Collaborate 09 and Swine Flu

I wrote this on my final leg to Orlando for Collaborate 09. Many people have already arrived, it is amazing how much I learn through facebook. Then I met Borkur Steingrimsson from Rittman Mead at Orlando airport, we did the natural thing and had a great big hug, I forgot that according to NBC we should only have elbow tapped.

I am not laughing about the outbreak of Swine Flu or rather H1N1 virus, it is very serious and it is right that we have plans to deal with it, but I think there should only be one source of information and that is what the World Health Organisation was set up to do. As of today they say dont stop travel. On CNN yesterday the story was about how people are just fed up of the story.

Our own Ronan Miles was unwell last week, not swine flu (probably just man flu) but he decided to cancel his trip out to Collaborate. Not only did he feel awful physically but he felt bad about cancelling although it was great to see the number of other user group leaders around the world sending their best regards and he will be missed. He did the right thing, would you want to sit next to someone with a cold on a plane? I had a cough after 12 hours on a flight to Tokyo before the swine flu outbreak and the next day someone I had never met gave me a packet of face masks in the street. So at least I have some if needed on my flight home.

I hope it does not have a big impact on Collaborate, the financial situation is already affecting all conferences as some companies look to cut back on 'junkets', perhaps conferences should be moved to less exotic places in the future. I am not saying Birmingham UK is not exotic but we never get people complaining it is a junket.

So back to the conference, if you see me, hug me, I am not ill and not scared of you.

Insync Australia

I was honoured to be invited to speak at Insync the Australian Applications Users Conference. I was looked after by Daniel Strassberg of QUEST who then extended the hospitality to me staying with his family afterwards.

It was a great conference and those attending got a lot of value out of it. I hope those organisations who think conference attendance should cease or be scaled down because of the ‘Credit Crunch’ understand what the consequences are.

I gave 3 presentations, ‘Extending your E Business Suite with Hyperion’, ‘Future Applications Planning’ and a joint presentation with Richard Ward of Oracle Australia on SOA. During this presentation I again used the ACE FMW tool kit and gave a live demo. It was a little slow but that’s OK, however I was even more nervous than normal as Alex Gorbahov was in the audience. With someone of his intelligect in the room I felt I was at a professional review and I believe he even twittered he was there, so no pressure!



Richard has already blogged about the presentation and he also refers to the youtube video recorded by Oracle who wanted to hear about the ACE Program and my SOA analogy. I truly believe that when I have a concept down to a very simple level that I can understand that should be the starting point of my own presentations. So I have been explaining SOA and the way we now look at integrations as they way we charge all our gadgets with USB - Reusable, Simple and redeployable. Do you agree?

What I would give to see Larry's Shopping List

Why are we caught out by each of the Oracle Acquisitions? We know they are running at aproximatley 1 a month and have done for almost 5 years, there is no sign of it slowing down and actually there should be great deals in a recession so if you have the cash why not?

The week before Oracle announced the acquisition of Sun, I was in Tokyo. I was actually on my way to Insync in Sydney but more of that in the next post. I work for Fujitsu and it was a real honour to have the opportunity to visit our head office and I also got to visit Oracle Japan.

Larry Ellison was in the Oracle office the day I visited which is not too much of a surprise as Open World Japan was the following week however he changed his plans and flew home early and he didnt stay for the conference. I was surprised and yet I should have guessed he had some shopping to do, it all made sense when the Sun acquisition was announced the following week.

It is too early for Oracle to talk about the details but there are many people who can see some of the benefits and impacts, including our own Ronan Miles from UKOUG who gave this interview in Computer Weekly

UKOUG Conference Series - Update

Hard to believe after all the planning but the first of our conference series is over.

The Irish Conference took place last week and with 170+ was a great success.
We used a new venue which was very good and worked well and they gave us lots of support. Feedback from delegates was very positive and we had 3 spontaneous volunteers to assist with SIGs, etc.

SO what is next? Well it is the PeopleSoft conference and if you are a PeopleSoft user I urge you to attend. Feedback from past years is you want your own event and UKOUG have not only listened but acted.
I know that we are all under careful scrutiny of costs currently but if you have UKOUG membership there is no additional cost and the value of the conference is easy to justify. You will learn from your peers about what you can do with your systems today, network with people like yourself and understand more about Oracle's plans.

So I urge you to think hard about the event, look at the agenda and plan your visit. And if you are not a PeopleSoft user look at the other events in our conference series and see what we have in your area.

UKOUG Conference Series 2009 – One Conference, many events

Just a photo

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?

Oracle and User Group Volunteers

Working with Oracle is something users groups strive to do. We are all very independent and not simply vendor puppets but when we work well with Oracle we can use it for the good of our members.

Two weeks ago OAUG held a Connection Point in Dubai in the Dhow Palace Hotel and I went along as a speaker. Oracle Dubai was very supportive and it was a great success. But user groups need more than just Oracle on their side; they need volunteers from their membership. Each user group has professional people to run the events and logistics but it is the volunteers that drive the content, the agendas and ultimately the success, and the fuel for the volunteers is enthusiasm.

In Dubai 7 / 8 people volunteered afterwards to help with a Middle East user group and I hope they can continue what has been started there. These volunteers are in their infancy but Dubai as saw an example of the ‘old timers on the block’. The Product Development Committee I run in the IOUC has quarterly question times with Oracle on Fusion Applications. The latest one with Steve Miranda was at 1am on the first night (or rather 2nd morning of the conference), and 4 of us attended the call, Bashir Khan, Michael Rulf, Nadia Bendjedou and myself (and of course Stanley). What dedication! Not only did we all stay up and make it through the 60 minute call but it was so good we then stayed up talking about it for another 35 minutes.

The morale of the story is that working with Oracle whilst staying independent is a very important part of user groups success but most important is the volunteers.

Thankyou to you past, present and future (?) volunteers