Collaborate Days 0 and 1

By Jake • April 13th, 2008 • View Comments

Collaborate 08 officially begins today, but I flew in yesterday and got to hang out with Dan and Matt, who were in town early to set up for sessions today.

Thanks to Twitter, I shared a cab from the Denver airport to downtown. The cabbie negotiated $25 each, then tried to change it to $30 when we arrived, unsuccessfully. Welcome to Denver.

Denver is cold, at least it was yesterday. Today is much warmer. There’s a promenade a few blocks away from the Colorado Conference Center, no doubt inspired by the Promenade in Santa Monica. Walking through there, you see signs for Collaborate 08.

Oddly, I saw a child on a leash there too. And later on, a giant shrimp, or I guess a man in a shrimp suit. There’s a Bubba Gump across the street from the super-sweet Hyatt where Matt and Dan are staying.

I’m staying in the less fancy Comfort Inn. My room is on a corner though, so I have a sweet wrap-around window. Initially, I thought this would make sleeping an issue, but it didn’t.  After a day spent with Dan and Matt, sleep was easy.

This morning, I had coffee with Anne Zelenka, friend of the ‘Lab, ex-Oracle EBS, blogger extraordinaire, etc. It’s always a treat to meet online friends in person. Anne had some tidbits from her time at Oracle, e.g. she started the Trading Community Architecture (TCA).

If you’re an EBS person, you probably know the tables for TCA are all prefaced with “HZ”. Turns out that Anne took that product code in honor of her son, a nice bit of trivia. I can relate because the product I used to worked on (and David still does) has the product code “FUN”. All the meaningful codes are taken, so you’re forced to think of less obvious codes.

Anyway, I’m at the conference center today. The giant blue bear peering in the windows is pretty funny. I registered, rummaged through the backpack swag, found the wi-fi and planned my sessions for tomorrow.

Next on the agenda is the ACE dinner tonight. If you’re here at Collaborate, drop a comment so we can meet up in person.

I won’t be here long, thankfully, since I think the altitude is making me overly thirsty and headachy. I hope that’s temporary.


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  • Jake
    @Puneet: Thanks for scratching an itch that's been bugging me for 10 years.

    @Amanda: D'oh, I had to bail yesterday evening, so I didn't get wander the booths. I have seen your site briefly in the past; thanks for the link love. Have you seen Eddie's OracleCommunity, which is also hosted on Ning? You could cross-pollenate information between the two communities. More is better.

    Maybe we can catch up at OpenWorld.
  • Hi! You should visit the SmartDog booth - alas, I'm not actually THERE, but my coworkers are awesome. ^.^ We've been linking to this blog on our website. Hurray - hope you continue to enjoy your time in Denver!
  • @David Just happen to meet KC today. She has been with Oracle longer than 11 years I guess, and she cleared the mystery behind AR/RA. Actually, RA meant 'Revenue Accounting', a functionality that later folded into AR itself. I didn't check if RA came in from an acquired company or not. Maybe next time when she comes around...
  • Jake
    @David/@Meg: This is a fun game. We should start a wiki page to collect the anecdotal history of each product code.

    Then again, that sounds like work . . .
  • In Talent we now have a new product code "HRT" and those of us [ahem] wiser females find this a funny play on Hormone Replacement Therapy. We didn't do this on purpose but did add the joke after the fact.
  • As I understood it the RA table came from a company that Oracle acquired many years ago(before my time - so more than 11 years ago), that then became part of the receivables (AR) product. Maybe somebody can confirm or deny this who has been around here longer than I.
  • Jake
    @Puneet: Good stuff. I always wondered why there were RA and AR tables in the Receivables schema. Forgot to ask Anne about that.
  • I always used to wonder about the origins of HZ. Now I know.

    Talking of product codes, one other product in Procurement family has a similar history, from what I have heard. "CHV" is the product code for Supplier Scheduling. Apparently, CHV are the initials of one Vance Checketts (sp?) who was working in Procurement at that time.
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