UKOUG Technology and E Business Suite Conference Series Event

Straight after VisIT it was time for my favourite conference, our own. Since UKOUG created the conference series to ensure each community had the conference experience they want, the traditional, pre-acquisition event has affectionately become known as TEBS.

UKOUG has a unique funding model where members pay up front, and in general the membership base funds everything we do through the year, except the actual conferences which bring in additional funds through exhibition. That is a very over simplified statement and I can assure you the budget cycle for every event is much more stringent but it is useful to understand the basic premise. When money was less tight, this worked very well and we could concentrate on the content, the last few years have been a real challenge and a lot more effort than you think goes into delivering something that needs to improve on the last event and yet cost much less. Added to that the needs of our community as well as the community itself is changing; it really is the only constant.

There were a number of little things that became big things behind the scenes at conference and I tend to see it all and then worry about them, but most of the feedback I get is very positive, and when you read the blogs about it it was successful. But we always need to improve so if you have any ideas let me know.

We tried a few new things this year, the Panto and the Inspiring Presentation Awards which I will talk about in the next posting but I think our biggest challenge was something we never planned for - the weather. We lost about 200 delegates and some speakers to the weather and there are great stories of people making the event regardless. One lady travelled overnight from Edinburgh by coach and many had to leave early or not leave when their travel plans were interrupted. on the Wednesday many people came back from the airport because their flights were cancelled whilst many more had long, long delays. Then the UKOUG community came into its own, Jury's was a very popular hotel and each room has two beds, and I think everyone who had planned to stay Wednesday night and had a room, gave their spare bed to those who had not planned on it, and we had a great night.


And yes looking back it was a great success, so well done to everyone involved and I hope you have next year's date in your diary already. Dec 5th - 7th

Strategy Planning at UKOUG

July is always a busy month for UKOUG, as well as a board meeting we also have our volunteers meeting, the main way we capture and share ideas. Luckily in NI we have 2 public holidays (12 & 13) which I can swap to take these 2 days off from Fujitsu.

This year the calendar was packed, I arrived back from Washington and the ODTUG conference on the Saturday, met up with Lisa Dobson my fellow director and went off to a 40th birthday party for James Morle, a fellow ACE Diretor and member of the OakTable and a great speaker for UKOUG. It is a measure of the friends you make in this circle that Graham Wood flew over from the US for the party and whilst he was over spoke at the UNIX SIG for UKOUG. Then Lisa and I went to Birmingham Sunday evening to ready ourselves for the strategy meeting that started early the next day.

To start, we revisited our Mission & Vision Statements and Values and what changed from the last time full review, about 4 years ago. The emphasis is on the Oracle Community and who is a member of that, what we decided was:

   - Those who use Oracle Products
   - Those who provide Products and Services around Oracle
   - Oracle themselves

Our Mission remains - Serving the Oracle Community and our vision is changing slightly to reflect the emphasis on this community member to:
To be the association in which everyone in the Oracle community engages.

We did not finish the next stage which is a full evaluation of our own customers and products so this may not be the final draft.

We had a facilitator to keep us on track and although we did get sidetracked occasionally we did make progress. As a board we need to decide what we can do with what we have. There is lots more to do and we took a lot more information from the volunteers the next day which will be an important part of our analysis.

There was a board dinner that evening which was a good time to get to know the new director Graham Spicer a bit better and then I went off for a relatively early night.

The next day we had a standard board meeting at 8.15. We are our own company in UKOUG and not outsourced to an operating company so there are statutory things we must cover. This and setting our next actions on the strategy process took us till 9.30 when the volunteers started to arrive.......

What's in a name?

Not a long post, but just wanted to say, someone, somewhere knows just how good UKOUG is. I won't say publically who the letter is from, but next time you see me ask. I like it.

The Black Art of Marketing

I am a director of UKOUG and when I first joined the board I took a real interest in how the board actually worked. In UKOUG we do not outsource our services they are provided by our own staff, in our own building. This autonomy is much desired and envied by other groups but has its own challenges. As a director I am responsible for the future success of the company and the legal requirements such as trading, accounts, staff health and safety. I took a diploma with the Institute of Directors and was very proud when after much late night studying and writing my professional evidence portfolio and facing a panel of peers I was awarded Chartered Director in 2006.

One of the subjects I enjoyed most was marketing and especially the subtle marketing such as viral marketing. I have written before about how the ACE Program taps into the powerful messaging someone outside Oracle has. The fact that I talk about Oracle with passion and yet an equal amount of cynicism is recognised by Oracle as being very effective (even if they don’t say so out loud). The ACE Program is an example to all organisations. One place I could never work is Oracle itself, and they probably would not want me anyway.

So this week I found myself at my local IOD annual dinner. The chairman of the IOD in Northern Ireland is Joanne Stuart who coincidentally used to work for Oracle and I have known her for many years. This year as an after dinner speaker Joanne had invited BJ Cunningham. I didn’t know how global a brand he is and to be honest I had never heard of him before. I can’t say I hadn’t seen him before as we checked into the hotel at the same time and he was quite a character, wearing his tuxedo under an olive long length parker, I was tempted to ask if he had left his moped outside.


BJ is an entrepreneur who pushes everything to the limit. He believes in doing the unexpected and has not always been successful but he loves what he does and has a fantastic story to tell. His main claim to fame was the ‘Death Cigarette’ now I am not condoning smoking but you have to admire his thinking. He says look at the problem to find the answer. Everyone knows that smoking is not good for you, yet tobacco companies try everything to make you buy their products, governments do the ‘right thing’ but banning advertising and printing health warnings but they don’t want tobacco to go away they make an awful lot of money from the taxes. So BJ created the ‘Death Cigarette’ put a skull and crossbones logo on them and in a two fingered salute to the tax man found a legal loophole. He had seen people evade prosecution for non payment of VAT on cigarettes and alcohol brought from Europe by declaring them for personal use. He also knew that the legal definition of an agent acting on someone’s behalf meant that they were an extension of the person they acted for. So he set himself up as a cigarette agent! Eventually the tax man caught up with him and he ended up in court where the judge said and I can’t do the wonderful French accent BJ used but imagine it “In law you are correct, but the law was never meant to allow you to do this, so you are wrong and therefore guilty”, hard to argue with.

This is very funny but the point the was trying to make is around the brand and loving what you do. He said a brand is a promise and not a logo. I totally agree and have written about the Saatchi and Saatchi Lovemarks concept, which I talked to BJ about later, he was impressed I knew about it. Regardless of the product his business case stacked up and he was able to borrow money. In his talk he also had a humorous look at business cases and their later success. I have to say at this point I wondered exactly what he was smoking as to an audience of 400 people in Belfast, In the Europa which has the dubious honour of being the most bombed hotel in Europe, he decided to use religion as his case study. The business case of a virgin birth and the ultimate sacrifice may not sound a good investment but whatever you believe it is successful, with a great logo and phenomenal following. You could have heard a pin drop until he finished, I think he may have been the only person to survive religious humour in the history of N Ireland. But he was not making a joke at anyone's expense, he wanted people to think about the concept of the brand.

He went on to say to be successful in your business you must love yourself, your product and your customer, success is not just about the money. I so agree, I am not the best paid but I feel I am successful and it made me think of a recent blog posting in the same vein from Cary Millsap

It was a fantastic and thought provoking look at business, and later I spoke with BJ and I asked him about how he markets himself. He doesn’t yet really but is thinking about it and I know he will be successful. I suggested he do more short videos and put them on youtube. His story is funny and yet has a great message. Video is the new pod cast, blog etc, you only have to look at the Miracle Channel to see how powerful it can be.

In a way I am in marketing, I am selling the brand of UKOUG here in this blog, the promise that ‘We serve the Oracle Community’ and less obviously the brand of my day job where the attributes I display are in tune with their philosophy. And yes I love what I do.

BJ I apologise for any inaccuracies in my memory.

Thinking Ahead to The Future

A few weeks back I was asked by one of our SIGs to give a Fusion Applications update. I said yes, but as I started to think about it I thought, I spoke to this group in October and then we had a lot of very successful Fusion Apps content in our annual conference, so did they want just a repeat of that?

Then the Scottish SIG committee asked me if I could talk about Fusion and EBS in 5 years time, and I thought yes that is what I can do for both groups. I spoke to a friend who is also a customer and she agreed, presentations just on Fusion Apps seem quite distant from the EBS we have today.

Looking forward, is a great exercise, what might change? What do we know will happen and what based on what has happened in the past may happen in the future? What other potential risks are there?

The UKOUG board is about the strategy to keep the organisation viable, financially healthy and providing what the member needs. We have regular strategy planning sessions and we too need to take the long term view. It is early days but recently Ronan and I have been looking at how we think UKOUG may look in 5 - 10 years time, and how do we plan to get there? We have a planning day with the board soon and between us we will agree a strategy. However it is not a once off exercise and must continuously be revisited. This is why the board is so important, it is not just about the next event.

I have been on the board for 8 years and deputy chair for the last 6 but every two years when it is time for board elections I get really nervous. So if you think I am doing a good job, or other members of the board up for re-election, then vote for us, or tell your main contact to do so. I really want to carry on supporting you.

Back to my presentation on Fusion Apps and EBS the next 5 years. A lot of people attended the session and I got very good feedback. I will present this a few more times around UKOUG where invited and in several overseas conferences over the next few months, but just like for UKOUG I need to constantly revise.

The presentation should be in the library soon and I could do a posting on it, when I find some time for this blog if people are interested.

Where Did You Go For Lunch?

I started this blog to give an insight into the life of a UKOUG director. Today was the first board meeting of 2010 and it was defiantly different.

Ann Power who has been a director for 5 years and is responsible for HR and very important in our Apps community, works for Thales, and today's meeting was hosted by Ann at their new flagship building in Crawley.

It was a very busy day, we had our annual board appraisal to look at, we take this very seriously and use a questionnaire provided by the Institute of Directors, and it looks at all the areas that a board has to address to ensure the success of their organisation. Completing the questionnaire was a few hours work for each director. Then we look at the areas we score low on, and even more the areas were we don't agree on how well or otherwise we perform.

Today we also look at the governance of the organisation, and what that should include. Then we looked at how to encourage innovation from both the staff and our members, what new membership products should we introduce? You tell us please.

However the most memorable things of the day were totally unrelated, it snowed hard, all day and we all worried about getting home, however none of the snow settled but the piece de la resistance was the treat Ann arranged for lunchtime. She had arranged for us to go down onto the shop floor and see the flight simulators. Amazing, and we even went into one that was in use, and landed in Kuala Lumpur, not bad for a quick lunchtime trip! We even looked at the computer power behind the simulator. I would love to have photos in this blog but for obvious reasons camera phones etc were banned. We must say thank you to Ann but especially to Robert who was our guide.


UPDATE - Thales have sent us a few pictures of what we saw

JDE Conference Event UKOUG

Just a few weeks until our UKOUG Conference JDE Event. I am really looking forward to this. As ever we have great support from Oracle with both John Schiff and Lyle Ekdahl over from the US who are coming over because they care about their customers.

There will also be an analyst from gartner giving us something to think about.

Lyle will host a roundtable with the title 'What's the Fusion Story' come along to this very interactive session and then we have a special offer for you. Any one who has attended as a delegate one of the other UKOUG 2009 conference event days including JDE can attend free the Wednesday morning (2nd December) of the Technical & EBS conference event where there will be a 2 hour demo of Fusion Applications.

And if all that is not enough (only joking) I will be presenting at the JDE conference about how you can use Fusion Technology today with JDE.

So if you haven't booked yet, what are you waiting for?

Multi Tasking from the Great Ronan Miles

The purpose behind this blog is to give a little insight into what I and other directors of UKOUG get upto, and today I want to give a small example of how 'multi tasking is a key requisite'.

The keynote Presentation at ODTUG today was John Kopcke, SVP, Business Intelligence and Performance Management Global Business Unit, talked about how Management Excellence was the way for organisations to make a difference now. Most organisations have already got the operational excellence that was their business case for ERP systems.

Like Steve Miranda yesterday, John was able to relate to a mainly technical audience although it is fair to point out that the Hyperion Audience in ODTUG contains a lot of non IT , but IT enabled professionals.

Important for UKOUG, is that this afternoon John is on a plane to London to speak at our UKOUG Hyperion & BI conferene event later in the week. Both Ronan and I have been able to speak with John to ensure that he knows what our audience will be like. The press in UK have already arranged with Ronan for feedback from the conference and although Ronan will not be there he was today taking great notes during John's keynote so that he is fully briefed before speaking from here to the press on Wednesday. It is great watching Ronan take notes, do you know he is a 'touch typist' (and for all you gen X & Y people that means he uses 10 fingers and types really fast).

At break times, Ronan and I have been meeting up and planning for future events, making note of best practices we are witnessing here, liasing with other user groups, agreeing content from product managers for their content at UKOUG and also keeping up with our day jobs. On Sunday before the keynote, Ronan and I handed out tickets at the main door. We know UKOUG relies on its vlunteers and are happy to simply be volunteers for ODTUG.

SO despite the beautiful weather here in Monterey, do not worry we are working hard for you

Quick Update

Blogging is great, it is much more up to date than Debra's Diary but you have to be disciplined enough to update it as soon as something happens, if not, like now you end up with some time and have several things to say.

It is two weeks since the PeopleSoft conference and I haven't said how it went.

The conference was at the Sofitel in terminal 5 of Heathrow and was held over 2 days on 19/20 May.


Ari Aaltonen one of our new directors opened the conference and then there was the keynote presentation, which with a new release of PeopleSoft was well timed. After the keynote I had to rush off to the day job, but came back for the evening entertainment. I am not really interested in casino type games but I do like to watch others and generally hear feedback from delegates.

UKOUG like all organizations need to keep costs down and myself and the staff excelled at this event. We stayed in a well known brand of hotel that had advertised advance booking of under £20 and it seemed great. HOWEVER this particular site did not live up to their promise, the main entrance was blocked by concrete blocks apparently to keep the unwelcome out, another entrance was boarded up but eventually if you drove through an industrial estate you could find it. I don't want to fill this whole blog with my woes, but I do want you to know what the staff are prepared to do (once only, not again) to save money on your behalf.

On day to I gave a presentation about how Fusion MiddleWare relates to PeopleSoft and I got good feedback. This makes me really pleased as I am not in the PeopleSoft area but do passionately believe the usergroup is for all communities and strive to follow our mission "To serve the Oracle community”

Its All in the Communication

What ever the project if you look at the top three challenges one of them will be communication.

User groups are no different and it is a constant challenge, how do you keep your existing members informed and attract new ones. You cannot allow yourself to go stale.

Then communication itself is always changing, my daughter has no idea about writing letters, thinks email is old fashioned and can't imagine how our house would function without 'Post It' notes on the fridge!

I started 'Debra's Diary' in Oracle Scene our UKOUG Publication to try and keep our members informed as to what was involved in being a director and what I and the rest of the board got up to, on the first entry I said it was as close to a blog as I would get and yet within a year I had started this blog, and it is good to see that other users groups are doing the same now, because at first I worried about being the only Oracle Blog that was not product focused in its content (note I did not say technical).

I cant quite bring myself to twitter yet, it isn't that big in the UK although Stephen Fry famously twittered when stuck in a lift (I wonder if he had read my blog on the subject and stolen my idea?).

But today I have decided to try a video clip. Miracle had all their presenters last year give their extracts this way and my favourite ones are Cary Millsap and James Morle. Robyn Sands did quite a serious one, but her daughter edited an 'outtakes' version which is hysterical and I wish was available on youtube. Quest have a video clip contest for Collaborate.

The quality one my video is poor and I will have to perfect how I do it but at least I have started. I used a web cam that Oracle gave away at a recent architects club for this my first video blog.On the clip I am talking about our conference series, I mentioned them before but the first one Ireland is just days away. Good luck to everyone involved and I know it will be a great sucess.

You can watch me or simply close your eyes and just listen. Does the concept work? Let me know? What other methods of communication should I try?

Busy Time for New and Old UKOUG Directors

I am so busy this year I haven't had time to post anything so am hoping to put that right now.

Our new conference series means a lot more planning and budgeting and we had a session for that at the end of January. The in February we had our Annual staff and directors day, the idea originally was that this followed strategy setting but it now comes before the strategy setting day so that UKOUG staff get a say and more importantly give their ideas, and finally the Strategy Day itself. Three very full meetings with lots of reading and calls between time.

But that is not all we have already called for papers, judged them and set the agenda for the Irish Conference and paper judging for the Hyperion and BI conference closed today. The conference series will be a continuous program of planning and execution. Make sure you contribute and share your experiences with the rest of your community.

Let UKOUG increase your value

I subscribe to a number of newsfeeds and last week Search CIO highlighed this article - Unexpected side effect of recession - time for IT education and training.

The premsie is simple, if you have spare capacity use it to home in our your skills, attend those SIGs you normally don't have time for. UKOUG membership is very cost effective and much cheaper than attending expensive training courses. In return your ROI on Oracle investment will increase.

A New Blogger, an old friend

So what ever happened to my friend Mike from the elevator?

He has recently been elected as President of ODTUG and we met up a few weeks ago at the IOUC Summit.

Since then Mike has set up his own blog and one of his first posts is about volunteering. Read it, he talks about why we volunteer and how it makes us feel. It makes me feel wonderful and that is not just in the User Group. I teach retired people computers and get so much back from them, I look after the AV in my local church and in my time lots of other things and the common denominator I feel great, make great friends and hopefully do just my little bit in return.

I told Mike my favourite quotation is "Commitment is doing the thing you said you'd do, long after the mood you said it in has left you" - (Facing Up by Bear Grylls), and my daughter thinks that is going on my headstone I am so passionate about commitment.



In UKOUG we have over 200 volunteers and without them we would not be the best user group in the world.

But what do I like most about Mike's blog? I originally came above Tom Kyte in the blog roll, Mike has changed it now but I still rank above Duncan Mills!

Best Practice doesn’t stand still.

At the IOUC Summit , Oracle brings together the leaders and representatives of the many hundreds of users groups they have around the world. Examples were given of collaboration between the groups and of best practice. UKOUG is often quoted as best practice especially in the areas of Surveys, Conferences and Fusion Input. We are not however sitting on our laurels and also listen to other groups and see where we can collaborate and learn to give more value to our membership.

There was a lot of interest in our new conference series, and we met with the Oracle ACE Program to see how we can mutually benefit. We have a lot of ACE speakers who already find presenting at UKOUG rewarding but we want to expand this. But we also want new speakers, perhaps we should start a 'buddy' system and pair up experienced speakers with those who have yet to get started but have a story to tell?



All the user groups talked about economic pressures and the effect on members some of whom have already lost jobs and many others under threat. In these times we as User Groups must also tighten our belts but ensure we give the support and education needed to our members so that we can together survive. In the last difficult period the user groups actually flourished, in hard times the value proposition of the user group is more acute and provides great opportunities for people to learn from each there when more traditional education may not be an option and UKOUG does represent incredible value.

UKOUG Round Up

I can't believe I didn't write anymore about the UKOUG conference, it is the best in the world! But then again I was so busy it was just a complete whirlwind with no time to take it all in let alone blog, then afterwards it was 'catch up' then 'clear the decks' for the day job and then the holiday season.

So how can I quickly summarise UKOUG? It was great, numbers were good and as ever we had lots of very happy attendees.

BUT, UKOUG has outgrown the ICC which is the only venue suitable in the UK. Yes there are lots of bigger exhibition centres but not with the number of breakout rooms we need. By trying to get everyone into one conference we have grown to five days, and cannot give everyone the level of detail they want, on top of all that the smaller communities feel lost and exhibitors cannot easily tell who is interested in what.It was still successful this year but down to the sheer hard work of everyone involved, speakers, staff and volunteers.

So what is the solution? Earlier this year we tried something different with the JD Edwards community and held a separate event for them under the same conference banner, this was great, they had 4 times the number of people they had at last years conference, some delegates had not been to a JD Edwards conference since before the PeopleSoft acquisition of them. And at the ICC we had a separate event for the PeopleSoft community.

On the Sunday before conference we have a SIG Chairs meeting and it was put to them that we should have a conference series, spread out over the year and finishing with the traditional event at the ICC but back to a more manageable 3 days. The feedback was that we should go for it and the details of the series can be found here.

One big advantage I can see is with keynotes, as a user group we have the reputation of being world class and this attracts high quality keynote speakers, but with the impossible task of shoehorning it all into the ICC we have had to have parallel keynotes for topics that should have plenary slots. Taking these communities out into their own event means we can give them what is deserved and continue to attract the best executives.

UKOUG Partner of the Year Awards

As the song goes 'What a Night', we have just had our first UKOUG Partner Awards dinner and I like other directors who attended are so proud.

'To Serve the Oracle Community is the mission statement of UKOUG, and we believe that partners are part of that community. Earlier this year we started a Partner Forum as a response to feedback we had received and a discussion we had at last years conference. The partners wanted two things, an ongoing dialogue with Oracle as a community of partners and how they could get more value from their user group membership.

The UKOUG has a unique membership model where with low membership rates we deliver everything to our membership normally at no additional cost (platinum level), and we do this through a combination of membership fees and sponsorship. We rely on the sponsorship from our partners so it is important to listen to what they need to make events successful for them as well as for the attendees who traditionally hate marketing either from partners or Oracle.. One of their first suggestions was a Partner Award scheme that is voted for by the members, and we are proud not only to have delivered this but in a really short timescale.


The Ceremony Dinner took place on 16th October at Claridge’s, London and you can see the winners on our website. The after dinner speaker was David Blunkett MP who was very witty and yet thought provoking. He was amazed to be at an event where what should have been a room full of competitors was actually a room full of people who through UKOUG do 'Serve the Oracle Community' and that is quite a message for our Government

Many of our members voted for these awards and we expect next year's to be bigger, better and just as much fun.

Are we bored of Fusion Applications?

As you know I have been involved in Fusion Applications since the first announcement of Project Fusion, and now I have seen some of the first release I am even more excited. But is everyone else or is everyone bored or worse not convinced there is anything to get excited about?

At Oracle Open World a few weeks ago I was very disapointed with the lack of presence Fusion Applications had in the agenda. Only 3 Oracle Sessions had the words 'Fusion Applications' in the title. The first was the joint presentation I did with Nadia Bendjedou based on her excellent paper 'the evolutionary path to fusion', then Fusion Applications Part I and Part II given on the Wednesday.

Nadia and I had a good attendance but Steve Miranda's presentations were I thought poorly attended, did people not realise they were on? It is a big pity because he actually demonstrated a fair bit of the content and for most people it was the first they had seen.

But am I basing my observation just on OOW? No, at OUG Scotland last week, I gave 2 presentations, one on automated delivery of Discoverer Reports and one on an update to Fusion. I know the Fusion was the last slot of the day, and Scotrail were on strike so some people left early but the numbers I felt were low. Those who did attend gave excellent feedback.

So my message to Oracle, get your message right, it may not be ready today for people to use but Fusion is coming and I like it. I want to go to R12 EBS first to take the additionally functionality available now, but I have Fusion Applications in my longer term sights!

OUG Scotland

When I first joined the board of UKOUG there was a need to address content for members who are not within commuting distance of the home counties. Thier SIGs tend to be more generalist and so may not address all their needs, however we did find that the perpensity for these members to attend the annual conference is actually greater than normal.

What we came up with were annual 1 day regional conferences, the first being the Irish Conference in Dublin in March 2003 which was an instant sucess and later that year we introduced the Scottish Conference.

These events are more complicated to put together than a simple SIG, the attendance is much larger adn there are normally 4 streams and this week in the Raddison Glasgow was no exception.
This picture shows the staff that travelled up along with Ronan our Chairman at the airport on our way home.

It was another sucessful day and thanks to all those who spoke and to the committee that put toether the agenda. Steve Gold from Oracle Scotland gave a quick address at the start confirming his support to OUG in Scotland, and based on the day we will be around for a long time.

UKOUG Special Events

This week the UKOUG had a special event - Archive and Purge These are meetings that fall outside of the standard Special Interest Groups (SIGS) and I thought it would be interesting to explain how a special event comes to happen.

After each user group meeting members are asked what else they would like to be covered, volunteers are also asked at their meetings and then at each board meeting (there are 6 a year) the directors talk about ideas that have been put forward and determine if they meet the current strategy. If they do a director must sponsor the idea and it goes onto the ideas stack. I was sponsor for Archive and Purge.

The ideas stack is reviewed at each board meeting and one or two are moved into the next stage, here the office do some market research to see that there is a big enough audience and sufficient sponsors to make the day a success both in terms of value to the members and economically.

Then the agenda needs to be drawn up, hopefully there is an obvious volunteer to help, and in this case Anthony Ross from the Projects SIG offered to help. It was decided early on to have two streams, one functional / business focused and the other technical. It was difficult to pull together an agenda and fellow director David Kurtz and myself had to work with Karen Smith in the office to create an agenda we thought would be of value to the audience. Only then does an ‘idea’ go into production. Anthony was also involved in the Process SIG for Acquire to Retire and so we co-located the two events in London.

I wanted the Archive and Purge Day to start with discussions about why people archive, what they have tried and what worked or didn’t? Normally discussions come later in the day but I wanted them up front so that the audience could see who was similar to them so they could speak to them in the breaks. It also gives presenters the opportunity to ensure their presentations cover what people are after. Unfortunately Anthony could not make it on the day, very frustrating but volunteers do have day jobs, and I want to take this opportunity to say a big THANK YOU to Raj Patel Deputy Chair of the Application Server and Middleware SIG who stepped in at the last minute and facilitated the technical stream whilst I looked after the functional side. The discussions were very interesting and backed up the theory that there is no simple answer. There were presentations from sponsors who have tools that deal with the requirement in different ways and from organisations that have actually been through archiving.

We had about 120 delegates and I haven’t seen the official feedback but from what I heard from delegates they all found the day very helpful.

If you can't beat them....

For the last few years I have chaired the Product Development Committee of the International Oracle Usergroup Community IOUC http://www.iouc.org/ and one of our main focuses has been on Fusion.

To begin with Fusion was just for Applications, and technical Oracle folk were completely turned off. But we could quickly see that it was about the technology it would be written in. Getting this message out was a big challenge and one we undertook by getting the applications community to look at the technology. Initiatives like the Oracle Excellence Awards at last years Open World look to showcase Application Customers who have embraced Fusion technology, and bloggers such as Floyd Teter OAUG http://orclville.blogspot.com/ go a long way towards this.

But what about the technical community not aligned to Oracle Applications? One of our members George Trujillo http://web.mac.com/george.trujillo/ from IOUG had raised concerns that the technical community managers don't understand Fusion and what it means and therefore they are not investing in the training required.

My own contribution is to give user group presentations on the evolution of the Fusion message, so that people can see its relevance. The audience has almost always been applications and it has been well received.

My last outing was the OUGF (Finland) http://http://www.ougf.fi/ 20th anniversary conference last month. This conference was held on a boat sailing between Helsinki and Stockholm, idyllic. The applications stream was very small and I did not expect many to show up but I was pleasantly surprised, a fair number of the technical people turned up to see what it was about, and I got very positive feedback including some from Oracle themselves.


So the moral of the story? Talk to techies, they are not all that bad :)