LAOUC 2025 Tour - The Extras

 

I said at the start of this tour that it was my sixth visit to LAOUC and what a privilege.

I like stats so here are mine for LAOUC:

That's 30 events in 17 cities, spanning 14 countries over 6 tours. Thankyou Oracle ACE Program for giving me these amazing opportunities.

The tours are full on, and very little time to see a lot but we try. If there is a spare day we will attempt a tourist day. Personally I try to add things to the trips, often diving, like Panama 9 years and this year in Mexico before the tour starts. I went to Machu Picu with Tim Hall in 2015 after that tour. Spent a lovely weekend in Cartagena on my first visit and great hosting from local user group leaders in many of the cities.

Deiby Gomez who I met many years ago from Guatemala and was their first ACE Director,  who's taken a break from speaking at conferences whilst he completed a degree in law, joined us for the Guatemala dinner and then hosted myself, Emmanuel Guzmán Rojas and his girlfriend for a day to Atitlan lake. I have been before to the top tourist place Antigua so this was a fantastic opportunity to see more of this beautiful country.

We started early in the morning as it is a long drive through the mountains but worth the journey. We arrived in time for breakfast overlooking the lake. There are several villages around the lake with the only realistic travel being by boat. Deiby had us a private boat and it was an amazing day, the villagers are used to tourists and have set up co-operatives to share their skills in coffee, bee keeping, cotton weaving and chocolate. We got to experience several of these as well as climbing to the viewing platform. I was even persuaded to do a couple of tuk tuk journeys, I am getting much braver in my old age.

I couldn't do the whole tour, just the first 4 countries but I did stay a night in Heathrow on the way back so I could meet up with Ronald Bradford and his family, Ronald who was a MYSQL ACE Director who I had previously travelled with on LAOUC tours and even attended his wedding and his family have visited me in N. Ireland.

I have made amazing friends over the years with the LAOUC tours and the wider ACE program and many are still friends today. With such a break since my last visit it was great to catch up with those I have not seen since, although most welcomes went "Welcome back to .........., it's great to see you again and where is Tim (Hall)?"

I don't intend to leave it so long next time and fit in perhaps one more tour before retirement and I promise I will try to take Tim with me but I can't guarantee it.

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LAOUC 2025 - Tour Reflections as an Oracle ACE

The tour isn't complete yet, but my contribution is. I only had 2 weeks available, which meant just the first 4 legs. Mexico City, Costa Rica, Panama, Guatemala.

I have been involved in user group events for over 25 years and have heard most feedback before but on this tour I met many first time 'tour' speakers, local, Oracle and ACE participants and thought I would share my thoughts.

ACE Director Funding:

This isn't a negative, in ANY way, just clearing up a few myths:

I am incredibly fortunate to have funding from the Ace program for many events. For participating ACE Directors they pay for flights and hotel, for the night before and off any sessions I deliver. It doesn't cover any extras, and often not what I actually pay for these two categories, but you know in advance, and it is your choice to participate at that point. I am not complaining, it is a generous contribution, and has enabled me to speak all over the world and experience many unforgettable events, make real friends, and visit places I may not have visited otherwise.

Other ACEs are not funded by Oracle, they may be lucky and have employer funding, and in the past I have benefited from this, but many are contractors or their own small business and this is not only direct costs but also non billing days.

For the usergroups:

When the individual uaergroups that make up a tour, they determine the dates. If they want speakers to do multiple legs, especially if funded under the ACE program (ACE Directors only), then they need to be close together, but that also needs to be feasible.

We did Panama one day and flew onto Guatemala the same day. That makes the day incredibly long for the participants, and means the usergrpoup cannot host the speakers after the event if they want to.

The tour organisers need to set up a group chat, we used WhatsApp on this tour which is great, and doesn't cause issues for people from overseas. But it should be setup at planning stage, not just for the actual tour. It is really great to travel in small groups, share rides and know you aren't the only one on a flight. You don't all need to travel and stay together, people have favourite airlines and hotels, but by sharing information you get nice sociable travel packets.

I travelled with Alex Zaballa, I have done several LAOUC tours with Alex when he was an ACE Director but now he is at Oracle itself. He was also joined by two other speakers from Brazil,  Gilson Martins and Mario Barduchi. Alex and I became travel mentors to Gilson who was on his first tour. I hadn't met Gilson before in person but he did interview me for his GoldenTalks Women's Day video. Alex was our foodie and most of his restaurant picks were awesome but don't mention "spoon' in Costa Rica (not his best).

Hospitality is really appreciated, it gives the speakers a chance to meet with each other, especially those only at that event. ACEs should be encouraging local speakers to join the program and help those who are trying to progress to the higher levels. This is a great time to do that. Often there are Oracle Product Managers speaking and that gives a chance for new relationships to be formed.

It is helpful if the local event can recommend hotels, including corporate chains, and give an indication (real not optimistic) traffic times. Most foreigners rely on Uber and what we didn't factor for in Mexico was the time it takes to actually secure an Uber. We don't want to be late but equally don't want to unnecessarily give up any  sleep :)

At the locations we are not overly needy but we do need good AV systems with on sight people to help if there are problems. Internet is also a must, we want to demo systems and that requires connect ability.

Audience Expectation:

Often events are held in universities, but this doesn't always mean the audience is students. They may be local users and just in a university because they are cost effective. There may be a lot of students and there maybe a mixed audience. All variables are good but speakers need to know. We need to adapt our content for heavily student audiences.

Personally I love speaking to students, they want to know about careers that use the technology they are learning. Those universities like Mexico and Panama that are already linked to Oracle are a great opportunity to encourage them to do more. Access to Oracle learning is so much easier now with Livelabs so they can take up more learning and gain even more interest in Oracle which is what we all want.

One student in Panama came up to me later in the day and said she only came to my session as her boyfriend suggested it, but she liked the way I talked about Oracle and was really impressed and will look at it more. Speakers live for comments like that.

Being part of a tour is such a privilege and real fun. I have made so many friends on tours where you really get to know people, and have stayed friends like I said on my 'extra's post.

LAOUC 2025 Guatemala

We arrived in Guatemala about midnight their time, which is an hour behind Panama where we came from. So we were really tired and the event started early, so little time for sleep.

Up early the next day for the conference. Not sure why but I had 3 back to back sessions, which kept me busy, then it was lunch and I went back to hotel for some sleep before a wonderful speaker's meal.

The extra session I did here was my All You Need To Know About Oracle, and for again a mainly student audience it is a great session. Oracle want students to think of Oracle as a viable option and remembering a funny story is a great way to instal that thought process.

In one of my sessions there were two APEX developers who work for a bank. It is there first job out of university and they had never really considered why some organisations are so dependant on legacy systems. My roadmapping session, albeit generic for the audience, made sense of the strategy that they have found in their employer.

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LAOUC 2025 Tour - Panama

Quick flight from Costa Rica to Panama and onto the third leg. We arrived at lunchtime and went off to find an incredible but a very reasonable restaurant.  

Then I retired to the hotel, where I had an upgrade to a junior suite overlooking the ocean. I have stayed at this hotel before wish we had longer. it was by far the best hotel of the tour.

This really was an in an out stop, I didn't even go out again in the evening as I knew I tomorrow was going to be a long day, a full covariance and then fly to Guatemala for the next leg.

I gave my two presentations and again there was a larger percentage of students, and I will talk about that again in my summary blog. When I gave the EBS Roadmapping session the user group leader said he wished one of their big organisations had been there, a food and beverage company. Two arrived after lunch so I gave them a private run through.

The event was held at the Univeridad del Valle or UVG, and like the one in Mexico, it is an Oracle Academy university. That means they have lecturers like Paulo below are trained in Oracle technology (SQL, Java and APEX) and are given a curriculum and resources to teach. When a student gains certification they get points towards their degree. These students were really keen to learn how these skills are used in the outside world.

The day finished quite abruptly as a thunder storm erupted and the university lost power, but it only affected the last session of the day. 

Big thanks to Edardo and the usergroup team and Thankyou for the gift 

Then it was a panic to get an uber to the airport due to the weather but when he did turn up he was obviously sent by a higher power.

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LAOUC 2025 Tour - Costa Rica

The second leg of the Latin America tour was Costa Rica. 

I arrived with most of the other speakers on Saturday late afternoon and we had Sunday free before the event on Monday. We did think about visiting a volcano but the trip is pretty full on and stressful and we just didn’t get around to looking at it early enough, so we downloaded an audio app of places of interest and just went walking, listening to the app like a guide. The city of San Jose is quite compact but full of green areas and parks with lots of museums and spectacular monuments. It was a really enjoyable morning. 

We went to an Argentinian restaurant for lunch and it was amazing.

The event on Monday started quite early although it was a much less stressful Uber ride to the university and then after a kickoff at 8:45 am, the sessions followed. I again did my roadmapping talk to a room mainly students and again adapted it for them. After lunch which was provided by Pythian sponsorship, I gave my talk on AI comparing it with between EBS and Fusion applications. There wasn’t really a large audience but what I did have was a great conversation with fellow speakers about what is required to make applications work with AI on premise.

At 6 pm when the sessions were over, all the speakers Again became a panel for the audience to ask AI questions. 

This session was deliberately aimed at the students and over 65 stayed right to the end at gone 7pm. We had the obvious questions. 'Will AI take the jobs?' etc but we also had a few thought provoking questions like 'did we think AI would stifle music?',' Did we think that our thirst for AI would use up what precious resources we have left'. 

After this there was a speakers reception so a very long day but so worthwhile thank you Eddie Molina for having us back and for me my fifth visit to Costa Rica.

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LAOUC 2025 Tour - First Stop Mexico

I wrote about my excitement of joining the Latin America Oracle User Community tour this year not having been part of it since before Covid.

The tour started in Mexico City. I arrived early the evening before having taken the opportunity to go diving in the north of Mexico prior to the event, so not too long ago flight from Cabo San Lucas. A number of speakers were staying in the same hotel and we all met at breakfast before boarding Ubers to the university where the event was being held. Mexico City has a population of about 22 million and I think all of them were out in cars at that time. Eventually #3 at the university and guess what - we were not at the right one, so another quick Uber to navigate a sprawling university and we were there.

I was on in the first session time slot and set up included finding a rather old projector with a VGA connector and whilst we had HDMI adaptors it was a little temperamental. My first presentation was my roadmapping session and I had made an effort to translate the content into Spanish. Unfortunately the projector wasn’t helping people to be able to read it! After my session the AV people did manage to improve the presentations so the rest of the day was better.

I’m always worried at events where English isn’t the attendees first language, what effect this has on the audience and when an event is held in the university, what the mix of actual users and students will be. I shouldn’t have worried, it was mainly students in this first session about 3/4 of the room and those that were Oracle users were in the main consultants so I actually talked about why organisations have on premise applications still in use and not just the shiny new applications or technologies that the students are learning about at the moment and we had a very good conversation.

One audience member said that Costa Rica you can do an internship in Cobal and if successful and get a job, you’ll earn four times the national wage in your first job. I think this was a great discussion and a lesson for the students that many of the organisations they may work for will have some older but mission critical systems. My roadmapping is relevant to them all, what factors should they be looking at.

Just before an amazing lunch there was an Ace Director panel where we discussed our experiences with AI. It was very well done with questions being asked across the panel. We’re five of the 78 directors were Spanish speaking and then when the English speaking myself and Kai Yu, the user group leader Ronaldo Carrasco translated although most of the audience didn’t need it.

My second presentation was comparing AI in E Business Suite and Fusion applications and I spent some time beforehand thinking about how I could make that more generic if my audience was again student centric as it had been in the morning. However I had a smaller audience but most were EBS users and we had a great discussion as I gave this presentation. 

After the event which was such a success for ORAMEX the Mexican user group. It was time to go back to our hotels and a large group of speakers went out to a local taco bar for dinner.

Next up is Costa Rica. Many are travelling today although some are spending an extra day in Mexico City to see some of the sights.

(Thanks to Gilson Martins for many of the photos).

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