Planning the IOUC Meeting

I said last week how I was getting ready for the IOUC meeting. Well yesterday was the travel, and in an attempt to save money I have flown BHD – LHR – Chicago – SFO, quite direct but over 24 hours door to door, still a good opportunity to catch up on email and finish my slides for RMOUG, edit an Oracle Scene article and clear my to do list (almost).

I was actually typing this above the Rockies on the final, bumpy leg of the journey. I arrived about midnight and was hoping a few friends would still be at the bar so I could have a nice whiskey (Irish spelling) before collapsing into bed.

Today I had meetings all day, first with the FMW team to have the VM images of apps on my ACE FMW kit updated, then a meeting with the new Oracle Marketing executive for Fujitsu, this is an important time for my organisation as we manufacture Sparc and X86 for Sun. Then I met with Applications Marketing to understand their current and planned campaigns.

Tuesday I am meeting with the person behind Fusion Functional Setup Manager, I was privileged to see this before Christmas and have promised a blog entry but need to check out a few things.

I also am meeting a friend from the Fusion GL team, I would like to say it is because of some dark secret, and in a way it is, I have said before most of the brains behind Fusion are British and this is another x-pat who asked me to bring out squeezy marmite.

Then it is lunch with the user experience team and then an afternoon in the labs. The evening is an EOUC dinner, where X user group leaders have managed to make the journey out to HQ

Wed is the big Sun event, being broadcast live from HQ and I am privileged that user group leaders are being rewarded with VIP invites. Then it is straight into the User Group Presidents meetings. The evening kicks of with a reception.

Thursday starts with my committees first meeting at 7.30, then we have a full program of executive briefings and the same on Friday, problem is there are 4 streams and between Ronan, James and I we need to try and cover it all. Another reception Thursday gives us another chance to network with other user group leaders.

Friday I again have a 7.30 committee meeting and a lunchtime one to plan our next project and the main meetings finish about 2.

I will stay on and have a few more meetings , I have tried to fly out the same day before but my brain is just buzzing and the journey is simply too much. I will quietly start all the actions I have taken, write up notes, email people, update this blog and attempt to clear up the ‘day job’ which hopefully I have kept on top off as the week has gone on.

Then Saturday a quick chance to shop, quiet lunch and the long journey home starts. I will be in my house about 6pm Sunday, and hopefully ready to start bright and early Monday morning. Lucky I don’t suffer from jetlag, I am back n the US, Denver in just 2 weeks for RMOUG.