Last week was UKOUG annual conference and it was back to its traditional date, the first Monday in December, Super Sunday was back and it was back in Birmingham.
I know how hard it is to put on a usergroup event and this was a really good event. It felt busy, there were lots of conversations going on and looking at the LinkedIn posts people really enjoyed it.
There did seem to be a lot of streams so attendance in each session was not enormous but I had good attendance for my sessions, so I was happy.
Super Sunday is a very technical day and I went along to learn. I didn't attend too many sessions but did have a chance to catch up with a lot of the speakers I haven't seen for a while.
Monday the main event kicked off and I had the first time slot for my All You Need To Know About Oracle presentation, which I gave for the first time publicly at UKOUG last year and it got me shortlisted for best session. Again I had a good turnout and whilst I recognised a few faces, there were newcomers to our ecosystem and I hope they learned something.
In the afternoon I was on a panel for long term mentoring, sharing ideas and stories to encourage others to become or ask for a mentor. I was joined by Sarah Dow who is my mentee from the ODTUG WIT mentoring scheme but also a SHINE mentor, Neil Chandler from the MASH Program and his mentee Rishin Mitra, who is actually an almost neighbour of mine in N Ireland! We were excellently facilitated by Grace Honeysett.
Tuesday I spoke on the value of Redwood, and was a little nervous there were several sessions on Redwood, second only in volume to AI! It demonstrated how important Redwood is to organisations using Fusion. I wrote a little more about this on LinkedIn.
I then supported Sue Duncan who did demos on Visual Builder, the technology behind Redwood. My last contribution was to support the HCM Executive Round Table where there was more discussion.
There wasn't a lavish party. but there was the opportunity to network on the Monday evening and the event finished on Tuesday with a motivational speaker Bonita Norris, the girl who climbed Everest.
Actually it didn't finish there, UKOUG have put a lot of effort into their SHINE mentoring program and there were a couple of sessions and a celebration of their two cohorts. Bonita stayed to be on panel and it was lovely to see so many men stay on.
UKOUG wasn't back at the traditional ICC in Birmingham, numbers and sponsors have to return to much higher levels to make that affordable. This decline had started before Covid, and affects a lot of usergroups.
In keeping with my trip down memory lane I stayed near the ICC and walked through it everyday. Part of me wishes I hadn't, that perfect date has been taken over by the SAP usergroup. They are growing, and why? Well I talked about this in an article a while back, but it is still true, A usergroup needs an engaged community, all year round and not just an annual event.
UKOUG had a number of executive round tables, turn them into Special Interest Groups and get the people together every few months.
Thankyou to the Oracle ACE Program and my employer for supporting me to attend.
