My OOW14 - Oracle Applications User Experience Day

The now traditional OAUX training day was the Wednesday before OOW, and this year was opened up to a few select partners in addition to the user advocates of which I am one.

It was a great day with a full room at the conference centre in Redwood Shores and a lot of the UX team there to share their expertise. The day kicked off with Jeremy Ashley their VP talking about their work and setting the scene for the workshop.

They went through all the UX messages which I know are the major differentiator with Cloud (previously known as Fusion) Applications. There were breakout groups for the different families HCM, ERP, CX and Extending.

Extending is really important to me as in my new role I will be responsible for the move by Certus into PaaS. Amazing here is their Rapid Development Kit and we will certainly be using this with their help.

There was some talk about the UX of Fusion being made available to traditional apps but at this stage no program name was given, later in the week we got to know this was Alta. Press Release

In the afternoon Jake Kuramoto and Jeremy did a session on Shinny Things - wearables and other new technologies they are looking at, and my favourite quote from Jake "google glass is so last year" - this looks like fun and it is, but there is also a very serious side to this as Oracle needs to understand where this technology can be used in the enterprise. One area I am very interested in is the use of voice especially in mobile and the Oracle agreement with Nuance (Dragon software) makes this very real.

Jake's team have also created a wearable for OOW which I got to try out at their showcase event. You pre registered your interest priorities in the five areas they were showcasing and the wearable lit up the colour of the stand to visit first. Then once you waved the wristband in front of a device on the stand the colour changed to match your next priority. It was a bit of fun for this event but imagine being able to select online where in a shopping mall or even just a department store you want to visit and a wearable tell you where to go. GPS for shopping - brilliant.

The pitch back participants plus Ultan and Misha from UX team.

At the end of the day they had a pitch back competition, and I was part of it along with Gustavo Gonzalez Figueroa , Lonneke Dikmans, Floyd Teter and Sten Vesterli. We all got a prize but the overall winner for the undisclosed objective of BS bingo was the big man himself, Floyd. Always a gentleman the picture shows his humility in victory. But seriously Floyd along with the rest of us really believe in the UX work at Oracle and the value it has to the development if their applications.

The day then ended with a small reception but it wasn't the end of UX for OOW, it got a mention on several keynotes especially Larry's first one, but let them tell you their story.

I also got to help out in one of the UX sessions during OOW.

Thanks again to everyone in UX especially Misha for a great day.


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My OOW14 - User Groups at OOW

First I have to say well done Oracle, the User Group Pavilion at Oracle Open World has found the right home, please keep it there next year.

User groups are all about community and having them next to OTN, Oracle's own community, they were easy to find, prominent and proved excellent for conversations about user groups around the world.

EOUC had held a competition to get a new logo as it really needed updating and it was great to see it on our stand:

I have for many years attended the IOUC meetings on behalf of UKOUG but this year they moved to just before OOW, and it clashed with my ACE Director commitments; so no IOUC for me and anyway UKOUG were well represented by James Haslam and Fiona Martin our Member Advocate Chair.

As I didn't attend perhaps I have no place commenting but actually I personally was disappointed with the agenda. The reason for moving it to OOW was to ensure as many groups as possible could attend, and when it was in January some groups had to choice just one visit to San Francisco. I understand that, many years ago when the IOUC was relaunched it was after OOW for the same reason but people were simply too tired, and this time they did plan it for the Thursday and Friday before.

However to me the big values of the IOUC were as I mentioned in a post several years ago:

 

1. Networking with other groups

Whenever you hold a usergroup meeting you will achieve this, and OOW itself with the Pavilion is a natural place for leaders to meet between sessions.

2. Sharing best practice

I understand there was plenty of sharing and I am sorry I missed the Java user group Devoxx and their session on Devoxx4kids

 

The Devoxx for Kids Initiative is amazing and they had a full house at their event in San Francisco and even got a mention in Larry's Java keynote

Fiona on our behalf talked about our Application Innovation Initiative where we are having SIGS and events focusing on new technologies and applications for existing applications users.

 3. Oracle Product Managers giving briefings

 

These didn't happen, simply because the meeting was not at Oracle HQ and most product managers were busy in their run up to OOW. What I really liked about having these in January was that you had had time to understand the messages from OOW and start conversations about them with your members.

 

4. Oracle Marketing sharing their plans for following year

The plans for the rest of this year were shared but January coincided with Oracle having just completed plans for the next financial year.

5. Cross user group initiatives
These had all but died off a few years back which is a real pity, the Support Group did a lot to ensure groups had a way too talk to Oracle on general matters and the work the Product Development Community did in the development of Fusion Apps is one of my personal highlights in my Oracle life.

So I would rather they moved back to January, but things die if you don't keep trying to improve them, so Oracle were right to try.

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My OOW14 - EOUC 12 Short talks on 12c

In my OOW14 Objectives post I talked about the planned 12 Short Talks on 12c
session I was hosting for the EOUC. As I said usergroups have their own dedicated content on the Sunday of OOW, and the EOUC had a stream with presenters as voted by the various EMEA user groups.

The idea of the session was 12 presentations all about the 12c database and was proposed by Ralf Koelling from the DOAG and I volunteered to host. I knew it would be a big job, 12 of the best speakers all with their own way of preparing for events, so I wasn't optimistic I would be able to control them all.

Douwe Pieter van den Bos included an article on this session in his OOW OTech Magazine edition (page 23) and OTN's Bob Rhubart created this blog and podcast which I really recommend as you can Hear Jonathan Lewis discussing table dancing.

I sent out a PowerPoint template including an intro slide that showed a picture of Jonathan Lewis, gave them a slide number limit, and a deadline for sending to me so I could get it spliced into a single deck.

Twelve professional presenters with an unbelievable track record, but follow instructions....no
Three (in addition to Jonathan) sent them back still with Jonathan's picture, another three used their own template including one with a different resolution, others completely ignored the number guideline and Alex Nuijten decided to be white on black slides and some didn't turn up until after we arrived in San Francisco.

The original line up was      

      1. Upgrading to 12c: What Will It Break? Jonathan Lewis, Oracle ACE Director, OakTable
      2. The Optimizer in 12c. Christian Antognini, SOUG, Oracle ACE Director, OakTable
      3. Data Pump Enhancements in 12c. Osama Mustafa, MEOUG, Oracle ACE
      4. Pattern Matching in 12c. Gurcan Orhan, TROUG, Oracle ACE Director
      5. PL/SQL Security Enhancements in 12c. Alex Nuijten, OGH, Oracle ACE Director
      6. Data Redaction in 12c. Oded Raz, ilOUG, Oracle ACE Director
      7. A Case for the Multitenant Architecture, Even with a Single PDB. Tim Hall, UKOUG, Oracle ACE Director, OakTable
      8. How Does Oracle SQL Developer Manage Multitenancy? Ami Aharonovich, ilOUG, Oracle ACE
     9. Multitenancy: Impact on SaaS.   Kashif Manzoor, MEOUG, Oracle ACE
    10. Oracle Multitenant in Standard Edition: (How) Does This Work?    Julian Dontcheff, OUGF, Oracle ACE Director
    11. What Features Will 12c Offer Traditional Oracle Apps?  Bjoern Rost, DOAG, Oracle ACE Director
    12. In-Memory—Enables Us To?  Dimitry Volkov, RUOUG, Oracle ACE

Unfortunately Kashif Manzoor was taken ill the day before flying out to OOW and had to withdraw, I did try and find a replacement but with no luck, so I had to do it, more on that later.

Dimitry Vilkov had to pull out a few weeks before OOW but promised us slides and a video. However when the video turned up it was over 9 minutes long and the whole idea was 5 minutes each! So I have included his slides and video in the download but bought in my secret back up speaker to do the In Memory on the day! Yes I got SQLMaria Maria Colgan to come speak, after all she comes from Ireland originally so defiantly an EMEA speaker.

I jiggled the agenda slightly so Maria could go earlier than planned as she had a keynote to get ready for, and then I moved the Impact on SaaS until just before Bjoern as actually the benefits are very similar technically. But you know me, not very technical so I talked about the business benefits and how actually Oracle's Apps strategy is behind a lot of the R&D in all the technology including the database.

These changes in 12c make running a cloud easier and cheaper and a better customer experience, which ultimately keeps the cost down. so as the world starts to adopt Cloud Applications 12c ensures Oracle are able to provide the best platform at any level.

But going back to the overall session, it was split over two timeslots each with 45 minutes. I thought it would take a while for switch-overs so did not think we would have much spare time, but I had underestimated their professionalism.

The crowd was building and we were almost full as we started.

I introduced the session and Milena and Ralf were my time keepers. Thanks to Graham Wood who lent us a 2nd projector so we could have the clock show up on the wall, unfortunately Graham couldn't attend the session and I spent 3 days carting it around trying to catch up with him, luckily it was light.

Jonathan went first (the podcast explains why) and finished on exactly 5 minutes, the bar was set. Then the others just got on with it and we had almost 20 minutes for Q&A after the first 6. I was worried about that but actually we could have had more, people were so engaged.

Then we had a lesson in Big Data, despite having told Oracle both in advance and on the day that both sessions were combined, everyone, yes everyone had to march out, queue up and be rescanned to enter the room for the 2nd half. Apparently they wouldn't have the data they need if we didn't.

Again after the 2nd half we had plenty of time for more Q&A and the event finished on a real high.

I have had so much feedback, people who want to do it again, so let us have your ideas as to what topic to do next.

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My OOW14 - Speaking

As well as the EOUC 12 short talks on 12c that I hosted (and spoke in at the last moment) I had 2 other speaking sessions and a customer lunch.
 
I was included in the AppAdvantage Lunch – the only partner present not sponsoring but I was there in my capacity as guest author on their blog and joined in the discussion raising the topic of importance of dialogue between business and IT.  



Rick & I Selfie

This gave me the idea for my OTN tech tip video.

Then later in the week I was to join Rick Beers from the AppAdvantage team in a panel session on  technology assisted deployments and upgrades. Unfortunately on the day I was the only panellist but I loved it the interaction was great, Rick had a slide set and I gave my opinion and ideas on each topic.  

 


On Thursday I was the demo-babe for the First Time UX experience session, a bit nerve wracking as my new boss Tim Warner attended. It was not a bad turn out for the end of the conference and an important message as there are still a lot of people who don't know what to expect. I was also able to share real life experience from users.

I didn't have a session accepted for OOW this year and yet still ended up with several. Thanks to the different Oracle programs who reached out to me and I loved being part of yet another amazing OOW.

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My OOW14 - As A partner

This was my first OOW with Certus Solutions who I joined just 3 weeks before. Certus really 'get' the value of being an ACE in the Oracle World and support all that I do, in return I want them to have the benefits.

Certus are Oracle Cloud Application experts and one of my first objectives is to help move us into PaaS for extensions where additional functionality can be added.

One of the reasons I talked to Certus in the first place was I already knew Tim Warner as he has been involved in User Experience  and is co-chair for the HCM SIG at UKOUG. So it is not surprising that Certus are committed to producing not just great quality PaaS applications but ones that match the UX design principles of the Cloud Applications themselves.

So my mission for OOW was to find out everything I needed to know about PaaS including the timelines for availability. I also needed to meet up with the EMEA SOA Community lead Jürgen Kress, The UX team, Development and Partner Enablement, all who had reached out to help us since we made our intention known.

I talked in my ACE Director blog about having access not only to Product Management but also to peers in different disciplines, so I was able to talk to them about our approach. As we embark on this journey I will also be adding another column to the Oracle AppAdvantage blog exploring the different stages.

Not all the components we need for the full UX are available yet as PaaS but not too far off on the roadmap. We have an approach agreed and that includes selecting a development partner which is next on the to-do list. Certus is the best at what they do, implement Cloud Applications and we in turn will select the best partner for what we want, cost effective but UX compliant extensions.

The meetings went really well and next steps agreed, so no time to rest up after OOW we have a long way to go but its coming together and I'm very excited.

I made a quick OPN video on PaaS and my colleagues Tim Warner and Rob English made one on recent Certus projects.

 


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My OOW14 - Couldn't say it better Myself - Analysts

A full time analyst / commentator has something I don't have - time. So as I part of my summary of OOW here are a few already published I like:

 Dennis Howlett who I greatly admire - filmed me at Collaborate earlier this year talking about Cloud Applications and he took time to talk to me again at OOW. His summary of the event quotes me well.

 Ray Wang of Constellation Research who I have an affiliation with and am a judge for their annual awards - made a great video blog review of the event with his team.

You can watch all the keynotes and general sessions and download the presentations of the others
https://www.oracle.com/openworld/live/on-demand/index.html

OOW was all about Cloud, underlines I made the right choice joining Certus as they only operate in the Cloud for Fusion.

I spent time talking with other analysts I have met over the years and it is great to validate my thoughts against the experts.

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My OOW14 - Just for Fun - My Oracle Family

I try to keep my blog for my thoughts, both about what I do and what I think in the Oracle space (I have a private blog for random things), I keep Facebook for fun, my criteria for friends being those I would have in my home, and twitter I TRY to keep for business comments.

 

But the Oracle world is a community and you can't separate clearly the different parts, I have so many friends around the world I have met or travelled with and they are just like Family.

So social media doesn't always work out the way  I intend especially when tagged by friends on twitter who have different use cases. I don't mind normally but it does sometimes confuse people, especially in reference to my Oracle family.

To recap, last year Tim Hall aka oracle-base decided to call Graham Wood of the Real World Performance team, his dad. Lots of fun around this concept.

Then in April of this year whilst on the Norwegian usergroup conference cruise, Tim and I made our way to the restaurant for dinner, we were early and the only person in there was the captain. So unless we wanted to get married there was nothing for us at this time, so we thought 'why not'. Most importantly we didn't really or legally tie the knot but Tim blogged we had married, and Tim's blog has thousands of readers.

The following month I went to Collaborate and sat next to Graham at the ACE dinner. I tweeted a photo of us saying 'having dinner with the new father in law' and also posted it to Facebook. Interestingly real relatives were getting in touch to see if I had something to tell them.

Tim loves a windup and quickly started to mention it frequently and to be honest I quite liked the fun. Heli from Finland who wanted to be included so we decided to adopt her. Our family was complete:

My Oracle Husband - MOH - Tim Hall

My Oracle Father-in-law - MOFIL - Graham Wood

 

My Oracle Daughter - MOD - Heli Helskyaho

In Bulgaria three of us (no dad) were reunited and it was great to all be together again.

Tim keeps the story alive and planning started for a family dinner and official photograph for OOW and it happened on the Wednesday before.

 

Me, Tim, Heli and Graham

During the ACE Director briefings Tim kept tweeting about it (remember I want twitter to be professional) so when he started his series of interviews with.... Blogs, I with the help of Michelle Malcher returned the favour.

Love the Craic (as they say in N Ireland) but need to add that when introducing my real daughter to Doug Burns he asked if she was real or part of my Oracle family.

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