This was my first year at OOW without being a usergroup leader, although I am still very much involved.
UKOUG did have a meetup but I wasn’t able to attend, hope it was fun.
This year the usergroup area was in the centre of the exhibition which is such an improvement on other years. This year there were no EOUC people manning the stand but I did install a UKOUG virtual assistant! Actually, I just left one of the really clever vidipack on the stand. You can also see the content of it here.
Over the years I have made many friends in the community and OOW is always a great time to catch up. Communities in Oracle overlap a lot, many are in the ACE program or are partners. Much of what I do, is because of the camaraderie. I am blessed.
I also got the chance to make a video for the Sangam conference in India where I will be immediately after apps18. If you look carefully you can see UKOUG's Brendan in the background.
Of course, I did my bit for EOUC, facilitating the ‘even ACES make Mistakes session’.
I have always had an interest in #PaaS4SaaS, both the integration capabilities but especially the ability to extend the SaaS applications. Within Accenture I think I will be doing even more of this and I'm quite excited about this continuing opportunity.
The partner advisory council before OOW, updates in the ACE briefing and the partner round table I attended on the Thursday, all enforced my belief we are at a tipping point.
All new Cloud SaaS implementations are at least considering PaaS. Universal credits have helped with the adoption and there are other initiatives available which I think will grow this even more. I am in no doubt that Oracle are doing all they can to deliver on their promise to be the best and widest coverage in Cloud.
Chatbots are a fast growing area, perhaps the quickest marketing to production I have ever seen. The new Digital Assistant will be a differentiator and best news to me was the work planned between the Digital Assistant and SaaS development teams.
VBCS is developing rapidly and less aimed at the citizen developer (me), but I'm working on that for an industry solution and again very exciting.
I would like to give a special thankyou to Jürgen Kress who runs the partner community for PaaS. It is a really active community and he uses the ACE directors in the community (his smurfs) to help with understanding what we need.
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. Return to main 2018 OOW page
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..
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.
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 28thfloor 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. Return to main 2018 OOW page
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 Silveirawhilst 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.
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.
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 99thbirthday 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!
