UKOUG TechFest19 Survival Guide November 13, 2019
Posted by mwidlake in conference, Meeting notes, UKOUG, User Groups.Tags: behaviour, Meeting, UKOUG, user group
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Brighton, December 1st-4th 2019, Grand Hotel, Techfest2019. This is the big Technology event for the UKOUG this year, one of the largest Oracle Tech events in Europe.
All This And More
The UKOUG conference is traditionally the one to finish the European year of conferencing and it is always incredibly popular with both delegates and presenters. There are two things that are not traditional about this year’s UKOUG December conference:
- It is Technology Focused. We asked our members when they wanted their annual conference and there was a strong split between Business Applications and Technology members, with many Business Apps members finding December a bad time to be out of the office and most of them preferring May/June, so we split the conference and the big Business Apps conference will be in June 2020. However, our Tech members wanted to stick to December.
- The conference is in the South of England. Birmingham was our conference home for many years and we have been to Manchester & Liverpool, so time to try the South.
I’m really please we are in Brighton as it is a lively, fascinating place. Also, being that little bit further south, it might be less cold. Slightly!
Why Come?
Because there will be fantastic talks, round tables, Q&A sessions, experts to quiz, people with the the same technical challenges as you, Partners able to offer services and, last but not least, it will be fun!
Technical Content
The UKOUG conferences are very popular with presenters. On average we get 5 submissions per presenting slot, more for some streams. We could fill the conference with talks from Oracle ACEs, Oracle Certified Masters, and the best Oracle Corp offer. What we actually do is have stream-specific teams that select not just known speakers but also topics we know are hot, new presenters, avoid repeating content. It’s damned hard work but we aim to give you:
- Independent experts who will tell you exactly how it is, like Richard Foote on indexes (all the way from Auz, so a rare chance to see him), Frank Pachot from CERN, Security guru Pete Finnigan, Abigail Giles-Haigh, Craig Shallahamer, Jonathan Lewis, Zahid Anwar, Loneke Dikmans…
- Oracle giving you the latest information “from the horses mouth” and, just as important, the chance to meet product managers and other experts. People like Maria Colgan, Mike Deitrich, Jeff Smith, Nigel Bayliss, Susan Duncan
- 9 or more concurrent streams across Development, Analytics & Data Science, Database, Systems & Infrastrructure, and APEX. No matter what your interest in the Oracle Tech world we hope your problem will not be “is there a session of interest” but “which session of interest do I go to now?”
- Roundtable discussions, panels, keynotes, presentations – and the chance to meet the experts around the conference and at the socials
The arrows should not be taken as indicative of any specific type of fun…
Fun
Learning stuff at conference is the name of the game, but so is having some fun. The more enjoyable the conference and the social times after are, the more you you will get out of the content. I know from personal experience that if a conference is just information and being serious, after a few hours my brain shuts off.
Also, it’s when you are more relaxed that the magic thing about attending an event in person happens – you meet people and get to know them better. This opens doors to industry experts, you find people dealing with the same PIA technical issues as you, you exchange war stories. You make friends. I get just as much (if not more) from the people I meet at conference than the official presentations.
Monday evening there will be networking drinks, Tuesday will be the big party (and I’ve been promised No Loud Music!!!). If you are a UKOUG volunteer or speaker, there is a drinks reception Sunday night. (I know of a couple of other events being put on by other companies too, such as Rittman Mead).
We will be having the retro games consoles scattered around the venue again.
And, we are in Brighton! Of course as the UKOUG President I would never encourage you to leave the conference hotel… But as a human being I would say go and look around Brighton, have a bit of fun! You might want to do what I am doing and be in Brighton a day or two before the event (or after) and really enjoy what the town has to offer. Mrs Widlake is coming with me on Saturday so we can have a mini break.
One other fun thing – Mark Rittman is organising a gentle cycle ride Sunday morning. Details can be found {here},it will be a couple of hours via a cafe, prior to Super Sunday starting. I plan to take part.
Now, the practical stuff:
Getting There
Train
Basically, if you can get to London OK, you can get to Brighton just fine. Trains go from Victoria in under an hour, from St Pancras (very convenient if you come to London on Eurostar), London Bridge (both about 90 mins) and, if you live near Cambridge, you can get a direct train through London to Brighton. There is a direct service from Gatwick Airport taking about half an hour.
I’d strongly advise booking *now*. If you come down on Saturday or Sunday, it can cost as little as £15-20 from London, £40 from Birmingham, Bristol or Leeds.
If you don’t often travel by train just be aware that “open” tickets and booking only a few days ahead can be eye-wateringly expensive. Plan ahead, decide when you are travelling, and book ASAP.
Plane
The best international airport to fly to for Brighton is Gatwick, as there is a fast (1/2 hour) train service direct to Brighton for as little as £10. A taxi will take 40-50 minutes and cost that many pounds.
Heathrow is also sort-of on the same side of London as Brighton but you will either have to go into London to Victoria by the slow Tube line and then out on the normal train services to Brighton, or take the Heathrow Express (15 mins, about £15 each way) to London Paddington and take the tube Central Line around to Victoria.
If you come in to Stansted, basically get into London (Stansted Express) and work it out from there!
For Luton (and Stansted, sort of) Niall Litchfield says
If you are flying into Luton, don’t go into London and change. Take the shuttle bus to Luton Airport Parkway station (10 minutes) and take the direct train to Brighton. If you are going to Stanstead then you should consider your life choices!
Automobile
UPDATE – see comments by Niall Litchfield (again, helpful chap), a local who says to not drive in to Brighton as parking is so bad. He is 20 mins away and will take the local train. Best bet if you must is Park and Ride
It’s relatively simple to drive to Brighton. You go around the M25 to the M23 and down that, and keep going when it turns into the A23. I’m not so sure about coming along the more coastal road (A27) – I have bad memories of it taking ages to get anywhere.
But parking can be expensive. If you are not being provided parking by a hotel you are using or you plan to come in and go home each day then you might like to look at https://www.visitbrighton.com/plan-your-visit/travel-information/parking or similar. I’m no expert on parking in Brighton (I last did it 30 years ago) but I’ll ask someone local and update this accordingly. My one hint would be avoid NCP car parks – they are usually very expensive and, as a company, they are terrible. Ask anyone who commutes by train into London or any other major city and they probably hate NCP with a passion.
Walking/Cycling
Don’t be daft, unless you are local, in which case you know more than I do!
Under a month to go & lots of hotels available
Where to Stay
I’m afraid you missed the special deal to stay at the Grand (the location of the conference) but you might still be able to book there. However, at the time of writing (see image), there are many, many hotels available around Brighton and you might want to look at Air B&B for something cheaper.
I personally use Trivago to find accommodation but other websites are available. They should all allow you to what I do which is choose the lowest “comfort” level you want and the price range. I then use the map view as it makes things a lot easier than a list of hotels with no idea where they actually are!
I’m actually staying at the conference venue – as President I have a lot of duties so it makes sense for me to be on-site. I also know that there are a lot of presenters etc staying at the hotel so it should add to the vibe, but sometimes I specifically choose to stay a 5, 10 minute walk from a Conference, so I can get away from it all if I should wish. I find a 10 minutes stroll before a conference wakes me up and doing so after gives my brain a chance to turn off a little.
Coffee, Refreshments etc.
It’s been a problem for years at UKOUG conferences. Getting coffee (or tea or whatever) has been a real challenge as the venues always wanted a fortune to provide catering all day. Catering! Just hot drinks and maybe some biscuits! This year, tea & coffee will be available throughout the conference! I’m not guaranteeing it will be good tea and coffee, I’m not daft, but Brighton has a big coffee culture so I have hopes.
Water should always be available.
If your are a coffee snob (looking at one person in particular here) then, look, we are IN BRIGHTON! Go out the hotel and walk 2 minutes, you will soon find a hipster cafe and can get your double espresso skinny latte with raw cane sugar there. And in fact, yeah, do it! Pop out the venue for 10 mins and go to a local cafe. Or get an ice cream. Or, if you are inclined, a glass of wine and a cake. Cafe culture is all around you.
If you don’t like the provided coffee at the conference, don’t tell me. Tell me about other things that are right or wrong but, honestly, the quality of the coffee is not something I want to hear anything more about. This is the UK and it is an I.T. conference, the coffee is supposed to bad!
You will have been asked when you registered for the event if you have dietary requirements and this should be catered for. Vegetarian options should be provided at all meals as a matter of course. Any issues, as the UKOUG staff and they will sort it out for you.
At the social events there will be soft drinks as well as alcoholic ones. Some people like alcohol, some do not, it really is not that important if you drink or not. BUT if you find there are no soft options then let the UKOUG staff know immediately – we had a problem one year where the caterers only provided beer & wine and no one mentioned it for ages. They just got angry and slagged us off after the event.
There will be no secret whisky tasting this year. There never has been. It’s just a rumour. If whisky is not your thing then feel free to not bring a different thing to share at the non-existing tasting.
Chocolate. I’ve also not heard rumours about a chocolate tasting happening…
Other Hints
Go to at least one talk you know nothing about, that is not your core work area. You will probably learn something unexpectedly useful! You might even get a peak at a shift in your career.
Speak to the famous people. They are human, they are *just like you* (only, of course, much much smarter…). Honestly, just say “hi” or “isn’t it a shame about the Rugby world cup final” or “what bread do you like to bake?” (this is surprisingly likely to get an interested response from a growing number of speakers). Have a little chat. But also, please do not stalk. If you find yourself hanging about after a session to chat to the same person you chatted to three time already, you have become a scary stalker and need to stop.
If you don’t know many people at the conference, go to a panel session or a round table. If you can build up the courage, when you see a circle of half a dozen people chatting and you recognise some of them as “in your area”, go and join in. (And, if you are one of those people in a circle of mates, chatting, keep an eye out for people hanging about nearby looking nervous. I wish we did not stand in these circles, backs to each other, but I can’t think of a good way to break the circle.)
Take breaks. If you do 7 sessions in succession I am willing to bet nothing is going into the brain anymore. If you happen to find yourself talking with people just before a session starts and you are enjoying the conversation, maybe keep it going and have a coffee/water. I really do believe that those contacts you make/develop at conferences and the ad-hoc things you learn as just as valuable as listening to Connor McDonald bang on about SQL in his boring monotone again. He does rubbish slides.
APEX Connect – A Slightly Different Conference May 13, 2019
Posted by mwidlake in conference, development, Meeting notes.Tags: behaviour, design, knowledge, Meeting
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I wanted to do a write-up for the APEX Connect conference that happened in Bonn, Germany, a few days ago, as it was a slightly different conference than I normally go to and a slightly different experience for me.
I really don’t like DBMS_OUTPUT!
APEX Connect is a German event (put on by DOAG) that is focused on APEX, SQL & PL/SQL, and JavaScript. So more of a developers’ conference. It was an unusual conference for me for a few reasons:
- I don’t generally go to developer-focused events, my current roles tend to be performance & architecture based and, despite having been a developer or development DBA for most of the last 30 years, I (wrongly) mentally class myself as a “DBA type”.
- I was doing a keynote! I’m not used to that, but I was honoured to be asked.
- I was doing only the opening keynote, so once that was out the way I had pretty much 3 days of being a normal delegate. That made a really nice change.
The conference was well attended and well run. A couple of things that they did right was to have good catering and coffee was always available – good coffee! It really makes a difference and it is something some conferences (including the ones I help organise) struggle with. You have no idea how much venues in the UK want to charge to make coffee available all day, let alone *good* coffee!
Something else that struck me was that the audience was a little younger than many Oracle-focused conferences. This was helped by DOAG’s #NextGen programme which encourages students and recent graduates to come to conferences and meet professionals working in the industry. I met a few of these students/recent students as they had been tasked with asking all the keynote speakers a question, which I thought was a nice way for them to meet these “stars” and realise we are just normal people, doing a job.
Some of the usual suspects! Conferences should be, I believe, half educational and half social.
Another thing was the male:female ratio. Looking at the sessions I was in, it was about 75%:25%, which in our industry is a little unusual – and very encouraging to see. I had a good discussion with Niels de Bruijn on the subject of sex (balance), who is the main organiser, and it is a topic I have discussed a few times with Sabine Heimsath, who organised the SQL & PL/SQL stream and who asked me to present. Niels was pleased with the balance at the conference, and I shared my experiences of trying to increase the balance in the UK (I’d love 25%!). It is not a simple issue and I think (note, these are my words and not theirs) that it is almost a lost cause for my generation. I think things went wrong in the home computer industry in the 80’s and continued through the 90’s, with IT being portrayed by the general media as typically male and the IT-focused industry keeping to a very male-focused stance. I won’t stop trying to address the balance but I wonder if where we can really make the difference is in events where the audience is younger…
Anyway, APEX Connect had a nicely balanced and lively feel.
As I said earlier, I had been asked to do the opening keynote. My job was to say something that would be relevant to the whole audience, which was not too technically deep, and set the scene for APEX Connect. An added bonus would be for the audience to leave the talk energised for the rest of the conference. My normal talks are about tech… but I do branch out into talks on presenting, disasters and, err, beer. Talks to entertain basically. So that is what I aimed for, to entertain and to energise.
Server Side Development…
I’m one of those annoying presenters who does not usually get particularly nervous before a talk, I simply step up to (OK, behind) the lectern and go. But for the second time in 6 months (the other being the opening words for UKOUG 2018) I was really nervous for this. I think it is because when you talk on a technical subject, you are describing how something works and, so long as the audience understand, the rest of the talk (little stories, extra facts) are window dressing – enjoying the talk is a good thing to achieve but is secondary. With a keynote the Window Dressing is actually the main thing, and if the audience does not enjoy the talk you have not done the job. I’m glad to say I got a lot of positive feedback and I was very much relieved. I think I hit “peak enjoyment” for this talk when I described my early career (Builder, Oracle 7 PL/SQL developer, server-side developer, Development DBA) and used the graphical slide here.
Server. (on it’s) Side. Developer.
I have to say, with that talk out the way I was able to really enjoy being simply “at a conference”, seeing some great talks (Toon Koppelaars, Connor McDonald, Kamil Stawiarski, Eric van Roon – I missed Luiza Nowak & Heli Helskyaho but I had seen those talks before), chatting to lots of people, and enjoying the socialising.
I want to say a big Thank You to the organisers – Simone Fischer, Niels de Bruijn, Tobias Arnhold, Kai Donato and all the others behind the scenes. I know what it’s like doing this! And a special Thank You to Sabine Heimsath for asking me to present and for helping me get places and answering odd questions on German culture!
I’ll finish with what I think conferences and the community are all about. This does not just apply to developers of course, but to all of us in the industry:
OUG Scotland – Why to Come & Survival Guide June 12, 2018
Posted by mwidlake in Meeting notes, UKOUG, Uncategorized, User Groups.Tags: Meeting, UKOUG, user group
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The UKOUG’s Scottish conference is on the 21st June in the centre of Edinburgh, at the Sheraton Grand Hotel, not far from Edinburgh Castle in the centre of the city.
Picture from viator.com, who do tours etc
The Event
There is a six-stream agenda covering Database, Apex & Development, Platform & Services, Coud Apps, EBS Apps tech, and Business Analytics/systems & EPM, so pretty much the whole breadth of Oracle Tech, Apps and BI. We have a keynote by Oracle’s Caroline Apsey on the Bloodhound Project, the UK-based group trying to smash the world land-speed record with a 1,000mph rocket car – and solve lots of engineering challenges on the way. And uses the Oracle Cloud. I’ll be sure to see that one.
With 6 all-day streams there are a lot of presentations to choose from, but as a taste of what is on offer I’ll mention Jonathan Lewis talking about stats, Heli Helskyaho explaining the basics of machine learning, and from Oracle we have Grant Ronald on AI-driven chatbots, Hilary Farrell on the new features of APEX 18.1, and Keith Laker on JSON & SQL. The talks are a nice mixture of end-user experiences, recognised experts and Oracle themselves. UKOUG is independent of Oracle so although we are very happy to have Oracle support us, we have talks that are not just what Oracle are currently pushing. This is what I love about user group meetings, you get the whole story.
As a member of the UKOUG this event is free, counting as one of your SIG places. If you have run out of SIG places, you can buy an extra one at £85 – or upgrade your membership of course 🙂
If you are not a member you can pay £170 to attend the event, which is pretty cheap for a day of Oracle conference when compare to many other events of the same size around Europe. However, if you become a bronze member of the UKOUG – which comes with a SIG place, so you can come to the event – that will only cost you £165! Contact the UKOUG office for any help.
(note, all prices do not include VAT, which is 20%. A UK company can usually claim this back).
Social
I’m sure there will be a good few people travelling up the day before the event so there is a social being organised. This will be in the Shakespeare Pub from 19:00, which is not far at all from the Sheraton hotel. I’m afraid that you will have to buy your own drinks etc, but I’ll be buying a round at some point.
I have to run away back home before the event itself ends, but there is a social event in the hotel after the presentations, in the exhibition area, starting at 17:25.
Edinburgh
Edinburgh is one of my favourite cities in the UK – and actually in the world. I’ll be turning up Wednesday afternoon so I can have a wander about the city before joining the meetup the evening before the conference and, if I had the time, I’d be going up sooner or coming back later. If you have time, a wander up Royal Mile to the Esplanade gives fine views over the city. Having looked at the nest of roads and alleys of the old town in front of the castle, it is only a few minutes to the New Town with it’s contrasting, rectangularly laid out, Victorian grandeur. In the old town I love the camera obscura just off the Esplanade, the Dynamic Earth museum at the bottom of the Royal Mile/Holyrood road and, if I have a couple of hours, I’ll wander up Arthur’s seat – a small “mountain” (the remains of an ancient volcano),180+meters of ascent in the centre of Edinburgh. Views are spectacular. Unless it rains.
Getting There
Train
The venue is about a mile from Waverley train station in the centre of Edinburgh, half a mile or so from Haymarket. Intercity services go to Waverley.
It is not as expensive or as far away to get to Edinburgh from London as you might think. At the time of writing trains from London Kings Cross are 4-5 hours from about £42 each way. And the route is gorgeous, running up the East coast with views out to sea. Sit on the right side of the train on the way up! To get travel at that cost you do need to pick your exact train and book ASAP. You will end up at Waverley station right in the centre of Edinburgh.
Travel from other cities in the UK will be similar, but cheaper. Apart from Birmingham maybe. I don’t know why but there seems to be a “tax” on leaving Birmingham!
Getting to the Sheraton from Waverley is still easy, there are buses and trams. If you have time, you come out of Waverley, cross North Bridge, go up the Royal Mile and down Johnston Terrace. It’s a one mile walk and you can take in the view from the Castle Esplanade on the way.
Tram
If you are heading to the Sheraton hotel by tram, you should get off at West End stop, take Canning Street then bear left onto Rutland Square. Walk past the horse statue and across the footbridge to turn left on Exchange Square. The hotel entrance is on the right.
Car
Even though I live in the South of England, if I had a day to do it I’d drive up to Edinburgh and stop off at places along the way. If you are local-ish to Edinburgh and the trains do not work for you, I’m told it may be best to head for the multi-storey carparks at Castle Terrace or Semple Street. But driving into Edinburgh can be a bit of a pain.
Plane.
I’ll be coming in by plane as I live very close to Stansted Airport. It is costing me £21 each way with Ryanair (Ack!) and there are several flights a day to chose from. You can also fly from Luton (£48), Gatwick (£60) or Birmingham (£70).
The Edinburgh tram system now runs out to the airport so getting in by tram is quick and easy, in shiny, modern trams. If my memory of the roads is still accurate, a taxi will take a lot longer, as well as being more expensive.
I hope some of you can join me at this great event in this lovely city.
Riga & Romania, Zagreb & Zurich: It Sounds Rockstar but Really it’s Not May 10, 2018
Posted by mwidlake in conference, Meeting notes, Presenting, Private Life, User Groups.Tags: Meeting, UKOUG, user group
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I’ve spent a lot of time over the last month or two trying to plan how to navigate a set of visits to the Eastern side of Europe. This might sound a little “My Glamorous Lifestyle” but, as my friend Tim Hall (he who is “Oracle-Base”) has documented in his posts under “my glamorous lifestyle”, doing the Oracle talk circuit often entails lots of hours in airports & stations, travelling with cheap, basic airlines, and sometimes a lot of stress. It is not the “Airport lounge and first class service” some people think it is. Anyway…
I’m visiting cities in the orange zone
All three venues are at pretty much the same longitude, about 25 degrees (that is to say, the same distance “East” of the UK). The first trip is to Riga in Latvia, where I am presenting at Riga Dev Days 2018. This is my first time at Riga Dev Days and in fact my first time in Latvia. Sue has never visited Latvia before so is joining me for a long weekend prior to the conference – they have a millinery (hat) museum in Riga! (If you do not know, my wife makes some very nice hats)
The last trip is to Romania, to present at a the Romanian Oracle User Group meeting. I was asked if I would consider this by Mirela Ardelean at the UKOUG conference last December and my response was “Hell yes! I’ve never been to Romania before and I love being asked! Besides, I don’t think Sue has been to Romania yet…” So, another weekend as a tourist with my wife before a speaking engagement. Bucharest is pretty much directly South of Riga.
I’ve had these two in my calendar for a while and, though the trip to Romania was a little fluid for a while, I knew I could do it easily – there are cheap, direct flights to both from London Stansted airport, which is just a few miles over the fields from my home.
Riga hat museum 🙂
And then things changed. I became UKOUG President elect (and, a lot sooner than I expected, full president) and there is a meeting of European Oracle user groups in Zagreb, Croatia, in a date between the two user group events I was doing. I felt I needed to be there – I think all the European user groups have stuff to learn from each other and the UKOUG board supported this position.
I now had a three-week period with large chunks “over there”. I looked at flights, times, costs, hotels… It was not working. Getting home to the UK in that period with at least 24 hours at home was going to be very, very hard. I looked to see if train transport or even a hire car would help. No. But carrying enough personal stuff to last three weeks was also hard work. Even if I did weird things like popped into other countries by train or travelled at antisocial hours, the cost was making my eyes water. Each trip itself was OK if based on a simple “UK and out/return” basis. But together, it did not work. Moving between each country was not a smooth process and going home to the UK was even worse…
Then Sue made a suggestion. Don’t go “home” – go to see your wife – via Zurich!
That worked!
In the middle of all these trips I can pop back to Zurich and by train to Basel, and see Mrs Widlake. And wash my dirty clothes. It seems crazy, but adding another leg to what was already a frenetic travel plan made it all doable. So now I am going Stansted-Riga-Zurich-Basel-Zurich-Zagreb-Belgrade-Bucharest-Stansted.
Bucharest
Why do I do all of this? Because I love what I do as a vocation (UKOUG, presenting, the Oracle Community) and I love what I do as a Husband (she currently works abroad, I go visit, she visits back, and we meet up in random countries across Europe). For both I travel cheap as I am either spending the salary of my wife or the funds of a User Group. Both are limited and I try to keep costs down. Especially on the latter.
I really wanted to fit in a trip to Bulgaria as well, to go to the BOUG spring conference, but I really just could not make that work as well. That will have to be next year, if they will still accept me.
I already know I will be knackered by the end of this tour, but that’s OK – I will have time to recover. That would be 48 hours before I go to Valencia for a holiday “with the boys”. Followed 48 hours later by a trip to Scotland to be UKOUG President at the Scottish UKOUG conference.
I might take July off to sleep….
Top and Tailing Bulgaria. November 9, 2016
Posted by mwidlake in conference, Meeting notes, Presenting.Tags: Meeting, Presenting, user group
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Tomorrow I head off to Bulgaria for the BGOUG Autumn Conference 2016. I’ve only been to the Bulgarian user group once before, having heard from so many people what a fantastic user group conference it was – and they were right. Milena Gerova and her team do an amazing job of organising it and make everyone feel really welcome. So I am really looking forward to my return.
Bryn always gets a good crowd but this was typical for Bulgaria (sorry it’s blurry)
In one of those strange quirks of fate, I’m “opening” the conference and also “closing” it. I.e. my first session is in the first slot on the first day and my last is, well, the last slot on the last day. In between I’ll be enjoying the other talks, doing a third session myself and trying to avoid repeating the “6am with the crazy Ukrainians” experience of last time!
Having the first slot on the first day is just perfect for the session I am doing “The heart of Oracle – How the Core RDBMS Works”. A while back I realised that there are a lot of experienced and highly capable Oracle practitioners who do not actually know some of the basics of how the database software works {if I look in the mirror I see one of them}. That is, why redo is so important, what goes into the redo stream, that all table and index data is accessed via blocks (until you get to that fancy engineered systems stuff) and it is blocks that go into the SGA buffer ache, what a consistent get is or how Oracle finds a block of data in memory. That last one I had no clue about until about 6 years ago, I had made some stupid assumptions.
When you discover these things or tell someone about them, a common response is “Oh! That makes so many things make more sense! I wish I had known that from the start…”. So this talk tells people about these things and, though it understandable by anyone who has only got as far as writing their first SELECT statement and was originally aimed at those new to Oracle, most experienced people take something new from it that helps make all those more detailed talks make sense. It really suits all levels. Thus having it at the start of the conference will hopefully help give them a better understanding of the core framework of the Oracle RDBMS into which knowledge of specific areas can slot into.
The location in Pravets is lovely
The final session is equally suitable for everyone. Which is good as it is the only session available at that time! It is a “Discussion Over Beers About Oracle Database” – beers are available to all. It’s a fun and relaxed way to round off the event, with questions coming from the audience. I loved the session last year and this time I’m up on the panel. Bryn Llewellyn was sniping from the audience last year (as only Bryn can) so they are doing what you should do with any troublemaker, which is to put them in charge :-). So Bryn is also on the panel, along with Joze Senegacnik and Tim Hall.
Sometime in between those two bookends I’ll do my talk on clustering data for better SQL and overall database performance but more importantly I’ll be listening to many of the other great talks. I’ve looked over the agenda and I know I will have the complaint common in any conference with good contents – more than one talk I want to see at most points in the day. Thankfully, having been a bit of a conference tart this last few months, I have seen some of them already which makes my decision making easier.
Traditional Dancing is a Traditional Entertainment (and my shot is traditionally blurry!)
Another thing I am looking forward to is enjoying the hospitality & entertainment that BGOUG is so famous for. The conference is in a hotel that is not that near many other things, which could be a problem. But the organisers make sure that we are entertained in the evening and the food last year was great. This made even better by spending time talking with the delegates and other speakers in the evening. Last year I was struck by how engaged the audience was during sessions and how enthusiastic they were to learn & share outside of them.
Just like The Polish user group conference I went to in October, BGOUG has the three things a great conference needs: Excellent presentations; good organisation; an engaged audience. For some people there, this will be their 10th or 20th time (or even more) at the BGOUG conference. Nothing says more than that.
Pint with Oracle User Group – First International POUG (Polish) Conference October 14, 2016
Posted by mwidlake in ACED, conference, Friday Philosophy, Meeting notes, Presenting, User Groups.Tags: behaviour, Meeting, Presenting, user group
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Kamil kicks it all off: Apparently water has bacteria in it – so drink beer
(stolen from Pieter v.Puymbrooeck)
Last week I enjoyed being at the first international conference that the resurrected Polish Oracle user group has put on. I say enjoyed – I actually mean really enjoyed! Why did I like the conference so much? Three major components came together.
(Before anyone rushes to mention the Polish custom of entertaining you with alcohol, that was not one of the three parts. It was the fourth instalment of the trilogy…)
Let’s start with a little history. I first came across Kamil Stawiarski just a year or so back. I had blogged about Pragma UDF and how it improves the performance of PL/SQL functions called from SQL – and then came across his blog post on it. About the same time he came across mine and we got in touch. He’s an “Oracle DBA type” and his company is called ORA600! {if you had not noticed, so is mine}. The similarities do not stop there. He loves beer+presenting (for some reason I have this reputation…) and using an axe. I am a little more technical – as I use a chainsaw as well as an axe. In respect of Oracle Technical, I’ll give Kamil the prize in that. The biggest difference is I am old enough to be his dad. I might adopt him. Anyway, Kamil came to the UKOUG Tech15 conference, we met up and he asked me (as well as several others) if we as international speakers would support him running a conference in Poland? Of course! I had so much in common with Kamil, he and his travelling companion Adam were so friendly, positive and knowledgeable that it was an easy decision.
A date was chosen, Kamil let us all know and those of us who could went along. The conference took place in Warsaw on Friday 7th to Saturday 8th October, with a speaker’s meal on the Thursday. There were two streams during the conference, one mostly on database topics and the other mostly on development & BI. We had a lot of well-respected and talented speakers including Jim Czuprnski (who has Polish roots), Joze Senegacnik, Piet de Visser, Heli Helskyaho,Phillipe Fierens, Neil Chandler, Sabine Heimsath… Apologies to the others I have not mentioned. Why did we all turn up? Because we were asked to. Most of us presenters just enjoy presenting (as we crave attention and being asked to present appeals to our egos 🙂 ). Being serious, if you want to organise an Oracle conference or user group meeting, don’t be afraid to ask people to consider coming along. The worst we will do is say “no” (and please be cool if we do; we all have other calls on our time).
What a set of Mug Shots 🙂
With this cunning trick of simply asking people he thought could speak well to come speak at his conference, Kamil had got himself a bunch of good speakers, one of the three things you need for a good conference.
The speaker gifts were just so apt!
The next part that is key is the organising of the conference. So Kamil set too organising it. Well, I say Kamil orgainised it, he actually got Luiza Koziel to organise most of it, which he says was one his best moves! So he, Luiza and probably half a dozen people I should thank but have not (I really should get a list of the volunteers), spent a lot of time and effort planning the event. Update – Kamil let me know the names. In his words:
Rafal Rebecki- he found all sponsors.
Pawel Chyliński, Adam Jagielski and Radosław Kut – always ready to help with every issue we had challenging us
Kamil Kozieł – directly responsible for all marketing stuff like website and social media
Adam Boliński- help with organising speakers and preparing agenda he was also one of the sponsor
Of course Luiza Kozieł – she was responsible for everything 🙂 finding venue, organising hotel and gadgets. she did most of the work
I’ve helped out with many conferences & meetings, from the huge behemoth that is the UKOUG Tech conference to small SIGs and special interest groups. It takes a lot of work – much, much, much more work than you can appreciate until you do it yourself. They sorted out a suitable venue, they compiled the abstracts for the talks and speaker profiles (often not an easy task, some of us are such prima donnas), put together the web pages for it and advertised the event well. During the event they smoothed out the issues that invariably crop up and they looked after all the delegates and speakers. The food at the venue was excellent, both the speaker’s meal and the conference party were fantastic, signage at the venue was good, crowds were managed and encouraged back into sessions at the appropriate time. There are a dozen other things that go to making the mechanics of an event work and, from what I could see, it was all done well or quickly resolved such that I did not notice.
Heli Helskyaho’s crowd is a nice example of how busy the sessions were
The organisation was great, the speakers were fantastic, what is the third thing you need?
The final thing is sort-of beyond the control of the organisers. For a conference or meeting to work you need an engaged audience. The audience does not have to be huge (though full rooms really help) but they have to be there mentally as well as physically. POUG got an excellent, large crowd of delegates. As a presenter I like it when I feel looked after. A speaker’s meal is great, havng registration and any admin done for you by the “office” is a help. There are lots of “nice” things you can do for the speakers but, for me at least, there is only one absolute. What makes a conference great for a speaker is actually having delegates who want to be there and want to hear presenters speak – and who then are chatting between themselves, challenging the speaker “experts”, asking questions in sessions, continuing discussions outside the presentations and generally making that “buzz”. Lots of things can be done by both the organisers and, to some extent, the speakers to help this. But in the end it comes down to having an involved audience. And in Poland we had that in spades. It was very, very “buzzy”.
Don’t water the speakers after midnight!
Obviously the organisers can prime the pump by getting the speakers and organisation right and I think it helped that the people leading the conference were relaxed and yet determined that everyone had a good time. But in the end, I think the delegates take some of the credit for making the conference so good.
All in all it all came together wonderfully in Poland last week. It’s in my top three conference experiences. (I won’t confirm where or which the other three are – It changes depending on what aspects I am thinking about).
The end of the conference summed it up. Just as in Ireland earlier this year, the last session was an open, “panel” affair with some speakers at the front and an intention to get the audience involved. At POUG we had a discussion about why DBAs are so arrogant and Developers so useless. Of course, neither statement is true all the time and it led to a lively, good-natured and often very funny discussion. The organisers had ensured that this could roll on if there was the desire to do so and the audience demonstrated that there was. I am sure we went on for twice the allotted time! Finally POUG stepped in and closed the conference (in a very nice way).
The DBA-Dev “love” – thanks to Kiran Tailor
I’ve got lots of stories to tell about the POUG conference but that can be in another post – or simply when chatting at other conferences or in a a bar. Some of them involve the use of alcohol as an enabler in IT.
I hope there is another POUG next year. I hope it is even half as good. I especially hope they let me come back!
This Autumn, I am mostly being a Conference Tart. August 12, 2016
Posted by mwidlake in ACED, conference, Meeting notes, Presenting, User Groups.Tags: Meeting, Presenting, user group
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The first half of this year was a little quiet for me on the presenting front. I was concentrating on writing and also on organising events, as opposed to going to them, so most of my trips were for personal reasons (that means “holidays”…). I presented at the Ireland conference and a few UK user group events but that was it – quite a few European events this spring fell on dates I was not available (including the Israeli and Finnish conferences where I was asked to attend and would have loved to). Or, oh the shock of it, my submissions were not accepted! {How dare they 🙂 )
However, the final third of this year is the total opposite. I’m at a conference at least once each month from September to the end of the year. In the spring this year I decided to make up for my poor showing speaker-wise by offering talks to a few more events. I knew I would probably do Oracle OpenWorld as, being an Ace Director, the Oracle OTN program is incredibly kind to us and help us attend the conference itself and the ACED briefings just beforehand. Despite my best efforts to scupper my own chances of attending OOW16 (I did not respond to an email I should have for ACED and I only submitted technical talks and not fluffy cloud ones) the ACE program have sorted me out and I’ll be there. I’m not presenting (unless my status as standby for the EOUG lightning talks and OakTable World morph into actual slots) but it’s nice to do a conference with no duties.
In December it is the total opposite for UKOUG Tech16. This is “My” conference, as in not just my home conference and the one I nearly always present at, it is the one I help organise. This year I am the project lead for Tech16, rather than the Database community lead role that I filled for the last two years. It sounds like a promotion and it sort-of is, but in reality there is less work than being a community lead, as I have a lot less to do with organising the content and agenda. But I will have duties to do at the event as well as the one presentation I am doing (I keep it down to one presentation when I have other responsibilities) so for me it is quite a demanding conference.
Between these two book-ends I decided to offer talks to DOAG in Germany and I was asked to speak at the Slovenian and Croatian user groups, which I was delighted to do. DOAG accepted two of my submissions so that was 5 conferences, which is a nice number.
Then the Polish user group announced their next conference and I had promised “the other ORA600” to submit for that one. Then last week I was asked to consider doing the Nordic OTN tour. I said yes to both. The Nordic OTN tour is not finalised yet but it looks like it could be 3 or 4 meetings in different countries on consecutive days.
On top of this, my wife is relocating to Switzerland in October for work and I’ll be trying to assist with that. So I’ve had to put together a spreadsheet of where and when I’ll be. It’s all rather busy. It would be foolish to add to all of this.
So I plan to submit to the Autumn Bulgarian conference too because, well, it’s a cracking conference.
The saving grace? Most of the conferences I am going to have asked me to do the same presentations. So I only need to prepare 3 (or is it 4… I’ll check my spreadsheet).
Why do I do all these conferences? Because (a) I actually like presenting and sharing what I know and (b) I meet people and make new friends. So, if you are at any of the above events, come over and say “hi”.
I suppose I should update my “Appearances and Meetings” page.
Tech 16 – We Want Your Abstracts on SE, Real-World & Practical Topics May 25, 2016
Posted by mwidlake in Meeting notes, Presenting, UKOUG, User Groups.Tags: Meeting, UKOUG, user group
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The Call for Papers is open for the UK Oracle User Group annual TECH conference. It’s in Birmingham, in December, and is being co-located with the JDE & Apps conferences too (and the call for papers is open for them also).
If you are a Standard Edition (SE) expert, have a real-world story to tell about how you used Oracle (good or bad!) or want to teach others how to get going with some aspect of Oracle, I really want to see your abstracts.
You can register as a speaker and submit abstracts here at this link. You have until June 1st, so that’s just under a week. Plenty of time 🙂
I love this event, I’ve been going since 2002. Last year was the best for many years, almost everyone I spoke to felt it had regained the energy of prior years, attendance was up, lots of new faces were there and, a real sign of a good agenda, people complained that they were having to pick between excellent talks.
A couple of things have changed a little in the last two years, which I think have increased the overall appeal of the UKOUG conference.
First is that we now have “introductory streams”. These are talks that need no or little prior knowledge of the topic and give you all the information about it to get going. The conference had become a little too “expert-focused”, packed with great talks about esoteric aspects of tuning or internals that many of us love – but not everyone is ready for or interested in. We will still have lots of those, but we are giving more talks for those who are not experts (yet). This will be the third year we are doing this due to it’s success. If you are an expert, how about offering a paper that gets people started? Such talks tend to get much larger and enthusiastic audiences.
Second is the Standard Edition stream. This was really popular last year, the first ever dedicated stream of sessions for SE at any conference. Lots of you use SE but like the small kid in the schoolyard, it tends to get ignored. Last year we chose introductory talks, for obvious reasons, this year we are aiming for more depth – can you talk for 45 minutes about an aspect of SE, help people really make the most of it?
Third is more emphasis on real-world experience based talks. They are always the most popular, especially if they are about things not working out as the theory or Oracle Sales Guys would make out. The UKOUG is a User Group, we want to share good, bad and ugly. Personally I’d love for someone to step up to the mark and give some talks about real Cloud adoption or why Cloud is NOT the answer to all requirements.
Of course, we are always interested in the latest-greatest, just-released and did-you-know-about type talks too. But to be honest, we get lots of those 🙂
Speaking at Oracle Midlands on Tuesday 17th May May 12, 2016
Posted by mwidlake in Meeting notes, Presenting, User Groups.Tags: Meeting, Presenting, user group
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As the title indicates, I’ll be speaking at the UK Oracle Midlands event on Tuesday evening next week. Details can be found here (and that link should mention the next event if you click it in the future).
I’ll be talking about PL/SQL being called from SQL and how you can “extend” SQL by writing your own functions. That is a relatively well known thing to do but the potential impact on performance and the 12C improvements to reduce that impact are less well known. Maybe even more significantly, calling PL/SQL functions from SQL breaks the point-in-time view most of us take for granted with Oracle. More people are blogging and talking about this but it is still not widely appreciated. Is this a potential issue in any of your systems?
Joel Goodman is also presenting, on storage fragmentation. Joel is one of the best presenters on Oracle tech on the circuit and knows his stuff inside out.
I really love the Oracle Midlands user group, I’ve been to a few of the meetings and presented there one-and-a-bit times before. It meets in the evenings and lays on some free refreshements at half time (Samosas when I have been there!). It’s a real, dedicated, ground-roots user group. Annoyingly (for me) most of the meetings for the last year or so have been when I could not get up to the Midlands for them (it’s not a hard or long journey, it was just the timing was always wrong).
Red Stack are good enough to support/sponsor these events and do so with a light touch. You know they are there but it is not a hard sell, so kudos to them. Mike McKay-Dirden is the person behind these meetings and, with this being the 15th such meeting, I must take my hat off to Mike for running such a successful group.
So, if you are able to get to Birmingham (UK! Not USA…) on Tuesday evening, you should do so for an excellent, free learning opportunity. I hope to see some of you there!
What To Do at OOW15 (Social & Serious)? September 30, 2015
Posted by mwidlake in Meeting notes, Presenting, User Groups.Tags: Meeting, Presenting, user group
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I’m going to OOW15 this year, my first Oracle Open World in 11 years I think. And despite the Prom Queen rejecting all my offerings, I will actually be sneaking in a presentation – which I am very happy about.
The European Oracle User Group (EOUG) get a few slots and two are being used on Sunday 25th, 13:30 – 15:15 for “More Than Another 12 on Oracle Database 12c” – 12 European experts all doing six minutes each on a couple of tid-bits on 12C, including Christian Antognini, Bjoern Rost, Brendan Tierney, Julain Dontcheff, Jonathan Lewis… plus Tim Hall and Maria Colgan if we can squeeze them in (thus “more then 12…”). It was a great success last year, so if you are going to OOW15 sign up to the session at this link to avoid disappointment. You can see more details by our organiser, Debra Lilley (thanks Debra), in her blog post about it.
So I know what I am doing for 6 minutes. What do I do for the rest of the time?
A main aim I’ll have is to try and meet up with loads of people I either only know via antisocial media or have not seen in years.
I am sure things have changed in over a decade and, I have to confess, I did not make the most of my last OOW experience. It was all rushed, I was pulled out there very last-minute (as part of being named Oracle Beta Tester of the Year by Oracle Magazine – get me 🙂 ) and they wanted me to be able to do some press stuff (it sounds grand – but there was not a lot of interest in me as I was utterly unknown, but I spent what seems like hours being available in case someone wanted to talk to me). To make it worse, I did not know many people out there who were not actually Oracle employees, and oracle employees found it hard to get into things as priority was given to attendees. I felt pretty alone amongst 45,000 people interested in the same Tech as me. I did not even realise I had to sign up for the top talks and by the time I knew, they were all full. I did stumble into some very good Other Talks by accident though.
So, what should I be doing? What great talks should I be signing up for and which fantastic social events should I be trying to get invited to/slotted into my agenda? I don’t even know if many events are by-invite-only…
After over a decade of doing other conferences (and helping organise a few!), I feel a bit like a conference newbie again…
All help for a lonely out-of-towner gratefully received!
Martin Widlake's Yet Another Oracle Blog 