Hotsos symposium 2006, day 3...
Hotsos Symposium day 3. I officially have lost my voice by the end of this day. Not entirely due to talking and talking, although that didn’t help. I’ve caught a cold…
Wednesday started far too early as I had the 8:30am speaking slot! It went well I thought though, it took precisely 60 minutes with good questions during the talk. That is two for two (as far as keeping on schedule). In fact, the schedule was kept to very well by all participants – that is a good thing.
I attended quite a few sessions – the first one after I gave mine was “How NOT to develop an Oracle Based Application” by Kerry Osborne. This one had me shaking my head in violent agreement with his 10 points (like “go ahead, build that ‘db independent layer’” and such). It was accurate, it was funny, it was good.
Then, I went to Toons Koppelaars two part presentation on Applied Mathematics for Database Practitioners. This was really neat. A very formal way to specify database constraints in a completely unambiguous fashion. I actually “got it” as I was able to recall much of my logic courses from college. He has a book coming out (that was being co-authored with Lex de Haan prior to his passing away) and I’ll be picking it up. This was one of the hi-lights of the conference for me.
Then I closed the day out with Cary’s “Capacity planning for Oracle” talk. I always enjoy his sessions – both for the technical content as well as the style. He and Jonathan (whose session I’ll be in all day today) have bits of “presentation style” that I try to steal myself.
Lastly, we did an Oaktable dinner. There was 18 of us (19 really). We had a place for Lex at the table:
– we all toasted him and had a good Texas steak dinner.
posted by Thomas Kyte at 10:35 AM
20 Comments:
I miss those Texas dinners. Oh man... you really feel the need for it after being away from texas for a while. And your comments didnt help much this time.
I was talking about your comment on "texas dinners" by the way.
Good tribute to Lex. I had a friend who's young daughter played soccer aand she died of cancer. The team played the next game "man down" and won. Quite touching.
...“How NOT to develop an Oracle Based Application” by Kerry Osborne...
Tom, anywhere can find the text on the web? Thanks!
Just curious wher y'all headed for steak.
Bob's? Del Frisco's? Other?
"This one had me shaking my head in violent agreement"
Since you went on to say that it was accurate, I imagine you meant nodding your head in violent agreement, right?
If not - what did you disagree with?
where can i find the text for “How NOT to develop an Oracle Based Application” and "capacity planning." ?
I shake my head in agreement. Shaking can go up and down, it can go left to right. I don't think it was at all ambigous.
seems pretty common
here can i find the text for “How NOT to develop
I asked Kerry and he said he would post it on enkitec.com soon (after he gets back)
I've known about this conference for two years now, and been trying to get my employer to subsidize my attendence to no avail. It is a bit sad hearing about how wonderful an event it is, knowing that I keep missing it. Alas, maybe next year.
I also enjoyed the latter part of Mogens Norgaard's talk yesterday - he, his guest (James Moore?), and the audience compiled a list of 'items that make you go hmmmm when you look at your clients' database'.
Also! Thank you for answering my question on oracle text today.
Tom - definitely keep us all up to date on Toons Koppelaars' book. I didn't see it available on pre-order at amazon but it sounds great. Is there any way to order it yet?
Shaking can go up and down, it can go left to right.
Classic.
aatsxpj
Hey 'smartin' I'm right there with you! I "got" to go to a 3rd party software users' conference instead. I know I would have brought back much more value to the company by going to Hotsos conference.... I also was a little jealous, miffed, etc. hearing about it all....Yea, maybe next year.
But then again, I should be thankful for my job too!
i suppose the symposium is over ... time to post some comments.
Tom,
I hate to disagree with you, but if you do a search for 'nodding his head in agreement' you get 12,500 hits. Your query for 'shaking his head in agreement' returns 482 hits. Which is more 'common'?
Lance -
how is that disagreeing?
You just proved that nodding and shaking are both used.
I said "shaking my head in violent agreement"
where exactly is any ambiguity in that statement.
I love the ways we communicate. In our (American) culture "shaking" one's head is typically considered left to right, non-affirmative while nodding up and down is affirmative. I have interacted with other cultures where its the exact opposite. Without the visual, one can only understand that "agreement" is the key word in Tom's statement. By the way, attended Hotsos and it was incredibly informative and humbling to us 'wannabe gurus'. Thanks.
I interrupt this important shake-nod discussion to point out that Toons Koppelaars' initials are the same as Tom Kyte's.
That aside, Toons' presentations, for he actually took up two slots in the schedule, were certainly highlights for me as well. It made my head hurt and filled me with the fear that one day I'll understand Fabian Pascal. That book is on the shopping list for sure.
Tom,
The disagreement was not with your original statement, it was with your followup statement "seems pretty common". The fact that you said "shaking .. in .. agreement" made your original statement non-ambiguious. But, if my math is correct, not a sure bet, one was found to be used 96.3% of the time and the other 3.7% of the time. So I was simply pointing out that while "shaking..." was indeed used, I would not call it "common".
It really is not that difficult to understand Fabian. Start with letting your fear go (and buy the book :-))
My aim is to finish it by the end of this year.
Toon
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