be right on the mark!

First on the schedule of the second evening (28^th of September) was the Gala Diner. Mr. Nogood opened it and marked Oracle ACEs, OCP/Ms and Oak Table Network members with special distinction — a blue silk sash. Sadly, I can’t find mine in my travel bag; I think perhaps the Water-Park has it now.

After that, there was a Q&A session with an Oracle representative. (Shame on me! I can’t recall his name, but he is a former IBM employee, so it’s not too embarrassing.) I remember how he described Oracle 11g — “the greatest of all releases.” It might be true, but nobody could resist a good laugh. He also gave an interesting answer on the question of how they are going to be able to support so many of their recent acquisitions: they are making sure that their sales personnel is educated to be aware of the whole product line and can support customers very well. I apologize for my sarcasm, but I couldn’t resist asking him how training of salesmen helps improving technical support.

One more thing that I’ve mentioned before was that Carel-Jan Engel was nominated as the Chairman of the Board of Directors (or something like that — quite pompous) of the newly organized International Miracle User Group (iMUG). I believe that he is the perfect choice. He was given two immediate tasks: form the Board of Directors, and find out the purpose of iMUG.

As I was the only representative of Canada, I was sat next to the Canadian flag. (This was actually a bit unfortunate, as I would expect a Russian flag.) Naturally, the Maple Leaf was beside the Stars and Stripes, which itself was next to Cary Millsap, representing the US.

There were also bunch of Finnish guys around, and I learned some interesting facts about Russian-Finnish war in the beginning of the last century. Unusual from my perspective. I also learned about the Finnish Sauna Society and I’ve been promised an invitation — which I look forward to very much. I found their web site interesting, especially the page on development of the Finnish Sauna. I also learned that my “grand dad”, Mikhal Gorbachev, was one of the first users of the first handheld mobile phone, and that that gave it quite a bit of publicity. It was more like a big brick then a “mobile” device. The Mobira Cityman model was nicknamed Gorba after him.

I should mention that the food was very good, and I especially liked dessert. I have to pay a visit to the Oktoberfest now, so please excuse my stopping here. I will continue with Water-Park adventure soon.