Being Friends with Larry Ellison… :)

So I tried to finish out some of my OOW posts, but I ended up talking about this with a friend and thought I would share how I became Facebook friends with Larry Ellison instead….

After returning from Oracle Open World 2011,  I sat one day at my desk, staring in disbelief, (as many Oracle folks busy in the social media world during OOW were that day) at a friend request from Larry Ellison’s Facebook account.  I accepted it and me and my fellow DBAs then reviewed the account to verify that this was Larry’s official account and yes, he’d friended little ol’ me.

We joked about it from time to time in meetings or in conversation, “but then again, Kellyn is friends with Larry Ellison…” but I didn’t do anything with it, as what would I say to the man, really, (or whoever runs his Facebook account…)?

A number of months go by and it comes time to do one last, huge promotion for RMOUG Training Days 2012.  I went on Facebook, started to perform the invite to the event via the “Invite Friends” option and started down my list of friends.  I invited everyone I could think of that would benefit from attending the conference and then came to Larry Ellison’s name.

What should I do?  Should I invite him?  I decided the heck with it and marked the box and off went the invite.

And this is how I was unfriended in approximately one day from being friends with him.  I’m sure if someone asked him why he unfriended me, he would have a very confused look on his face and wonder who the heck I was, (like Larry really manages his own Facebook account…) but there are three lessons from this story:

1.  Always take a chance-  accept friendships, send invites.

2.  If nothing else, you’ll always have a great story to tell.

3.  Don’t invite CEOs of major companies to local events…. 🙂