2024 UKOUG Thoughts

Last week was UKOUG annual conference and it was back to its traditional date, the first Monday in December, Super Sunday was back and it was back in Birmingham.

I know how hard it is to put on a usergroup event and this was a really good event. It felt busy, there were lots of conversations going on and looking at the LinkedIn posts people really enjoyed it.

There did seem to be a lot of streams so attendance in each session was not enormous but I had good attendance for my sessions, so I was happy.

Super Sunday is a very technical day and I went along to learn. I didn't attend too many sessions but did have a chance to catch up with a lot of the speakers I haven't seen for a while. 

Monday the main event kicked off and I had the first time slot for my All You Need To Know About Oracle presentation, which I gave for the first time publicly at UKOUG last year and it got me shortlisted for best session. Again I had a good turnout and whilst I recognised a few faces, there were newcomers to our ecosystem and I hope they learned something.

In the afternoon I was on a panel for long term mentoring, sharing ideas and stories to encourage others to become or ask for a mentor. I was joined by Sarah Dow who is my mentee from the ODTUG WIT mentoring scheme but also a SHINE mentor, Neil Chandler from the MASH Program and his mentee Rishin Mitra, who is actually an almost neighbour of mine in N Ireland! We were excellently facilitated by Grace Honeysett.

Tuesday I spoke on the value of Redwood, and was a little nervous there were several sessions on Redwood, second only in volume to AI! It demonstrated how important Redwood is to organisations using Fusion. I wrote a little more about this on LinkedIn.

I then supported Sue Duncan who did demos on Visual Builder, the technology behind Redwood. My last contribution was to support the HCM Executive Round Table where there was more discussion.

There wasn't a lavish party. but there was the opportunity to network on the Monday evening and the event finished on Tuesday with a motivational speaker Bonita Norris, the girl who climbed Everest. 

Actually it didn't finish there, UKOUG have put a lot of effort into their SHINE mentoring program and there were a couple of sessions and a celebration of their two cohorts. Bonita stayed to be on panel and it was lovely to see so many men stay on.

UKOUG wasn't back at the traditional ICC in Birmingham, numbers and sponsors have to return to much higher levels to make that affordable. This decline had started before Covid, and affects a lot of usergroups.

In keeping with my trip down memory lane I stayed near the ICC and walked through it everyday. Part of me wishes I hadn't, that perfect date has been taken over by the SAP usergroup. They are growing, and why? Well I talked about this in an article a while back, but it is still true, A usergroup needs an engaged community, all year round and not just an annual event. 

UKOUG had a number of executive round tables, turn them into Special Interest Groups and get the people together every few months. 

Thankyou to the Oracle ACE Program and my employer for supporting me to attend.

2024 SAOUG Travelogue

It was a real privilege to be asked to be keynote speaker at the revamped SAOUG, and it was a real whirlwind trip! When they asked and said it was end of October, I checked my calendar and thought, that’s great, then once I had made the commitment, I turned the page and realised I had to be in Dallas for a meeting early on the 1^st November. But I had made the commitment and "Commitment is doing the things you said you'd do, long after the mood you said it in has left you" Bear Grylls. 

The flights to South Africa are overnight both ways so I flew Saturday arriving early morning and Tony Cook from FudgeLearn collected me. As my friends know I am not good as a car passenger (blog on my travel woes) and I am a bit nervous about the reputation of public transport in SA. I saw Tony on the agenda so reached out on the off chance he was on my flight and we could travel together but he has a team in SA and was already there but would have someone to pick me up. When I cane through passport control, there he was. A great welcome, thankyou Tony, and to your colleague who drove us.

 

The event was at Misty Hills outside of Johannesburg, I have been there before with Dina Blaschczok who was the first person to host me in South Africa. The location has an amazing restaurant Carnivore which `I didn’t have time to eat in this visit but highly recommend.

 

The event kicked off with a dinner for those there the night before the conference and it was great to meet people and learn a little bit about what they were using Oracle first.

 

South Africa has something called ‘Load Reduction’ with planned power cuts, but in all my visits what I have learnt is that power cuts come unannounced and hopefully your hotel has a generator. This hotel did but for power cuts after 11pm they don’t use generator until 5am and my biggest 1^st world worry is that my phone goes dead, so it was always plugged in. Obviously locals are used to this, and when the power went off the first time (happened 4 times in the 50 hours I was there), everyone just carries on chatting and wait for that generator to kick in which is about 10 minutes. That included the band at the gala dinner who were cut off half way through a song.

I got to meet lots of amazing people but one that was really exciting was meeting a colleague of my ODTUG mentee. Kim Kannemeyer from Brovanture.

On the final day, I had hoped to stay till the end but British Airways bought my flight forward and along side the city traffic, took the opportunity to have a lift back to the airport with the SAOUG super volunteer Daniel Robus, who was the event MC.

And there it was, just 2 1/2 hours in South Africa for every hour flown. But worth it.

2024 South Africa User Group Conference

SAOUG like most user groups had seen a reduction in members even before covid, and they had struggled to rebuild. I believe that last year their event was poorly attended and so this year they started with a new board and support from Oracle. I know how hard that can be and I want to start by saying congratulations on being brave and how it paid off, the event was excellent, and the content engaging.

Being asked to be a keynote speaker was such a privilege and they asked me to do my roadmapping session. When I was talking to people the night before I found out that although South Africa now has an Oracle datacenter, SaaS is not yet available there, so that may present some challenges, but it hasn’t stopped many organisations implementing SaaS and did warrant discussion. I adapted my normal presentation to talk about on premise technology as well as applications and many people asked me questions relating to what they did during the rest of the conference.

I also used that session as an opportunity to explain the ACE program and tell SAOUG that they only have one ACE, Ahmed Jassat and that is not representative of the expertise they have in South Africa, and I did have a few people ask questions afterwards, so hopefully we can recruit a few more.

 

The Oracle country team also talked about what is happening locally and gave a roundup of OCW using local examples.

I attended other Oracle sessions and must say I was impressed at how they made them relevant to the audience. 

 

The theme of the event was Driving Innovation and Modernization in the Business Landscape. There were only 3 breakouts which ensured a great audience for each session. 

 

My session for the first day was Redwood, What is it, what’s behind it and how we use it in Fusion SaaS. We explored the brand, the concept, the development platform and what that means for SaaS, and then we looked at how Visual Builder is behind that user experience and how it can be leveraged. And yes I mentioned how it is a pre-requisite for the embedded gen Ai.

 

Ai was obviously an important theme and on the 2nd day, they had a keynote speaker , Arthur Goldstruck a local author who talked about Ai from his book ‘The Hitchhikers guide to Ai’. It was a great presentation and I took many notes, and was so humbled when after my plenary panel session which followed, we were each given a copy of his book.

 

I was the facilitator of the panel session, which was 3 customers, Ntellane Motsamai from Lesotho Revenue Services, Miguel Graca from safarmex, a medical company, Mahomed Asif Sultan from Tourvest Travel Services, a leading travel agency and Michele De Kreek a change management expert. The format of Q&A is so much more insightful than a carefully choreographed presentation. I only had one call with them beforehand and we kept it simple, they shared their stories in chunks and kept bringing it back to just how important change is in the success and Michele would add advice and though leadership here. As a facilitator your worry is if it doesn’t flow the panel session could just be a collection of random soundbites, but I had nothing to worry about here, they were excellent.

 

Conferences are not just about the sessions, the real value is the conversations in the corridor and the connections you make. What this panel shared will have resonated with many other delegates.

 

My last session was my 'All You Need to Know About Oracle', It's lighthearted and I have been doing this tongue in cheek session for newbies in the Oracle world in my organizations for years, and had never though of doing it publicly until someone at KSCOPE 2023 told me that was what they needed. Now it is fast becoming the 2^ndmost asked for (after my roadmapping ).

 

I had a very busy room of delegates and I had questions, laughs and ‘ah ha’ moment in the audience. I asked questions and we discussed different areas of Oracle. Each time I do this session I get such a buzz. Sadly I had to leave straight after for my flight but as I left a got a new request:

 

Two early career professionals, in this case graduates asked if they could have a conversation based on the session to explore the different areas of Oracle to help them decide were to specialize. I had never considered that as a use case before and what a privilege to be a tiny part of someone’s future. So I hope to do a virtual call with them soon.

Well done SAOUG for being bold, kickstarting your usergroup and believing in their value and to Oracle and the other sponsors. You exceeded everyone's expectations and pulled off an amazing event. I hope to be back.

The SAOUG travelogue 

Oracle Open Cloud AI World - The Messages

Well, it my time to share my thoughts on OCW which was 10 days ago but I still keep finding scraps of papers with notes and to-do lists!

The announcements on AWS partnering with Oracle, were very well received and the message definitely was from all parties that customers want and demand the option to pick and choose what works for them. Seeing Larry onstage with AWS was I suppose inevitable, despite how unlikely it would have seemed in the past, all the other cloud providers already had agreements.

 

Then it was all about AI, at all levels, how AI in the infrastructure is being used to stop cyber-attacks, which themselves are using AI to be ever devious. How AI is being used to take coding to a new level, DevGen allowing the magic to happen from the database up to the applications, but only because the infrastructure now supports it. The analogy Juan Loaiza used of upgrading from to a supercar but not getting the benefit if you are still on a dirt road was perfect. You have to upgrade the infrastructure too.

 

I loved Safra’s keynoteI continuing the CloudWorld mantra that customers are partners, the Oracle technology need’s a customer use case to shine. Her approach of telling the stories through these customer partners is key. The CIA section made me smile, their speaker, the La'Naia Jones CIO started as a DBA, and remember they were Oracle’s first database customer. I am going to use her as an example the next time a DBA asks me if their job will go, aim high! 

 

As an applications person, Steve Miranda was the highlight for me. The generative AI he promised last year, has been delivered, in fact over a 100 examples when he promised 50! The AI agents he showed promise so much and the speed of innovation in cloud makes me confident. The demo of him needing equipment on a business trip and doing everything from receiving a quote in Japanese on a piece of paper, photographing it, emailing it, the requisition and PO being auto generated and eventually being paid, all through his mobile was brilliant. I loved that he also pointed out that Mastercard virtual payment card was now available, another promise from last year and Inoapps were the first customer to use this as mentioned in the Mastercard Earnings call.

 

I’m mainly an apps person but the technology fascinates me and I need to know how it works, In Inoapps we have been working at using the native AI offered with OCI and Autonomous and it was great to see other use cases and explore the different components that make it all possible. I had loads of questions but had the advantage of visiting a great friend Michelle Malcher after OCW, who works in Database PM and she answered all my questions. 

Success is not just winning

 The UKOUG Annual Awards were held last week and I attended with the unbelievable honour of being shortlisted in 3 community categories, Woman in Technology, Inspiring Individual and Best Speaker.

When the short list came out the one I was most proud of was best speaker. This list is simply the 3 best scores for speakers at the last UKOUG event. My presentation that scored so high was 'All You Need To Know About Oracle', a session I put together many years ago for new colleagues as a whistle stop tour around the Oracle world. I believe it is funny, irreverent and educational. It is always being updated but I had never given it publicly. 

The event was held at the very impressive Oracle Red Bull Racing HQ in Milton Keynes.

Last summer at KSCOPE I was doing the newbie orientation session and one delegate said afterwards he had hoped the session was about Oracle rather than just first time attendees. I told him about my session and offered to do it as a webcast just for him if he would give me feedback, and then I might do it externally. He loved it so I submitted it for UKOUG and they accepted it. The room was packed, many existing Oracle people who wanted to get a broader picture and many new to our world delegates. I was a bit nervous to see Jen Nicholson who keeps all the ACEs in check in the room, but her feedback was great. So to achieve a top 3 score for the entire event was real confirmation that it was a good session. I have since gone on to deliver this at other events and it is on the  agenda for this year's KSCOPE in just a few weeks. With Jen's encouragement I also presented it to an intake of Oracle's graduate program in their Austin HQ earlier this year. 

The other speakers on the shortlist were Connor McDonald and Chris Saxon, both from the Oracle Ask Tom team. I have known Connor for ever and Chris for a long time, and there is no doubt they are top presenters. I knew Connor would win, his presentations are beyond great. To be on the list with him was a real box ticked.

For the Woman in technology category I was shortlisted with Lydia Maksoud and Michelle MacDonagh. I had never met Michelle before but was sat next to her in the awards dinner and want to stay in touch. I have posted before about my love of mentoring, and the payback when a mentee has succeeds in their field. Last year I posted about Lydia Maksoud, one of 4 new ACE Associates I had the privilege of mentoring through the process, giving them the self belief in what they do. So when Lydia won the award it was amazing a young woman at the early part of her career is recognised for her contribution, and like a proud mum I felt a tiny little bit of that was my encouragement.

The final category I was short listed for was Inspiring Individual, I was nominated here by Abi Giles- Haigh, who herself was shortlisted and Philippa Clifford Davies. Both ladies are amazing WIT advocates and leaders in their field, so I was super proud to win the category. I took the opportunity to thank everyone, especially my employer who sees the value of what I do, encourages and support me. 

My manager, Fiona Martin is also a very dear long time friend and I couldn't have been more pleased when she was recognised with joint  Leader award at the end of the evening. 

We aren't always recognised for what we do, but when we are it is a great feeling. Take the time to recognise those around you, encourage them and watch them flourish.

Why Didn't AI work for Me?

 

A great friend and fellow Oracle ACE Director, Opal, has written an amazing series on AI in EPM. 

The first and introductory blog wasn't about EPM, it introduced generative AI, setting the foundation for everyone, by investigating the technology behind a bit of fun we had in the ACE program.

When I read her Linkedin post announcing the blog, I was intrigued, I had the ACE Superhero Avatars and am really disappointed in them, I read the blog and was blown away by how deep she had dug into what, as I said, I simply saw as a bit of fun. So I commented on it.

In précis she explained how the WEDO team inside Oracle, who build cool and exciting things to showcase Oracle technology, had set up this generative AI to take a set of superhero photos and generate new avatars based on photos of the ACEs who uploaded their headshots.

I have worked with the WEDO team before, they are based in Spain and full of young dynamic people bringing technology to life. When working for Accenture, we had one of their visual demos on our stand at an event in London. It looked like a scalextric set but it was run via commands in Oracle standard apps, E Business Suite, Transportation Management etc.

People loved it. So when Opal said they were behind the avatar project I wanted to know more.

My experience of the ACE project was disappointing. I was on the road and I sent pictures already on my phone for them to use, I didn't spend time on creating new ones. The results were terrible, none of them looked like me at all. 

Well except the non superhero or glamorous one! 

As more and more ACEs posted theirs I was so jealous. Theirs all looked really good. So I reached out, and begged for another voucher. The nice people in the ACE program felt sorry for me and let me have a second attempt. I took great care to take selfies in the same pose as the base avatars, believing I was giving myself the best chance. The email with the pictures arrived and I opened the attachments with great anticipation; I was equally disappointed.

As time went on, and I saw more and more posted in various channels I decided perhaps it was just better for men, then Opal and other ladies posted theirs and I felt deflated; theirs were definitely better.

Don't get me wrong, the pictures are excellent quality, they simply don't look like me.

One thing was that those disappointed were not posting their results so actually I was only seeing the best, and as some discussed on our slack channel I decided the problem was age. The closer you were in age to the original picture, the more recognisable the generated picture. I guess some kind of bias in the algorithm based on not many superheroes being old!

A couple of weeks ago was the Oracle CloudWorld Tour in London, and WEDO had a stand. They had a different take on generative AI. They took a photo of you and you described what you wanted the background to be, and the AI would generate the picture. I had to have a go. 

I asked to be underwater in a beautiful reef with a manta ray and an octopus in the background. It then generated this picture. Not bad.

I spoke with the  WEDO team and discussed my theory about the superhero avatars  bias and they agreed. As we discussed it, I realised it wasn't just age, but also hair colour; not many superhero's are grey!!!

My ACE avatars may not be as exciting as they were in my mind, but not quite an hallucination. 

Thank you again Opal, the  WEDO team and the ACE program for opening my mind.

New Look UKOUG

Linkedin is full of posts about Oracle Cloud World Tour London and many of the pictures include people wearing a new badge.

UKOUG Have updated their logo and what they stand for in their DISC mission. 

I love it.

Every organisation should regularly review what they stand for, internal and eternal opportunities and challenges to ensure they are relevant to their existing and potential members. As a Chartered Fellow of the Institute of Directors, this governance has always been important to me; so pleased to see it front and centre of this renewed board.

I am very proud of my time on the board of UKOUG. It has had its own struggles as well as the Covid years that hurt all usergroups, but this renewal looks good.

I hope as a member, content provider and speaker I can continue to be part of UKOUG and that it goes from strength to strength.