Oracle OpenWorld 2013 – Why The Best Demo I’ve Ever Had Wasn’t A Demo

Oracle OpenWorld has taken over San Francisco this week! Often we go to technology conferences and are clamored with multiple demos showing the speeds and feeds of new products. And as we all have witnessed, sometimes the demos go well and other times, well, not so good!  However, what I want to address is that a lot of demos lack any semblance of usefulness in a real life work scenario.

I’ve always said that the best demos tell a story. It takes me through a real business use case that I can relate to.  It talks about features relative to how a person would actually use them in a work situation.  As analysts, we get way too many “analyst demos,” and not enough “real life user demos.”

The Impromptu Oracle Social Network Demo

I had the opportunity here at the Oracle OpenWorld 2013 conference to meet with  Oracle’s Jeffrey Bailey about Oracle Social Network (OSN). This executive took out his iPad and with the passion of an evangelist, straightway walked me through his entire workflow with OSN. He showed me how he interacts with his direct sales team and other teams to get work done, follow up on leads, broadcast wins and integrate business applications and processes. I was shown how he uses co-browsing to share information and also integration with email.

What struck me was how much I was learning about OSN from a typical business user who used it as a natural part of his daily work routine. This wasn’t planned as a demo but it was probably the best demonstration of the capabilities of OSN I had ever seen.  It was an intimate view and perspective from a real user. It was great! I laughed, I cried! Just kidding!

Focus On The Business User

While Oracle OpenWorld is still going on, I’m on the lookout for sessions that focus on the user and how they can get their work done. I’m paying particular interest to sessions on social, mobility and cloud. At Aragon we are seeing the emergence of the business buyer for enterprise social collaboration technologies. These buyers are interested in collaboration tools at the point of which they care. At the point of where they need to make work decisions. Social collaboration technologies have to provide context and persistence.

Other sessions this week will show OSN integration with real-time collaboration such as web and video conferencing. We have always believed that users will need a single click metaphor from wherever they are in their workspace application or device to a communication or collaborative session using presence as a pivot. We’ll report back with a full wrap up of the week.