 Live from San Francisco, extracting the signal from the noise, it's theCUBE, covering Oracle Open World 2015, brought to you by Oracle. Now your hosts, John Furrier and Brian Grace Lee. Okay, welcome back everyone. We are here live in San Francisco. This is theCUBE, Silicon Angles flagship program. We go out to the events and extract the signal from the noise. I'm John Furrier, the founder of Silicon Angles, joining my co-host, Brian Grace Lee, wikibon analysts, our next guest, the tiny and wide deck vice president of event marketing, Oracle, welcome to theCUBE. Thank you, thank you. We are on Howard Street. They closed down San Francisco, it's a huge show. It's so exciting, it's like our game day. We're going to break it down. We're going to do 48 interviews over the course of the next three and a half days. So we are just getting going. And I'm sure you're just getting that first sea legs right now. What's going on for you right here at the event? Right now everything has started. We are kicking off the show. We have Larry Ellison coming this afternoon to speak and we have Java one keynote starting in an hour, I think. So we are ready to go. So does Larry like fly in the last minute as he chopper in? I mean, there's so much persona, like intrigue about Larry. Is there a back secret door he comes in and extract or what? Give us some color into the prep and all that keynote because that's the fun time, the Sunday keynote. The Sunday keynote is fun. Yeah, no, he's great. He's been working on his content and he will arrive early and go through it backstage. Yes, there is a secret door. We will not share that today. Real time updating. Yeah. So give us some numbers inside the numbers. What's the event about? Is it size wise? How many lunches do you serve? Anything you can share? What are some of the stats? Yeah, so we have about 110,000 hotel room nights in the city. We have a great partnership with the city to put the conference on, obviously affording us this opportunity to close down Howard Street. We also closed down Taylor Street to host the Java one attendees. We use every room in every hotel for sessions and there are thousands, more than 2,500 sessions, more than 400 partners and exhibitors and more than 800 Oracle demos. There are just, there's so much going on in every hotel. We have 18 different venues that we host portions of the conference and we've organized it such that the attendees really get to experience and take what they need out of it. We've tried to co-locate the content, the demos and we've done a really, a lot of work in making it as easy to navigate as possible given the breadth of the conference. What can attendees expect this year here at Oracle of the World? A lot of education, but a lot of fun. With all of those sessions, that's why they come but they really come to network and to hear from other customers so the big thing they're going to do is learn from each other and that's what the conference is all about and I think that's why people still come to events. It's also fun as you get a lot of customer breakout sessions, different, a lot of activity and a lot of business being done, which is great but everyone always wants to know who's the band? Who's going to be the music? What's the party like? Well, we love to appreciate our customers and we appreciate them with very big name bands. We have a concert out at Treasure Island and about 25,000 people will be there on Treasure Island on Wednesday night. It's Elton John and Beck, so great bands. Super exciting. So this is a huge event. You just talked about some of the numbers but tech is moving so fast these days and if you think about doing updates once a year to your customer base, it feels long, it feels stagnant. What do you do the rest of the year? How do you address international markets that might not be able to get here? How do you give them mid-year updates? How much of Oracle Open World kind of moves all year long? It does. This is really our anchor event, our flagship and after this we'll run thousands of seminars based on the content and the sessions here and the speakers here and the customers and the videos that are produced for Oracle Open World, they will get shared globally. But I'm really proud to say this is a global conference. We have 30% of the audience coming from outside of North America and they come here because of the depth of the content, the access to the product experts, the access to the other customers and the partners and so you'll see if you walk around a very international crowd. Okay, with that said, obviously some people can't make it because some commitments are travel or they're on the other side of the world. What about those folks that aren't here physically? What can they do online? What are you guys sharing? I'll see with theCUBE here, broadcasting live, with the crowd chat, a lot of stuff going on social media but what are you guys offering online? Yeah, so online it's a great program online and that is a huge audience for us. You're right, we cannot neglect that audience at all. It's a great way to get the content online. Oracle Open World online includes the keynotes, it includes everything you're doing, it includes the social media aspects of it so we do want people to engage and it's a fantastic way to get to the content. You know, I love the online stuff. I think you guys do a great job and you have a huge audience. We monitor the Oracle feeds and I can tell you that you guys do a lot of social media but there's so much more demand for Oracle. How do you take an event that's got so much activity and investment and blow it out, what's your vision? I mean, because the events are now marquee events, it's the must attend so it's a scarce resource but yet there's millions and millions of people online that want to tap into it. Is there any innovations you can share that you're excited about? In terms of the online audience? Just outside the physical event, you got your own San Francisco for the week. We do. What are the exciting things you guys are doing for the folks that aren't here? So beyond the conference here, we do engage with our audience globally through the, like I said, bringing the content out to them after Open World but we do take their input throughout the week of the conference and we're always looking to their commentary online and seeing what they have to say about what they're seeing and hearing from this event. And I really look forward to hearing what folks who are viewing theCUBE have to say about the conference. Well, we're going to bring all the signal from the noise but the Larry Ellison keynote is always my favorite because the Twitter stream is so fast, the commentary, he really puts out a tweet once and then changes the world, but his content, he's in high demand. He's still out there making these moves. Yeah. It lays out a strategy for the whole, I mean, every statement he makes, people are going, how does that affect them? How does it affect their competition? What's it do to the markets? What trends are they investing in? You know, cloud, this week is a lot of cloud, cloud, cloud. Lots of other things with lots of cloud. I mean, this event will be here for a week and then it goes away. We talk about cloud in terms of on-demand resources. We talk about developer apps and infrastructure. All those elements are here. You're essentially running a small business. How much, or a large business actually, how much of the Oracle cloud can you take advantage of in a week like this or in what you do all year long? All year long, the marketing team does use our own products, obviously, in the marketing of the conference. So that's a wonderful opportunity for us to trial it out and to be a great customer reference for other customers. In terms of the question around how we get more of the voice into the market, we actually use, beyond even online, we have a lot of other co-located events for analysts specifically, financial analysts, industry analysts. The media is here in a big form. Hundreds of press and hundreds of analysts are here. So they're helping to amplify the voice of the conference throughout the course of the week and get the message out to the broader audience beyond what we're able to do. Right. What's a newbie do? It's first time to Oracle Open World or even just new to Oracle? I mean, it's, you guys have been around a long time. You're an industry leader, but new people are coming. How do you, what would you say to them? What's the best things to go see or what are the new things that you're hearing a lot of interest in? I love it when new people come and we have a lot of new people that I've already been meeting with who have come from Oracle and other groups that I've given tours behind the scenes tours. And I think the best thing to start with is, of course, the keynotes and the welcome reception and just walking around and talking to people and experiencing as many sessions as you can. But there are a lot of fun things to do in Yerba Buena Gardens. We have an immersive art experience, it's an installation, see yourself in the cloud and just fun things like that are things that you can then start to experience together and talk to people about and connect with customers. The other really important thing is to look at the mobile app. It seems so simple, but all of the sessions and all the speakers, if you wanna hear from a specific speaker or a specific company, you can find it and figure out who you wanna see and go to those sessions and talk to those customers and understand what's going on, how they're solving their problems, how Oracle's helping. There are some very fun activities as well, just for entertainment. We have a great relationship with a lot of the sports franchises in the Bay Area. And so we are afforded the opportunity to showcase those sports relationships. I'm really excited that Rick Welts will be joining us. He's the president and COO of the Warriors, the Golden State Warriors, the basketball championship from last year. And so he's joining us during Thomas Kurian's keynote and he is going to talk about business transformation and for the Warriors, they went through a significant transformation, both on the court and in the office, the back office. So front of house and back of house. And so he's gonna talk to Thomas about that and that's gonna be Tuesday morning. So that's a must see. And then a little special thing is we're gonna give away 450 tickets to the game that night, the opening game of the Warriors season. So we're very excited about that. That's super exciting. You know, the Warriors thing brings up sports and we've done some things, sports and big data, CUBE events. But that transformation really highlights some of the enterprise challenges, right? Like how you manage the team, how you manage the fan experience, and then how you manage the operations. And so now, if you're like an IT guy, okay, that's managing the operations, but now you have a connected world, internet of things and which people are things. So mobile devices. So that's now the main requirements for businesses. The team is the employees and customers. The experience is products and the operations. So what did you learn from that Warriors experience? Because that's a really great example. Super exciting. Yeah, it is amazing. Between that, just how they, it's all about people for them. It's all about people for us. I mean, you'll hear Mark Hurt often speak and we have special HCM conferences focused for HR folks. And his passion is talking to the HR managers and talking about people and how that works. I think it's getting the most out of people, but making people feel passion. And I know the Warriors drive a lot of passion through their organization. Again, both on the court and in the office. We're speaking with Tonya Wiedek, the vice president of event marketing here at Oracle. This is on theCUBE. We are live in San Francisco. Super exciting. Your job. Let's talk about your job for a minute and share. I'd like to share some experiences because managing those three things, we just talked about the fan experience, customer experience, the team and operations. The events have changed over the past decade and a half or so, even 20 years, you look back, radical change and you love global events. So you have your own business. So how are you managing your team? How are you managing the experience of the events and share some insight into just some of the day-to-day things that you guys are doing globally with the events? I mean, that is, it's a huge task. More important than ever now. It is. I mean, I think customers are still moved by meeting the people behind the product and developing a relationship and a partnership and events afford businesses that opportunity. So it is a critical aspect of our marketing. And as I mentioned, we do use our own technology, our own. We're always looking at the data and the analytics, trying to figure out exactly what we need to do, what markets we need to tap, what percentage would be net new, what percentage would be installed based. So we're constantly assessing our business to ensure that we're meeting the company's objectives for what we are doing every day. Everyone wants to have the user experience be great. What have you learned over the past five years that has been some sting that you can share with the audience around other people running events to make it a great experience? Because events are going to the big production events and then a smaller event still is effective. How do you make that content and the experience so compelling? What's the secret? It's about creating moments that people will remember and talk about with others from the smallest thing that you can do, like handing somebody on the street a ticket to the appreciation event. If they have a badge and they're not going, but they're part of the program, we want to make sure that everyone gets something special out of it. And we have a lot of those surprise and delight moments built into the conference as well this year. That's super exciting. Tonya, final question. What are you excited about this week coming up? Top three highlights for you personally. And then secondly, what's the bumper sticker for this event? Some of the folks out there wanted to get a teaser for the content. What would be on the bumper sticker? And your experience this week, what are you excited about? How three things in the bumper sticker? So I'll start with the bumper sticker actually because I have seen the conference evolve. And we started as a user conference more than 30 years ago. And we still are a user conference. This is for the customers. But I have seen it move and transition and grow with the company from a technology conference to a business and technology conference. So this is where the convergence of business and technology really come together. And that would be my bumper sticker. In terms of the top three, I think that, again, it's a lot of those taking the opportunity to pick those perfect sessions. We, the way the content is designed, I as a marketer would want to be in all the Oracle marketing cloud sessions that are happening over in Moscone West. There's something for everyone here. And so... It's hard to pick your favorite child. Design your own experience is sort of how I would look at it. And we're here to help do that. And I think that's what this conference is about. There's a lot, but it's also very focused on what they're looking for. So designing is really having the flexibility is the key. That's right. Design and schedule. Of course, Elton John. Elton John, I love Howard Street. Elton John and Beck. I think that we're sending some folks to the Warriors game, but it's a sold out game. So we could only get 450 tickets. We have a viewing party here. The Warriors got us the broadcast rights to broadcast the game. The first game here on these beautiful trust rings that are LED screens. So that's what night tonight? Tuesday night. Tuesday night, okay. So Tuesday night Warriors, that's the big, big sports thing. And obviously Wednesday night's the big concert. And then designing your own from marketing cloud to a lot of different sessions. It's pretty geeky too. There's a lot of geeky content. Yeah, geeky content, business content. It's still a technical deep dive. There is something for everyone. Business converge with technology event. Exactly. Tanya, thanks so much for joining theCUBE. Of course, we love theCUBE. We're here on Howard Street. Thank you for having us. We really appreciate it. Thank you. And go to Siliconangle.tv. We're podcasting now. And every Wednesday we have Women Wednesday in Tech and also the guests of the week podcast and join the conversation at crowdchat.net slash O-O-W-15 for Oracle Open World. Join the conversation. Take your tweets and comments. We'll be right back more live in San Francisco after this short break.