Oracle's Blogger Overtures

This should be a moment to celebrate and congratulate Oracle for reaching out and inviting bloggers to Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco next month. But read Dennis Holwett's post this morning and my dialog this weekend with two of Oracle's sponsors for the initiative - Justin Kestelyn and Jake Kuramoto.

Clearly, this is something very new for Oracle. Not sure how else to explain the unnecessary baiting of SAP, the weak argument that not paying travel expenses will keep us "impartial"(when their annual payments to Gartner, other analysts and advertising to various media could easily pay for flying and lodging a  thousand bloggers to the event), and the flippant explanation of anonymous blog comments by their employees (something I have written passionately about before).

But those details and language will smooth out as Oracle deals more with bloggers. There is less clarity around the big question Dennis asks: What executive access will bloggers get if we went to the conference? And my big question - what Oracle customer access would we get at the conference?

Would their execs allow an open dialogue with bloggers on Fusion, TomorrowNow, SaaS, other topics? Will they be no-shows like last year? And will they allow us to mingle with Oracle customers, not just shepherd us from one session to session? Till those big questions are answered, tough for me to invest 3 days of unbilled consulting time, and $ 2k in travel expenses.

So, here's complimenting Oracle on making a start. I am optimistic next year it will be much more compelling for me to go - expenses paid or not.

Comments

[Justin Kestelyn]

Thanks Vinnie; appreciated. If I may revisit the T&E issue one more time though:

Perhaps this was not well explained, but the objective is not to "keep you honest" - you're either honest or you're not. Rather the objective is to avoid creating the *perception* of quid pro quo, a perception which you must admit would widely exist were the T&E covered. This is just a simple fact of the world, and has no relationship to your actual, real-world honesty.

That being said, I do understand your predicament. Perhaps we'll find some middle ground in the future.

[Jake]

I agree that experience should help create a more productive relationship. This is the first date.

I can't speak for the program planned for blogger attendees, but I assume it will include roaming access to the entire conference, which obviously includes customers, employees, partners, etc. I didn't sign up to shepard anyone.

And no one's baiting SAP. They happen to have the model that you/your colleagues point to as one that works. Oracle is understandably suspicious.

Your pal, Jake

[bkutik]

On the matter of access, I have found Oracle completely open about that -- at least for press and analysts. Unlike other (unnamed) vendor user conferences where those two groups have a special program far away from the customers, Oracle lets you sign up for any regular session.

Time with top executives is scarce for everybody, but there have been group and individual appointments in the past.

Given the overwhelming size of the thing, I can't imagine they have the bandwidth to corral bloggers. But who knows? Good luck.

[Michael Feldstein]

This conversation is particularly interesting to me as a (relatively new) Oracle employee who also also has a long-standing independent blog about my vertical. I've been on both sides of this fence. Since I'm not involved with and have no direct knowledge of the OpenWorld blogger access program, I don't have anything to say about that specific program. But I do want to raise the more general issue that you brought up on Jake's blog about employees being nervous about talking to a blogger.

One of my colleagues asked me recently about how to know which bloggers to read, when to respond, etc. This person is exactly the kind of Oracle employee that you'd want to have speaking directly to bloggers--smart, knows the products, knows the customer base, no BS, etc. (S)he just doesn't have experience with blogs, doesn't read them, etc. Quite independently of any corporate directives or culture, there are just a lot of good people, even in technology, who aren't participating in the blogosphere and don't know the right ways to engage yet.

I encounter this all the time as a blogger as well. I'll be in the middle of what I consider to be a casual, friendly chat with somebody and the person will suddenly lean forward and say, "This is off the record, now." People don't have a clear sense of what the ground rules or boundaries are.

So here's my question:

Forgetting for the moment official corporate blogger engagement initiatives, what do you suggest that companies like Oracle do to help acculturate the front-line employees who could be engaging in fora like this one if only they knew more about them? And turning the tables a bit, how can we bloggers do a better job of reaching out to these employees and helping them better understand the value and rules of the road for this kind of engagement?

[vinnie mirchandani]

Mike, companies can actively discourage (or only let a handful of employees blog), not sure they can encourage employees to blog or participate in blogs. Individuals get into Facebook. Twitter, blogging at their own pace and sphere of interest - and some just never get comfortable with writing - blogs or other docs. I do think there should be guidelines on blog etiquette, restrictions on sharing proprietary detail etc and also blog ethics...one of my favorites is dont comment anonymously.