Don't give up on UKOUG

Twitter is currently full of comments about UKOUG and it is very difficult to explain what I think in 140 characters so I'm writing this blog to try and explain.

I've worked with UKOUG on either its board or the council for the last 12 years and I'm passionate about what UKOUG stands for; ‘Serving the Oracle Community’. The Community is anybody touched by Oracle, and we reach much of that community, and UKOUG's new President David Warburton-Broadhurst is simply aiming to widen that reach.

To me UKOUG need to do 5 things:

1.   Reach our target community
2.   Represent our community
3.   Deliver to our community
4.   Influence Oracle
5.   Manage a successful business

When I joined the user group in 2001, The Community was very simply defined; UKOUG were able to bring in more income than UKOUG required running the events UKOUG delivered.

Then things started to change, the community grew, the Oracle acquisition strategy meant that the community contained a lot of different Interest groups, a lot more people who want content from UKOUG and then came the economic downturn.

I believe David can not only help us with Reach but also with Influence and give us his expertise in managing a business.

 

Our Target Community

One of the areas that UKOUG have always wanted but never really been able to reach was that the top executives in our user organisations. A few years back UKOUG introduced our Business & Strategy sessions at the main conference and although this has given us more senior manager content it hasn't elevated as much as UKOUG would like. If you look at other user groups around the world they all have executive tracks.

Many years ago Ronan and I went to CIO connect and talked about UKOUG and all of the people that were in the room said that their organisations were members who sent their staff they didn't think there was any content for them and that's what David is saying; his company is a member of UKOUG, he pays for his IT people to attend UKOUG events. He must thinks there is great value for them as he continues to renew that membership.

But UKOUG had bigger problems, reaching higher within our existing membership is one thing, but UKOUG do not have all Oracle users, and as people tightened their belts, some of our existing members had dropped off.

 

Represent our Community

Unlike most other user groups UKOUG employ our own staff; UKOUG do not use a 3^rd party. This makes us the envy of many but it also means UKOUG have a business to run, which I will come back to later, but just to say that as the business became more complicated the old board was spending more time on that and not enough representing the community. That was why UKOUG reduced the size of the board, created the Executive to work with the office and the Council to work with the Community.

You vote for the Council and I hope UKOUG are working with you closer.  
 

 

Deliver to our community

 

I hope the Council is working with the various communities to ensure UKOUG are delivering what you want.  UKOUG have a number of task groups to help deliver this and UKOUG have also reached out to other volunteers to be part of these.  This is the most important area and UKOUG will always find room for improvement and why it is so important to get your feedback and for volunteers to get involved.

UKOUG have outgrown Birmingham something else that really annoys me. In the UK we have such a lack of places that provide what UKOUG need, a place that can have a large plenary session, a large number of breakouts and a big enough exhibition area and UKOUG cannot continue in Birmingham. UKOUG have split the conference so that we can grow our reach, and can grow across all of the things that are part of what Oracle offers. I'm really sad that UKOUG are no longer having a single conference but that there is no way around it. I am so jealous of the user groups in the States and in other countries where their conference centres are plentiful, large and in many cases they are discounted by the local authority or by the local hospitality industry, that doesn't happen in the UK, we have to pay top dollar.

Our conferences will be fun, I am leading the group putting together the Applications conference and Fiona is pulling together the Technology conference; they are looking good but please, please don't walk away from UKOUG, give it a chance. 

 

Influence Oracle

 

UKOUG need to be able to influence Oracle, this is one of the most important reasons for being independent, to help shape the way that their products are going in the future.

From a feature point of view in the technology UKOUG are doing okay and can show this is a good examples in Technology, either through relationships between Special Interest Groups and Oracle Product Management, and UKOUG have many speakers who we count amongst our volunteers who participate in beta testing of technology.

At an applications level UKOUG had great traction in the early days of Fusion Applications but we need more in the wider applications communities. Working with Oracle at a global level UKOUG recently encouraged members to get involved in the Customer Advisory Panel.

Oracle wants to know what organisations need in their products, what will get them to increase their investment. They have Strategy Advisory Boards and CIO events, but UKOUG need to be part of this, to get the executive participation from Oracle and to get sponsorship and participation from the partners that work in this area. I’ve already said the big user groups who cover Applications have successful Executive programs and they do have more of an input into applications. 

 

Manage a successful business

 

I have left this to last but a hard reality is that UKOUG have to balance the books. Like it or not but UKOUG has to run a businesses and it has become more and more complicated because our revenue streams are not matching what it is that UKOUG want to deliver to our members and therefore UKOUG have to do some really strategic work to turn that around.

Our income comes from membership and sales of sponsorship and exhibition. Membership was dropping but over the last year UKOUG have reversed that trend but we need more organisations involved.

Sales have been hit badly, the economic pressures on organisations has hit their budgets which now need to cover many more streams of marketing, such as social media etc. The number of partners has also reduced, mainly through acquisition. In order to retain their marketing budget they have to show a return on their investment at the time, and the hard truth is that if they feel if they're not reaching the people who have got the money in an organisation and then not able to directly attribute any opportunities.

I have seen on Twitter that people have said it's the technical people influence and they are  absolutely that's right,  I seriously believe we wouldn't be buying Engineered Systems if we weren't listening to the Tanel, Doug and Alex’s of this world. However that does not give you a lead on the day of exhibiting, and that is what is being measured.

UKOUG through good management in the past has healthy reserves but we haven't managed to bring in enough revenue for the last three years and cannot continue to do that and so we need to make the hard decisions in our business just like your organisations have had to do and I hope David will help us with that.

So is David the right person for the job? I hope so, I really hope so and he looks to have the skills that UKOUG need to the business acumen to help our organisation grow and return to profitability; he also has the links in order to get us to step up and reach out to his peers and bring in the right additional content so UKOUG can influence Oracle at that top level.  His first interview with the press was not a great start but the emphasis is completely and utterly wrong, I think the second one is a lot better. But give him a chance, in this world we see the same news story reported as many different ways as there are articles, don’t write him off after just two.

UKOUG don't always get these things right first time, we did make major changes two years ago for the right reasons and they've done some very positive things, UKOUG need to continue to change, we need to be agile and do what is necessary to bring UKOUG not only is be a successful content giver, influence effectively but also be successful financially.

UKOUG needs our members to standby us, to support us and to help us; if you think of something else we need to do or if you think we're doing something wrong then please come and tell us. Twitter is a great way to give instant feedback but a quick way to bring us down and I really don't think UKOUG deserve that today. Please give UKOUG and David a chance.

Finally I also take this opportunity to ask for your help and support for the conferences this year. If I didn’t think it would work I would have left UKOUG. Yes, I have not left UKOUG I am still an elected and active member of the council.

Just to reiterate, this is Debra Lilley’s thoughts.  I'm so passionate about UKOUG I don't want it to die, we will get there and we will have most wonderful conferences and I look forward to meeting you there.

Thankyou Roel for Making me Think about the value of ODTUG

I really enjoyed reading Roel Hartman’s blog on how ODTUG / KSCOPE can change your life, and saw a number of similarities. I first spoke (deliberately) to a technical audience at KSCOPE in New Orleans the same year as Roel, and although I was a confident speaker they gave me the new opportunity to talk to developers about the business benefits of what they are doing.

Like Roel I am an ACE Director which came about from me linking the technical and functional sides of Fusion Middleware. ODTUG are the best forum for this (outside of my own user group UKOUG obviously), because they have dedicated FMW tracks supported by Oracle Product management, and the excellent Sunday Symposiums.

This year I am submitted a paper on when and how you would extend Fusion Applications and really look forward to having the discussion this presentation has. We have over the years said that applications should not be customized and yet Fusion Applications are written in such a way, using metadata to deliver what the user sees that we can extend them.

I am also helping Susan Duncan with a presentation on ADF Mobile development, showing has this has been used in Fusion applications which are the ultimate shop window for FMW.

I recently visited Australia with my job at Fujitsu and the timing corresponded with the ODTUG Seriously Practical BI & EPM event and I was honored to be asked to speak there. I talked about how BI & EPM are usedin Fusion Apps. ODTUG members are using the technology that underpins these applications and knowing how they are used makes these members a valuable commodity. I was even more honored when I was asked to add this to my Kscope sessions.

So attending KSCOPE can change your life but it defiantly changes other peoples’ lives through community service days. I have painted schools, cleared weeds and cleaned classrooms as part of these events and boy does it set you up for a week of learning at the conference. I am really looking forward to being part of this year’s endeavors.  When you leave a conference you take away great memories but the community days ensures  you to leave something behind of value.

OUG Ireland - March 2013

I really must get better at adding these blogs on time! almost 6 weeks late on this.

First UKOUG had a very prompt comment out on the event which I think summed up the day very well. And all their photos are  available on the UKOUG facebook page

For me it was about themes, there were two very distinct themes in the agenda , mobile and analytics that were across all streams. Again showing how important it is to look at the big picture, and one of the reasons we are moving to a flagship Applications conference in October. At the start of the event I  suggested that people should look across streams and attend a session they may not have originally chosen. For instance , the BI Apps in the EBS stream was just as relevant for the BI community, and the same went for the JDE community which I was really pleased to see for the first time at OUG Ireland.

Mark Rittman and Brendan Tiernay were amongst those speaking on analytics along with local presenters and Nadia Bendjedou talked about how Endeca is being integrated with EBS.

I talked about Fusion (surprise), first my what does it mean to you, and enjoyed listening to an update from Standard Life about their Fusion implementation. I also spoke about FUSE as an example in Ultan O'Brien's mobile ADF UX session. Mobile also appeared in both keynotes and in an APEX session from Roel Hartman. Roel also presented on APEX fundamentals with Alex Nuijten

The latest edition of Oracle Scene came out on the same day with a special Ireland edition  and I had an article about NI Water and their achievements.

My company were also in attendance and I am very proud that Fujitsu support UKOUG.

The evening before the event we had an ACE Dinner and had the opportunity to welcome Brendan Tiernay as the first ACE Director in Ireland (I live in N Ireland, different place). It was also really nice when this was mentioned in the keynote the next day. There was a great showing of ACEs and it was fantastic to get together, thank you OTN.

I have blogged before about Wee Oscar whose mummy is an Oracle Developer, and Oracle Dublin led by Paul Diamond were gearing up for a charity cycle ride to Belfast where Wee Oscar lives to raise money. They were in the exhibition hall and raised over €1,000 on the day and over €12,000 in total.

Voting for UKOUG Councillors

In the run up to the UKOUG elections I have been asked by many people who should they vote for?

I am still a council member having been re-elected last March and part of the question being asked is ‘what does the council need?’

 

There is a lot of information on the website about what you should think about when voting but here are some of the questions I am asking myself before placing my vote:

The council needs a balance, not just of communities, but also skills and experience.

For instance we need management / executive skills.  Not only does half the board which runs the business side of UKOUG come from those elected, the council also works on initiatives that need to be driven within UKOUG and with Oracle.

We need a balance of partners / independent contractors and end users.

Don’t discount partners, they often have the time and the skills to make a difference, but make sure they and every candidate has a track record. Are they already part of the community? I personally had not been active in a community before I was elected to the old board, so it isn’t a non starter but we are electing someone for 3 years and we need to know they will be active, and have the right reasons for doing so. In my original election I am sure I simply got the woman’s vote and there was such a shortage of nominations.

Independent Contractors are also very important and I think we need to look at how we support them as a community. The user group has a lot of support here in their volunteers, especially in the speaker base, but again look at their motivation and track record.

End Users are what we all want, but they need to be engaged, and have the time necessary.

We also need a balance of experienced and new council members because we need new ideas but also an understanding of what does and what doesn’t work.

To work, the council needs to represent all communities, but once on the council those elected represent all communities and must act in the best interests of UKOUG and not a single area. If all your votes go to one community they may be over represented. Only one council member can be the Responsible Councillor for a specific community and those elected may find themselves being asked to be responsible for a community they are not active in.

Finally as councillors it is not just about who we represent, we are there to determine the strategy for our services to members. It is hard work, and those elected are expected to take part in working groups and give up one day a month.

So please read through all the manifestos, don’t just vote for someone you know, but look at their track record, will they serve your user group well. But please do use your vote.

Roundup (Finally) of UKOUG

Exactly a month after UKOUG2012 finished I have finally got around to blogging about it.

Before hand I talked about what we were hoping to bring to the conference and it delivered. Everyone had a great time, learnt a lot, met up with old friends and made new ones; all in the name of getting more out of our Oracle Investment.


Sunday was excellent, The OakTable Sunday returned along with a FMW afternoon and both were full. Unfortunately I was unable to attend either as we had a Council Meeting for most of the day.

The main conference kicked off on Monday with Lisa Dobson as Vice President giving a fantastic presentation on Where UKOUG has been and where it is going. I was very touched by the thank you she gave me for my time as President and Fujitsu for their support.


The Oracle Keynote was Dermot O'Kelly and then the ever funny Andrew Sutherland. Both giving us what we need to know about Oracle but with a local bias.

I led the task force for UKOUG2012 and the whole group simply wanted to deliver the best conference we could. One of the changes made to previous years was to have all the Community Keynotes run at the same time, to ensure each community had a full contingent and clarity of what their stream had to offer, by putting the keynote first. It meant we had slightly fewer sessions available but I think it worked, The Executives appreciated it and I heard good things from the delegates which is the main measure.

Monday evening Martin Corry bought the house down with his witty commentary on his Rugby Life, I loved the fact he said "I'll take questions, but remember I work for Oracle now, so the answer is probably Exadata".

I can't post about everything but things I want to comment on at UKOUG2012 are:

• EBS 
• Fusion Apps
• OTN
• Fujitsu

Most of the photos are from the UKOUG collection which you can find on Facebook, and thank you to Liesbeth for permission to share them.

OTN, IPA & ACE at UKOUG

OTN or the Oracle Technology Network, are great supporters of user groups. The ACE program encourages people to share their knowledge and user groups are an ideal platform for this.

Over the past few years OTN have sponsored our IPA Inspiring Presenter Awards and I am glad to say they did again this year.

Oracle Speakers:
    Tech      Grant Ronald
    Apps     Nadia Bendjedou

UK Speakers:
    Tech       Jonathan Lewis
    Apps      Graham Oliver

1st Time Presenters:
    Apps      Duncan Casemore
    Tech       Peter Raganitsch

Overseas Speakers:
    Apps       Andy Donovan
    Tech        Connor McDonald

2012 Judging Scores 
    Overseas Christian Antognini
    Tech        Alex De Vergori
    Apps       Jo Bates

Last Year another great supporter of user groups, Mark Townsend died unexpectedly, not long after being a community keynote speaker at UKOUG, and we asked OTN that these awards were given in his memory for 2012. A great friend of Mark and UKOUG, Graham Wood presented the awards.

Another OTN tradition is the ACE dinner on the Sunday night and again they came up trumps. Great to see old and new friends coming together to support this great program. Thank you Viki and Lillian.

Fusion and UKOUG

This year at UKOUG we split the Fusion Apps content into 'what and why' and 'how'. People are using Fusion now and it is time to talk about their experiences.

Liam Nolan gave the Fusion Community keynote, which unlike all the other communities was held on Tuesday as we knew so many people would be interested. It was a great recap of where Fusion is and covered much of what I what I learnt at OOW.

After his presentation, Liam and I hosted a round table where almost the whole audience remained. Interestingly there is two distinct groups, customers who need to know what Fusion offers them and Partners who need to understand the market opportunities for them. We are looking in UKOUG at what to do with the Fusion Community in 2013 and will be talking to the Partner Forum as to how we can make this happen. We need to ensure we give both communities what they need without smothering the end user.

The best presentation for me was from Standard Life. They haven't finished their journey but have a great approach to it, starting with this brilliant video as to why? What interested me most was that Standard Life like many organisations taking up Fusion Apps are not only doing it in co-existence but also using a SAAS delivery model. This has different considerations for both the customer and their partner (Standard Life partner with IBM); I know in Fujitsu I am working hard with Oracle on what this means for us. Topic for another post I think.

My presentation was based on the article I wrote for Quest and what I think Fusion Applications means to Organisations.

What would Fusion content be without the UX team? We are so luckly with their support at UKOUG. Jeremy Ashley brings his team each year. His presentation was about Fusion Mobility and like at OOW I got to be his demo babe.

There was also a couple of videos made of Jeremy where I interviewed him about Fusion Mobile and UX but he is a pro, turned the conversation around and got me to talk about Fusion. Can't wait to see the edited copy.

If you have anything you want us to look at for the Fusion Applications community this year, contact me through UKOUG.