180925 SPOUG - Not so much Cloud - Lots of Wind

I am a very blessed person, speaking at conferences has given me the opportunity to see so many places and experience many things I would normally never have tried.

SPOUG - Spain was no exception. This was their first conference for some time and they had an amazing day at an indoor sky diving centre! And yes I did have a go.

Madrid is a beautiful city, and even at the end of September it was over 30'C. I wandered around for a little bit when I arrived before joining the speakers for the dinner in a beautiful restaurant.

The conference itself was a little out of the centre, and again I had some wifi issues but there is another post for that; wifi aside it was a great day. To be fair the wifi wasn't too bad, I just wanted to use lots of it.

There were 3 tracks covering most technology areas of Oracle. Less than 30% was in English. I was really pleased to see Nelson Calero there. He is from Uruguay and when I first went to Latin America with the ACE program the events were really small, but over the years they have really grown and n
ow they are exporting their presenters. What as great story! 

I spoke about VBCS to extend SaaS and chatbots. There was an ACE Rueben also talking about the same two topics. I was worried that we would overlap or rather following Rueben Rodriguez would make my sessions look too simple, but I shouldn't have worried we were actually very complimentary.  In both sessions I struggled to live demo as much as I wanted but with help from the audience and using their 4G we got through both. If nothing else I gave them lots of entertainment. 

It was a great day and a great opportunity for me to meet more Accenture people as they are a major sponsor of SPOUG.

As I said wifi was an issue, so a lack of Cloud, but in Europe's biggest indoor skydiving installation, wind was not lacking! Everyone at the event was invited to fly - free and 50% took up the opportunity.

I wanted to, I wanted to be brave, after all when else would I have this opportunity? However my brain over complicates these things and said 'don't be stupid!. I struggle all the time with these thoughts and once before I nearly gave up on an amazing opportunity. Belfast is known for its shipbuilding cranes known as Sampson & Goliath and many years ago I had the unusual opportunity to go to the top of their cranes which are now recognised as important historic buildings. I was petrified and even though I did actually do it, the picture shows I was still uncertain.

Anyway I went for the skydive, waiting was VERY scary but I did it, and actually enjoyed it.

Thank you again SPOUG for the invite.