OOW17 - Oracle Developer Community formerly OTN

A few weeks before #OOW17 - Oracle Technology Network changed it's name to the Oracle Developer Community. #DevCommunity 

The ACE Program is part of this relaunched community and a nice new name means a nice new jacket. Thank you, and loving the shape of the lady version.

Community is a really important part of the Oracle outreach, and there is something for all of us. Take part, it is such fun.

During #OOW17 the Developer Lounge was the place to catch up with friends, have fun, see technology in action and learn more about the community.

Thanks to all the #DevCommunity team, especially Jennifer and Lori.

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2017OOW - User Experience

Another of my now traditions pre #OOW is the UX training at HQ. The UX advocates within the ACE program come together and learn all that is new and product direction. Since the first talks of Fusion this has been baked in and to me it IS what makes the applications SELL.

The most interesting discussions of the day were around chatbots.  Oracle has a great video to show use this, which to me is a bit weird but I was misunderstood when I made a comment, and have a separate post on my luddite thinking.

Last year when we were there they were building a smartoffice and this year we got to benefit from this. A few people were remote but the system made us all feel like they were part of it. You just had to remember you were also being seen by them.

To me, what was important is that the key principle of simplicity is still central to everything they do in the UX team.

I am reusing an old presentation over the next few months, about how Fusion or Cloud Applications hang together, and although in every area the technology and UX have moved on, the design principles remain.

Then the developer side of UX is about making all that research available, The Rapid Design Kits, help when you are designing or writing your own applications. We have used them in ADF with our development partners eProseed. They are also mainstream for mobile, and now being made available for both Jet and Chatbots alongside the relevant development cloud offerings; and at no extra cost.

Both Lucas and Tim have written more technical posts on the day so sharing them covers off the hard bits.

Then during #OOW17 they had their exchange. It was a bit far from the main Moscone so they put on transport, which I have to say scared the life out of me once it moved off into the traffic! Anyway I met up with Tim (oraclebase) at the event. He snuck into a UX training day last year, as his employer is implementing cloud applications and although not directly involved he wanted to learn more. The UX team fell in love with him and now he is very much part of the extended UX Ace Team.

They had demo stands to show chatbots, blockchain, AI and the new RDKs.

Still smiling, we had't moved at this point

Then Wednesday I joined a UX Advisory board luncheon. A chance to speak to users who benefit from an ongoing relationship to the team. Jeremy Ashley, the GVP who heads up UX includes outreach in everything his team does.

And if I am ever forgiven for my comment, I hope to be back again soon.

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Barriers to Adoption should not stop Innovation

During a session on chatbots at the Oracle UX event I made a comment that I think was taken incorrectly and as we were pushed for time I didn't have the opportunity to explain what I really meant.

The examples that was given was one of an individual using an  intelligent personal assistant such as Alexa to ask how much vacation do I have and the response being taken from HCM Cloud

I said that I had just had a salesman give me this example and I had replied I didn't want a non work related interaction having access to my information. The reaction I got from the UX team made me feel like a complete Neanderthal but I'm not; or am I?


Actually I've been here before, when the Fusion Expenses mobile app first appeared, the voice recognition was quite poor and in fact we joked that unless you spoke just like George Bush it didn't understand you anyway. I did however demo the app in many conferences around the world and I suppose if I'm honest, when doing this part of the presentation I said it was a bit of a gimmick, I didn't see myself ever using it. Roll on 4 years and guess what is really funny? I am actually creating this blog using voice recognition on my iPhone and don't even think about it today.

Anyway I was in India for OTN Yathra and I had a room full of people watching attentively to my presentation and I said I didn't think I'd ever use voice recognition in the app and one of them said they had an exact use case.  He worked for GE and they have engineers who have to service electricity windmills, they need to go up to the tower and they can use a barcode and GPS to know exactly which one they are at. However when they climb to the top and they do their inspection they then have to complete a service inspection report. Being able to enter transactional data into their enterprise application using voice recognition would revolutionise their work pattern. Their whole team agreed this was wonderful.

He was right, this was a real use case that an enterprise customer needed and there was I laughing at what I saw was a gimmick because I couldn't actually see me in the use case that had been presented - sitting in the back of a taxi and saying 'taxi ten dollars'.

So I guess then I should've learnt that the problem with adoption is the disruption concept doesn't seem personal until the use cases talked about are real to us, and then we can see the proper adoption capabilities.

It isn't that long ago that we were laughing at Mark Rittman for trying to make his Smarthouse enabled and he had the well documented problems with making a cup of tea. People then said, 'why don't you just switch it on yourself?' Now these intelligent personal assistants are common place. In this UX session I was one of only a couple who did not have something like an amazon echo in their home today.

Perhaps if I spent more than three days a fortnight (2 weeks) in my house I might consider it.

Anyway back to the session. The use case being given was that of you using a chatbot to interrogate HCM, it seemed foreign to me, I didn't feel comfortable with the concept and that is the barrier to adoption. If an organisation doesn't see the use cases being relevant to them they won't use it. Well not today. But as but I said adoption becomes mainstream, all of a sudden it doesn't seem so foreign.

Anyway that's what I was trying to say but we had so much to cover the discussion was cut short and then all everybody remembered was that I was the philistine in the corner. I tweeted that and when Jeremy Ashley created his story  of UX at #OOW17, the only tweet from me was this:



And then on Twitter I had a response from Grant Ronald telling me about the fact that this technology is great that people are adopting it everywhere, so even in San Francisco I was getting the hard life.

I'm going to have to think more cleverly and say what I need to contribute most distinctly.

What is important is that Oracle invest a lot of R & D, not just in UX but in these new technologies. Jake and his team in the AppsLab have a mandate to understand emerging technologies, use case and PoCs within the enterprise.

Oh and guess what we are now working on back at the office?

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2017OOW - Off Piste (having fun)

I love that OOW gives me the opportunity to have fun alongside the hectic time table. Much of that means very, very early mornings.

So traditionally there is the Bridge Run (well I only walk it, hence an even earlier start) and then the swim. I didn't cycle this year as I did Javaone4Kids, but that in its self was really fun.

So the Bridge Run on the Sunday morning was a beautiful sunrise. I walked with Alex, Tim and my friend Julie. Such a beautiful morning. The plan is we finish about the same time as the runners. I know I am cheating but I still love it.

Such a wonderful place to wonder at the amazing world in which we live.

On the Monday morning is the swim. Part of the tradition here is just how risqué can Bjoern's swimsuit be. No need to talk about the details.  

Then after the swim we go back into town on the cable car. This year I was sporting my new 'Ask Tom' towel, I have plans for this towel, but that is for another blog.

There were several dinners I attended but one worth a mention was the Irish Oracle Dinner at North Beach. I am sure we were in the mortuary, although I'm told it is really an abattoir. 

The food was lovely and the wine was amazing. Thank you Dublin. 

Wednesday evening is the Appreciation Party and like last year it was at AT&T Park. I like it there we can walk. Thanks to ODC (OTN) who had a reserved area for us. The acts were Ellie Goulding and The Chainsmokers. Ellie was good, and there was quite a singalong to the Fifty Shades numbers. However The Chainsmokers were a bit young for me and I (and many others) left early, but it was still a great time.

Tim, Roel, Michelle, Alex, Julie, Me, Peggy

Breakfast on Thursday was a great time to catch up with even more friends, great to have the time to relax.

The weekend after #OOW17 was Fleet Week, the highlight of it being the airshow. I didn't stay long enough to see that but did see some spectacular practice runs Thursday and Friday.

Julie and I went down to Dolphin Swimming Club (were we do our swim) to watch the Blue Angels fly up by the Bridge. Then we got even more entertainment when a complete idiot bought his yacht into the beach. The Park Rangers told him he could not do so, and he simply shrugged his shoulders and continued. Well he continued until he got the yacht stuck on a sandbar. All the swimmers tried to help him and then the police arrived, he thought to help him but actually they came to remove 'him' and left the boat behind. 

Friday morning, I had a very quite lunch at the Cheesecake Factory, what a view, what a beautiful meal (blue cheese, pear and walnut flatbread), a skinny margarita and yet again a view of the airshow rehearsal. 

San Francisco is a beautiful city, and I love this annual pilgrimage. I always stay one extra night as by the end of #OOW I am functioning on pure adrenalin and the thought of siting still on a plane for 12 hours, is not going to be fun. So a little bit of me time does well.

 Goodbye SFO , hopefully I'll be back next year.

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2017OOW - Certus Solutions and Oracle Partner

It was a great #OOW17 for Certus and kicked off with a great award. We knew before we left from the UK but were sworn to secrecy.

We won the Oracle Excellence Award for HCM Cloud in EMEA, and when it was presented to us at the Partner Event on the Sunday night, Bas Diepen said it was for not only our customer successes but also our reputation for 'on time and on budget'.

Sunday was the Oracle Partner Events and they announced their new Cloud Excellence Implementer program and identified the fact that we were one of the first to embrace this. This is a program that recognises customer success rather than sales, so very suited to Certus.

There were four of us from Certus at #OOW17, and we had lots of things to cover, lots of meetings to pursue our strategy around the different solutions we offer, and this all culminated with our customer case study session with DHL.

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2017OOW - UKOUG & User Groups in General

UKOUG was represented at #OOW17 in force. As explained in a recent news article we were sending both Paul Fitton our President and James Jeynes our Executive Director.

Both Paul and  James were new to #OOW17 and I am sure they were surprised at the sheer scale of it all. They both had very full agendas and I know they wanted to see lots of sessions between meetings, but I haven't caught up with them post UKOUG and am not sure how recovered they are yet!

Paul did a daily blog which is one excellent insight into his week and well worth the read.

Sun - blog.fittons.co.uk/oow17-day-1/ Mon - blog.fittons.co.uk/oow17-day-2/ Tue - blog.fittons.co.uk/oow17-day-3/ Wed - blog.fittons.co.uk/oow17-day-4/

I did see them both at the User Group luncheon on Monday and then again Monday evening at the UKOUG Meetup. This was an initiative Brendan Tierney ran with and apart from being in the darkest pub in all San Francisco it was a great idea and one we need to do again, a quick chance for us all to say hallo.

Whilst Paul and James attended on behalf of UKOUG, Brendan and I were at #OOW17 as part of the ACE Program and Fiona Martin was there in her role with her employer. I didn't stay long, I had somewhere else to go but I did just remember to get a photograph of the 5 directors all together (Ed our Finance Director wasn't at OOW; he was at home looking after the money).

Also at #OOW17 was Kerry Stuart, our Head of Sales who was very busy making new contacts for conference, both long term exhibitor leads and for delegates to this year's conferences. All except me took turns on the user group stands while I as traditional facilitated the EOUC Short Talks.

I did have a chance to represent us at a User Group Focus group where Oracle were looking for feedback on some initiatives. 

We have all come back with actions, information, questions and ideas; plenty to keep us all busy. And of course all those #OOW17 messages to ensure we have covered in the conference agendas.

I heard one great story from Jeremy Ashley, GVP of User Experience who told us how over several UKOUG conferences he had meet with people from one Public Sector organisations and was now working much closer with them. This is what user groups are about, influencing Oracle. What Jeremy's team does will benefit all users.

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ODC Appreciation Day : Visual Builder Cloud Service

Yep, it's cloud, but it lets me extend cloud apps and initially that was a no-no. It is also low code, so you don't need to be technical, so why wouldn't I like it?

Well I wish they would keep the name, it was called Application Builder Cloud Services and that meant it was ABCS and I wrote about it, lots.

First Thoughts

After #OOW16

Article in UKOUG Oracle Scene 64

I've presented on it several times as well, and to me all SaaS users should at least be looking at it.

Perhaps if you haven't seen it yet you will come to my session at UKOUG

Extending you HCM SaaS is as simple as ABC(s)

I just wish they hadn't changed the name, need to change my session name




Happy Oracle Developer Community Appreciation Day