I went to Hotsos Symposium 2014, in Irving, Texas, last week. If you\u2019re an Oracle technologist and you\u2019re not going to the Symposium each year, you\u2019re really missing out. Not only is it a chance to see some excellent presentations, it\u2019s also a chance to interact with the presenters on an ongoing basis for a few days, as the conference is small enough to allow for that. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s also a chance to enjoy camaraderie from Oracle professionals from around the world. Yep, this conference is so good that people fly in from overseas to attend. <\/p>\n
Plus the food is great, and there\u2019s a party on Tuesday night. <\/p>\n
On the lighter side, here are some non-technical highlights:<\/p>\n
During Tom Kyte\u2019s presentation, someone\u2019s Siri piped up, \u201cI\u2019m not sure what you\u2019ve just said.\u201d I didn\u2019t have any expectation that she\u2019d understand index cluster factors. Actually, she probably wouldn\u2019t have liked the discussion about type casting or pushing predicates, either. Can you imagine being Tom Kyte\u2019s Siri?<\/p>\n
This is an intelligent crowd, so it wasn\u2019t surprising to hear of their children\u2019s admissions to medical school, other children in their medical residencies, and other children abroad in exchange programs. <\/p>\n
At the party on Tuesday, several tables had Jenga games going. I\u2019m very impressed at the steady-handedness of those DBA\/developers! <\/p>\n
I already mentioned the food was good. This of course didn\u2019t go unnoticed by the other attendees. We somewhat jokingly discussed having walking treadmills installed in the back of each presentation hall. Truthfully, I bet people would use them, if only they were quiet enough. <\/p>\n
I saw purposeful inclusion of cultures further east, and it made me smile \u2013 I\u2019ve seen vegetarian food at the Symposium for many years now, but I noticed kulfi (the Indian equivalent of Western ice cream) available in the frozen treats cart during an afternoon break, and I noticed the deejay at the party was playing some Bollywood hits. <\/p>\n
One attendee\u2019s laptop had a sticker which said, \u201cMy other computer is a data center.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kerry Osborne\u2019s presentation was about problem-solving styles. One slide divided people into quadrants, with the two axes being smart-or-stupid and industrious-or-lazy. Kerry had read that a military leader said there was good use for all the combinations, except stupid and industrious, which was a downright dangerous combination!<\/p>\n
I hope we\u2019ll see YOU at Symposium next year!<\/p>\n
Mary Elizabeth McNeely<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I went to Hotsos Symposium 2014, in Irving, Texas, last week. If you\u2019re an Oracle technologist and you\u2019re not going to the Symposium each year, you\u2019re really missing out. Not only is it a chance to see some excellent presentations, it\u2019s also a chance to interact with the presenters on an ongoing basis for a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mcneelytech.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mcneelytech.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mcneelytech.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mcneelytech.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mcneelytech.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=157"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.mcneelytech.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":250,"href":"http:\/\/www.mcneelytech.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157\/revisions\/250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mcneelytech.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mcneelytech.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mcneelytech.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}