Please welcome back ConFonz, the man who goes to technology trade conferences so Valleywag doesn't have to. The Conference Fonzerelli, a veteran of many OpenWorld conferences, thinks Oracle has pumped up its image this year. The show is much more huggy-touchy-feely-bloggery. Despite the fact that most Oracle employees of use are hiding under rocks. Quite a change from the days when Oracle at your door meant you were either out of a job, out of memory, or simply out of your mind. If anyone in the technology industry is wondering how to run a conference, this is the one to emulate. Oracle OpenWorld pulls 45,000 people, and twice as many service workers to support it. That's why Howard Street is closed and why you can't get a good picnic spot in Yerba Buena Park.For the most part, Oracle was playing nice this year. No acquisitions announced at the last minute. No wild claims about bullshit products. It was a much more subdued conference for the company. Not quite so for Sun Microsystems, a shrinking violet at this year's show. Sun's made quite a business out of selling Unix and Oracle systems together. While Sun's head of PR was in attendance, and no doubt countless underlings as well, there wasn't much there to tie the two companies together. Rather a shame for anyone who's been betting that Oracle would buy out Sun as a way of backing into the hardware market. Not that that would ever have happened anyway. Really, the reason Sun's not here is that it acquired its own database, MySQL earlier this year. Why play with the big boys when you can own something that's really not ownable? It should be noted that Larry Ellison is far too in love with his sail boat. (Photo via Oracle Apps Blog) And isn't there something that's just completely unagreeable about giving Oracle employees space in the press area? Even if they are paid-for bloggers. HP's woes don't tie to anything more than personal illness. As a bonus blind item, which HP'er showed up late, didn't have a badge, fainted, then vomited all over the registration desk? Anyway, all the drunken out of town soccer moms, PeopleSoft devs and DBAs are on Treasure Island tonight watching UB40 earworm its way into their subconsiousness. Normally, the ConFonz would be all over this shwanky free food and booze event. Too bad the Fonz can't stand to be within 5 miles of UB40. Auditorily-mandated restraining orders are a bitch.

CONFONZ AT THE WEB 2.0 SUMMIT — While the rest of the world prepares for Halloween, there was a significantly scarier sight on display yesterday at the Palace Hotel. You truly know the web 2.0 "revolution" is over when the suits outnumber the geeks. Granted, the Palace isn't exactly a geek haven. And the pricing of badges for the conference is certainly out of the range of most of your average Web coders. But it's easily within the grasp of venture capitalists, marketing weenies, and CEOs. And that's just who attended this, the second Web 2.0 conference of the year.

CONFONZ — The Conference Fonzie was certain that Britain was known for its manners. Those beloved British boxing boys are supposed to be well behaved and polite in all social situations, aren't they? Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to apply to imported Limey tech journalists. To their credit, Intel's international press day, a preface to the Intel Developer Forum at San Francisco's Moscone Center later this week, is a somewhat dull event.

CONFONZ — Last week saw two ubernerdy conferences for customers of two big software companies in San Francisco. BEA's conference at Moscone West was completely fucking empty. There were a handful of people on each floor, all looking around wondering why there was no one nearby with which to press the flesh. VMware's conference, at Moscone North and South, by contrast, was hopping. With a massive Treasure Island party and no expense spared on the food and conference bag, VMware sucked in the dollars and attention, while BEA sat unloved across the street, with nary a surly teamster to defend it. Hmmm, what's going on here?

Please welcome back the ConFonz, our secret correspondent from the world of conferences. — Ed.

CONFONZ — One of the nicest parts about being the Conference Fonzerelli is overhearing the amazing stories told in-between roundtables and plenary sessions. They're rarely newsworthy, but such tales often portend just how utterly fucked a company or entity really is. Take this doozy about Yahoo and its attempts to do something good for the world.

CONFONZ — To be perfectly honest, Terra, just underneath the Bay bridge, is becomign the go-to spot for any and all PR firms to hold events for their clients. Unfortunately, this means that your humble narrator, the Conference Fonzerelli, has had some of his weaker moments in front of the wait-staff therein. Fortunately, they're a tight lipped bunch, and they didn't out the Fonz for who he really is at last night's Outcast PR CEO dinner. After the jump, we detail the high ratio of Press-to-CEO's, and dish some dirt on the WSJ.
While most PR events are packed with press, and only a few folks from the company paying for the soire, last night's dinner was supposed to be packed with high faluttin' CEO's from the likes of Cisco, EMC, and Salesforce. Instead, it was mostly a bunch of high level VP's, though some of the fabled CEOs did show up.
Mostly, though, this was an event at which the press talked shop amongst itself. Each dinner table held 5 press, one PR, two VCs, and one actual CEO. Certainly an event that didn't live up to its name. However, the food and booze made up for this. While the booze and crowd wasn't nearly as exciting as that which was served at the Wired Rave Awards at the St. Regis Hotel a few weeks back, anyone who really put their mind to it could get drunk. And frankly, all the major newspaper folks did just that.
And while the Wall Street Journal isn't a Valley institution, good gossip is good gossip. According to someone that works there (we're sure Gawker already knows all this stuff already), Mr. Murdock is just after the Journal for its name, and the ability to say that he owns it. Evidently, the bancroft family thinks Rupert is a complete jerk-off, and has no intention of selling out. But then, he is offering a metric fuck-ton of money. All of us here in the press world are saying prayers for you tonight, WSJ. Keep fighting the good fight, and don't take any guff from that swine.

CONFONZ — Lo, and below him, he saw the valley. Above him he saw the smog filled skies, and in his hand he found a broken bottle of bourbon, half drained and bloodied. Where had this bottle come from, and why was the humble Conference Fonzerelli stumbling around on Microsoft's Mountain View campus? And, for the love of Allah, why are all the urinals here one foot off the ground? Is this Paris? Japan? Does Microsoft employ lots of little men? Yes, gentle reader, the ConFonz is in charge of Valleywag today, and the fun has only just started. After the jump, the ConFonz goes to college.
Back in the day, Carnegie Mellon university made its name in robotics. When you're competing with MIT for math dorks, and Stanford for programmers, it's tough to find a geek niche. So, when CMU decided to build an arm of its computer sciences department in the Valley, it wasn't the most readily expected news. Where would students of this new program go in order to buy deep fried hot dogs? What about being beaten up by Pitt frat boys? Those poor Pitt boys would have to fly for six hours to dispense geek beatings.
As it turns out, CMU is only in the bay area to hold conferences. Silly little conferences, sponsored, thus far, by Microsoft and UC Berkeley. The first of these was at Microsoft's campus on Monday, and it included everything you'd expect from the event.
Dozens of professors discussing software as a service? Check.
Small-time CEO's trying to confirm that these professors are right? Check.
Press, snorting and guffawing at how out of touch the professors are? Check.
Microsoft's Craig Mundie explaining how the professors are wrong, and laying out a roadmap for how Microsoft will max out all CPU's everywhere, no matter how many cores or how fast the clock speeds are? Check.
But the real shocker of this mini-conference is the fact that all of Microsoft's men's rooms in its Silicon Valley campus include dwarf urinals. Does MS employ multiple little people? Usually, these things are installed haphazardly upon the hiring of a dwarf. But it would seem that Microsoft is prepared for that eventuality, and that people working here tend to have splash-back marks on their immaculately pressed khakis.

Hold on to your hats — we hear Bill Gates was boring as the keynote speaker for the info-security RSA Conference, ongoing at Moscone Center. Fortunately, Conference Fonzerelli is on hand, much to his personal regret. The ConFonz quoth:

You're all expecting some sort of expletive-encrusted fecal-festival gracing gooey herein html. Bully bullocks are always zipping zazzily towards you fucking alphabetical heads.

Heyyyyy, ConFonz! Valleywag's go-to man for conferences smells Oprah-style freebies at Office 2.0.

This week, the Conference Fonzie reports from the Intel Developer Forum at SF's Moscone Center. Dig in!

ConFonz returns with yet another conference report. This time he reports from the BEA Systems enterprise software conference at San Francisco's Moscone Center.

The Conference Fonzie is still at LinuxWorld, this time sending in his longest report yet. Like a North Atlantic iceberg, most of this one is under the horizon; hit the post title to see it all.

Valleywag correspondent ConFonz reports today from the world's most graybeard-saturated convention. LinuxWorld is like Disney World without the trauma of seeing an on-break Goofy holding his own head.

Valleywag correspondent ConFonz raced out of Silicon Valley to hang at DefCon, the daddy of all hacker conventions. Here's his report, grisly as a post-mescaline Hunter S. Thompson piece.

Valleywag's conference correspondent, the ConFonz, is slowly turning his column here into Fear and Loathing in San Jose. Enjoy.

Valleywag abhors censorship. But it also abhors looking like a [CENSORED] that just [CENSORED]ed two double-D [CENSORED]s. The latest Conference Fonzie report belongs on "The Aristocrats" more than it does on this blog, so enjoy ConFonz's, erm, colorful metaphors as he describes the MI6 Conference.

Aaayyy, ConFonz! Valleywag's best-groomed correspondent finds the dance floor and stays remarkably un-potty-mouthed at the IEEE Microwave Something-or-Other Con.

ConFonz, is nursing a SloshCon hangover — "Aaaay, I'm up and moving!" — but even a morning migraine can't stop Valleywag's favorite correspondent from reporting.

As the Register's Andrew Orlowski flies back to England, it's time to check up on the other trolls of tech — the real journalists, fake journalists, and — ugh — bloggers.