Advert – UKOUG conference, end of November

The best Oracle event in the calendar (in my opinion) is only a month away now. From Monday 30th November to Wednesday 1st December the UK Oracle User group Technical and E-Business Suite (TEBS) conference is running. {Being old-school I still think of it as the UKOUG conference but the user group also run other conferences for eg Siebel, Peoplesoft and the up-coming JD Edwards event, dedicated to those segments of the constantly growing world of Oracle}.

I love the TEBS conference. I loved it when I knew almost nobody else attending it because of the breadth and quality of the technical presentations. When I was a manager I liked the fact I could mix going to the technical stuff to going around the demo booths and seeing if any of the services on offer were of interest. And now that I know more people who attend the event, I love catching up with them and also meeting new people who maybe I only knew before by name or reputation.

The social events around the conference are no where near in the same league as those at Oracle Open World – which means that the UKOUG ones are not massive and unfeeling, but of a size where you can bump into friends and be introduced to other people. {And, I should add, the UKOUG staff do an excellent job of organising them}. I’d say half the people I know in the Oracle world I met at the conference.

So having said how much I like the conference, the question is, am I presenting this year? There seems to be an inverse relationship to the number of years I have been attending and the number of talks I do. Back in 2004 I did 3, in 2005 and 06 it was 2, 2007 was 1. 2008 I had to skip the event and last year all my proposed talks were rejected. I blame the fact that the quality and number of abstracts submitted goes up each year.

The good news (or bad news, depending on your opinion) is that I am presenting again this year, first thing on Tuesday at 08:45

My SQL is suddenly performing badly and nothing has changed. Why?

I’m actually very nervous about this presentation as I want to not only describe why SQL might change how well it performs but also demonstrate the reasons – and how you detect them. Demonstrations take an age to prepare and, as fellow presenters know, have this nasty habit of dying under your feet. I’ve not got a lot of spare time at present so I already feel I am behind schedule!

I’ll also be curious how many people from the MySQL field drift into the room thinking it is part of the MySQL stream {which runs on the Wednesday}. Sadly the talk will be of no use at all to them as it is very specific to Oracle!

Despite the presenting duties, I’m really looking forward to the event. I’d love to meet anyone who reads my blog, whether you like it or not. Just stop me and say “hi” if you see me around.