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From the Editor
Collaboration Travels
By Tom Haunert
It isn't always easy, but collaboration is almost always worth the effort.
As a writer and editor, nothing I've written or edited for print has ever been a one-person job. Most content in Oracle Magazine, for example, gets edited or proofed by 6 to 10 people, and oftentimes an editor or proofer will ask for significant changes. While these changes may not be welcome by the author at first, in most cases they're appreciated by all by the end of the production cycle.
Collaboration is a key part of processes at Oracle Magazine and, of course, at Oracle. Product development at Oracle, for example, is a collaboration of thousands of people. The text, audio, and video content on Oracle.com, Oracle Technology Network (OTN), and Oracle Partner Network is the result of collaboration across Oracle employees, partners, customers, industry experts, and more. Online forums demonstrate collaboration, and events such as Oracle OpenWorld (OOW) and Oracle users group meetings and conferences bring Oracle people, partners, and customers together in person.
Getting to Collaborate
I attended Collaborate 06 in Nashville, Tennessee, this past April. After attending many OOW conferences, this was my first time at a users group conference, and I enjoyed the experience of meeting with Oracle partners and customers face-to-face.
The process of getting to Collaborate 06, however, was a bit more collaborative than I ever would have anticipated.
By complete coincidence, I was on a Sunday flight to Chicago with two coworkers, and we were all booked on the same connecting flight from Chicago to Nashville. But the connecting flight was cancelled, and there were no seats on any flights from Chicago to Nashville for the rest of the day. According to the first ticket agent we talked to, there were no seats to Nashville available until Tuesday, and the standby lists for flights to Nashville were quite long.
As we waited for the first Nashville standby opportunity, we met up with a fourth coworker. He had missed a flight and was supposed to be with us on the same cancelled flight to Nashville.
And then he proposed the idea of driving to Nashville.
We all needed to be at the same meeting early Monday morning, and there was no time to reschedule. Driving was the only way to make sure all of us made it on time.
It didn't seem to be a sensible idea at first, partly because I had already been awake for 14 hours, but waiting in Chicago for up to two days for a flight didn't make much sense either. So after a lot of debate, we all drove to Nashville. The trip took about eight hours, and we arrived at 3 a.m. Monday.
We talked the whole drive—about work, and about other things. I needed to give a presentation on Monday, and I know that the discussions on that drive improved my presentation.
Another result of my Nashville drive was that I got about three hours' sleep that night and was exhausted for many days. But driving was absolutely the best alternative for us as a group.
Getting Home
On the flight home from Nashville (yes, I flew), I sat next to an Oracle customer who had been at Collaborate 06. Several years ago, his company had deployed an applications stack (that was later acquired by Oracle), and there was some consensus that it was time to upgrade the stack. This customer was at Collaborate 06 to get more information about the true costs and benefits of the upgrade, and after the conference he was confident that the upgrade was worthwhile based on the new technology.
But the costs he talked about were harder to quantify. The previous application deployment had been difficult, and people at his company were not looking forward to another deployment like the last one. This customer wanted information from people who had done the upgrade or knew what was involved to find out how the upgrade would affect his people. My understanding was that after getting information at Collaborate 06, he felt confident that the benefits outweighed the costs of the upgrade.
Looking Forward
I'm looking forward to OOW in San Francisco, October 22-26, 2006. It's going to be the biggest OOW ever, I don't need to fly, and my drive will be much shorter than it was for Collaborate 06.
I've sent this column out for review and input some excellent changes. I'm now looking forward to collaborating on the next column and the next issue of Oracle Magazine.
Tom Haunert, Editor in Chief
tom.haunert@oracle.com
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