LAOUC 2025 Guatemala

We arrived in Guatemala about midnight their time, which is an hour behind Panama where we came from. So we were really tired and the event started early, so little time for sleep.

Up early the next day for the conference. Not sure why but I had 3 back to back sessions, which kept me busy, then it was lunch and I went back to hotel for some sleep before a wonderful speaker's meal.

The extra session I did here was my All You Need To Know About Oracle, and for again a mainly student audience it is a great session. Oracle want students to think of Oracle as a viable option and remembering a funny story is a great way to instal that thought process.

In one of my sessions there were two APEX developers who work for a bank. It is there first job out of university and they had never really considered why some organisations are so dependant on legacy systems. My roadmapping session, albeit generic for the audience, made sense of the strategy that they have found in their employer.

LAOUC 2025 Tour - Panama

Quick flight from Costa Rica to Panama and onto the third leg. We arrived at lunchtime and went off to find an incredible but a very reasonable restaurant.  

Then I retired to the hotel, where I had an upgrade to a junior suite overlooking the ocean. I have stayed at this hotel before wish we had longer. it was by far the best hotel of the tour.

This really was an in an out stop, I didn't even go out again in the evening as I knew I tomorrow was going to be a long day, a full covariance and then fly to Guatemala for the next leg.

I gave my two presentations and again there was a larger percentage of students, and I will talk about that again in my summary blog. When I gave the EBS Roadmapping session the user group leader said he wished one of their big organisations had been there, a food and beverage company. Two arrived after lunch so I gave them a private run through.

The event was held at the Univeridad del Valle or UVG, and like the one in Mexico, it is an Oracle Academy university. That means they have lecturers like Paulo below are trained in Oracle technology (SQL, Java and APEX) and are given a curriculum and resources to teach. When a student gains certification they get points towards their degree. These students were really keen to learn how these skills are used in the outside world.

The day finished quite abruptly as a thunder storm erupted and the university lost power, but it only affected the last session of the day. 

Big thanks to Edardo and the usergroup team and Thankyou for the gift 

Then it was a panic to get an uber to the airport due to the weather but when he did turn up he was obviously sent by a higher power.

LAOUC 2025 Tour - Costa Rica

The second leg of the Latin America tour was Costa Rica. 

I arrived with most of the other speakers on Saturday late afternoon and we had Sunday free before the event on Monday. We did think about visiting a volcano but the trip is pretty full on and stressful and we just didn’t get around to looking at it early enough, so we downloaded an audio app of places of interest and just went walking, listening to the app like a guide. The city of San Jose is quite compact but full of green areas and parks with lots of museums and spectacular monuments. It was a really enjoyable morning. 

We went to an Argentinian restaurant for lunch and it was amazing.

The event on Monday started quite early although it was a much less stressful Uber ride to the university and then after a kickoff at 8:45 am, the sessions followed. I again did my roadmapping talk to a room mainly students and again adapted it for them. After lunch which was provided by Pythian sponsorship, I gave my talk on AI comparing it with between EBS and Fusion applications. There wasn’t really a large audience but what I did have was a great conversation with fellow speakers about what is required to make applications work with AI on premise.

At 6 pm when the sessions were over, all the speakers Again became a panel for the audience to ask AI questions. 

This session was deliberately aimed at the students and over 65 stayed right to the end at gone 7pm. We had the obvious questions. 'Will AI take the jobs?' etc but we also had a few thought provoking questions like 'did we think AI would stifle music?',' Did we think that our thirst for AI would use up what precious resources we have left'. 

After this there was a speakers reception so a very long day but so worthwhile thank you Eddie Molina for having us back and for me my fifth visit to Costa Rica.

LAOUC 2025 Tour - First Stop Mexico

I wrote about my excitement of joining the Latin America Oracle User Community tour this year not having been part of it since before Covid.

The tour started in Mexico City. I arrived early the evening before having taken the opportunity to go diving in the north of Mexico prior to the event, so not too long ago flight from Cabo San Lucas. A number of speakers were staying in the same hotel and we all met at breakfast before boarding Ubers to the university where the event was being held. Mexico City has a population of about 22 million and I think all of them were out in cars at that time. Eventually #3 at the university and guess what - we were not at the right one, so another quick Uber to navigate a sprawling university and we were there.

I was on in the first session time slot and set up included finding a rather old projector with a VGA connector and whilst we had HDMI adaptors it was a little temperamental. My first presentation was my roadmapping session and I had made an effort to translate the content into Spanish. Unfortunately the projector wasn’t helping people to be able to read it! After my session the AV people did manage to improve the presentations so the rest of the day was better.

I’m always worried at events where English isn’t the attendees first language, what effect this has on the audience and when an event is held in the university, what the mix of actual users and students will be. I shouldn’t have worried, it was mainly students in this first session about 3/4 of the room and those that were Oracle users were in the main consultants so I actually talked about why organisations have on premise applications still in use and not just the shiny new applications or technologies that the students are learning about at the moment and we had a very good conversation.

One audience member said that Costa Rica you can do an internship in Cobal and if successful and get a job, you’ll earn four times the national wage in your first job. I think this was a great discussion and a lesson for the students that many of the organisations they may work for will have some older but mission critical systems. My roadmapping is relevant to them all, what factors should they be looking at.

Just before an amazing lunch there was an Ace Director panel where we discussed our experiences with AI. It was very well done with questions being asked across the panel. We’re five of the 78 directors were Spanish speaking and then when the English speaking myself and Kai Yu, the user group leader Ronaldo Carrasco translated although most of the audience didn’t need it.

My second presentation was comparing AI in E Business Suite and Fusion applications and I spent some time beforehand thinking about how I could make that more generic if my audience was again student centric as it had been in the morning. However I had a smaller audience but most were EBS users and we had a great discussion as I gave this presentation. 

After the event which was such a success for ORAMEX the Mexican user group. It was time to go back to our hotels and a large group of speakers went out to a local taco bar for dinner.

Next up is Costa Rica. Many are travelling today although some are spending an extra day in Mexico City to see some of the sights.

(Thanks to Gilson Martins for many of the photos).

LAOUC 2025 Tour - Excited to be back

 

One of the first Oracle ACE tours I took part in was Latin America in 2011, and I fell in love with the hospitality. As a nation they thirst for knowledge and they welcomed the ACE speakers who came to talk to them.

I quickly realised that they had their own amazing speakers and user group leaders and over time the ACE program encouraged then to join the program. Many are still my friends today.

I was privileged to take part 5 times.

2011 https://debrasoracle.blogspot.com/2011/07/highlights-and-thoughts-from-otn-latin.html

2012 https://debrasoracle.blogspot.com/2012/07/latin-america-north-otn-tour.html

2014 https://debrasoracle.blogspot.com/2014/08/laotntour-2014-latin-america-north-tour.html

2015 https://debrasoracle.blogspot.com/2015/08/2015-laotn.html

2016 https://debrasoracle.blogspot.com/2016/08/otn-latin-america-tour-2016.html

The ACE program is split into regions and I am EMEA so it is even more special to be supported by them in Latin America and I thank them for sending me again, 9 years since my last visit. I look forward to meeting up with those I have met before through to new Oracle users attending their first conferences.

I am speaking at the first 4 legs of this year's LAOUC Community Tour , Mexico, Costa Rica, Panama and Guatemala.

At all four events I will be giving my Roadmapping talk for on premise customers and then Comparing AI  in EBS to Fusion Applications and why I think AI may be the tipping point for on premise.

In a couple of events I will also be giving my All You Need to Know About Oracle for those new to our world.

I can't thank the ACE program enough for supporting me and for the individual uaergroups for inviting an Apps non Spanish speaking individual to their events.

Looking Back at the US Conference Season

The  conference season in the US is over and I am getting around to the blog. If nothing else this gives me a list of where I have spoken to look back on.

I try to be involved in 3 US user events, ASCEND, BLUEPRINT 4D and KSCOPE. This year the events all happened in a 2 week period and that made it impossible, and I had to miss Blueprint, but I hope I will be forgiven and that I can be part of 2026.

ASCEND for me is mainly about the E Business Suite, and I spoke 4 times, twice in their pre conference webinar series and then twice on site. 

First up was a conversation with Mia Urman from Auraplayer on Modernizing EBS, I always love speaking with Mia, her passion for EBS and getting the most out of it is infectious and no surprise she was announced as member of the year for OATUG. We have also just heard that we will speak again on this subject at Oracle Cloud World.

Then I did part one of AI in EBS and comparing it to Fusion. This was based on an earlier webinar that was so well received we split it into two. Part two was one site in Orlando. I also wrote about the topic here.

Finally I spoke with Mohan Dutt and Soumit Roy on Juicy Opportunities with Gen AI: Squeezing the Full Potential of Oracle E-Business Suite. Definitely a popular topic.

Important for me was understanding what people are doing with EBS, so as well as attending some sessions and meeting with both our customer's I asked lots of users what they are doing, and this will shape some of our upcoming webinars and services.

I also wrote a blog about how I interpreted the messages and what I learnt.

ASCEND also covers Fusion but with a smaller audience, as expected there was a lot here about AI as well. From Oracle the main message was about the soon to be released AI Agent Studio. I attended pre training a few weeks ago and the possibilities are endless. I came away with 2 immediate use cases. I always say you should be looking at challenges it can help resolve rather than just the new technology. At Ascend I spent time with Nancy Estell Zoder, giving feedback and explaining these use cases. Part of the ACE Director role is feedback to development and this was an excellent opportunity.

I love the chance to catch up with old friends and make new friends and  the loviest thing happened this year. Floyd Teter is an amazing advocate for Oracle applications and I knew was not going to be at ASCEND but after one of my sessions a delegate came up to me and introduced himself as Floyd's son. He is just starting his EBS career. 

Then it was a quick flight to Dallas to KSCOPE and I cover that here in another blog. I am on the board of ODTUG and so KSCOPE is my personal priority, and where I learn about the technology underpinning and enhancing the applications.

However between the two, at early o'clock on the Saturday morning, I took and passed the Fusion AI Agent Studio exam, which went live on the day before. User organisations need to know their partners are trained and certified in these new technologies.

My attendance at ASCEND was sponsored by Oracle through the ACE program and I have another post about that too.

Dates for next year:

Blueprint 4 D - May 4 - 7 Dallas

Ascend - June 8 - 11 Orlando

KSCOPE - June 14 - 18 Denver

KSCOPE 25 - Now I have finally recovered!

 

I love KSCOPE, but you would expect me to say that, I am a current board director for ODTUG, looking for re-election.

But I do love it, I am an applications person, but its success is the technology it is based on and how we can use technology to extend them. KSCOPE is where I come to learn about that. I attended my first KSCOPE in 2007 and have only missed one since.

This year KSCOPE was in Dallas, and although it started on the Sunday, the board arrived the Thursday before, for a full day of meetings on the Friday. 

The meeting started with a quick update on the conference but the rest was about ODTUG, we published a strategy earlier in the year and we each have areas to deliver on. Kurt Mayer and I are responsible for communities, and one area we have worked on is the OCI Community that was announced at conference. This is especially important to me as this is where we extend the Apps. Where we use APEX there is a vibrant community, but Visual Builder, Integration and other OCI services do not have a clear home. We have had content but they have been streams and more recently tags in the Database Track. So we pitched for and had approved by the board an OCI Community. I hope this will not only deliver for OCI but give more focus and clarity to the Database Community. We asked Basheer Khan if he would be interested in leading the community and he stepped up, and in the run up to the launch, organised a series of webcasts.

Monty Latiolas was the KEO for KSCOPE 24 & 25 but has handed the batten over to Sara Beth Good for KSCOPE26 and planning has started for that already.

After a very full day, Saturday started with a session to determine what we need in our mobile app, creating a purchasing document when the team is so technical means we often run down solutioning rabbit holes but as ever Jackie McIlroy our President kept us in order. However I did get up even earlier to take an Oracle AI Studio Exam! There was a welcome reception for volunteers in the afternoon.

Sunday is our Symposiums, where Oracle Product Managers who support KSCOPE in force. Many delegates come in early especially for these, I floated between a few and welcomed people to the event.

Then we had welcomes for speakers and newcomers in the exhibition hall before the first networking session. Conferences would be unaffordable for delegates if we didn't have sponsors and exhibitors. This year the exhibition was fun and lively and in no small way thanks to Elizabeth Ferrell who unfortunately had to miss the conference due to a virus. 

The theme of a state fair worked well with lots of fairground attractions, and money was raised for a local charity Cook Childrens including a very generous contribution from our top sponsor AppliedOLAP . One of those stalls was a dunk the board tank. I volunteered ahead of time, but when I saw it I almost pulled out, but my favourite quote is "Commitment is doing the thing you said you would do, long after the mood in which you said it has gone" - so I had a sneaky go when no one was looking to make sure I could actually get back out again. 

Some people enjoyed this just a little bit too much - you know who you are! Thank you Connor McDonald for the video.

Monday started early with rehearsal for the general session, and then I facilitated a panel session on Visual Builder v APEX. This is my bailiwick, and the discussion was really interesting. Both products are strategic to Oracle and the APEX team shared how they are working even closer with the SaaS development teams.

At lunch time it was the Women In IT event and I was a table facilitator, There was a good sprinkling of men in the room which I love and my table had a great discussion on how they saw themselves in the work place.

The general session was excellent and started with an opening video the board were very proud off. We recorded our parts individually (mine from a hotel room when travelling) and the team at YCC our management company did the magic with a sprinkling of AI and came up with the final clip. I loved it.

There was information, a thank you to Monty, a lifetime achievement award for Edward Roske who has finished his time on the board and stepping away a bit from the Oracle world (but I don't believe that). Videos for both of these are on our youtube channel.

I made the announcement of the OCI Community here with Basheer. So pleased we have delivered. We made the plea for more volunteers and if you are interested sign up here.

Each year there are two awards, one for volunteer which for the first time was a repeat recipient, Karen Cannell. In the last year amongst many things she has done for ODTUG she took over from me as lead for the Innovation Incubator Committee (new ideas), and was the leading light for both the ACE Alliance launched just before conference but in full swing in the ACE lounge, and the APEX Boot camp initiatives. Her partner in crime on the boot camps, Product Manager Jayson Hanes was awarded the Oracle Volunteer Award. Both so well deserved.

Then there was a magician, or rather Keelan Leyser is a World-leading Tech Magician, Mentalist, Digital Illusionist and Optical Illusion Expert. I was a bit sceptical as I don't like magic as I need to know how things work, but I actually really enjoyed his show. 

Back to sessions and then the evening there was more networking (and dunking for me), the ACE Dinner (more about ACE activities here) and then community events such as Open Mike and the very popular Silent Disco. Obviously there was also the traditional Werewolf games played into each night.

Tuesday and Wednesday plenty of education content starting very early, I don't get the opportunity to attend as much as I would like as the board try and meet with each Product Management group whilst they are on site and look at what they can improve and work on together over the next year. This is so important as these relationships are key to our success. I truly believe that improving what we do between the conferences in the communities will make the annual KSCOPE even better.

The special event Wednesday evening is something everyone looks forward to. This year the theme was Stars over Texas and there were many interpretations from celestial goddesses to 4th of July. I went for the later. Love this picture from the official photographer of myself with Wayne Van Sluys.

My board task for the evening was to get everyone who wanted to go back to the resort on the buses. Easier said then done when everyone had had such a great time. The venue was inspired, food and drink flowed and the drone show was magic. 

Thursday morning, had yet more sessions but more community focused and then we had a final session where top presenters were acknowledged. A tradition from KSCOPEs before that had been missing for a while. Back by popular demand. Monty, you and your team delivered a great event.

Now, if I can just get elected again for next year......

If you want to know more about KSCOPE this is the video for you.