Friday Philosophy – Presenting Leads to Drinking, Discuss June 15, 2012
Posted by mwidlake in Friday Philosophy, humour, Meeting notes, UKOUG.Tags: behaviour, Humour, Meeting
9 comments
Just a quick Friday Philosophy {the day job is very demanding at the moment, thus the silence on the Blog front}
I’m presenting in Leeds at the start of July on UKOUG AIM SIG on “The First Few Things You Need To Know About Exadata”. As part of the final preparation of the agenda it’s been raised that we should have a beer after the event and put it on the agenda.
Now, when I ran the Management and Infrastructure SIG, there was always a last item of “retire to a pub for a drink or two”. It is a common feature of technical UKOUG SIGs and a great opportunity to chat to the speakers more.
Chat to the speakers. Now I think about it, most of the speakers always make it to the pub after a SIG. If the attendance on the day is 10% speakers, 10% committee and 80% delegates, the make-up in the pub will be 30% speakers, 20% committee and 50% delegates, or similar.
At conferences, the bars in the evening are covered in speakers (all still speaking – loudly and {usually} drunkenly).
So, is it that:
- Speaking leads to elevated drinking
- Drinking makes you more of a sucker for speaking
- Speaking and Drinking have a shared genetic basis
- It’s just me.
My excuse is that all that hot air coming out my mouth makes it dry and it needs a little wetting afterwards…
Next Public Appearance – Scottish SIG on 29th Feb February 13, 2012
Posted by mwidlake in Meeting notes, UKOUG.Tags: Meeting, Presenting, UKOUG, user group
2 comments
Who’s up for a beer or whiskey in Edinburgh on the evening of 28th Feb?
I’ve been promising myself I’d do the Scottish SIG for three or four years but life has always conspired to stop me. However, at last I am going to manage it this year.
The meeting is on the 29th February at the Oracle {was Sun} office in Linlithgow. You can see the schedule and details here. As ever, it is being chaired by Thomas Presslie, though I {and I suspect Mr Hasler} will be hoping he is not forcing drams of Whiskey on people before 10am in the morning, as he did at the last UKOUG conference…
I’m presenting on Index Organised Tables again, following up on the series of posts I did {and have still to finish}. As well as myself there is also Tony Hasler talking about stabilising statistics {one of the key things to stable and thus acceptable performance from a very knowledgeable man}, a presentation by Wayne Lewis on Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel 2 {which I understand is Oracle Linux with the extra bits Larry wants in there before they have gone through to the official Open Source release} and Harry Hall talking about all the new stuff on OEM 12C. If he says Cloud too often I might lob something heavy at him 
{nothing personal Harry, I’m just tired of the C word in connection with Oracle already}. Additionally, Gordon Wilkie will also be giving an Oracle Update.
Part of the reason I want to do the Scottish SIG is that I really like Edinburgh {and Scotland in general – wonderful geography}. My original intention was to take my wife up there and make the trip into a short break – but she has to go to the US that week and I have a new client that needs my time, so it will be a dash up there the evening before and back in the afternoon.
So, is anyone around in Edinburgh from late evening on the 28th of Feb and fancies showing me one or two nice pubs?
I’ve Been Made an Oracle Ace. December 5, 2011
Posted by mwidlake in Private Life, UKOUG.Tags: private, UKOUG
14 comments
I tried to come up with a witty title but after only first day at the UKOUG conference, OakTable Sunday, my brain is already a little fried…
So yes, last Friday evening I received an email from Oracle Corp informing me I had been nominated for and been accepted as an Oracle Ace. I’d just accidentally blown away some of my slides for a presentation I’m giving this week and I was a bit weary of the whole community thing, so it gave me a real lift. It would have given me a lift anyway, but the timing seemed very nice – it re-invigorated me and it also meant that I could now mention my Ace-dom at conference. Endlessly. I never won prizes at school so this sort of thing goes to my head. Sorry.
Of course, my wife keeps my feet on the ground. I wandered over to the kitchen to tell her…
“Hey, Sue, I’ve just been made an Oracle Ace!”
“That’s nice dear – empty the cat’s litter tray while you are there, it stinks”.
*sigh*
It means a lot to me to be an Oracle Ace. I’m not going to pretend to be all unconcerned over it or say “oh no, not me, I am not worthy of that” like I did {and still do} over being a member of the OakTable. In the last 10 or 12 years I’ve done a lot for Oracle Corp (some of which is public, some of which was working with Oracle on testing things and talking to other Oracle customers about getting the most out of the technology) and also with the UK oracle community so I kind of feel the Acedom is an earned reward for that. But I am also very grateful for it, it is still a relatively rare accolade and Oracle have to feel that you are benefiting the wider community to bestow the award on you.
Being an Ace has already had some impact on me. I met my friend Neil Chandler at the conference, he is the person who nominated me (Oracle tell you who nominated you). “Hey, Neil, due to you I’ve been made an Oracle Ace! Thank you very much!”. “Great Martin, well deserved – so let’s have beers tonight and you can thank me properly”. “Errrr, I’ve been invited to an Ace meal this evening….”. “Well get you! Only just an Ace and too good for us commoners huh? You’ve changed, You’ve really changed….”
The Ace meal was good and much appreciated but I ate too much spicy stuff and boy I’ve got bad indigestion {and more unpleasant symptoms} now.
So it seems, based on evidence so far, Being an Ace loses you friends and makes you feel unwell. This is not what I was expecting….
{It’s OK, Neil and I had beers before the meal and he forgave me in the end – on the condition I provide him with more beer soon}
Headlong rush to Conference – Preparing the Presentations November 29, 2011
Posted by mwidlake in Meeting notes, UKOUG.Tags: behaviour, knowledge, Meeting, Presenting, UKOUG
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With only a few days to go before the UKOUG conference this year I’m preparing my presentations. I know pretty much what I want to say and, for the IOT talk at least, it is not as if I do not have enough material already prepared – some of which has been on the blog posts and some of which has not. (though it did strike me that I could just fire up the blog and walk through the thread, taking questions).
My big problem is not what to say – it is what not to say.
I’ve always had this problem when I want to impart knowledge, I have this desire to grab the audience by the throat, take what I know about the subject and somehow just cram the information into the heads of the people in front of me. All of it. I want them to know everything about it that I know, the core knowledge, the oddities, the gotchas, how it meshes with other topics. It’s ridiculous of course, if I’ve spent many hours (days, weeks, 20 years) acquiring experience, reading articles and learning, I can’t expect to pass that all on in a one hour presentation – especially as I like to provide proof and examples for what I say. But I think the desire to do so is part of what makes me a good presenter and tutor. I bounce around in front of the audience, lobbing information at them and constantly trying to judge if I need to backup and give more time to anything or if I can plough on, skipping the basics. Hint, if you are in the audience and I’m going too fast or garbling my topic, then I am always happy to be asked questions or told to reverse up a little. I’ve never been asked to speed up though
It gets even worse. If I am putting myself up there to talk about a topic then I don’t want to be found wanting. I want to be able to handle any question and have a slide or example up my sleeve to demonstrate it. It’s exhausting and, again, pointless. At somewhere like the UKOUG there is bound to be someone who knows something I don’t know about any topic.
For me the trick is to pare it down, to keep reminding myself that if the audience leaves with more knowledge than they came in with, that is a win. If they actually enjoyed the experience I’m even more happier. Maybe I should forget the topic and just take drinks and nibbles…
So, I’m currently doing what I always do, which is trying to force myself to remove stuff that is not directly relevant whilst still leaving a few little oddities and interesting items. Plus getting the 200 slides down to something more reasonable – like say 120
If I can get it down to one slide per minute (some of which I skip on the day as they are there for anyone downloading the talk) then I’m OK.
Of course, having done this, the day before the course I’ll do one last “final review” – and add a couple of dozen slides to just clarify a few points…
How deep to dig – Another Opinion and Another Good Blog November 22, 2011
Posted by mwidlake in Blogging, UKOUG.Tags: behaviour, Blogging, performance
1 comment so far
I think I’ve posted before about how deep a good DBA should dig into solving issues, as opposed to fixing them as soon as possible and moving on to the next urgent task.
Well, a friend of mine, Neil Chandler, has just posted on this topic, giving his reasons why you don’t run a 10046 trace on production. Neil raises some good points about how difficult it can be to get permission to do something as intrusive as a 10046 trace on a production system as well as the fact that most problems can be solved way before you get down to the level of tracing. Especially if it is not your job to go around solving the problems that have stumped the in-house team, which is the lot of many people who are recognised as being very good with Oracle.
That leads me onto a slightly different topic. For every one of those technicians who’s names you know there are at least a dozen who are just as good but not as visible. Some of us choose to make more “noise” {blogging, presenting, writing articles} so we become visible. Others also support the user community but in a less noticeable way, some even positively choosing to keep a lower profile. Neil is one of those. He’s a very good Oracle and SQL*Server DBA and also very knowledgeable about Unix OS’s and SANs/storage {though he would maybe argue he is not – don’t believe him}. When he comes along to the pub his is an opinion worth listening to {once he’s finished demeaning me that is, and I’m sure he will give me a hard time about this article about him next time we meet} and when I’ve asked his opinion he has never failed to help. Neil also supports the UKOUG, he’s been deputy chair of one of the SIGs since it’s inception – but he refuses to be chair, has kept away from presenting and he keeps in the background.
So, I was very happy when Neil started blogging. It is a mixture of technical stuff and observations on the IT world, all written in a very comfortable style – Look back at his previous post on timestamps not being impacted by FIXED_DATE. A nice piece of information to tuck into your bag of “things to be aware of”.
So, a belated welcome to the world of blogging Neil. I think it is a blog worth watching.
What Have I Let Myself in For! – UKOUG this year November 16, 2011
Posted by mwidlake in development, Meeting notes, UKOUG.Tags: design, index organized tables, IOT, Meeting, UKOUG
7 comments
One of my favourite Oracle happenings of the year is fast approaching, the UK Oracle User Group technical conference {see/click on the link on the right margin}. I’ve blogged before ( like here, last year) why I think it is so good.
I try and present at the conference each year and I go no matter if I am presenting or not.
However, this year I think I might have got myself into trouble. I put forward 3 talks, expecting one or possibly two to get through. One on Index Organized Tables, one on IT disasters and one as an introduction to database design – I’ve moaned about it being a dying art so I figured I should get off my backside and do something positive about it. Each talk is in a different stream.
Well, the IOT talk was accepted, the Disasters talk was rejected and the Database Design intro was put on the reserve list. I was happy with that. I did three talks the first year I presented and promised myself never to be that stupid again {I spent most of the conference in the Speaker’s lounge or my hotel putting the talks together and tweaking slides}.
What I was not expecting was for the OakTable to ask me to do the IOT talk on the OakTable Sunday. Yikes! {The OakTable Sunday is a great opportunity to see a set of presentations by people who really know their stuff in a smaller setting – You really want to get along to it if you can}. However I had two reasons not to do it:
- I would have to miss one of the other OakTable talks.
- That thing I said about people presenting who really know their stuff.
I was told that (1) was not a problem as the talks would be repeated in the main conference so I would have an opportunity to see the one I missed and (2) stop being so British and do it. {In fact, one friend on the OakTable told me off after the last conference for my criticism of my own presentation that year – “yes it was poor for you but normally you do a good job, so keep doing it”}. Of course I said yes.
Then it struck me, I was presenting twice now. Once on Sunday and repeating on Wednesday in hall 5 {I’ll probably not simply repeat the contents, at the OakTable Sunday I’ll assume a little more knowledge by the audience and dig a bit deeper technically, in the main conference I’ll cover off the basics more, for those utterly new to IOTs}. At least it was only one set of slides to prepare.
A few days later I get a mail from the UKOUG office. A gap had appeared in the Development stream, would I be willing to do my “Oracle Lego – an introduction to database design” talk – but beef it up a little? Yes, sure. What do you mean about beef it up? The dev stream guys wanted something that went into more detail, was more about some of the more challenging systems I’ve work on. So we exchanged a few emails and it quickly became apparent that some wanted the intro talk I had originally proposed, to get people going with database design. Others felt there would be more audience for a more in-depth talk, so could I span both? I had to say no. I remember attending my Oracle database design course in 1993. It was 5 days long. If my memory serves there was also a second course a couple of weeks later that covered more advanced design for 3 days! I can talk fast but not 8 days fast. They were effectively asking for two quite different presentations, an intro and then a review of more challenging examples “OK” they said, “do Oracle Lego – But if another gap comes up, could you do the intermediate talk?”. Err, OK… So I wrote a quick synopsis for “Oracle Meccano” {Meccano is a toy construction kit made up of miniature girders, plates, bolts and stuff you can make proper things out of. If you liked Lego you would love Meccano as you got older} .
Since then I have been slightly anxious about getting an email from the UKOUG about a gap in the development stream for the conference…
This week I have started preparing the presentations for real {which so far has resulted in me breaking my server, finding a load of notes on blogs I was going to write and then doing this post} so I contacted the ladies in charge of the agenda and asked if I was now off the hook for the Oracle Meccano talk? “Yes, no more gaps, it is not on the agenda”. Phew. “But could you put it together in case of last minute cancellations?”. *sigh*. OK.
So I will, but I’m not signing up to do any Session Chairing, which I was about to. If you see me at the conference and I look a little crazed, it’s because I got a mail from the UKOUG just before the event about a sudden gap…
At least there is no chance I will be asked to do the Disasters talk at short notice, I saw the scores it got by the paper reviewers .
