My Love Waits There in San Francisco...

A tad dramatic? Yes.

Rough week "watching" everyone at OpenWorld. I gave it the old college try, but I didn't have the heart for it, it and it.

June
I submitted my registration to attend as a blogger.

July 27th
I received notification that I had landed one of those coveted prizes.

August 1st
I published How To: Oracle OpenWorld Free Passes which has become the 3rd most viewed article on my site.

While wrestling over silly things like:

• Travel
• Hotel
• Expenses (no vacation time in the bank)
• Mild fear of flying

I was still expecting to go.

August 24th
I came to terms with the fact that I wasn't going to be able to make it. This was spurred on by a visit to my parents to beg for money to pay our mortgage.

August 25th
I found this tweet from Justin Kestelyn, aka Mr. OTN:



That linked to his post here, Jake followed suit a short time later here.

I decided, again, to give it the old college try.

August 27th
I thanked everyone for their support.

September 1st
And 4 days later, I bowed out again.

September 28th
Someone bought 100 oraclenerd T-Shirts!

September 30th
Posted a blurb with links and everything to all that I could find concerning OpenWorld.

October 9th
Word starts to trickle out of the Oracle ACE Directors meeting...in their schwag bag is the official oraclenerd T-Shirt!

October 11th
OpenWorld officially begins.

October 14th
The Blogger meet-up.

Looks to me that it was a complete success. Alex Gorbachev organized the event. Doug Burns has a nice wrap-up here.

I kept trying to get people to send me pictures of them wearing their super cool oraclenerdT-Shirt, but I only got 3 action shots. I'd say Alex won that battle as well. ;)

Backtrack: October 9th 12:16 A.M. EST
I received this email:

Anyway, I also asked redacted if he knew of any bloggers who were interested being sponsored to go to OOW. My client is redacted and they asked us to reach out to some bloggers to sponsor in order to attend the show. At present we have two bloggers who have agreed to be sponsored. One is primarily shooting video and the other guy is a general tech/business blogger. redacted mentioned that you might be interested in a sponsorship? You are certainly well versed with Oracle and ERP, so your participation would be a nice addition. In return we would hope you would spend a little time getting to know redacted and perhaps covering some of the activities the company is doing during the show.

Please let me know ASAP if you are interested and if there is any more information you would like from me. We would make your travel arrangements. (emphasis mine)

Obviously I turned it down...just not enough time for me to make the appropriate arrangements (work/family). Oh well.

But...I am starting to save up now for OOW10! Spreadshirt is offering free shipping if you buy 2 or more oraclenerd T-Shirts. The deal is good until October 26th so hurry up if you want to take advantage. For US buyers, use the code TREAT9, for Canadians, use CADTREAT9.