A Texas Gal in a Big, RED World

 Posting on behalf of Alison Krause, who is on the Dell Storage social media team

Today I experienced day 1 at one of the BIGGEST technology conferences this year, Oracle Openworld 2011. This is my first time to San Francisco and if I didn’t know any better I might think I was in Oracle, California. They took no short cuts in painting the town red…literally.  I enjoyed a fabulous touristy day in San Fran yesterday, but today got to the meat of why I’m here. OOW11. Incredibly cool stuff. I am very impressed with how well they have put this event together.

I am sitting in “Social Avenue,” an area sponsored by Sprint where you can charge up your devices and get a little work done. I covered a lot of ground today but have so much more to discover and attend over the next two days. I made several stops by both of our Dell booths to make sure they were appropriately hopping. They were. The event coordinators did a great job with both booths. The Dell solutions booth features a Juice Bar. Very cool.  Who doesn’t love enjoying some juice and smoothies while chatting about the solutions that Dell has to offer? The Dell Storage booth is filled with our top experts from our IDM team, EqualLogic team, and Compellent team. I attended a couple of great sessions today featuring a few of our own, Ravi Kulkarni and JP Sparkis. Cloud was the primary topic in sessions I attended today. After mapping out tomorrow, databases seem to be a hot topic of the day.

Two specifically exciting things I am looking forward to tomorrow are Michael Dell’s keynote and the tweetup at Dell’s juice bar. Jeff Sullivan has put together a tweetup that will take place from 2 to 3 right outside Moscone North (on the east corner).  I am sure we’ll have lots of people stop by to get some juice and Dell Tech Center shirts! I look forward to chatting with our twitter friends.

I am off to finalize my session attending plan for tomorrow then heading to the Oracle/Dell partnership reception this evening. Pleased with my day 1 experience and looking forward to even more goodness tomorrow.

Check out these twitter accounts for frequent even updates and photos: @dell_storage and @alisonatdell.

About the Author: Gina Rosenthal