The Changing face of UKOUG

I wanted to write a blog about the upcoming Applications and Technical conferences but thought I really needed to step back first and talk about UKOUG.

The most read posting on my blog is the one that explains the relationship between Oracle and User Groups, and I find myself referring to it a lot. There have been a lot of changes in UKOUG over the past two years and I keep being asked about them so thought I would try and explain them as I see them. There is information on the website about how it is today but this is more about the journey.

THESE ARE MY THOUGHTS NOT AN OFFICIAL UKOUG BLOG

 

UKOUG is a not for profit organisation, but unlike most usergroups we have our own staff, we do not outsource the running of the membership and delivery of our offering, events etc. This means we are also a business.

 

Originally we had a simple board structure. This was fine; the board were elected by the members and were able to balance the legal running of the company with representing members. Life was much simpler then, Oracle was the database, forms and reports and E Business Suite. There we many, many companies who wanted to sponsor and exhibit at conferences. Companies who provided solutions around what Oracle offered.  

Then Oracle started to change, they went shopping, over 70+ companies in the last 8 years. This has consolidated the market, what Oracle covers is much, much wider and there are actually less partners to work with and also over this period we have moved into a global economy where everyone is tightening their belts. The world of social also means that much of what usergroups did traditionally is now available freely.  This meant the traditional board had to represent a now very diverse community and run a business that was much more difficult and on a much bigger scale. The reality was we spent all our time running the company at the expense of truly being engaged with our members.

 

So in 2011 we worked on how we could address this, we knew it had to change. In the good times the usergroup had through good financial management built up a reserve for lean times, which now we needed but it won’t last for ever; we needed to evolve and change, and stay relevant to the members. The proposal that was accepted was to have a council that elected representatives sat on, that worked on what members wanted, and three of the council joining an executive of three on a new, much smaller board that would be the legal requirement directing UKOUG. The executive was made up of 3 people looking after HR, Finance and Commercial. They would work with our full time staff to run the business.

 

After a year it was obvious this was not the right model either. The council also struggled to fairly represent the members and was too big to efficiently drive initiatives forward as one and the office felt they now had to answer to both the executive and the council. The board found it difficult to bring the two sides together and a number of volunteers resigned. It wasn’t a complete disaster, there were some great examples of working groups led by council members that were able to deliver and the executive were making inroads into reversing financial fortunes and membership numbers. 

We didn’t have any problem with finding volunteers who wanted to be elected to help, but what we did find was that we didn’t have people who had both the skills and the time to carry out some of the roles needed. The council needed to elect a president, one who could not only represent us with Oracle but also influence them on behalf of our members. This led to us co-opting a volunteer to be our President who has those skills; someone Oracle will listen to.

We needed to further evolve the 2011 change, keep what worked and change what didn’t. The council knew this was going to be ‘turkeys voting for Christmas’ but one thing we all share is a passion for the community and no one wanted UKOUG to fail. The 2013 evolution, was voted on by members at the AGM, and this time passed by a higher majority than in 2011.

So what has changed? 

Council has gone and we have given community representation to the people who really know our members, our volunteers; the SIG leaders and their deputies. The business will be run by a CEO, James Haslam. And the staff will answer to him and will be accountable and empowered to deliver what is needed. 

The board is made up of the CEO - James, Graham Spicer – Commercial and David Rowntree – Finance and then balanced with 3 representing members; David Warburton-Broadhurst our President, Fiona Martin - Member Chair and myself as an additional elected member. These roles are being carefully scoped by an Appointments Group led by Liz Penny with Carl Dudley responsible for ensuring those who put themselves forward have the skills we need and the time to devote to UKOUG. They are looking at things like roles and responsibilities for all board and appointments group roles  and ensuring we have both a succession plans and most importantly a President Elect; we don’t want to need to co-opt, we want transparency and voted for officers on the board.

We will gather member and community input by running all our initiatives in the form of projects. Each project will have a board sponsor, and office Project Manager and representative volunteers working as part of the working group, much as Apps 2013 and Tech 2013 have done this year. Members will be more involved.

This new model should reduce overheads and bureaucracy from Council and Executive, empower James and the Office, but most importantly allow interested volunteers to step up and engage around projects which are important to them, without having to commit to a full 3 year elected position.

 

Working groups have to make decisions that are right for UKOUG which may not suit every single member or stakeholder but we can only make the best decision when all stakeholders are part of those groups. So please if you don’t like the direction or individual decisions don’t criticise, get involved and be part of the answer. 

Personally I have devoted 14 years to UKOUG and my motivation is not to be constantly moaned at by unhappy people; I want users of Oracle technology that I believe in to get more out of their investment, learn from others and have a say in its direction. To do that we need a UKOUG that can deliver with the resources at its disposal, both financial and more importantly the community.
 
And let’s start with really successful Apps and Tech conferences coming very soon

ACE Down Under

I was in Australia in March with my day job at Fujitsu but also had the opportunity to speak for both Quest at a SIG and an ODTUG Seriously Practical BI/EPM event whilst I was in town. Daniel Strassberg from Quest told me afterwards that the member feedback was poor and that they had said I needed to practice the presentation more. I can be pretty paranoid and was actually really disappointed till the next day he said what I really needed to do was to come back in August to their annual conference and give it again. Stupid me, how long have I known Daniel? I should have known better, and yes I came back.

QUEST and AUSOUG normally have a single InSync conference in Australia and I have spoken at it several times before, but this year there was a different format. QUEST would have their InFocus Event in Melbourne on the Thursday and Friday 15/16 August and AUSOUG would continue with the InSync name and have a conference in each state capital. Sydney was the same two days as InFocus and Melbourne for them would be the following Monday and Tuesday. There were the other states but two far apart for me to consider. The plan was I would fly into Melbourne, do the first day of InFocus, fly straight after to Sydney and do masterclass on Fusion on the Friday, and then return to Melbourne to do more traditional sessions at InSync there. 

I decided to go out a day early and do a ‘tourist’ day from Melbourne. This is my 4^th trip, including a few times for Fujitsu but I have never had the time to see anything except the AbbA experience exhibition when it was there! Don’t ask! I wanted to do the Great Ocean Road, but before that I spent a lovely day with Bambi Price from ODTUG and her husband; you make so many friends in User Groups but you have to take the time to nurture those friendships between conferences which are just too busy. 

The actual tour was a full 12 hours and over 600km but it was magnificent. The geology of the coastline is unbelievable and I did the very touristy thing of having a helicopter ride over the Apostle Rock formations. 

Unfortunately I hadn’t realised that winter in Victoria, unlike winter in South Africa last month, is cold, and windy. The helicopter was petrifying whilst over land. I held on so tight my hand hurt and my breathing was so laboured the pilot asked me to switch of the microphone on my headset. Once over the ocean it was fine and just awesome. I also experienced something I had never seen before; upside down waterfalls, where the wind was so strong it blew the water back up the cliffs. 

The QUEST conference was in the Convention Centre and I stayed at the Hilton Hotel there. I must give them a shout out as I got another suite upgrade, having had one as an upgrade when I was over in March as well (I could get used to this, unfortunately my other hotels in Australia were not as nice). User groups have got to constantly look for new ideas to become relevant and at this event I think QUEST got it right. They worked hard at the community aspect of their members. They even had a small display of merchandise that members produce, so people could visualise the companies that use JDE; Underwear, Stockcar memorabilia, bedding, electrical items and wine that I will come back to, just a few of the items. The idea was simply to display them but many were then raffled off at the end of the event.

JDE has great processes for ‘Vine to Glass’ the Wine Industry, and their current president Graham Baker is from Yalumba Wines, (other wines are available, and in fact when Oracle first obtained JDE through their PeopleSoft acquisition the president was John Brown from Brown Brothers Wine). The conference this year was kicked off by Jane Ferrari who is their storyteller. Jane was very funny, she started by saying she had no IT ability at all but that her job was to go out tell the Yalumba story and create ‘fortresses’ of people who believed in their wine, and would continue to talk about it after she had gone. That is what the ACE program is about, Oracle encourages the ACEs to be storytellers, tell what they have learnt about the Oracle products and the way they have used them. Take those stories out to the communities at conferences, through blogs etc and leave people talking about it. 

At the end of the day Jane also held a wine masterclass which was heaven, and without knowing why it she had everyone in stitches. Remember Jane knows knowing about IT and especially Oracle, but she started by saying. “I must start every story with a disclaimer about drinking sensibly, but now I have mentioned it we can move on”, her very own “safe harbor slide”, not very different to Oracle at all!

I did repeat the presentation I gave in March on what Fusion tells Organisations today, and hopefully the feedback will be better this time Daniel. I also talked about consolidation and cloud, but all too soon it was time to say goodbye and catch my plane to Sydney.  I could have stayed for the 2nd day as AUSOUG cancelled their Sydney event, but the flights were already booked and too expensive to change. However all was not lost, Yury Velikanov has been organising some MeetUps for a while and got all those who were in the same situation to talk about Cloud. It was about 20 people in a room in a bar in Sydney and it was brilliant. The questions were brilliant. As well as Yury from Pythian there was James Antony from Red Stack, Anton Els from DBVisit and a local user another of the organisers Nuno Pinto Do Souto .

Yury Velikanov also collected us at an unmentionable hour to take us to

watch the sunrise over Sydney, which he had done for me back in March as well. This time I was more prepared with suitable shoes and a warm jumper Bambi lent me that advertised ODTUG (Great product placing). Then we went to the now legendary coffee shop for breakfast.

After the MeetUp I had chance to catch up with the other Bambi, B2 - Bambi Staverly and her husband for a beautiful meal under the Sydney Harbour Bridge. This Bambi used to be the Oracle liaison for usergroups in ASIAPAC. The usergroup community really is one big family, one I am honoured to be part off. 

On the Saturday I had another opportunity to go diving from Manly. I hoped secretly to see a shark and I did but not what I expected, this was a baby Port Jackson Shark that had been injured by linked fishing hooks. We spent a while trying to free it to no avail and eventually it was taken up to a dive boat were the hooks were removed with pliers, and the shark returned to the sea and hopefully a complete recovery. 

InSync cancelled a few of their state conferences and as a user group leader I know these decisions are not taken lightly but it does affect all stakeholders, and I hope it doesn’t hurt the community in the long run and that they recover quickly. But the conference in Melbourne went ahead; it had affected some speakers so those who were there were asked to do a few more sessions. I hope the delegates were happy with the final agenda, and although some of my sessions were small those attending had lots of questions so I think it was well received. I did a four hour masterclass on all things Fusion, based loosely on the duet Floyd Teter and I did in Utah last year. Afterwards I was exhausted and slept a full 12 hours afterwards even missing out on the first of two evenings with Penny Cookson, her husband and Tony Jambu. I also managed to catch up with Francisco Munoz Alveraz for about 10 minutes. Did I tell you just how great the people are you meet in this role? On the second day I did a standard presentation on Tailoring Fusion and then a Q&A about EBS v Fusion, which is a great way for me as a user group leader to understand what users are thinking.

All too soon and it was over but not before I attended a session on Oracle’s Applications Strategy – Cloud and On Premise from Doug Hughes VP Applications Development which was really good at talking about the changing shifts in customer expectations about IT deployment.

So a great time down under but time to go.

Feeling Brave - SAOUG

I have been honoured to speak at Oracle related events all around the world but last year when in Latin America, after a conversation with Tim Hall (OracleBase), decided that this year I would try and do something in Africa, as being an EMEA ACE, Africa is one third of my own region. The initial idea was to see if we could arrange an OTN Africa Tour, these tours are the best value for both Oracle and for the speakers who have the opportunity to speak several times in a shorter period of time, however there are very few engaged user groups in Africa – unless you know differently…

The SAOUG usergroup in South Africa is not only engaged but also an innovative user group that even has a loyalty scheme for members that gives benefits from companies who are also members.

So I approached SAOUG and was delighted to find they have a vibrant applications community and a large annual conference. But did I really want to go to South Africa?

You hear so many awful things about South Africa, how dangerous it is and I am not a very brave person. I could have just arrived, stayed in hotel, done the conference and left, but that is not me. I really do believe that travel is still a privilege and I don’t count airports and room service as the pluses in that list! I want to see the place and have done the open topped double decker sightseeing bus in most cities I have visited, but perhaps that kind of trip in down town Johannesburg isn’t the best idea. However another really amazing thing about being a speaker is the community and the friends you make. It doesn’t matter where you go there is someone you know. In South Africa I knew Marius Wentworth the SAOUG Chairman I had met him in the IOUC and I also knew Dina, a user who I had met at UKOUG through a mutual friend in 2008, and we had met again since at both OOW and earlier this year at Miracle Denmark. Dina invited me to stay with her family and promised me it would be safe. So the big adventure was on.

Dina took me to Pretoria to look at museums and learn about South African history, we also visited an animal reserve to ensure I saw the animals as they are fed there. Then we spent two days in Pilanesberg NationalPark and I did see the animals in their real environment as nature intended. WOW. My real love in life is geology and after the conference Dina took me for a few days on a Waterfall tour and I was in heaven. The scenery, rocks and waterfalls were breathtaking, and the name of one place ‘God’s Window’ summed it all up, and my favourite place? Bourke’s Luck Potholes.

But back to SAOUG and the conference. I presented on Mobile ADF and how Fusion UX Design Patterns could help, this was something I have been working on with the ADF Team and the UX Advocates group, and Sue Duncan and I did a joint presentation in New Orleans at KScope. Really great audience, most of whom were about to start their mobile journey and desperate for any advice on where to start. My second presentation was on BI & EPM in Fusion Apps, thanks again to Mark Rittman (whose book had pride of place on the bookstall in the conference), for encouraging me to talk about this. SAOUG was the 5^th time I had given this presentation and I love the technical audience and their questions. Both my sessions were full and I could have carried on answering questions for hours, so was really pleased when the EBS SIG asked if I would do a Q&A in their final session of the conference.

A conference for me as a speaker needs 4 things:

• My own sessions to be well received - check
• Feel as if I have made a difference to at least one user and I know by the questions both in and out of my sessions that certainly was the case here
• Made new friends – check
• Learn something new myself

So what did I learn? 

• I sat in a customer session where they had deployed Fusion Compensation in a SaaS model. This moved to a very interesting debate on the choice of cloud. Something I think we will hear a lot more about and I know I am involved in a meetup on this topic in Sydney next week.   
• SAOUG had quite a lot of Oracle keynotes and where they were presented by passionate people they were excellent. I especially liked the one by the country leader who talked about innovation in South Africa. 
• They also had two incredible motivational speakers. The first one was a traditional inspiring achiever Peter Van Kets and his story of his challenges were certainly engaging, especially he and his team mates selflessness to help the British team finish their race to the South Pole 
• The second speaker Gavin Sharples was phenomenal but a little too Politically Incorrect for the UK. It is interesting that is a country known for other inequality, sexism is not an issue. Just one of the parallels I saw between South Africa and my own home in N Ireland. Gavin’s presentation entertained, shocked and left behind an audience all motivated to work better at both commercial and family relationships. I have signed up to his newsletter and just hope the filters don’t censor it.

Would I go to SAOUG again? You bet, and next time I intend to take a few friends along and just maybe 'will go in Summer'.

Don't give up on UKOUG

Twitter is currently full of comments about UKOUG and it is very difficult to explain what I think in 140 characters so I'm writing this blog to try and explain.

I've worked with UKOUG on either its board or the council for the last 12 years and I'm passionate about what UKOUG stands for; ‘Serving the Oracle Community’. The Community is anybody touched by Oracle, and we reach much of that community, and UKOUG's new President David Warburton-Broadhurst is simply aiming to widen that reach.

To me UKOUG need to do 5 things:

1.   Reach our target community
2.   Represent our community
3.   Deliver to our community
4.   Influence Oracle
5.   Manage a successful business

When I joined the user group in 2001, The Community was very simply defined; UKOUG were able to bring in more income than UKOUG required running the events UKOUG delivered.

Then things started to change, the community grew, the Oracle acquisition strategy meant that the community contained a lot of different Interest groups, a lot more people who want content from UKOUG and then came the economic downturn.

I believe David can not only help us with Reach but also with Influence and give us his expertise in managing a business.

 

Our Target Community

One of the areas that UKOUG have always wanted but never really been able to reach was that the top executives in our user organisations. A few years back UKOUG introduced our Business & Strategy sessions at the main conference and although this has given us more senior manager content it hasn't elevated as much as UKOUG would like. If you look at other user groups around the world they all have executive tracks.

Many years ago Ronan and I went to CIO connect and talked about UKOUG and all of the people that were in the room said that their organisations were members who sent their staff they didn't think there was any content for them and that's what David is saying; his company is a member of UKOUG, he pays for his IT people to attend UKOUG events. He must thinks there is great value for them as he continues to renew that membership.

But UKOUG had bigger problems, reaching higher within our existing membership is one thing, but UKOUG do not have all Oracle users, and as people tightened their belts, some of our existing members had dropped off.

 

Represent our Community

Unlike most other user groups UKOUG employ our own staff; UKOUG do not use a 3^rd party. This makes us the envy of many but it also means UKOUG have a business to run, which I will come back to later, but just to say that as the business became more complicated the old board was spending more time on that and not enough representing the community. That was why UKOUG reduced the size of the board, created the Executive to work with the office and the Council to work with the Community.

You vote for the Council and I hope UKOUG are working with you closer.  
 

 

Deliver to our community

 

I hope the Council is working with the various communities to ensure UKOUG are delivering what you want.  UKOUG have a number of task groups to help deliver this and UKOUG have also reached out to other volunteers to be part of these.  This is the most important area and UKOUG will always find room for improvement and why it is so important to get your feedback and for volunteers to get involved.

UKOUG have outgrown Birmingham something else that really annoys me. In the UK we have such a lack of places that provide what UKOUG need, a place that can have a large plenary session, a large number of breakouts and a big enough exhibition area and UKOUG cannot continue in Birmingham. UKOUG have split the conference so that we can grow our reach, and can grow across all of the things that are part of what Oracle offers. I'm really sad that UKOUG are no longer having a single conference but that there is no way around it. I am so jealous of the user groups in the States and in other countries where their conference centres are plentiful, large and in many cases they are discounted by the local authority or by the local hospitality industry, that doesn't happen in the UK, we have to pay top dollar.

Our conferences will be fun, I am leading the group putting together the Applications conference and Fiona is pulling together the Technology conference; they are looking good but please, please don't walk away from UKOUG, give it a chance. 

 

Influence Oracle

 

UKOUG need to be able to influence Oracle, this is one of the most important reasons for being independent, to help shape the way that their products are going in the future.

From a feature point of view in the technology UKOUG are doing okay and can show this is a good examples in Technology, either through relationships between Special Interest Groups and Oracle Product Management, and UKOUG have many speakers who we count amongst our volunteers who participate in beta testing of technology.

At an applications level UKOUG had great traction in the early days of Fusion Applications but we need more in the wider applications communities. Working with Oracle at a global level UKOUG recently encouraged members to get involved in the Customer Advisory Panel.

Oracle wants to know what organisations need in their products, what will get them to increase their investment. They have Strategy Advisory Boards and CIO events, but UKOUG need to be part of this, to get the executive participation from Oracle and to get sponsorship and participation from the partners that work in this area. I’ve already said the big user groups who cover Applications have successful Executive programs and they do have more of an input into applications. 

 

Manage a successful business

 

I have left this to last but a hard reality is that UKOUG have to balance the books. Like it or not but UKOUG has to run a businesses and it has become more and more complicated because our revenue streams are not matching what it is that UKOUG want to deliver to our members and therefore UKOUG have to do some really strategic work to turn that around.

Our income comes from membership and sales of sponsorship and exhibition. Membership was dropping but over the last year UKOUG have reversed that trend but we need more organisations involved.

Sales have been hit badly, the economic pressures on organisations has hit their budgets which now need to cover many more streams of marketing, such as social media etc. The number of partners has also reduced, mainly through acquisition. In order to retain their marketing budget they have to show a return on their investment at the time, and the hard truth is that if they feel if they're not reaching the people who have got the money in an organisation and then not able to directly attribute any opportunities.

I have seen on Twitter that people have said it's the technical people influence and they are  absolutely that's right,  I seriously believe we wouldn't be buying Engineered Systems if we weren't listening to the Tanel, Doug and Alex’s of this world. However that does not give you a lead on the day of exhibiting, and that is what is being measured.

UKOUG through good management in the past has healthy reserves but we haven't managed to bring in enough revenue for the last three years and cannot continue to do that and so we need to make the hard decisions in our business just like your organisations have had to do and I hope David will help us with that.

So is David the right person for the job? I hope so, I really hope so and he looks to have the skills that UKOUG need to the business acumen to help our organisation grow and return to profitability; he also has the links in order to get us to step up and reach out to his peers and bring in the right additional content so UKOUG can influence Oracle at that top level.  His first interview with the press was not a great start but the emphasis is completely and utterly wrong, I think the second one is a lot better. But give him a chance, in this world we see the same news story reported as many different ways as there are articles, don’t write him off after just two.

UKOUG don't always get these things right first time, we did make major changes two years ago for the right reasons and they've done some very positive things, UKOUG need to continue to change, we need to be agile and do what is necessary to bring UKOUG not only is be a successful content giver, influence effectively but also be successful financially.

UKOUG needs our members to standby us, to support us and to help us; if you think of something else we need to do or if you think we're doing something wrong then please come and tell us. Twitter is a great way to give instant feedback but a quick way to bring us down and I really don't think UKOUG deserve that today. Please give UKOUG and David a chance.

Finally I also take this opportunity to ask for your help and support for the conferences this year. If I didn’t think it would work I would have left UKOUG. Yes, I have not left UKOUG I am still an elected and active member of the council.

Just to reiterate, this is Debra Lilley’s thoughts.  I'm so passionate about UKOUG I don't want it to die, we will get there and we will have most wonderful conferences and I look forward to meeting you there.