2018 OOW - Certus part of Accenture

When OOW call for papers was on, I worked for Certus but just 3 weeks before the event we became part of Accenture. This was announced in May but as staff we didn't move until 1st October. Tim Warner and I were the only Certus people attending.

This meant a new logo as we are keeping the brand.

On the Sunday I went to my first Accenture meeting. This was an Alliance meeting and it was a great introduction into how they work with Oracle around the world. It was coincidence that OOW was in our first few weeks but the opportunity to meet the global team in person was invaluable and a major theme for me throughout the week.

Monday morning there was a kick off breakfast at 0630 for the over 200 Accenture people at OOW, and Tim and I were made so welcome by everyone. However we were asked to the stage to talk about the Home Office project. We were on stage with 5 other projects and as we finished we were told we would need to dance before we could leave. I can only say it was a ‘Theresa May’ moment for me. Obviously, this was soon on social media. 

Accenture were so welcoming and had a number of gifts of ties and scarfs made, which I brought back to UK (after buying bigger luggage). With their permission I have cut one scarf to make another cloud cushion for the office.

Simon and Matt preparing for session

Tuesday, I had a bit part in the SOA Cloud session based on a Skanska HCM implementation. Skanska's Matt Gilbride talked about their innovative way to approach a global SaaS implementation. Product Manager Scott Haaland  and fellow ACE director and our partner eProseed’s Simon Haslam did the technical bit. 

There were lots of questions as to SOA Cloud versus Integration Cloud, and as ever the answer is ‘it depends’, it depends on what you do today, and what you have already invested in. Very rarely does an organisation start with a completely blank page.

Back at Certus we are working on a VBCS PoC with Oracle product Management so it was good to meet with John Ceccarelli  in person, and discus next steps. I will post about this PoC soon.

I did a periscope session with Accenture on the Tuesday, promoting our chatbot session. It was great fun, I love these quick videos, such a simple way to get a message across. Even better the background was made just for me.

The stand was always busy, Accenture launched MyConcerto to help customers understand our offerings and there was lots of interest.

Last year there were no Oracle sessions on the Thursday, just workshops, but this year sessions went on till 2pm. Tim and I had our chatbot session in this slot. The very last of the conference.  However, my normal promise of English chocolate did the trick, we had a great audience. I love this session, and have given it many times since Collaborate. 

There is always the challenge of the WIFI, I am using HCM Cloud, APIs, Mobile and Facebook Messenger, so I need good WIFI. The advantage of being the last session was the conference WIFI was being shared amongst much fewer delegates and it all ran well.

John Cafolla from HCM Development arrived half way through the session, which always has a weird effect on me. When development give me positive feedback I feel great, but I always worry they will tell me I have it all wrong. He liked it.

This was a great way to finish the conference. Thankyou to everyone in Accenture for making us so welcome. In fact during OOW they announced another acquisition of Daz Systems and I spent a lot of time at the two stands in the exhibition talking to Daz employees about the process and our experience. 

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2018 OOW - ACE Director

The Oracle ACE Director briefings were on Saturday and they were really good. Whit they covered everything from database to development and each of them talked about the relevance to apps, so I was very happy. I love these sessions, not my normal topics, but I think it is important that we all have a wider understanding than our narrow field of expertise. 

Sunday evening, we had our community dinner out at Fisherman’s wharf. My favourite part of this is the photograph.  <>

Noel fixing the stand

The ACE program is part of the groundbreakers community and we all had shifts in the developer’s hub they ran at CodeOne.

They had blockchain beer and escape rooms and lots of fun.

Michelle and I did our main shift at the 360 video stand. This stand was inspired by the Matrix bullet scene. 60 cameras controlled with raspberry-pis in a circular rig that each take a photo at the same time. They are uploaded to the Integration Cloud and processed using Jet routines and returned as a very clever little video. Apparently I sounded quite technical when explaining this to delegates although I have to refute that allegation.

Obviously, Michelle and I had a go.

My best superwomen attempt.

Then Michelle even managed to get Duke involved without damaging the setup.

However our shift was cut short when an over excited delegate fell backwards and knocked the rig.  Over half the cameras were disconnected and they all had to be recalibrated manually, a 2-hour setup job..

If you had a go all videos can be found here 

There were other stands showing off technology and I loved the badges that Noel Portugal championed. Noel and his team were amazing, setting up the technology behind the stands and keeping them running for 3 days. I am exhausted just thinking about how hard they worked.

We also had photographs taken that we can use for conference bio’s etc. I love mine what do you think?

The EMEA ACEs had yet another excellent short talks session.

Thank you again to the program for making my OOW happen.

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2018 OOW - Fun in the City

I managed to get a lift into the city with the groundbreaker ambassadors who had their briefing at HQ.  Then it was 7 nights in a hotel. 

If I stay more than 5 nights anywhere (including home) I like to have flowers, and when I arrived there were beautiful flowers in my room from my friend Dina Blaschczok.

I shared my room with Michelle Malcher and we had an amazing room on the 28^thfloor with an awesome view, San Francisco is such a beautiful city. This year we moved from the traditional Hilton in Union Square to Parc 55, another Hilton hotel just one block away, but it was actually 10 minutes closer to the conference centre.

We also (well Roel) found a new restaurant, it looked not much more than a café from the outside but once in, it opened up to a beautiful building with amazing food. So good we ate there twice.

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2018 OOW - Before the party starts

In the past there have been briefing sessions at Redwood Shores (Oracle HQ) in the days leading up to OOW. These few days are of more value to me than the actual conference, and although the ACE briefing was in town this time on Saturday I still had a Partner Advisory Council on the Friday and had arranged a number of meetings for the Thursday.

It doesn't matter how many times I go to Redwood Shores I never tire of the beauty of the campus, just as I never tire of San Francisco.

Thursday, I had meetings with Hillel Cooperman, the new leader for Applications’ UX or user experience. This is an area very important to me and it was good to hear what he is concentrating on and that he looks forward to working with the ACE program in the future.

  

I ran into Lancy Silveira whilst visiting Hillel and it was really interesting to discuss what we are doing with customers and VBCS and what they are looking at within the apps. I can’t share details, but I like the direction of travel. In fact, later in the week I did some UX testing on some of the ideas and it only excited me more for the future.

Friday was the Cloud Platform Partner Advisory Council. I had a number of Accenture colleagues there, so we were able to cover most of the multiple streams. I attended integration and apps development. Most interesting to me was the changes to chatbots, or rather, the enhancements to a full digital assistant solution.

The council was split across the conference and visitor centres at HQ and I found myself in the Derek Williams Room. Derek was a friend and helped me a lot in Japan when I worked for Fujitsu. This is a wonderful way to honour him and I did reach out and ask if they could add a photo and explanation as to why the room is named as such.

I also popped out for a meeting with Steve Miranda, the EVP for Applications. I have had the privilege of working with Steve since the first code was cut for Fusion and it is always good to see how far it has come. I went to see him in his office and on the windowsill, he has a large photo of the Fusion Nation team taken at the product launch. I am in that photo.

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2018 OOW - My Oracle Open World

I love Open World, the vibe and the energy. 2018 was no different. I said I was going to be busy, but even I under estimated this year’s OOW. 

My Travel to OOW was quite a simple journey for me, flight to Belfast and then onto San Francisco. 

My neighbour on the long flight did think he had a right to half of my foot well, luckily it wasn’t too small a space and I sit quite still but it was really annoying. 

I got a lot of work done and cleared the inbox, so I was ready to take on Open World.

I arrived early evening on the Wednesday and met up with Lori Lorusso from the Groundbreakers’ Community and we had a great evening by the pool with a bottle of wine. Now that is what I call great community leadership. 

Individual posts:

• Before the party starts
• Fun in the City
• ACE Director
• Certus part of Accenture
• #PaaS4SaaS
• Usergroups
• WIT
• Off Piste Fun
• Final Thoughts
• EMEA ACEs Short Talks

The travel back to London was great, I made British Airways Gold with just a week to spare. Anyone who travels BA not in business class will appreciate what an achievement that is. I don’t mind economy travel, if I get my choice of seat and get treated well on the ground. The big value of airline status is how they look after you when things go wrong. So that is me sorted for the next 12 months.

my nan 99 years young

I arrived in London about 10.30am where my daughter met me, rushed me to our hotel, where I had a shower and went straight to my grandmother’s 99^thbirthday party. I couldn’t miss that

I finally came home yesterday and spent today getting through 4 loads of washing! That’s it untill the next year – except there is a London Oracle Open World in January!

Oracle Open World - My Annual Jamboree!

Normally before I travel to Oracle Open World, I would post what I intend to get up to there; and it would always start with how I wear so many hats ...

This year is no different, I am just as busy, in fact so much so, I’ve now arrived in San Francisco and only now posting my plans.

This year I’ve been employee of Accenture for just 20 days. I’m still learning all of their processes and systems, but OOW is a great opportunity to meet many of the global team here. That alone could keep me busy all week.

I have no specific user group duties this year, as I’ve finished my time on the UKOUG board, but I am still hosting the EMEA ACEs session.  There is no user group Sunday this year and their sessions are spread amongst the week and our session will be on Tuesday, Oct 23, 03:45 PM - 04:30 PM | Moscone West - Room 3001. Normally this session is about the database but this year we are trying something slightly different and will be talking about mistakes and what you learn from them. I even have an example of my own!

I made a video with Bob Rhubart highlighting my actual sessions for OOW, worth checking it out.

Then on Thursday, yes Thursday there are general sessions this year right up until late. So Thursday Oct 25, 01:00 PM - 01:45 PM | Moscone South - Room 157, I have my other session with my colleague Tim Warner where we will show you how we took last years messages about chatbots and unpicked the marketing and put it back together again with the help of Product Management.   A chatbot working with HCM.  

I am also making a guest appearance had a session with the SOA Cloud Product Management team who are talking to our customers Skanska about the very the innovative way they approached their  HCM implementation. The integration work was carried out by our partners eProseed and Simon Haslam from there will be explaining how it was done.  Tuesday, Oct 23, 05:45 PM - 06:30 PM | Moscone West - Room 2002

As an ACE Director, this year we have our briefings on Saturday in the city, which is a deviation from our normal HQ briefings the week before OOW. I’m really looking forward to hearing all the messages before the main event. I did still arrive a few days early and I had a series of meetings at Redwood Shores today where I met the new leader for you UX Hillel Cooperman. 

Tomorrow I am at a Partner advisory board for PaaS, looking at how this is working with SaaS as this is becoming more and more prevalent in my day job. Then move into the city for the main event.

Alongside all of the Accenture meetings that I’ll be attending, there are a lot of receptions and customer events so hope to meet many of the global operations teams. I’m particularly excited about the opportunity to attend some of the Enkitech events, they too are part of Accenture and my friends there have been very helpful as I try and understand all the corporate policies.

If I find time I want to go to #OTW always fun.

Because this years OOW is Monday to Thursday, the normal free time on Saturday is gone and the off piste events have in the main gone, but hopefully only this time. For the first time in several years I will have no OOW triathlon. I do hope that I will at least get one walk over the bridge, but we’re not swimming this year which is very sad and I would just don’t have time to do the cycle ride. It’s sad but let’s hope that next year those things are back.

Sunday is the Partner Day, and then Monday it is OOW proper. I fly home on Friday landing back in London just-in-time for my grandmother’s 99th birthday party. 

It's going to be a long, long week but a good one!

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ODC Appreciation Day : Perseverance

Perseverance is a skill that you need when your career is an IT. My problem is that I struggle with the sheer amount of time that technology eats up.

I’ve been known to put off getting a new laptop and even phone because of the amount of time it takes to set it all up and migrate everything across. Even if you use some clever cloud backup, chances are you have to re-enter all the passwords etc!

However sometimes Perseverance is really worthwhile.
The ACE program gives me access to a very generous cloud account to play with Oracle technology and whilst I’m not the most technical in the program there are things that I want to give a go especially in the #Paas4SaaS area. Last year at Oracle Open World there was lots about chatbots and I came back and try it all out with the SaaS applications only to find that those new PaaS for mobile and chatbot modules were not in my trial account. I know that Jennifer tried all sorts of things to try and get that working but in the end had to create me a second trial.

Just as I got the second trial, Oracle combined the products into a single product OMCe and that was not in my trial, however  this time things were getting easier and I think there was a better route to talk to the provisioning folks. 

Then I still didn’t get what exactly what I needed and I was close to giving up! However another key benefit of the ACE Program is the access to product management (thanks again Grant and Rohit) and they helped me with a demo system, while we tried to get my account sorted. This meant I was able to get somewhere with my quest and present on how chatbots work with SaaS. Then just when I thought I was there, it changed again because autonomous mobile cloud would remove the need for me to manage the stack which as a non-technical person was an overhead I didn’t need and also I would stop me consuming my credits too quickly.

By this time that was the ability to simply raise an SR with MOS,  this is fantastic, self service, so  I asked for autonomous mobile and I didn’t actually take very long, but you guessed it, the product has changed again. Now it has been separated into two components, ODA and OMC, but on this occasion I raised the SR and the change to my provision in my account was made within 24 hours. So sometimes perseverance pays off, and sometimes what’s really slow for you, means that the others that come behind you have a much smoother life. 

Thanks again ODC for this benefit and for sticking with me during my fustration and all your support. And if you are interested in the topic of chatbots with SaaS, come along to my OOW session on the Thursday lunchtime.