Last week, I was pretty certain I would be nowhere near San Francisco week of November 11. Oracle had invited several Enterprise Irregulars to OpenWorld, but the conversation around that had turned off several of us.
Then it hit me how petty the conversation had become. Here was a fellow blogger, Jake Kuramoto, reaching out to us (outside Oracle's community of internal and partner bloggers), and I want him to have a success. So I called him, apologized for having contributed to the pettiness of the blog conversation, and asked how I could help with the OpenWorld agenda for bloggers.
Jeff Nolan did the same and has shared quite a bit with Jake about how he facilitated blogger participation and executive access at SAP events. I also sent Charles Phillips, President of Oracle a note and requested at least some executive access to bloggers during the event. Charles acknowledged my note, but realistically given the 40K attendees vying for executive attention and only 2 weeks to go, not sure there will be much beyond a handshake.
But, with an unclear agenda, am I (and other EIs) stupid to be investing 2K in travel expenses and in 4 days in travel and the event? Maybe so. But Oracle is a significant player we all cover, and a door has been cracked open and we get a chance to encourage them to keep opening more. Oracle, I believe, will benefit from the thought leadership several EIs have provided around the Web and Enterprise 2.0 meme. Several EIs did a call with Lawson Software last week, and I think they were pleasantly surprised at the insight many of us had on the enterprise apps market that they are not hearing from industry analysts and tech media. I hope Oracle gets a chance to also see that and continues a dialogue after the event.
Besides, it is an opportunity for me to meet many friends and fellow bloggers and hopefully, many of my readers at the event. Please drop me a note and we can try and meet up.
Oracle and Jake, thanks for the invitation. We look forward to your hospitality. In turn, as I wrote when SAP first invited outside bloggers to Sapphire in May 06, we come in transparency. Look forward to it.
