My Personal Problems (Oracle OpenWorld and Willie Hardie on Oracle for Small and Mid Size Businesses)

Maybe it's just me and my personal experiences (including presentations given to audiences who will not tolerate vendor commercials), but I really wish that Willie Hardie's presentation at Oracle OpenWorld had been less of an Oracle commercial and more of a true learning experience about the needs of small and midsize businesses.

I'll grant that this may be a minority opinion, but if someone is giving a presentation entitled "Oracle Database 10g for Small and Midsize Businesses," I would hope for the following:

• A presentation that focused exclusively on the needs of small and midsize businesses.


• A presentation that included material from small and midsized businesses.

Well, that isn't the presentation that Willie Hardie chose to give today (Monday, September 19) at Oracle OpenWorld. Hardie started by talking about how Oracle is the number one database in the world, and then listed the features in Oracle Database 10g, starting with the "g" word (grid). (Real meaningful to the small business.) Hardie did discuss a number of features that benefit small businesses (for example, the ease with which spreadsheet data can be imported into Oracle HTML DB), but the statements that didn't come from Oracle came from large vendors - "small business is important to us," said the large vendors. But not important enough to get a small businessman or businesswoman up there to speak for themselves.

Again, this may just be me, but I was hoping for something more.

[OE UPDATE: But I liked this.]