I enjoyed the flight and managed to sleep about three of the eight hours but either way it is hard when you arrive somewhere at 5.30am you are tired. We had arranged for a car to collect us from our hotel and it was so nice to be greated by a driver.
Heli & Bjoern |
Animals at large |
Sleepy kitty |
Then we visited the Sterkfontein Caves, were the oldest known human skull was found 3 million years ago in an area now called the Cradle of Humankind a World Heritage site.
Java Man Skull |
Java Man |
nice knees and headwear |
There was a museum before we entered the caves and here we found that even million of years ago Oracle had a presence, or rather Java man did.
The event was held in the Oracle Offices in Woodbridge and as a novelty for this tour started on time, and the day flowed really well, in fact as they have horrible traffic at peak times they are happy for us to give additional content with both Heli and Bjoern doing an extra session.
During my cloud session we had the data residency discussion, but actually in South Africa there are far more fundamental issues than no oracle data center (yet) to run cloud, they have no reliable internet and as we had already found out not always reliable power. I know South Africa does have cloud customers but there could be a long wait whilst people have enough trust in their countries' infastructure despite the Oracle marketing on the wall outside.
I also gave my #PaaS4SaaS presentation in full here and was a little concerned that the audience might find it a little technically light, but actually Bjoern and a delegate both independently gave me great feedback that they enjoyed the story telling of what my company had done.
There were also delegatesi had met in 2013 although the user group people are new, they have had a lot of changes recently and the support they got from Oracle to put on the day was greatly appreciated. For us Dina, who I hope we have persuaded to do more with SAOUG was our best resource, not only did she look after us as friends but she was responsible for at least half the delegates who attended.
Before Heli flew home the next day we did the traditional quick visit tourist 'red bus', which I was very much split on beforehand. I know that Oracle travel warnings are always exaggerated and for this trip we were told there had been shoot out by our hotel and the advice was
Having packed Heli off in a taxi, Bjoern and I went with Dina for a family evening and then before we left the next day we had a leisurely breakfast at Stonehaven on Vaal, and a boat ride.
All too soon OTNEMEA was over (well except for the long journey home).
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