Eine Woche voller Samstage *

* (stolen title from a German children book - a week full of Saturdays)

This week was different than other weeks. I spend one day working from home (well, almost - as I had to travel to the office to get my laptop re-staged) and also at two Oracle Community meetings. Although this was work (with some great fun-activities as well) this felt like an extraordinary week. Read the book if you want to get the feeling.

The first community meeting (SOA and E2.0) was in my own town Utrecht, which was off course very convenient. I met a lot of people from all over Europe and had the chance to exchange ideas about SOA and learned that BPM will be the next big thing. WebCenter will also evolve into something even bigger than it is now, due to the advance of Fusion Apps.

The best thing however was the Q&A session with David Shaffer of Oracle. Oracle shows a lot of interest in the activities and concerns of partners.

After that I went to Paris to attend the Security Community meeting. Same setting as above. Met again a lot of people I knew and a lot of people who I will be in contact with in the near future. Again excellent presentations of Oracle and another key take away message - everything in Fusion Apps will be based on 11g IDM and Security products.

Obviously both events had also a social get together. Tasting beer in Utrecht was great (probably because I was on my bicycle and could drink more than one beer ;-) and the cruise on the Seine in Paris was spectacular.

I encourage everybody to join the partner communities - as this will give you the feeling of inclusion and will widen your network tremendously.