2018 Collaborate - Women and the ACE Program

My final post from Collaborate.

There was a WIT lunch and I really enjoyed it. My fellow #UGR Michelle introduced the speaker Heather Parks who I thought was very nervous. She had a great story to tell as a successful #WIT in Las Vegas and once she started to take questions all the nerves disappeared and she was much better.

She told a couple of jokes, one which I can't put in print! But the one I loved was 

'What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas... in a database to be used to get you to come back and spend more money'

Then there was a #WIT Panel which Michelle facilitated. What I loved was how positive it was, no moaning, just positive stories and advice on how to get on.

The ACE Program had their traditional reception on the Monday evening and it was great to see a new Woman Seems Satapathy in the ranks and a new female ACE Director, well done Michelle Kolbe. However this isn't about targets or quotas and I'm equally pleased to see the men succeed in the program as well.

Mia Urman created an impromptu #WIT breakfast which was quite a feat considering the restaurant wouldn't reserve a large table. In fact they were very unhelpful and Michelle and I almost missed out, but we joined them just in time for the photo.

It was a good conference and great too see so many women taking part.

2018 Collaborate - Feeling Good

I had a great time at Collaborate 18 even if it was in Las Vegas (not my favourite destination).

I had plenty of sessions to deliver and even had time to attend several. The best one was from an old colleague in Fujitsu who did a comparison of EBS and Cloud Finance.

It was great to spend time with old friend, make new friends and room with the other 2 thirds of #UGR.

One of those was who worked with me on a project in Belfast probably 8 or 9 years ago and is now living in the US.

I took the opportunity to get a new profile picture since I have recently stopped colouring my hair and need one that shows the grey. Thank you Quest for the opportunity.

It was also good to see this man back speaking. My great friend Floyd Teter.

I had more fun with the ACE Program and several #WIT events.

See you next year in Texas.

2018 Collaborate - Certus Presentatons

Certus had 5 sessions at Collaborate, with both Quest and OAUG.

My first presentation was on Chatbots with HCM Cloud. This isn't the concept of internal chatbots with HR Helpdesk, but using Oracle Mobile to create a chatbot. Thank you again to Grant and Rohit for all your help.

I had a good crowd for what was the first delegate session after the main keynote. Tim Warner, my boss was my assistant and thanks to the audience gave me a 100% pay rise to keep me after I threatened to resign via the instant app in the chatbot. Great fun.

Then there was something new, Turbo Talks. Here OAUG had small areas in the exhibition hall. They had cardboard seats and using a mobile app could tune into one of 4 simultaneous talks. Mine was on the different ways you can extend Cloud Applications, and the pros and cons of each. There were a couple of technical blips but it was great fun and I would certainly do it again.

The third presentation was Tim's - he talked about the new UX in HCM Cloud Release 13 and the new patching regime. We validate or test the releases in advance for development, and have done 3 upgrades internally. There are a lot of changes, R13 is a real big upgrade but them we move to quarterly updates. It is really difficult to get your head around it and I got back to our first quarterly upgrades and they weren't exactly as expected!!







Then I had one more presentation to give, my VBCS presentation, with my now 'legendary' live demo to create a new app, link it to a HCM API, integrate it into the HCM menu and then top it off with a mobile app. It was so popular I did it twice! This presentation is based on the original article I wrote for Oracle Scene.

My Mobile App

I had a great time presenting and hopefully all the attendees learnt something.

UGR - User Group Royalty

A irreverent look at life after Leadership.

Just a few weeks after my term ended on the UKOUG board I was at Collaborate in Las Vegas with two other past presidents, Michelle Malcher IOUG and Sue Shaw Quest. 

Conferences can be expensive and over the years I have taken to sharing accommodation whenever possible to cut down the costs, and this time the 3 of us shared a room. A lovely room. We got us a suite at a very good price at the Mandalay Bay and it was very nice, thank you.

It was so nice we referred to it as the 'Palace'. It was at the end of a very long corridor which we called the 'Royal Mile' and very soon we had called ourselves 'User Group Royalty'. I loved it, we have each worked very hard for our respective groups and are all still very involved.

We have each had the opportunity to meet many people over the years, been involved with international user group meetings (IOUC) and become very good friends. All three of us were speaking at the conference and Michelle (despite having said she would never write another one), had a new book to promote - DBA Transformations. 

Michelle and I kicked off the week with the Gospel brunch on Sunday at the House of Blues

So we worked hard, but we also had the chance to have fun. All 3 of us are in the ACE program, and joined Jennifer at the ACE reception on the Monday.

Tuesday we were back at the House of Blues to hear the Conference Room Pilots, a vendor band that were really good. And then Wednesday we went to the beach for the conference Party.

Thursday evening, Sue's husband Ian joined us and we went to the Tournament of Kings at the Excalibur and then before leaving on Friday, Michelle and I did the Shark Reef. 

Life is Good. 

Chatbots - A Public Apology at Collaborate

One of the first sessions at Collaborate 2018 is my chatbot presentation. 

Last year at Oracle Open World I blogged about a chatbots session I had seen when visiting Oracle's User Experience labs the week before. 

The blog was about how the idea of a chatbot seemed alien to me as a reason to use Oracle Cloud. I did recognise that this is a common reaction to new technology and that I had been caught out before with voice recognition.

Anyway roll on 6 months and it's a real hot topic, something at Certus we recognise the need to be on top off. We have to keep up with the continuous innovation that Cloud brings. There is no cushion of time, whilst you wait for a customer to upgrade.

I saw lots of chatbot demos, and even did an online chatbot training course through Oracle Alliance & Channels. However the content was hard coded and not coming from a database and certainly not from Oracle SaaS.

I knew I had to learn this and so I had employed my favourite tactic, I submitted a presentation for a conference. And it was accepted! Thank you Quest for giving me the opportunity to publicly apologise for my earlier scepticism.

So if you are at Collaborate - please come along

Session ID: 105380  Reef F 0945 Monday 

Abstract: Do chatbots have a place in your HR department? This session deconstructs the chatbot to explain how it works

Through the ACE program we have fantastic access to Product Management and so I contacted Grant Ronald and asked him for some advice. There was also a delay in getting the cloud instance built and time was running out, but Grant had an answer.

Rohit Dhamija a Principal Product Manager working for Grant, was happy to work with me. I got a chatbot built and he got to learn all about Cloud HCM. 

The demo of the will return details quicker than logging into the system, deliver an FAQ and even allow me to resign online!

So come along and see our presentation and learn how it is actually done, and what is happening behind the exciting demo.

Passing on the Baton, Still Supporting the Team

As you will have seen in today's UKOUG eBulletin my participation on the board has come to an end. The time has come to hand over the baton to Neil Chandler and leave the organisation in the very capable hands of our current board.

It is a little bit sad. I know it right to go but I also feel there were things I had not finished however the board are perfectly capable of taking over.

As I start the hand over I had the chance to reflect on what I have achieved in all my time on the board, both this period and the earlier period which ended with me being chairman and then president:

• I have championed regional events which lead to both Ireland and Scotland. 

• I have worked hard to welcome our 'acquired' communities of PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, Hyperion, Siebel etc into the wider user group world.

• I'm most proud of what I have achieved not just with UKOUG but with user groups worldwide over the input to Fusion Applications.

• In 2008, I was awarded the Oracle Magazine, User Group Evangelist of the Year for that work on Fusion.

• Bringing the User Experience team and their labs to UKOUG

• I've bought Women in Technology and Next Generation initiatives which although we are always looking for better ways to make a difference are at least on the agenda.

• On a personal note, UKOUG gave me, as it has many other members of the Oracle ACE program, an opportunity and stage, to learn my craft as a presenter and the opportunities to share my Oracle knowledge. I will certainly continue to do so.

• I also grew my career through UKOUG, many years ago when first joining the board I undertook Director training from the Institute of Directors, jointly funded by UKOUG (in the main via a grant) and my then employer Fujitsu. Through that and many, many hours of hard work I gained my Charted IT Professional, Chartered Engineer (Software) and Chartered Director. 

But it hasn't all been easy, user groups have many challenges, I have seen Oracle change beyond recognition, both through acquisition and their move to Cloud. The global crash put great pressure on training of all kind and usergroup events struggled with both attendees and exhibitors. Digital disruption has also bought social marketing which now competes with in person marketing. Oracle are a big competitor too, not a month goes by that they don't have an event or meetup. More personal to UKOUG, we have had a succession of interim leaders since James Haslam left and now with James Jeynes having moved on there is again lots to think about. I still believe user groups have a big role to play, our independence from and our ability to influence Oracle are a big benefit to our members and the meeting of like minds to learn from each other should never be underestimated.

Paul Fitton our President has talked about the current Project Reach which looks to address the current challenges and I know that those involved will all work to overcome them with exciting new ways of working. My most recent job at UKOUG was to revise and re-issue our Mission and Values.

I want to thank all those who I have served on the board with, Ronan Miles for his mentorship, Burt Spence for his original encouragement and more recently Fiona Martin. I also want to thank the staff led by Karen McCormack. It hasn't always been easy but we have always delivered.

Most of all I hope I have encouraged others and that I don't need to be on the board to do.
I'm not leaving UKOUG, I am still leading the Applications conference this year, and hope to volunteer in a number of other areas so you haven't heard the last of me.

Women in Technology - Paying it Forward

At the UKOUG conferences in December I had the pleasure of inviting Caroline Apsey to talk about what Oracle are doing supporting the Bloodhound project.

Afterwards I asked Caroline if she would consider an interview with Oracle Scene about being a WIT with such a high profile and she was happy to do so with her colleague and Oracle Intern Lahini Sivaganeshan.

This Oracle Scene was so successful we are going to do a series of interviews and I already have women lined up for the rest of the year! We hope to include two of the students who attended OUG Ireland a few weeks ago.

Then Caroline asked me if I would talk about UKOUG and how we select papers for conferences and how that includes encouraging women. This was at a meetup she arranged in Oracle just before Easter.

Career Developer: CFPs + Presentations + Life Coaching!

Abi Giles-Haigh

Another speaker was Abi Giles-Haigh, a great UKOUG speaker who has won both a highest judging paper and best new speaker with us, as well as being recognised for her work by Oracle.

In fact Abi has an article on her work again in this edition of Oracle Scene.

Helen Cottee

The evening finished with a life coach Helen Cottee talking about confidence and I loved it.

WIT groups should be about this, encouraging each other through our networks and hopefully in just these few examples you can see how one thing leads to another.

2018 OUG Ireland

This year on 22 March we had OUG Ireland. Sometimes it is hard to let go. I have been the project lead for Ireland for many years, but this year Tony Cassidy took the lead. He and his volunteers (of which I was still one), did a great job and we had a wonderful couple of days.

This is the third year it has been at the Gresham and was a case of 'last chance' for the hotel owners. On paper it is ideal: Central, easy to get to, right size, right cost, but the first year there were lots of problems. Last year they promised everything was fixed and although better, still not quite right. But then the hotel was sold the the RUI chain and I have to say I was impressed with the changes.

Again we had a two day format which does work really well here. The day was opened by Tony and then John Donnelly & John Caulfield, from Oracle spoke about the Irish market for Oracle.

After the keynote we had another first at OUG Ireland. Last year each sponsor was given a few minutes in the exhibition hall to say what they did and why they were there. It worked much better than expected and so this year, it was repeated but this time on the main stage. It is the sponsors who make these events possible and they loved the opportunity and delegates could hear the message without being 'sold to' and if they wanted could follow up with the vendors afterwards, and many did. 

I did the kick-off for the Applications stream which I was very proud to be asked to do. I wrote an article in Oracle Scene just before Christmas on 'What Route to Cloud'  which I presented. Looking at all the different scenarios and some of the options. 

We took a detour from the normal, Q&A being at the end of the day, and did it after my kick off. The idea being then all speakers would have an opportunity to know what people were looking for and hopefully answer their questions during the two days. We had hoped that oracle would join Tony and I on the panel, but for logistical reasons that didn't happen but I think we answered most of them. 

During the run up to the event we had a larger than normal number of selected speakers cancel. Part of this was our fault, call for papers was before the date was announced and that meant some had to say no, but others canceled for different and valid reasons right up to the last week. So many of the speakers picked up free seasons and I think did UKOUG proud, although someone not at the event suggested I did too many, which upset me as I didn't ask for them and was helping out. I wasn't the only one, I know of at least 3 others who at the last minute stepped up. Perhaps I am simply just too sensitive.

My extra session on day one was about the different ways you can extend SaaS. This is based on a short session I have been asked to present at Collaborate in a couple of weeks. So a new presentation for me and one that was really well received. I even had an Oracle sales person photograph some of my slides as he said it was the first time someone had compared the pros and cons of the different options. 

I felt the audience wanted to hear about cloud. Like in Apps17 people are keen to understand, and perhaps not all are actively planning, they know it is now relevant to all.

At the end of the first day we had our annual ACE Dinner and again I had been replaced as the organiser, by the local Brendan Tierney and he did a great job. We were back at our favourite restaurant and it was a lovely evening. Tim Hall and I left before the real drinking started, I'm simply too old to party when there is more work to be done.

On the second day I had a 'Back to Basics' session. This was my original Fusion architecture presentation almost 8 years ago and revised on behalf of hroug last year.
Again I think it was well received.

We also had some Irish students who were here as guests of Oracle Academy, thanks again Brendan for arranging. 

Since it was a Friday, I was finished my sessions, apps was over and Dublin is only 3 hours by bus home and no flight. I took the opportunity to leave a little early and started my great adventure home. Bus from outside the hotel and it was trouble and stress free.

I hope I'll be back again next year, as both a volunteer and a speaker. Ireland was my first event I sponsor when I joined the board originally, and it is my home event.