Attendees of Benioff's presentation weren't sure how the SaaSCRM executive would respond to comments made by Ellison before OpenWorld began. (Ellison mocked Salesforce.com's "little itty-bitty application" for sales-force automation in a recent shareholder meeting.) Anyone hoping for some Benioff "trash talk" was sorely disappointed, as IDG News Service's Chris Kanaracus observes. "In the end," writes Kanaracus, "Benioff seemed more intent Tuesday on building bridges than burning them." (For more on how outsiders fare at OpenWorld, see Behind Enemy Lines: Salesforce.com and Rimini Street at Oracle OpenWorld.)
Oracle's theme this year was "Come with questions. Leave with answers." This tweet, during the presentation by Thomas Kurian (Oracle's EVP of product development) on Tuesday morning, made a lot of people laugh: "@nenshad: #oow09 Oracle OpenWorld: Come with questions, leave with more questions." Ouch.
Speaking of Twitter, the #oow09 Twitter stream was half informative, half crap. At times, trying to digest the enormous amounts of tweets was practically impossible.
I heard a lot of good and cool things about the Unconference gatherings at OpenWorld 2009. Must attend next year.
Was it just me, or were there a lot fewer Booth Babes on the floor of the Exposition Center? I saw more vendor booths with more game-based attractions.
The Blue Angels performed their aerial feats over the San Francisco Bay on Sunday afternoon, delighting the thousands of watchers (and many OpenWorld attendees). Impressive stuff, especially when it seemed like the jet planes were going to shatter windows and rip the roofs off of buildings. (They didn't, thankfully.)
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