The wonderful thing about Oracle User Groups is that we are independent. It also means that each user group has a different model. Some have individual and some corporate membership. Some charge for that membership and others give it for free but charge for events.
UKOUG has a membership model where in general an organisation has corporate membership which entitles them to generous attendance at SIGs and Conference. But we cannot stand still, the world is changing and the way our members want and need to consume information is changing, and we constantly look at the way we 'Serve the Oracle Community'.
We also continuously look at what makes us successful and the quality of our events. Our conference series attracts the best speakers worldwide and many of those are recognised by the ACE Program. To recognise this UKOUG has given corporate membership to the ACE Program, meaning that every ACE can have access to our extensive library and online presence.
We are also extending this to the Sun Java Champion Program.
If you are a member of either of these programs and have not yet signed up to UKOUG then check out the instructions on Facebook or contact Lillian direct.
Welcome to UKOUG. The best Oracle User Group in the World.
Sunday, 2 May 2010
Collaborate 2010
This time last week I was recovering from Collaborate 2010 and it seems so long ago.
As I said in my last post I was late getting to Vegas which is a pity as there were user group meetings I would like to have attended on behalf of UKOUG. It is always a good event to catch up with other user group leaders and collaboration between user groups goes way beyond just this event.
Apart for the Fusion Q&A that I took part in remotely via skype, I had two sessions on 'Thinking of upgrading or supporting Fusion Apps', on in the Quest Education Sessions and one in OAUG. Why, not because the tracks are closed to delegates outside the track, but because people do want to be amongst like minded people when they attend sessions. It can be very off putting to hear about the journey to Fusion for you as a JDE customer when the presenter is talking only about E Business Suite.
The OAUG session should have been Monday morning but I had postponed this to Thursday. The last day (as Thursday was) is always a difficult day for a session but I had 11am which is not a bad slot. I don't worry about when I have a slot, if you are a new presenter you can't expect to get a top slot, and if you are experienced and known then the slot has less of an issue. However the session was very badly attended because there was simply very poor advertising or communication or re-arranged sessions.
I did tweet, but not sure how many people were actually using twitter, a lot of presenters were but not sure how delegates. The organisers had an online agenda and an email went out each night referring to it for amendments. There were no printed changes or notice boards on site and whilst that works for a lot of people, it didn't for a lot, lot more. Never mind, the small audience enjoyed it and I had good questions.
The reason I was not disappointed was because the same session the day before had over 110 attendees. It was awesome.
I have been giving this presentation and derivatives for about 18 months and each time there is a little bit more information so getting it to fit in is always a challenge. I know I have too many slides, I don't use all of them but hopefully the attendees get more from the extra slides. I suppose it is a lazy way of not always having a white paper to go with them.
Back to the presentation, I always start by going back to basics, how did we get to the Applications' strategy that Oracle have today? If you aren't aware of all the stages of the evolution it could look as if they don't have a plan and that would undermine the confidence we need to have in our software vendor.
It is good that I can now actually show a few screenshots of Fusion Apps to whet appetites but the presentation is about understanding what is behind the apps rather than the apps themselves. I give my analogy for SOA which I am still astonished at how well it comes across but I continue to et great feedback so will continue to use it.
Having talked about the Fusion Vision I go back to Fusion Applications and how and when I think we will get there. As ever the number one question is 'Should I upgrade or should I wait for Fusion?'
At this session there was another question 'Why aren't Oracle telling us this?' The delegate said the presentation was great but that it should come from Oracle. I had not had the question direct before and was actually very proud of the reasons for my answer.
Oracle have a very strict interpretation of their Revenue Recognition rules, and whilst we might not agree with them, they are very consistent and they won't talk about a product coming up for release. I on the other hand do not work for Oracle and as long as you know it is my interpretation but based on unprecedented access to the teams and supported by the Oracle ACE Program I am able along with a few others such as Floyd Teter to give these presentations.
I have another presentation I am starting to give, where will we be in 5 - 10 years? Even though I love the Fusion Applications and can't wait to see them released, I know based on past trends, economic constraints and business needs it will be a long, long time until Fusion Applications take over. That is not a bad thing, Oracle have given us the ability to grow into Fusion Applications. I think I will come back to this topic in a later post.
But Collaborate is more than just giving presentations, I was able to meet up with other speakers, hear what they are talking about and learn from them. Here you can see me at dinner with Elke Phelps (co author of Oracle Applications DBA Field Guide) and Steven Chan of Oracle.
As I said in my last post I was late getting to Vegas which is a pity as there were user group meetings I would like to have attended on behalf of UKOUG. It is always a good event to catch up with other user group leaders and collaboration between user groups goes way beyond just this event.
Apart for the Fusion Q&A that I took part in remotely via skype, I had two sessions on 'Thinking of upgrading or supporting Fusion Apps', on in the Quest Education Sessions and one in OAUG. Why, not because the tracks are closed to delegates outside the track, but because people do want to be amongst like minded people when they attend sessions. It can be very off putting to hear about the journey to Fusion for you as a JDE customer when the presenter is talking only about E Business Suite.
The OAUG session should have been Monday morning but I had postponed this to Thursday. The last day (as Thursday was) is always a difficult day for a session but I had 11am which is not a bad slot. I don't worry about when I have a slot, if you are a new presenter you can't expect to get a top slot, and if you are experienced and known then the slot has less of an issue. However the session was very badly attended because there was simply very poor advertising or communication or re-arranged sessions.
I did tweet, but not sure how many people were actually using twitter, a lot of presenters were but not sure how delegates. The organisers had an online agenda and an email went out each night referring to it for amendments. There were no printed changes or notice boards on site and whilst that works for a lot of people, it didn't for a lot, lot more. Never mind, the small audience enjoyed it and I had good questions.
The reason I was not disappointed was because the same session the day before had over 110 attendees. It was awesome.
I have been giving this presentation and derivatives for about 18 months and each time there is a little bit more information so getting it to fit in is always a challenge. I know I have too many slides, I don't use all of them but hopefully the attendees get more from the extra slides. I suppose it is a lazy way of not always having a white paper to go with them.
Back to the presentation, I always start by going back to basics, how did we get to the Applications' strategy that Oracle have today? If you aren't aware of all the stages of the evolution it could look as if they don't have a plan and that would undermine the confidence we need to have in our software vendor.
It is good that I can now actually show a few screenshots of Fusion Apps to whet appetites but the presentation is about understanding what is behind the apps rather than the apps themselves. I give my analogy for SOA which I am still astonished at how well it comes across but I continue to et great feedback so will continue to use it.
Having talked about the Fusion Vision I go back to Fusion Applications and how and when I think we will get there. As ever the number one question is 'Should I upgrade or should I wait for Fusion?'
At this session there was another question 'Why aren't Oracle telling us this?' The delegate said the presentation was great but that it should come from Oracle. I had not had the question direct before and was actually very proud of the reasons for my answer.
Oracle have a very strict interpretation of their Revenue Recognition rules, and whilst we might not agree with them, they are very consistent and they won't talk about a product coming up for release. I on the other hand do not work for Oracle and as long as you know it is my interpretation but based on unprecedented access to the teams and supported by the Oracle ACE Program I am able along with a few others such as Floyd Teter to give these presentations.
I have another presentation I am starting to give, where will we be in 5 - 10 years? Even though I love the Fusion Applications and can't wait to see them released, I know based on past trends, economic constraints and business needs it will be a long, long time until Fusion Applications take over. That is not a bad thing, Oracle have given us the ability to grow into Fusion Applications. I think I will come back to this topic in a later post.
But Collaborate is more than just giving presentations, I was able to meet up with other speakers, hear what they are talking about and learn from them. Here you can see me at dinner with Elke Phelps (co author of Oracle Applications DBA Field Guide) and Steven Chan of Oracle.
Wednesday, 28 April 2010
The Great Escape
I always wanted to keep social and UKOUG things separate but on this occasion there is no separation.
I was honoured to be asked to speak at both OUGN (Norwegian user group) 14-16 April and Collaborate in Vegas 18-22 April, and sponsored by the ACE Program. The timing meant that I would need to go straight from OUGN to Vegas. My itinerary was:
13 April = Belfast-London-Oslo
16 April = Oslo-Copenhagen-Chicago-Vegas
This routing was selected by Oracle Travel and at first I was a little frustrated and disappointed as I knew a lot of friends were in Denmark for Miracle Open World and I would miss them. It wasn't that I didn't want to go to OUGN, I did, I just would have liked to have seen my friends as well. Then a great friend Dan Norris who works in the Exadata Team in Oracle, was given a training assignment for Berlin the same week and he too was routed through Copenhagen, but on the Saturday. He too was very frustrated to be so close yet so far to our friends. However as I did not need to be in Vegas till the Sunday, I decided to pay the change fee and stay the Friday night in Copenhagen, see my friends at what undoubtedly would be a great party and then travel with Dan to Chicago on the Saturday. I was happy.
Then things got even better, the course Dan was teaching was condensed and they were going to finish on the Thursday evening, which meant he too could have Friday night at our friend Mogens Nørgaard's house in Copenhagen. He tried to change his ticket but it was going to be too expensive so he actually bought a new ticket on a low cost airline. You may think we are stupid paying good money for one night, but if you knew Mogens' and the other OakTable members who were also to be there you would do the same.
Then Thursday the Eyjafjallajokull Volcano erupted, and all European airspace was closed. It was very difficult to do anything on the boat, there was broadband but pretty useless. Provided by satellite the Internet had a 140,000 km round trip and it was suggested that to ensure a good surf experience you should avoid sites with high graphical content. This meant that it was not reliable and I still don't know how they did it but you could not download email, either direct from web mail or via VPN. We tried hard to get information but apart from no flights it was very difficult. I did however find a fellow ACE Director Sten Vesterli and Jørgen Holmer-Bretlau from Oracle Support Denmark who also wanted to go to Copenhagen, so I would not be on my own.
Sue Harper, product manager for SQL Developer and a great friend of UKOUG was also on the boat, she simply wanted to get back to UK and another presenter Antony Helijula of Peak Indicators was in the same position. They decided simply to stay in Oslo and see how things worked out. (How did they get home? Read all about it here).
Jørgen managed to hire a car, one way to Copenhagen, I am still in awe, no one since has managed to do this, and I will try (I can't promise) never to moan about Oracle Support again, it truly was great. When the boat docked we caught the train to Oslo airport and I went to see SAS, you see, although they could not provide me with a flight to Copenhagen, if I didn't use this leg, and later turned up for the Copenhagen - Chicago leg, I would have found my flight cancelled. I expected the airport to be chaos, but actually it was rather quiet. Tony and Sue travelled with us, they wanted to talk direct to SAS since they couldn't get through by phone and Internet access had been so poor.
After getting the hire car we started on our mammoth journey 650 km, they took it in turns to drive an hour apiece, and to be fair the journey was not arduous at all. It is a single route E6, broken only by a roadworks diversion. It took almost 8 hours to get to Copenhagen airport and then once Jørgen collected his car he dropped me at the main railway station, where I waited for Dan. You see there were no flights from Berlin either and Dan had made the journey up by train. He had caught a direct train but had been made to get off at Hamburg as the train was simply too full. He had then had to stand on a slower train all the way to Copenhagen, everyone was just trying to get home anyway they could.
Still Dan and I met up at the station and had some food before getting a local train to Måløv to meet up with our friends. We had directions from the station but we managed to miss an important 'turn right' early on and spent a good hour dragging our luggage around until we were so far out of the town we gave in and consulted google maps. Eventually we found the house and joined in the fun. (here you can see Dan playing iPhone LightSaber with Graham Wood).
A lot of stranded people or 'Ash Refugees' had a hard time, but we did not, the best place in the world to be stranded is in this house, we had all we needed and we were all friends. In fact just two months before I had been on holiday with 5 of them. This was always meant to be a party it just went on a bit longer. It would be great is other Måløv refugees would comment with their story or blog link to this post).
Back to the OakTable, I am not technical enough to be an OakTable member but as the only 'unworthy' refugee in the house, I think now I must now rank as the #1 Groupie).
Dan and I were meant to fly out Saturday, so we went off to the airport which was even quieter than Oslo had been the day before. It was just like the scene in The Longoliers where they wait for time to catch up. We were told they could not do anything until air space reopened, but after a little bit of persuasion and waving of the Gold Card they allowed us to rebook on a flight for Tuesday. We knew the chance of it going was slim but at least we (or should I say 'I') could stop worrying until then.
Oracle travel tried to deal with everyone but there were just so many people affected. I spent 4 hours on hold one morning until I simply gave up, but after 2 days they did advise that if you could sort something out yourself they would honour it.
I was meant to be giving 3 presentations at Collaborate. The first was a panel for the Fusion 'Soup to Nuts' day organised by Floyd Teter and I joined in via Skype. I had already postponed my Monday session to Thursday but really thought I would have to cancel. I made the decision that if I got out Tuesday I would go but if that didn't work I would cancel, although getting back to UK would be just as difficult.
Then just after I finished my Skype session at 1.30 am in Denmark, Dan announced his wife had seen a notice on the SAS website that if you had a booking on a CPH - ORD flight Thursday - Sunday, there was a bus leaving Copenhagen at 6am for.............. OSLO where they had diverted the ORD-CPH flight that day. Oslo would open for a few hours and only for flights North and West.
We had to pack very quickly, and normally I am a very organised packer but not on this occasion, my US only suitcase had been opened as well as my small Oslo case, and everything just got thrown in. I had to wake Mogens to get a taxi organised, I hate waking people when they are in a deep sleep, you never know how they might react, anyway it took a few attempts to get him to register what we wanted but then he was OK.
Part of me didn't want to leave, I had a lot of friends there and we were having an awesome time, but I also wanted to be at Collaborate, I had made a commitment and I don't like to let anyone down. Dan wanted desperately to get home, his family were worried and they missed him. It was also his son's first communion the next weekend and he desperately didn't want to miss that. I felt guilty about the others in the house, they all had reasons for wanting to get home quickly and no one was depending on me, and I love a good party.
We asked Mogens to organise a taxi as we didn't want someone who was tired or who had had a drink to drive us to the airport. Big mistake, Mogens would have stayed awake at the wheel better than our taxi driver. I am a very nervous passenger anyway and Dan did his best to keep the guy awake by tapping him on the shoulder and talking to him whilst keeping me from hysterics.
Again the airport was surreal, there were very few people and no one from SAS appeared until just before 5am. Dan was very insistent that we would not get on the bus unless they guaranteed us a seat on the plane. A 'very nice man' Peter assured us that we would be and all the correct details were taken from us, so we trusted him. He also told us that the bus would be luxury, and it was defiantly the best coach I have ever been on, which is good because it was 9 hours.
However our trust in Peter was false, when we arrived in Oslo airport there was a very big queue for check in, but luckily my Star Alliance Gold Card got us to the front of the queue only to be told they knew nothing about a coachload of people from Copenhagen. At that point I lost it, I didn't shout I basically burst into tears whilst still trying to be assertive. They told us we could be put on standby, but we knew the flight was overbooked, and that the airport was likely to close in the next hour or so. I asked for a supervisor and she took a bit of persuasion but eventually she gave us seats.
Sadly there was worse to come. When we eventually took off there were about a dozen spare seats on the flight. Not enough people had seen the message. It seemed criminal with so many people desperate to get home. We flew over Iceland but there was nothing to see and I settled down to watch 'Up in the Air'.
We arrived in Chicago and for once immigration was quick (not many flights arriving), and I collected my bags which were tagged to Vegas and handed them back to United. I then left Dan and went to my terminal to collect my boarding card. Oh how silly I was to think my issues were over. United informed me that I wasn't booked on the flight and that my ticket wasn't valid because .......... I was stuck in Europe! Luckily there were seats on the flight, and I was soon settled ready for the final leg of my journey to Vegas.
Now what else could go wrong? Well how about no luggage in Vegas? I don't like Vegas and have repeatedly said that I hated it from the moment I landed 3 years ago, I saw 100+ slot machines before I saw my luggage that time. Well this time I saw an awful lot more, it was about 18 hours before I got my luggage. I arrived at about midnight and had a quick drink before sleeping soundly. I do have to say that the Luxor were excellent and although I rang everyday with an update, they had every right to charge me for the full booking but they never, they only charged me for the days I stayed.
Tuesday I registered for Collaborate, wearing dirty clothes but a very fetching new Vegas T shirt, and spent the day a bit shell shocked and telling my story to everyone that asked. A few years back I was known as the 'elevator lady', now I am the 'volcano beater'.
Was it worth it? Yes, I kept my commitment.
And do you know how to say Eyjafjallajokull? Well try this:
I was honoured to be asked to speak at both OUGN (Norwegian user group) 14-16 April and Collaborate in Vegas 18-22 April, and sponsored by the ACE Program. The timing meant that I would need to go straight from OUGN to Vegas. My itinerary was:
13 April = Belfast-London-Oslo
16 April = Oslo-Copenhagen-Chicago-Vegas
This routing was selected by Oracle Travel and at first I was a little frustrated and disappointed as I knew a lot of friends were in Denmark for Miracle Open World and I would miss them. It wasn't that I didn't want to go to OUGN, I did, I just would have liked to have seen my friends as well. Then a great friend Dan Norris who works in the Exadata Team in Oracle, was given a training assignment for Berlin the same week and he too was routed through Copenhagen, but on the Saturday. He too was very frustrated to be so close yet so far to our friends. However as I did not need to be in Vegas till the Sunday, I decided to pay the change fee and stay the Friday night in Copenhagen, see my friends at what undoubtedly would be a great party and then travel with Dan to Chicago on the Saturday. I was happy.
Then things got even better, the course Dan was teaching was condensed and they were going to finish on the Thursday evening, which meant he too could have Friday night at our friend Mogens Nørgaard's house in Copenhagen. He tried to change his ticket but it was going to be too expensive so he actually bought a new ticket on a low cost airline. You may think we are stupid paying good money for one night, but if you knew Mogens' and the other OakTable members who were also to be there you would do the same.
Then Thursday the Eyjafjallajokull Volcano erupted, and all European airspace was closed. It was very difficult to do anything on the boat, there was broadband but pretty useless. Provided by satellite the Internet had a 140,000 km round trip and it was suggested that to ensure a good surf experience you should avoid sites with high graphical content. This meant that it was not reliable and I still don't know how they did it but you could not download email, either direct from web mail or via VPN. We tried hard to get information but apart from no flights it was very difficult. I did however find a fellow ACE Director Sten Vesterli and Jørgen Holmer-Bretlau from Oracle Support Denmark who also wanted to go to Copenhagen, so I would not be on my own.
Sue Harper, product manager for SQL Developer and a great friend of UKOUG was also on the boat, she simply wanted to get back to UK and another presenter Antony Helijula of Peak Indicators was in the same position. They decided simply to stay in Oslo and see how things worked out. (How did they get home? Read all about it here).Jørgen managed to hire a car, one way to Copenhagen, I am still in awe, no one since has managed to do this, and I will try (I can't promise) never to moan about Oracle Support again, it truly was great. When the boat docked we caught the train to Oslo airport and I went to see SAS, you see, although they could not provide me with a flight to Copenhagen, if I didn't use this leg, and later turned up for the Copenhagen - Chicago leg, I would have found my flight cancelled. I expected the airport to be chaos, but actually it was rather quiet. Tony and Sue travelled with us, they wanted to talk direct to SAS since they couldn't get through by phone and Internet access had been so poor.After getting the hire car we started on our mammoth journey 650 km, they took it in turns to drive an hour apiece, and to be fair the journey was not arduous at all. It is a single route E6, broken only by a roadworks diversion. It took almost 8 hours to get to Copenhagen airport and then once Jørgen collected his car he dropped me at the main railway station, where I waited for Dan. You see there were no flights from Berlin either and Dan had made the journey up by train. He had caught a direct train but had been made to get off at Hamburg as the train was simply too full. He had then had to stand on a slower train all the way to Copenhagen, everyone was just trying to get home anyway they could.
Still Dan and I met up at the station and had some food before getting a local train to Måløv to meet up with our friends. We had directions from the station but we managed to miss an important 'turn right' early on and spent a good hour dragging our luggage around until we were so far out of the town we gave in and consulted google maps. Eventually we found the house and joined in the fun. (here you can see Dan playing iPhone LightSaber with Graham Wood).A lot of stranded people or 'Ash Refugees' had a hard time, but we did not, the best place in the world to be stranded is in this house, we had all we needed and we were all friends. In fact just two months before I had been on holiday with 5 of them. This was always
Back to the OakTable, I am not technical enough to be an OakTable member but as the only 'unworthy' refugee in the house, I think now I must now rank as the #1 Groupie).
Dan and I were meant to fly out Saturday, so we went off to the airport which was even quieter than Oslo had been the day before. It was just like the scene in The Longoliers where they wait for time to catch up. We were told they could not do anything until air space reopened, but after a little bit of persuasion and waving of the Gold Card they allowed us to rebook on a flight for Tuesday. We knew the chance of it going was slim but at least we (or should I say 'I') could stop worrying until then.Oracle travel tried to deal with everyone but there were just so many people affected. I spent 4 hours on hold one morning until I simply gave up, but after 2 days they did advise that if you could sort something out yourself they would honour it.
I was meant to be giving 3 presentations at Collaborate. The first was a panel for the Fusion 'Soup to Nuts' day organised by Floyd Teter and I joined in via Skype. I had already postponed my Monday session to Thursday but really thought I would have to cancel. I made the decision that if I got out Tuesday I would go but if that didn't work I would cancel, although getting back to UK would be just as difficult.
Then just after I finished my Skype session at 1.30 am in Denmark, Dan announced his wife had seen a notice on the SAS website that if you had a booking on a CPH - ORD flight Thursday - Sunday, there was a bus leaving Copenhagen at 6am for.............. OSLO where they had diverted the ORD-CPH flight that day. Oslo would open for a few hours and only for flights North and West.
We had to pack very quickly, and normally I am a very organised packer but not on this occasion, my US only suitcase had been opened as well as my small Oslo case, and everything just got thrown in. I had to wake Mogens to get a taxi organised, I hate waking people when they are in a deep sleep, you never know how they might react, anyway it took a few attempts to get him to register what we wanted but then he was OK.
Part of me didn't want to leave, I had a lot of friends there and we were having an awesome time, but I also wanted to be at Collaborate, I had made a commitment and I don't like to let anyone down. Dan wanted desperately to get home, his family were worried and they missed him. It was also his son's first communion the next weekend and he desperately didn't want to miss that. I felt guilty about the others in the house, they all had reasons for wanting to get home quickly and no one was depending on me, and I love a good party.
We asked Mogens to organise a taxi as we didn't want someone who was tired or who had had a drink to drive us to the airport. Big mistake, Mogens would have stayed awake at the wheel better than our taxi driver. I am a very nervous passenger anyway and Dan did his best to keep the guy awake by tapping him on the shoulder and talking to him whilst keeping me from hysterics.
Again the airport was surreal, there were very few people and no one from SAS appeared until just before 5am. Dan was very insistent that we would not get on the bus unless they guaranteed us a seat on the plane. A 'very nice man' Peter assured us that we would be and all the correct details were taken from us, so we trusted him. He also told us that the bus would be luxury, and it was defiantly the best coach I have ever been on, which is good because it was 9 hours.
However our trust in Peter was false, when we arrived in Oslo airport there was a very big queue for check in, but luckily my Star Alliance Gold Card got us to the front of the queue only to be told they knew nothing about a coachload of people from Copenhagen. At that point I lost it, I didn't shout I basically burst into tears whilst still trying to be assertive. They told us we could be put on standby, but we knew the flight was overbooked, and that the airport was likely to close in the next hour or so. I asked for a supervisor and she took a bit of persuasion but eventually she gave us seats.Sadly there was worse to come. When we eventually took off there were about a dozen spare seats on the flight. Not enough people had seen the message. It seemed criminal with so many people desperate to get home. We flew over Iceland but there was nothing to see and I settled down to watch 'Up in the Air'.We arrived in Chicago and for once immigration was quick (not many flights arriving), and I collected my bags which were tagged to Vegas and handed them back to United. I then left Dan and went to my terminal to collect my boarding card. Oh how silly I was to think my issues were over. United informed me that I wasn't booked on the flight and that my ticket wasn't valid because .......... I was stuck in Europe! Luckily there were seats on the flight, and I was soon settled ready for the final leg of my journey to Vegas.
Now what else could go wrong? Well how about no luggage in Vegas? I don't like Vegas and have repeatedly said that I hated it from the moment I landed 3 years ago, I saw 100+ slot machines before I saw my luggage that time. Well this time I saw an awful lot more, it was about 18 hours before I got my luggage. I arrived at about midnight and had a quick drink before sleeping soundly. I do have to say that the Luxor were excellent and although I rang everyday with an update, they had every right to charge me for the full booking but they never, they only charged me for the days I stayed.
Tuesday I registered for Collaborate, wearing dirty clothes but a very fetching new Vegas T shirt, and spent the day a bit shell shocked and telling my story to everyone that asked. A few years back I was known as the 'elevator lady', now I am the 'volcano beater'.Was it worth it? Yes, I kept my commitment.
And do you know how to say Eyjafjallajokull? Well try this:
Sunday, 18 April 2010
OUG Norway - Spring Conference
I had the privilege of presenting at OUGN which is a wonderful conference held on a cruise ship between Oslo in Norway and Kiel in N Germany.
I had previously done a conference cruise between Helsinki and Stockholm and really enjoyed it.
There were about 250 people at the conference and 5 tracks. The facilities were great for a conference except internet access which was provided by satelitte. This required a 140,000 km round trip and the suggestion that your 'internet experience would be improved if you avoid websites with high graphics or videos'. I am not sure how they managed it technically but they were also able to block email. None of this would have mattered except whilst on the boat we found out about the Volcano and the effect on flights but we could not get any more details.
I gave 2 presentations, one on Fusion Applications and the technology behind it, and one on answering the questions that Fusion Applications raise. I also took part in a session on the Oracle ACE Program with Sten Vesterli and Dan Morgan.
Meals were sit down affairs which always make me jealous, there is just no where in the UK we can cater for our conference needs and provide catering like this. It is fantastic for networking.As you can see from the map the journey is awesome, and the highlight for me was going under The Great
Belt bridge
Wednesday, 14 April 2010
A Busy, Busy Week
Please don't read this post, if you fancy volunteering for UKOUG. It may put you off.
UKOUG has as its lifeblood its volunteers. How much we ask from our volunteers is 'how much do you have to give?'. This post is about just one week in my life as UKOUG.
Monday 23rd March - getting ready for a busy week. Met Lisa Dobson fellow UKOUG director and we talked about new awards we are looking at for TEBS. Very exciting, I will keep you updated.
Tuesday 24th March - board meeting, I hosted this at Fujitsu's head office in Baker Street London. I felt really proud.
Very busy agenda and first item, welcome new directors David Kurtz and Graham Spicer.
After the meeting, myself and Suzanne our Marketing Manager travelled to Heathrow to catch a flight to Dublin for the first of our Conference Series 2010, Ireland. It was a great day and some really good speakers. I was very pleased we were able to have fellow director Julian Dyke and Arnaud Benjacar from Irish Life who talked about the project that one him and his colleagues the Oracle Magazine, Oracle Fusion Middleware Architects of the Year Award for 2009. My great friend Nadia Bendjedou from Oracle came and spoke on R12 EBS and Tony Cassidy our Irish BI SIG leader gave an excellent presentation on BI Competency Centres.
The day started with a keynote from the Oracle Country Manager Paul O'Riordan who did an excellent job of explaining what the SUN acquisition meant to Oracle.
One thing I would love at the conference events in Birmingham is enough space to sit down for food. Here in Dublin we had what I would say was the best conference food I have even had.
Even before the conference finshed, Nadia and I rushed to the airport and caught a flight to Frankfurt and a quick taxi to Mainz for the DOAG or German Oracle User Group Applications' Conference. I was able to present on what Fusion Applications means to users and we had a great discussion about what UKOUG has done to be part of this process and answer a lot of questions they had.
The weather was beautiful and I would have loved to stay a few days more, I used to work in Germany in Berlin and the temptation was really there, but I had to rush back to London for my day job on the Friday. Friday afternoon there was also a working party meeting for the 'Interaction with Oracle' goup from the UKOUG Partner Forum. This was a planning meeting for the next Partner Forum itself and we spent a lot of time looking at how the Alliances Channel works in the UK. If you understand how something works, you can engage so much more successfully.
Friday evening and time for the flight home, 5 flights in 5 days. Then I spent a few hours on Saturday working through the submitted questions for Steve Miranda who is responsible for Fusion Applications Development.
Not a typical week for flying or UKOUG work but I do have something to do every day
UKOUG has as its lifeblood its volunteers. How much we ask from our volunteers is 'how much do you have to give?'. This post is about just one week in my life as UKOUG.
Monday 23rd March - getting ready for a busy week. Met Lisa Dobson fellow UKOUG director and we talked about new awards we are looking at for TEBS. Very exciting, I will keep you updated.
Tuesday 24th March - board meeting, I hosted this at Fujitsu's head office in Baker Street London. I felt really proud.
Very busy agenda and first item, welcome new directors David Kurtz and Graham Spicer.
After the meeting, myself and Suzanne our Marketing Manager travelled to Heathrow to catch a flight to Dublin for the first of our Conference Series 2010, Ireland. It was a great day and some really good speakers. I was very pleased we were able to have fellow director Julian Dyke and Arnaud Benjacar from Irish Life who talked about the project that one him and his colleagues the Oracle Magazine, Oracle Fusion Middleware Architects of the Year Award for 2009. My great friend Nadia Bendjedou from Oracle came and spoke on R12 EBS and Tony Cassidy our Irish BI SIG leader gave an excellent presentation on BI Competency Centres.The day started with a keynote from the Oracle Country Manager Paul O'Riordan who did an excellent job of explaining what the SUN acquisition meant to Oracle.
One thing I would love at the conference events in Birmingham is enough space to sit down for food. Here in Dublin we had what I would say was the best conference food I have even had.
Even before the conference finshed, Nadia and I rushed to the airport and caught a flight to Frankfurt and a quick taxi to Mainz for the DOAG or German Oracle User Group Applications' Conference. I was able to present on what Fusion Applications means to users and we had a great discussion about what UKOUG has done to be part of this process and answer a lot of questions they had.The weather was beautiful and I would have loved to stay a few days more, I used to work in Germany in Berlin and the temptation was really there, but I had to rush back to London for my day job on the Friday. Friday afternoon there was also a working party meeting for the 'Interaction with Oracle' goup from the UKOUG Partner Forum. This was a planning meeting for the next Partner Forum itself and we spent a lot of time looking at how the Alliances Channel works in the UK. If you understand how something works, you can engage so much more successfully.
Friday evening and time for the flight home, 5 flights in 5 days. Then I spent a few hours on Saturday working through the submitted questions for Steve Miranda who is responsible for Fusion Applications Development.
Not a typical week for flying or UKOUG work but I do have something to do every day
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.
Saturday, 27 March 2010
Funny How Things Turn Out
How I got into IT is quite funny, and I start by apologising to all those of you who studied hard, took exams and earned a computing degree; I got there by accident.
This was in the late 70's and jobs were not as difficult to find. I actually got 3 job offers and selected my first employer by throwing a dart. Crown Agents was a quasi government department based in London at No 4 Millbank, and I started work in the procurement department but soon moved to the International Banking department which I loved. Small deviation from the story but I had to send a lot of legal information by telex and the telex operator worked as a manager for a band, went to see them a few times and liked them, he left soon after and the band Squeeze made the big time.
Then I was successful in my Civil Service Exams and was offered promotion, however Crown Agents had changed their status by then and I could not have promotion and stay so I decided to move. Then you were given the opportunity to give preferences and I selected Ministry of Defence, London and Accounts. They sent me to Admiralty Buildings in Whitehall London for an interview and I really thought I was getting what I wanted. But it was 1981 and computers were just hitting mainstream and there was a real shortage of programmers (the old name for developers), and what I had really been sent for was a computer aptitude test.
I went to an awful lot of schools, my father was in the army and we travelled a lot. I did OK, my final school was a good grammar school in Surrey. I did OK in my exams at 16, my best subject being physics, but even that was not by design, I had a friend I sat with in class and it rubbed off on me, I should have sat with her for more subjects she is now CFO for one of UK's biggest banks. However I did not enjoy school and really wanted to leave home as well, which is very difficult if you are at school. So I left, the school were not impressed and sent me a letter saying I had wasted a grammar school education that someone less academically suited could have benefited from.
I thought I wanted to be a laboratory assistant in a pathology lab, but between deciding that and taking my exams they changed the qualifications. You needed Maths (we have a 'S' after Math in UK), English, Physics, Biology and Chemistry. I had 8 subjects but combined science rather than Biology and Chemistry as separate exams. Rather than stay at school I decided to go into the public sector where they would let me go to college part time and get those 2 exams.
This was in the late 70's and jobs were not as difficult to find. I actually got 3 job offers and selected my first employer by throwing a dart. Crown Agents was a quasi government department based in London at No 4 Millbank, and I started work in the procurement department but soon moved to the International Banking department which I loved. Small deviation from the story but I had to send a lot of legal information by telex and the telex operator worked as a manager for a band, went to see them a few times and liked them, he left soon after and the band Squeeze made the big time.Anyway I loved the job, and did get my extra two subjects, but by then was enjoying working in London and had left home. I stayed in the job for 3 years and moved into a tiny bedsit in central London. I carried on at college part time and did the next level of education in Business Studies which would lead to Institute of Banking exams eventually.
Then I was successful in my Civil Service Exams and was offered promotion, however Crown Agents had changed their status by then and I could not have promotion and stay so I decided to move. Then you were given the opportunity to give preferences and I selected Ministry of Defence, London and Accounts. They sent me to Admiralty Buildings in Whitehall London for an interview and I really thought I was getting what I wanted. But it was 1981 and computers were just hitting mainstream and there was a real shortage of programmers (the old name for developers), and what I had really been sent for was a computer aptitude test.I was asked to draw a flow chart for making a cup of tea, and I can't remember what I actually included but I did OK, apparently the more boxes the more analytical your mind. I have had a quick go in this picture but got fed up very quickly. I was offered a job as a trainee Cobol developer with the Ministry of Agriculture in Guildford which is a fair way out from London and at first was not impressed. I found the work OK but you worked in very defined silos and I never saw the final product. We used a methodology called Michael Jackson - I am not kidding, but programs worked first or second time, you only had one chance a day to make a change and that involved punching a card to change a line of code.
I am not actually as old as this makes me sound, remember I was only 19 and the government was quite far behind. In fact one of my jobs read data in from paper tape, it came from Nimrod Aircraft collecting data on fishing activity after what was then known as the Icelandic Cod Wars.
My first program created the layout for a booklet that was produced for farmers, showing 'fatstock' prices (what animals fetch at market). It was one of the first that included both upper and lower case so when I wanted to print it I had to go to the computer room and change the print band to a 96 character set. We used ICL 1904 machines which is quite ironic as I have now worked for them most of my life (ICL was later acquired by Fujitsu).
I hated the way we worked and I felt quite blinkered, so after a few years moved into Operations and was responsible for the shifts in the computer room. If any of you remember them I had all the power, I decided which job got run when and people were always very nice to me to get their job processed. A job consisted of a tin tray that contained a spring loaded divider that kept all the punch cards together, once the cards were fed into the computer and the job run, the output on that beautiful green paper was placed in the tin tray . What ever happened to all the trays?
By this time I had met my husband to be and he was also in the army and had just been posted to Berlin. The week he went there was a job advertised in Computer Weekly for an Analyst Programmer and I applied, and got the job. I loved every minute of it, and moved on from Cobol to FoxPro, I was responsible for the entire process and really had fun. The job was for the Military but I actually worked via ICL for the first time.
After 3 years and just before the wall came down we moved to another posting in Germany and I had my daughter. On returning to the UK (Gloucester) I got a temporary job working in an insurance company, I thought that I would be too outdated to go back to computers, they move on so quickly, but the local council, had a recruitment drive for women called 'Women Hold Up Half The Sky' and were looking for those like me who wanted to juggle an IT career with parenting. 6 months after I started we were outsourced, and a few months later that company was bought by ICL and I was back.
By now UNIX was prevalent and I trained in Ingres, it was good although lacked the Oracle 'Alter Table' command (how technical did that sentence sound?). I also did a lot more analysis and design. Life was good. After a while I was offered another promotion but that was nothing going in Gloucester, they wanted me to move nearer to London but we didn't want to, and then I was offered a role running the ICL Oracle Support Desk in Belfast. They needed someone who had a foot in both technical and functional camps,and I fitted the bill. My then husband was from N Ireland so we were actually quite pleased to move.
I ran support for 5 years during which customers moved from Oracle Financials 9.4.1 through to 11i, the move from character to smart client to what we have now. Then as my daughter moved to High School I moved into consultancy as a Financials Consultant implementing and updating systems. Over Christmas 1999 I did 9 upgrades in time for Y2K. I got really interested in reporting and put together our first discoverer training classes and even persuaded ICL to open a classroom here in N Ireland.
When Oracle started their acquisitions two things happened, one reporting really did become BI and I had the chance to build a capability from scratch for which I am very proud and Fusion Apps were conceived and you all know how much I look forward to working with them.
So that is how I ended up in IT. Perhaps next time I will tell you how I got into user groups.
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