UKOUG Conference approaches.

Well, it’s that time of year again. It’s dark by 4pm, weather is miserable and I’m already sick to the hind teeth with Christmas, thanks to the never ending drive by the commercial sector to bully me into buying tatt and rubbish “to make christmas special”.

But there is another staple of the season of the end of November/start of December, which is to trek over to Birmingham for the annual UKOUG conference. Except of course that there are now several conferences run by the UK Oracle User Group, for different Oracle sectors and regions, but this is The Technical Conference. Back to three days and focusing on the database, application server/E-business suite and development. Just like the good-old-days before Larry bought up 300 companies and a big chunk of the software business services industry.

I’ve been lucky enough to go to a couple of Oracle Open Worlds (OOW) and mighty impressive the event is. But I prefer the UKOUG annual conference. It’s not the huge (and, I feel, overwhelming) size of OOW, but still pretty big, I think 10 streams of presentations, workshops and panels this year, and has the added bonus of being more Real. The presentations are to a large part independent from Oracle Corp and even the Oracle Corp presentations tend to be a little less Corporate and a little more Real. People say “how it is” at a User Group.

Plus there is more a feeling of meeting friends and colleagues and like-minded practitioners of every-day living and learning with oracle.

For those new to the scene, it’s far more easy to get to grips with than OOW and yet with Big Names doing top technical presentations, spread over a range of levels from introductory to the esoteric details of stuff most of us never need to know. Plus everything in-between.

Since 2003 I have presented every year except last year {when I decide to go play with elephants in Thailand instead}. I’m not presenting this year either and I would be lying if I said I was upset. I’m utterly gutted. But then I saw the spread of talent and interesting topics when I helped score the abstracts back in May and competition this year was fierce. I’ll be chairing a few sessions though and trying to meet up with people I know, and also people I don’t know but would like to.

If you see some small (5 foot sod all) chap with little glasses, short, brown hair and cream trousers, that is probably me. Come over and say “hi”. If you already know me and come over and say “hi” and I look like a rabbit caught in headlights, well you should know me by now and that I am utterly rubbish at recognising faces or remembering names, but that’s OK as I rarely bite and will be happy to apologise for my lack of social skills. If I’m anywhere near a bar, I’ll probably buy you a drink too, but then you have to buy me one. I’ll be under the table first though.

So, if you are also heading to Birmingham, see you there. If you are not, you are missing out on a fantastic Oracle event.