Time Machines…I need one for IBM’s Information on Demand conference in Las Vegas this year. Actually I need at least four time machines. You may think I am making a reference to the new DB2 10 time travel queries. If so, you are starting to see at least a glimmer of my mental snapshot, but I also need my time travel served with a side of parallel multiple dimensions and perhaps even a few clusters of extra brain cells. A clone or two could also be highly beneficial. To ease my current predicament, I need to make the concept of time as flexible as that conveyed so beautifully by Dali’s melting pocket watch. I need to mold time to suit my needs.

Why all the angst?  You see, I have been trying to methodically plan my IOD session agenda for more than a month and still can’t narrow down ANY of the week’s conference timeslots to just one session. I have duplicates, triplicates and in some cases quadruplicate sessions vying for my attention for each and every time block. I even have duplicate lunch events. This is after repeatedly reviewing the conference agenda, moving any sessions I could move (in an admittedly ineffective attempt to optimize my time) and making a high priority list of sessions (and lunches) that I simply cannot afford to miss.

IBM went overboard this year! Admittedly, I never have enough time at IOD to attend every session that I want to attend, but this year’s conference is beyond packed with vital technical information. Just attending all the DB2 10 sessions alone would fill up my week (and my brain) but trying to also fit in sessions to feed my interest in big data and business analytics and Netezza and security and data governance and master data management and technology futures and even more….it is too much!

Then there are the hands-on labs, the birds-of-a-feather lunches, the opportunities to talk to IBM Business Partners, the Expo presentations, the first ever Unconference events….it is extremely too much! Intense overload or not, I want time for it all, please!

Even if you eliminate my anxiety-riddled session-juggling dilemmas, I still am facing some serious conflicts and without a time machine, I am going to have to make some heartbreaking elimination decisions. You see, a lot of the IOD experience takes place before and after the scheduled sessions. To fully enjoy the conference, I also want to make time for networking with other DB2 DBAs, spending face-to-face time with IBM experts, visiting the bookstore and attending book signing events, geeky window shopping for technology products at the Expo, after-hours social meet and greets and perhaps even a quick shoe shopping mall visit with friends. Time! I need more time!

Obviously, the lack of clocks in Vegas could work to my advantage. With no clocks in evidence, perhaps I can trick myself in to some extra awake hours. Even on the last day of conference, after taking full advantage of every minute, I will undoubtedly still be trying to make time bow to my needs, but at some point reality will have to intrude.

Returning once again to my normal time-based existence, I am confident that my dreams on the plane ride home will feature the image of Dali’s melting pocket watch morphing back into a normal timepiece that is persistently ticking ever forward. With each tick, one more valuable detail learned at IOD will be written and indexed in one of my brain cells for speedy access path retrieval the next time I next need it. Perhaps it will go something like this…..

Dream interface to Brain instructions:  write DB2 10 Time Travel to brain cells 3 – 400, Netezza to brain cells 401 – 657, pureScale to brain cells 658 – 2082…MDC cluster info to brain cells 2082-2478 … .Attention:  neural pathways! speed up!  You are the bottleneck!…..it’s never the database….it’s never the database….it’s never the database.