By Ken Sakamoto, Star-Bulletin
Software users check out technology at the Oracle
Applications Users Group convention at the
Hawaii Convention Center.

Convention Center
passes high-tech test

The five-day event for
4,800 software users is
lauded by the organizer

By Russ Lynch
Star-Bulletin

The Hawaii Convention Center passed a major test this week, putting its high-technology resources into full swing for a meeting of computer software users, convention organizers said.

About 4,800 software users registered for the Oracle Applications Users Group convention and they brought in about 300 computers. Jalene Bermudez, president of the convention's organizer, Atlanta-based Meeting Expectations, said everything worked flawlessly.

Her company, which helps select sites for conventions, manages the conventions and rents out exhibition booths, compared four sites for the 1998 OAUG convention -- Denver, Anaheim, Los Angeles and Honolulu -- she said.

"We lined up the four cities and put them on an Excel spreadsheet," she said, comparing such things as travel costs, frequency of airline flights, hotel room rates, freight costs for exhibitors, the cost of using the convention center, and the availability of services such as building the exhibit booths.

"Surprisingly Hawaii, from a price standpoint, came out right in the middle," Bermudez said.

The mix of hotels available, from luxury resorts to budget properties, impressed the convention organizers too, she said.

While it was related to the products of Redwood City, Calif.-based Oracle Corp., the convention wasn't a corporate event.

Oracle, the second-biggest software company in the world with $7.5 billion in annual sales, did not finance the meeting, which began Sunday and concludes today.

Instead, the meeting was financed privately by the association of businesses and individuals using Oracle software.

But Oracle long ago learned to listen to its users, Bermudez said, and the company had several dozen representatives on hand to display and teach the applications.

Although the $350 million convention center -- with its miles of fiber-optic cable throughout the building -- passed the high-tech test, Bermudez said some changes are needed.

There weren't enough hanging points in the exhibition areas to suspend exhibits and the convention had to add some, she said.

Still, in a review yesterday of how the convention has fared, the lowest rating participants gave the center was "very satisfactory," Bermudez said.