Oops I've done it Again

Oops, another blog posting missed. I need to refer to this in a current posting so hence slotting this in now.

I live in Ireland, N Ireland near Larne and about 20 miles from Belfast so the annual Ireland OUG conference is very special to me, and as it happens I am also the UKOUG Councillor accountable for the Ireland Community.

The event is always held in March and this year at the new Convention Centre which is excellent. The office got a fantastic deal and everyone commented on how great it was, I hope they can pull off the same magic for 2013.

Our Oracle keynote was Jon Paul, who is the country lead for Ireland, and although I teased him about it being a little salesy it was great to hear about things happening in Ireland.

Oracle's Jon Paul

 

Alan Stewart

The presentations were excellent with a great mix of Oracle, Well known presenters from the ACE Program and most importantly local talent. The best session of the day went to Alan Stewart from NI Water who gave his warts and all story of their upgrade to EBS 12. Alan followed Nadia Bendjedou from Oracle who is the queen of EBS and she sat on through his session. One of his comments was on the number of patches post upgrade that were required and Nadia commented that it was much more for a bigger footprint, and accepted Oracle needed to make it easier. Nadia also conducted a masterclass on planning upgrades.

Ultan O’Brien and Richard Bingham from Oracle talked about Fusion and its support and there was also talks about what is available. I gave my ‘Should I upgrade or go straight to Fusion’ presentation and showed the Fusion TubeMap. 

Nadia and I

BI is really well mainstream in Ireland and there was an excellent stream plus a masterclass from Mark Rittman. I was particularly pleased with the middleware track, Grant Ronald from Oracle on ADF, along with ACE Directors Simon Haslam and Lonneke Dikmans to name just a few. Another ACE Director Roel Hartman looked after HTML and APEX. Server Tech coverage was also great but my favourite one here was the customer story from Deirdre O’Dowd – Department of Justice & Equality not only because it was a local customer presentation but because many years ago I worked with this team in Killarney.

 

Our wrap up keynote was Mogens Nørgaard a special favourite of the Irish community, and he talked about what he had learnt from Oracle. He was as open and controversial as ever but well received, even though he did present in his bath robe! Why? Because he could, however it was actually a reference to his current article in Oracle Scene.

So another great Irish Conference, thanks to all the speakers, the office especially Faye to the exhibitors and sponsors, and most of all to the delegates. See you next year.

P.S. another special thanks to Peak Indicators for the after event drinks.

Upgrade or Fusion? replaced by What is the value in the Upgrade?

Last year the top question I was asked was ‘Should I Upgrade or Wait for Fusion?’,    and I said “I am not pushing people to move to Fusion, I really do believe most should upgrade to R12, but I do always say you need to know all the information to make the right decision for your organisation.”

In a follow up posting ‘Chicken or Pasta?’ I talked again about the importance of due diligence; but the tide is turning and there is a new comment I am hearing more and more, “What is the value in the Upgrade?”

If you have ever attended one of my presentations were I have discussed this I am very clear, that your strategy has to be yours, and as long as it is built on knowing all the facts and you can articulate your decision then that is OK. I openly talk about why my organisation Fujitsu has stuck on 11i. Our business is to ‘Design, Build and Run IT systems; design and build are projects and run is a service. Oracle Project and Service Contracts do not work together well and service contracts do not process through projects which we use extensively and so we had to customise the system to suit us. Once the new functionality / ease of support / technology gain gives us enough additional value we will move.

I suggested last May in the posting above that Oracle waive the extended support uplift and they did inNovember (I don’t take full credit for that, but I did ask for it).

I always talk about the value of user groups for learning about the Oracle products and also for their influence on Oracle. OAUG recently published a survey of 327 customers and the facts are very scary, 61% had not upgraded to R12. There have been lots of commentary; Dennis Howlett is the most thorough. He talks about the threat to Oracle of third party suppliers and people simply walking away. I have presented on many options; Upgrade, Re-implement (with or without Business Accelerators), and Migrate to a shared service. I believe that there are these and more options and it is about risk, strategy and business needs. Please tell me you know what your organisation is doing, and if not, then talk to me.

In Support of ODTUG

A few weeks ago the funding program of the ACE Program changed. I think the changes are fair, and said so in this post, one problem was that the program had been so good, very few people had been unsuccessful in obtaining requested assistance that it was taken for granted by many.

The first event to be affected is KScope, the flagship event of ODTUG. Their agenda was set and the changes meant a lot of overseas speakers had to re-consider. Despite this, the final agenda is excellent, which is tribute to the strength of their speakers, and all attendees are in for a great week of education.

They also have Cary Millsap as their keynote speaker and we at UKOUG know just how special that is. KScope also has a reputation for a fantastic Community Day before the conference and amazing networking opportunities, some of which are still under wraps for this year, I wondered how can they top the fireworks on the Queen Mary last year? If you haven't registered for Kscope yet, why not?

UKOUG wants to support ODTUG and I was intending to be at KScope but my employer is having a big reorganisation and I want to be part of the exciting program here so have sadly had to say no,   but I am really pleased that our Vice President Lisa Dobson is able to represent UKOUG at KScope.

PLEASE CAN I HAVE YOUR VOTE

No point being polite, I want your vote.

UKOUG annual elections are now open  and I am up for election. I want so much to be returned to our new Council, and in turn to return as President.

Last year, I was very honoured to be asked by your board to be Chairman, but it wasn't a badge of honour. UKOUG had to change, and to change quickly. The new board proposed a radical change and I bought it to you the members and thank you for voting for that change. As a result I was the shortest lived Chairman ever in UKOUG but in the new structure was asked to be President.

How did I do? Well that is for you to judge; bringing in the change has been very hard, but also very fruitful and things are looking much better for the future. Change takes time but I believe we have turned the corner and are better prepared than ever to move with the times and continue to Serve The Oracle Community.

I believe I can represent all communities as one, in my day job I work with Oracle, through the hardware (some Sun Hardware is Fujitsu / Oracle partnership), technology and applications. I have run our support and BI teams, been an EBS implementation Consultant and EBS user, have worked mainly in the Public Sector and my main role is understanding what Oracle does and ensuring Fujitsu understands and helps their customers make the most of their investments. They give me unbelievable support to work with UKOUG.

I love presenting, because my biggest motivation is sharing knowledge. I am very proud to be an ACE Director, to have received awards for bridging the technology / applications divide and for User Group Work.

I believe that the privilege I have being close to what Oracle is doing should be shared with everybody. So if you have a UKOUG vote please vote for me, and if your company does but not you, please ask the main contact to vote for me.

Each membership has 5 votes. I want one of them but please use the other 4 wisely. 

As well as Peter Robson and I who are up for re-election, 20 other people have nominated themselves.  I would like to specifically mention Alan Bell, Fiona Martin, Kate Forbes, Jon Mead, Terry Potter and Colin Terry; all who have stepped up as volunteers co-opted to the Council in the last year. Many others have been volunteers in their respective Communities already. Read through ALL the nominations an select people who you think will represent you on the Council, look at their record of participation in UKOUG and what they stand for.

Conferences and the OTN ACE Program

The airwaves have been busy with people talking about the changes in the ACE Director funding program. To be fair no one has criticised the program just the timing and the need by many to pull out of ODTUG's KSCOPE 2012 as this is the first event to be subject to the changes.

I am a great believer in the program and have blogged many times, to me it is the recognition by my peers of my abilty and most of all the joy I get from sharing through presenting. The funding from OTN has made it easier for me to do this, and just a week ago I talked about that in my latest posting.

Just days after that posting, OTN asked to speak to me as President of UKOUG. They have to spread their reduced budget around more ACE Directors and more events, and had had to review their rules. The premise is to bring the speakers to as many people as possible who would not otherwise benefit. They therefore decided to stop funding the most established and successful user group conferences from the start of their next financial year. These conferences, UKOUG, Collaborate, RMOUG and KSCOPE were successful and well attended before the ACE program started and I am confident will continue to attract the best around.

As President of UKOUG, I want to send my support to KSCOPE, I understand how hard this is for you with this timing, but you are a fantastic conference and you will continue to grow in strength. The changes had to start with the Oracle financial year and being first hit will hurt. Everyone who can will still attend and those who have to pull out will help you to find alternative speakers either with new content or allowing those who can attend to give theirs.

Yes of course as President of UKOUG I am sad that a few of our speakers will not be able to make it as often as they have recently, but I am also grateful that OTN helped to bring them to us to appreciate. By being on this list OTN are recognising us publically as being amongst the best, and they are not walking away from UKOUG, they are still sponsoring our Inspiring Presenter Awards, encouraging all speakers and especially the new ones; we will still have instalfests and  I want to publically say thank them for what OTN has and continues to do for users.

Additionally OTN have revised rules about what can be applied for and the criteria to be applied. This clarity is I think very important, the generosity in the past meant very few requests were turned down and people had become very confident of funding.

As an ACE Director who has benefited from the funding, I am a little sad it is being reduced, but I have been fortunate enough to have an incredibly supportive employer as well, to have given me the time to speak. It is very important that OTN are keeping funding for emerging conferences where the community have restricted to access to non Oracle speakers, and for the pre OOW briefings where we have open conversations with the executives responsible for what Oracle are producing.

As an ACE Director I am still incredibly proud to be part of this program and actually see that this may take away from some of the unfounded negativity I have heard where some people think it is about being an Oracle puppet in exchange for funding. It is not easy to gain ACE status, it is a privilege and recognition of recipients knowledge and sharing back to the Oracle Community.

A Very Special RMOUG

I love RMOUG, it is a very similar user group to UKOUG although a lot smaller. It is a regional group covering all Oracle products and it is loved by both the speakers and the delegates.

Carolyne Fryc (RMOUG VP) and me

Something else I love about RMOUG is that every year some of the speakers go upto the mountains afterwards to enjoy a few days and recharge batteries. This year was even more special as it was my 50th birthday, which I shared with Tim Gorman (RMOUG President) and Peter Sharman.

The event runs, Tuesday through Thursday and Tuesday (the big day) includes a speakers event in the Winkoop Brewery, not a bad way to celebrate, but earlier that day I also did a Stranahan's Whiskey Tour thanks to Alex Gorbachev (I have great friends).

My presentation was on the Wednesday and I had a great audience, I gave my 'What Do Fusion Applications tell you about your own organisation?' talk and love the discipline of needing a white paper at RMOUG. I didn't attend many presentations, but I did watch Chris Ostrowski who like me works for Fujitsu, and made an effort to catch up with Tim Dexter who I haven't see for a few years. I also met up with another colleague based in Denver.

RMOUG is a fantastic conference and I hope to be there again next year. Alongside UKOUG and a few other really well established conferences there will be no travel funded for RMOUG by the ACE Program so airmiles and frequent sleeper miles will be required, but well worth it.

Having Fun in Utah

I love speaking and love being asked to do so, often creating impossible itineraries to do so, but this was an opportunity I couldn't say no to.

February means RMOUG and that will be my next posting, but one of my speaker friends Mike Swing, emailed me and asked if I could speak at his user group UTOUG in Salt Lake City on the day before. I loved the idea but asked why did they want me to talk on Fusion when Floyd Teter who now has his hands dirty from real Fusion Apps implementations, lives in Salt Lake City, having moved from the sunny climates of California just a few months ago? I think they didn't know Floyd was there and so the exciting opportunity of us both presenting came about.

Floyd's Blog Posting

The plan was simple, I would arrive in Denver (for RMOUG) as planned Saturday evening, but instead of spending the weekend in the city I would fly out to Salt Lake City Sunday morning and back again after the event Monday. Simples - except United decided to keep my luggage in Chicago, and although it made it to Denver Sunday evening I did not want it chasing me around America, so Sunday consisted of a quick shopping session, before Floyd and I could plan our talk (well prepared).

On the day it was brilliant, it is not often you get 2 1/2 hours to talk about your favourite topic with one of your favourite people. We decided what we wanted to talk about, created a large slide pack and then planned to keep interrupting each other. It was such fun, and the banter was great, although a third person got in on the act; the event was held in a teaching hospital and whenever a baby was born a tune was played on the tannoy, good day for babies 13th February.

We got great questions and a lot of questions, so I think it went well, now we are considering repeating it at Collaborate.