Just How Lucky Can One Girl Get? I Love My Job

I've just finished my latest ACE Tour, and I often get asked  "How you do it? How do you manage to work, do UKOUG and ACE director duties?"

It's my job, well my job allows me to do this and #ILoveMyJob

I have a really exciting job title - VP Certus Cloud Solutions but as I said in my six month appraisal of the job it was really about enablement. You see Certus is a team, a team of people who all believe in what we can achieve with Oracle Cloud, and my job is to help the team fulfil their potential to do this.

My ability comes from my experience with Oracle Applications, what I have learnt from others, and the network of people I am honoured to be part of. All of that comes from being an Oracle ACE, a user group leader as well as the occasional practitioner. When I talked to Certus about joining them, this is what they wanted and they understood the commitment that meant.

I recently talked in a recent blog about the ACE program self assessment and how that sometimes leads to the dream job which then curtails some of the opportunities. Certus hasn't curtailed me in fact we agreed a contract that probably lets me do even more, but I don't simply have time off, it is all about juggling.

Juggling, I would have said multitasking but at a Collaborate keynote in 2011 , Dan Thurmon talked about, or rather demonstrated that we don't multitask, we look for patterns in what we do and use the gaps between the patterns to do something else. In his final act he juggled several power tools, explaining each one had a different pattern and by carefully watching and understanding each we could juggle.

So last week I was on tour, I spoke at three events, and at each evangelised the work of OTN, discussed how cloud is perceived in each market, discussed PaaS with developers and encouraged the local user groups. I shared with my fellow ACEs, and looked at the intersects of what we do, I made connections within Oracle and the Partner market. I answered every email I received, answered every question I was asked,  I worked on presentations for Certus customers, some marketing material, worked on a bid, reviewed a new offering, kept up with what is going on in the Oracle world. I worked on the agenda grids for UKOUG conference, reviewed strategy documents, wrote a couple of articles and had input into the HCM Apps Innovation Day next week. I wrote blogs and I learnt. I did my job.

But it isn't about working 24 hours a day, I do get to sleep and I also get to do other things, I still teach my silver surfers, have great fun with friends on tour and I can throw things high enough in the air to find time to dive, even organising a boat trip at Kscope later this month.

There is a limit to what you can juggle, my daughter is grown up and left home so whilst I spend time with her, I am not rushing home every day to look after a child or even husband for that matter. The juggling works when every component is what you you want to do. If there is an element you don't get satisfaction from the result, then you will take your eye off the job and everything will come crashing down.

One of the disruptions of Cloud is the changing procurement process and the variety of the organisations we are bidding for. In the last few months I have been working, as part of this great team with a gaming organisation, a household name in manufacturing, a charity, a public sector organisation looking for complete transformation, and the latest one is so exciting I just can't sit still. Many of these are net new customers for Oracle Applications and based on all we have learnt we have now we have just launched Engage HCM for Midsize.

I may be a very visible face of Certus but I am just one. Last month we had a customer JT Global talk at the Oracle Modern Applications Day about how Cloud had transformed their business and how the Certus Team had delivered for them, I never delivered one bit of that project but have helped others and now am helping tell our joint story, here, around the world and hopefully at OOW.

I remember at my interview being told everyone in Certus just pitches in and I would do everything from making the tea to talking to CIOs, well that's true and I'm so loving it.

I really do have the best job in the world.