This was a busy week and one of the most interesting OpenWorld events that I have ever attended. Besides the groundbreaking announcement of the Oracle Exadata Server, there were many other things going on. I attended a few sessions but mostly I was helping the group of Oracle mobloggers doing video of the various aspects of the show. Thanks to support from Samsung, we had the use of more than 25 devices including a brand-new UMTS touchscreen device, the Samsung Omnia. Bhaskar Roy and his team from Qik also gave us terrific support. It was a lot of fun doing the mobile video, but a lot of hard work too. The first couple of days I was busy passing out devices and showing people how to use them properly. I also did some behind-the-camera work with the Asia Pacific PR team who was shooting offline video using their own devices. My phone and twitter did not stop the entire time I was there.

Among other things we used the devices to capture live video snapshots with Qik, a streaming video application that runs on the Omnia and other devices we used. Videos were cross posted to blogs.oracle.com, and other users joined in with their own content. By the time we got going, there were 40 Qik users streaming video of the Openworld. Several of the mobloggers were also posting photos to Flickr too. To top that off, I had a group of student Interns from the National University of Singapore Silicon Valley branch attending the show and doing some great work to help out. My teams from China and Singapore put up demos in the Inside Innovation display showing off some of the work we are doing in Enterprise 2.0 and Digital Media areas.

I had a bunch of smartphones, cameras, and audio gear and I enjoyed showing others how to use it. There were a few glitches but they got fixed quickly and I was able to enjoy seeing others learn how to use the gear to share their views of the show. Unfortunately, I did not get as much time as I thought to do my own posts. I did some videos and shot some stills too, but it seemed like I was in motion for the entire time. Next time I'm going to spend more time with this because it is a great way to share parts of the event which may not be big enough to be seen by others.

I've been blogging on Oracle's intranet for the past few years and am finally getting around to blogging here. My Asia Pacific buddies asked me to name this blog 'Tech Bets' after a series of talks that I give in the region. I'm interested in a lot of things and I love to track the weak signals and try to bet on what is going to happen in the next couple years. I have been sharing my thoughts with my co-workers on my other blog, but now I'd like to share them with you.

I'll be starting out by doing some moblogging and even some video from the Oracle OpenWorld 2008. After that I'll invite you to come along with me as I travel across Asia. The most common question people ask me is "Where are you based". My usual response is - Here, wherever that is. Seriously, though I spend about a week a month in the USA and the rest somewhere else. I move fast but I love the pace. I hope you enjoy coming along for the ride and welcome and ideas on where I should go next.