January 15th 2013 saw
the first stage of Oracle’s global CloudWorld tour kick off in Jumereiah, Dubai, with the first event
attracting more than 1,500 IT and business 
decision makers from across the
Eastern Europe, Middle East and African regions to learn about and discuss the
latest developments and trends in cloud computing technology.
In addition to the huge number of attendees, the event also played home to 27 tier one journalists from 13 of the regions countries and a further 23 top industry analysts.
From a press perspective things kicked off on the Monday night prior to event where Alfonso di Ianni, Oracle’s SVP for the region held a well-attended media briefing and networking evening, where the excitement for the following day’s content and news was clearly evident.
When it
came to the day itself, the weather was as ever Dubai beautiful and despite the
unusually strong wind, the excited streams of delegates did not mind when doors
opened and they bustled in to take their seats for Oracle President, Mark
Hurd’s, keynote.
Unlike a typical technology keynote, CloudWorld, Dubai saw Hurd walking around the tables, talking directly to attendees and even asking them questions as part of his interactive kick off.
The packed keynote hall was then taken trough the latest developments in Oracle’s Cloud technology and its benefits to business and public and private sector industries, as well as demystifying many of the industry jargon and trends that have been driving the Cloud industry transformation.
The hall then welcomed Hemant Julka, MITand Hussain Shaikh, Vice President of Human Resources, Emirates Group to the stage, where people saw the power of the Oracle Cloud in full swing and how Emirates has transformed its business across the region.
A change of pace
and subject matter followed as Charlene Li, Founder, Altimeter Group and the
author of the New York Times bestseller, Open Leadership, (for slides
mail) took the mike to discuss
the importance of social in today’s hyper-connected world and the 
event hashtag#cloudworld went into over drive.
In fact during the day we saw almost 800 tweets from key Oracle feeds and more importantly from between the presenters and attendees.
As the morning agenda progressed, the attending press were whisked away
for a 45 minute exclusive briefing with Mark Hurd, where they got to put their own regions
specific questions to him as well as being granted a embargoed, but sneak peak
of 
Oracle’s
Infrastructure as a Service with Capacity on Demand (Oracle IaaS) that launched
later that day.
Whilst Mark was face to face with the press, Steve Miranda, senior vice president of Fusion application development, Oracle, took to the main stage to showcase Oracle Fusion Applications and showcase some of the highlight’s Oracle 25 million users who rely on Oracle Cloud every day are having.
It was then time to
take all that information and ideas from the morning and hit the network area
with colleagues and newly made contacts over the break with some fine food and
drinks before the host of targeted track sessions kicked off in the afternoon
giving a deep dive into Apps development, Finance, 
HR, Sales and Customer
Experience.
The day draw to a close with an elegant evening of networking over cocktails and light entertainment in the form of a Latino Band people had the chance to review and debate how the cloud will change their business and judging from the many comments on #cloudworld and the discussions that were taking place, people left feeling more ready than every transforming their business in the age of‘collaboration and advocacy’