A Busy, Busy Week

Please don't read this post, if you fancy volunteering for UKOUG. It may put you off.

UKOUG has as its lifeblood its volunteers. How much we ask from our volunteers is 'how much do you have to give?'. This post is about just one week in my life as UKOUG.

Monday 23rd March - getting ready for a busy week. Met Lisa Dobson fellow UKOUG director and we talked about new awards we are looking at for TEBS. Very exciting, I will keep you updated.

Tuesday 24th March - board meeting, I hosted this at Fujitsu's head office in Baker Street London. I felt really proud.

Very busy agenda and first item, welcome new directors David Kurtz and Graham Spicer.

After the meeting, myself and Suzanne our Marketing Manager travelled to Heathrow to catch a flight to Dublin for the first of our Conference Series 2010, Ireland. It was a great day and some really good speakers. I was very pleased we were able to have fellow director Julian Dyke and Arnaud Benjacar from Irish Life who talked about the project that one him and his colleagues the Oracle Magazine, Oracle Fusion Middleware Architects of the Year Award for 2009. My great friend Nadia Bendjedou from Oracle came and spoke on R12 EBS and Tony Cassidy our Irish BI SIG leader gave an excellent presentation on BI Competency Centres.

The day started with a keynote from the Oracle Country Manager Paul O'Riordan who did an excellent job of explaining what the SUN acquisition meant to Oracle.

One thing I would love at the conference events in Birmingham is enough space to sit down for food. Here in Dublin we had what I would say was the best conference food I have even had.

Even before the conference finshed, Nadia and I rushed to the airport and caught a flight to Frankfurt and a quick taxi to Mainz for the DOAG or German Oracle User Group Applications' Conference. I was able to present on what Fusion Applications means to users and we had a great discussion about what UKOUG has done to be part of this process and answer a lot of questions they had.

The weather was beautiful and I would have loved to stay a few days more, I used to work in Germany in Berlin and the temptation was really there, but I had to rush back to London for my day job on the Friday. Friday afternoon there was also a working party meeting for the 'Interaction with Oracle' goup from the UKOUG Partner Forum. This was a planning meeting for the next Partner Forum itself and we spent a lot of time looking at how the Alliances Channel works in the UK. If you understand how something works, you can engage so much more successfully.

Friday evening and time for the flight home, 5 flights in 5 days. Then I spent a few hours on Saturday working through the submitted questions for Steve Miranda who is responsible for Fusion Applications Development.

Not a typical week for flying or UKOUG work but I do have something to do every day