RE: What was the WORST session at IOUG/Collaborate or OOW you have ever seen

THAT is too funny!!! I don't remember this particular case though.... wish I'd been there (or glad I wasn't, not sure which)!!

Thanks for sharing!!

RF

Robert G. Freeman
Oracle Press Author
Principle Engineer/Team Manager
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints Collaborate '07
Come join my APEX University Session
and Join me to talk about Evolutionary Database Development!! The LDS Church is Hiring DBAs! Contact me if you are interested!

-----Original Message-----

From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org
[mailto:oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org]On Behalf Of Jeremiah Wilton Sent: Monday, March 19, 2007 10:50 AM
To: oracle-l_at_freelists.org
Subject: RE: What was the WORST session at IOUG/Collaborate or OOW you have ever seen

Well isn't this just a deliciously evil topic?

In the earliest days of 9i/Linux, I was very interested in seeing any examples of actual RAC implementations on Linux. At one of the national conferences (I can't remember which, but someone else here may recall this), my colleagues and I were very excited to attend a session called "A practical implementation of RAC on Linux".

So we show up, and it turns out that it is actually just a sales pitch for Netapp filers. Worse, the presenter was completely unable to answer the simplest technical questions, and instead made up "technical-sounding" answers, that left us all scratching our heads. As the questions persisted, the presenter became antagonized and confrontational.

About 30 minutes into the presentation, nearly the entire audience walked out, not out of mere disinterest, but with palpable annoyance.

A funny twist to this story happened when the results came out from the attendee ratings of the presentations. I had presented at the same conference and really thought I had hit it out of the park. But as it turned out I was second from the bottom in a pool of a couple hundred presentations (many of which were outright sales pitches). Ouch! Worse, the Netapp debacle was scored as the top presentation at the conference. Huh?

As it turned out, the conference staff had sorted the results in reverse order and published them. A subsequent email several days later retracted the results stating that "a minor error in the scoring" had been discovered and that the results would be re-released. Several more days later, the same list, sorted in the correct order was sent out.

Anyone remember that?

Jeremiah Wilton
ORA-600 Consulting
http://www.ora-600.net

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http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l Received on Tue Mar 20 2007 - 00:13:16 CDT