OUG Scotland - another Great Day

Last Wednesday I had the  privilege of attending the 9th Annual conference for our Scottish Community. It was held in Oracle's Linlithgow building and I must thank Oracle for allowing us again the use of this, especially as the area we used had not been out of commission for several months and had to be cleaned just for us.

The evening before there was a dinner for speakers and volunteers which I am afraid I missed as I didn't travel till the next day, but it was a lovely idea to say thankyou to all those who helped make it such a great event.

Smiles from the UKOUG Staff

The actual day for me, and for some others of the UKOUG staff was a really early start as we travelled up to Edinburgh on a disgustingly early flight, but even at 6am they were all smiles. A great welcome awaited us with bacon and sausage rolls and breakfast pastries. I have to say the catering was fantatsic all day.

Everyone was looking forward to a great day, with a great agenda when the Fire Alarm want off. So out we all went and luckily, unlike London that day the sun was shining so it wasn't too bad, and for all those of you who say the networking time is the best part about these days well we added more and everyone took up the opportunity.

Even Tom Kyte had to go out for the Fire Alarm

The Team get ready to kick off

Once the excitement of this additional 'session' passed we re-entered the building and calmly the UKOUG and the committee re-cut the plenary sessions so that we could recover as much time as possible. Peter Robson, The Council Member responsible for Scotland started and was followed by Thomas Preslie the Scotland Community Chairman. Caroline Stuart spoke for Scotland and she talked about the Oracle Academy coming to Scotland next month and I have an exciting post about that coming up. And then our keynote speaker, the ever popular Tom Kyte.

My presentation was after the afternoon coffee and I had a presenters' nightmare. I was late for my session a misunderstanding over the revised timetable. One of my audience came out to get me, I was horrified. Luckily I had already set my PC up before the break and I was ready to go, but this was a new presentation for me on the various ways to Tailor Fusion Applications. Luckily the ACE Fusion Advocates program gives us fantastic training and I was I think able to pull it off, and as ever my measure of success is the questions I get and they were good. The worse thing about starting on the back foot was not knowing when the session was due to finish.

The agenda was a full 6 tracks with excellent content. As well as Tom Kyte from the US we had other overseas speakers from France, Finland, Slovenia and Holland. We had great speakers from all over the UK but more importantly we had local speakers and local customer case studies, the committee got the balance just right and I must thank them for this. 

The day finished we a social event and I personally deposited the last 6 delegates back safely in Edinburgh, as I went to my hotel for another early start back to London the next day. However the excitement wasn't over, my hotel was also home for the night to the Olympic Torch entourage. I felt quite special, and certainly safe, there was a big police presence; but I also felt quite sorry for them , they thought they were part of the most important event in Edinburgh that day........................but we know different.