Friday Philosophy: It’s Not What you Know – It’s What you are Getting To Know. December 7, 2012
Posted by mwidlake in Friday Philosophy, Meeting notes, Perceptions.Tags: Meeting, perception, Presenting, UKOUG, user group
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This has been a good but tiring week. It started with the UKOUG TEBS conference where I saw lots of people I know, a few who I didn’t but now do and I had good times in pubs and restaurants. One evening culminated in my singing part of “Two out of Three ain’t bad” in the style of a munchkin with Nial Litchfield in a pub at 1am, which I am sure he woud rather forget about – so if you know him, ask him about it. For me that was the indicator to go lie down in the dark and sleep. Irrespectve of drunken singing, I must had talked about 20 topics with 40 people over the conference, exchanging ideas, tricks and war stories.
I also presented on the Sunday, teaching people. I went to many fine presentations through the week and learnt stuff, balancing the knowledge books. This included one talk on Wednesday where I found out I had been teaching people wrong on Sunday! *sigh* Oh dear. And it is something I have been getting wrong for years. I’ll check the fine detail before I blog about that though. I now hate SQL Maria for pointing out my error – which is unfair but that’s life. Sorry Maria, I’ll buy you a beer sometime to make up for it.
After all that, I came back to work to find we had some big issues with one system. I won’t go into the details but there were half a dozen of us working on it, coming up with ideas, knocking each other’s suggestions down or agreeing with them – and coming up with working solutions. None of us could have done it alone and I reckon most of us learnt a couple of things in the process (such as how bad some of the app design was 
).
So all in all, a week of learning that has worn me out but left me happy and that is what I like about my work life at present. I am working with people who know stuff and who want to know stuff. I am in a role that exposes me to a lot of issues. I am working for a boss (and team) who let me take time out from the official job to learn stuff too. I suspect it is going to end soon though as the company I am working for are taking large numbers of people to the carpark and shooting them (figuratively speaking only, I should point out). It will be a shame if it does end. But then, just as when I worked with the best IT person I ever worked with, I’ll be happy I had the experience.
Yes, I know I am lucky to have such a good working life at present {but, you know something? I did take efforts to make it like this – maybe a future FF on that}.
So having said I like my working life so much, who is willing to bet I’ll be complaining like a spoilt child all next week?!?
Why Present (UKOUG TEBS 2012) November 27, 2012
Posted by mwidlake in Friday Philosophy, Presenting.Tags: behaviour, Presenting, UKOUG, user group
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The annual UK Oracle User Group Technical and E-Business Suite conference is fast approaching and rather than just say “hey everyone, I’m going to present at a conference” I thought I would say why I present at conferences (and SIGs (and any opportunity I get) ).
The UKOUG TEBS conference is the one that is, in my eyes, the UKOUG conference. It covers E-business suite and the core database stuff – DBA-type things and developer-type things. The things I am interested in. You can see the details and agenda via this link. If you would like to see someone else’s view of this year’s conference, from a delegate’s perspective, check out this post by my friend Big Dave Roberts. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I’ve personally got more out of the UKOUG TEBS conference than when I have been lucky enough to go to Oracle Open World. For me, I want to see user stories and opinions as well as the Oracle company line – and user groups give far more of that. UKOUG is the biggest and most encompassing of the European conferences, but check out and attend your local user groups if you are not based in the UK (or are in Scotland) – I’ve been to a couple now and all have been good.
{Oh, I should add, I am not presenting at the main TEBS conference, for the first time that I’ve made it there in…10 years! I’m presenting on the OakTable Sunday. I get to fully enjoy the whole 3 days of TEBS this year, as a normal punter!}
So why do I present?
First up, I am lucky that presenting does not scare me. Oh, I get nervous before I start and I worry about my material and doing a decent job of it, but I never feel sick or faint before starting(*). I’ve got some good friends who know as much or more about database technology than I and, in a social situation, they will let fourth with eloquence and passion about some topic. Usually in a pub. But the idea of formally presenting fills them with the heebie-jeebies if not the screaming abdabs. Or, when they get up to talk, they morph from erudite and eloquent {ie they speak clearly, concisely and interestingly) into stuttering, uncomfortable rabbits caught in the lights. And they quickly drop back from it. It’s a real shame as they have a lot to say. Actually, it is a blessing as it leaves space open for me
Secondly, I want to be noticed. There, I’ve said it. I’m pretty sure that 75%+ of the regular speakers at conference want to be noticed and that is a factor in why we do it. Oh, of course, we can wrap it up as “marketing your skills” or “maintaining a presences” but that’s fluff. We want you to see us talk and we want you to like what you see. Well, not the physical aspect of it, that would be weird, but we want you to either think we know what we are talking about or enjoy listening to us prattle on. We want to be appreciated. That’s not so noble, huh? But true.
As a sub-topic to “I want to be noticed” let’s deal with getting work. For me personally, speaking has never got me a job. Asking around friends and contacts most people are the same in that Presenting does not get most of us any work. Maybe it’s a factor when I get interviewed but no one has once come up to me after a talk and said “can you come to our site and be paid a vast sum of money to solve this problem”. I’d love you to be the first, though…
Third, and this may seem noble – or corny or self-worthy – but I talk because I want to teach. I want you to have in your head the knowledge I have in mine, preferably with less pain and anguish than it took me to get it in mine. I love teaching people stuff. It is a common trait to the OakTable network. We teach and we demonstrate why we think what we think. Usually. I can’t decide if I prefer making something that is broken work or teaching people more. Those two are why I do what I do. Frankly I gave up on making a “significant difference” years ago, I’ll stick to making lots of insignificant differences.
Fourth, I get to meet people. It’s taken a while as, except in small groups, I am not great at being sociable. That might seem odd given I said I like to be noticed, but I don’t like to be noticed as a fool and for reasons I will side-step, I’m not too great at judging how I am coming across. Plus I cannot remember names or faces, which is tricky sometimes. Actually, a lot of actors are not “social people”, for some they act because they can’t “do” people. Anyway, presenting has opened doors to me by meeting other presenters who know their stuff, non-presenters who know their stuff and, generally, people. Most of whom have been nice.
Fifth, and this is quite rare. I get asked. If you ask me to present the chances are I will say “ohh, yes please!!!!” We are back to my second point about being noticed, aren’t we? Caveat. If you ask me to present and you live thousands of miles from the UK, as I have no employer to fund my demands for limousines and four-star hotels, I might have to say no. Unless you buy me a LOT of beer.
That is why I present. You probably now expect me to say something to encourage you to present but, mehh, if you want to, just do it. If you don’t, don’t do it. It’s not for everyone. Except you over there. Yes, you know who you are. You need to present more.
(*) I confess, when I do a talk that is aiming to be funny, I get very nervous. When I do my “disasters” talk I can get very nervous as the whole idea is that people will be amused. If I get the feel of the talk wrong I can look preachy or obnoxious or bitter or daft or all four and more. But it is still the talk I most enjoy giving.
Next Public Appearance – Scottish SIG on 29th Feb February 13, 2012
Posted by mwidlake in Meeting notes, UKOUG.Tags: Meeting, Presenting, UKOUG, user group
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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
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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…
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
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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 .
UKOUG Oracle Conference agenda now out September 5, 2011
Posted by mwidlake in Meeting notes.Tags: Meeting, UKOUG, user group
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I just wanted to drop a quick post to say that the agenda for the UKOUG annual conference is now out. You can check out the schedule here.
They seem to have dropped the TEBS (Technical and E-Buisiness Suite) out of the title, I think because last year the UKOUG staff kept getting asked if it was the annual Oracle conference they knew and loved from prior years. And of course it is. (Other “application” sides of the Oracle world, like JD Edwards and PeopleSoft, have their own dedicated, named UKOUG conferences).
There is also a return of the Sunday OakTable stream. For those who have not come across it before, it is a chance to see some presentations by members of the OakTable in a smaller and more accessible room. ie you feel better able to ask the presenters awkward questions .
I’m not sure of the exact details of registering for this part of the event but the agenda shows the talks that are happening (in fact, if you click on the “view the full 2011 agenda” icon on the agenda home page, it shows Sunday by default). I managed to get along to the OakTable Sunday a few years ago and loved it – I’ll be on the opposite side this time, I’m priviledged to have been asked to fill one of the slots.
As ever, the conference has a massive and wide-ranging agenda, with mini-streams like EXA(data/logic) and MySQL on Monday,APEX on Wednesday… The number of papers and the general quality that are submitted to the conference goes up and up each year and a lot of effort goes into not just picking well know speakers but also a mix of new presenters and ensuring topics get covered. It’s hard, but during the selection process sometimes there are 4 or 5 talks we know are going to be excellent but are all on the same or similar topic – some have to be dropped to ensure the breadth of topics is still covered. The number of slots a single person is allowed to have is also controlled, again to maintain space for a wide range of presenters and presentations. All in all, it is not a simple task and even now some tweaks are going on (to fill topic gaps, finalise the exact scope for a talk or to allow for people who suddenly find they cannot present anymore). You can rest assured though that, all in all, it will be an excellent conference.
