KSCOPE 25 - Now I have finally recovered!

 

I love KSCOPE, but you would expect me to say that, I am a current board director for ODTUG, looking for re-election.

But I do love it, I am an applications person, but its success is the technology it is based on and how we can use technology to extend them. KSCOPE is where I come to learn about that. I attended my first KSCOPE in 2007 and have only missed one since.

This year KSCOPE was in Dallas, and although it started on the Sunday, the board arrived the Thursday before, for a full day of meetings on the Friday. 

The meeting started with a quick update on the conference but the rest was about ODTUG, we published a strategy earlier in the year and we each have areas to deliver on. Kurt Mayer and I are responsible for communities, and one area we have worked on is the OCI Community that was announced at conference. This is especially important to me as this is where we extend the Apps. Where we use APEX there is a vibrant community, but Visual Builder, Integration and other OCI services do not have a clear home. We have had content but they have been streams and more recently tags in the Database Track. So we pitched for and had approved by the board an OCI Community. I hope this will not only deliver for OCI but give more focus and clarity to the Database Community. We asked Basheer Khan if he would be interested in leading the community and he stepped up, and in the run up to the launch, organised a series of webcasts.

Monty Latiolas was the KEO for KSCOPE 24 & 25 but has handed the batten over to Sara Beth Good for KSCOPE26 and planning has started for that already.

After a very full day, Saturday started with a session to determine what we need in our mobile app, creating a purchasing document when the team is so technical means we often run down solutioning rabbit holes but as ever Jackie McIlroy our President kept us in order. However I did get up even earlier to take an Oracle AI Studio Exam! There was a welcome reception for volunteers in the afternoon.

Sunday is our Symposiums, where Oracle Product Managers who support KSCOPE in force. Many delegates come in early especially for these, I floated between a few and welcomed people to the event.

Then we had welcomes for speakers and newcomers in the exhibition hall before the first networking session. Conferences would be unaffordable for delegates if we didn't have sponsors and exhibitors. This year the exhibition was fun and lively and in no small way thanks to Elizabeth Ferrell who unfortunately had to miss the conference due to a virus. 

The theme of a state fair worked well with lots of fairground attractions, and money was raised for a local charity Cook Childrens including a very generous contribution from our top sponsor AppliedOLAP . One of those stalls was a dunk the board tank. I volunteered ahead of time, but when I saw it I almost pulled out, but my favourite quote is "Commitment is doing the thing you said you would do, long after the mood in which you said it has gone" - so I had a sneaky go when no one was looking to make sure I could actually get back out again. 

Some people enjoyed this just a little bit too much - you know who you are! Thank you Connor McDonald for the video.

Monday started early with rehearsal for the general session, and then I facilitated a panel session on Visual Builder v APEX. This is my bailiwick, and the discussion was really interesting. Both products are strategic to Oracle and the APEX team shared how they are working even closer with the SaaS development teams.

At lunch time it was the Women In IT event and I was a table facilitator, There was a good sprinkling of men in the room which I love and my table had a great discussion on how they saw themselves in the work place.

The general session was excellent and started with an opening video the board were very proud off. We recorded our parts individually (mine from a hotel room when travelling) and the team at YCC our management company did the magic with a sprinkling of AI and came up with the final clip. I loved it.

There was information, a thank you to Monty, a lifetime achievement award for Edward Roske who has finished his time on the board and stepping away a bit from the Oracle world (but I don't believe that). Videos for both of these are on our youtube channel.

I made the announcement of the OCI Community here with Basheer. So pleased we have delivered. We made the plea for more volunteers and if you are interested sign up here.

Each year there are two awards, one for volunteer which for the first time was a repeat recipient, Karen Cannell. In the last year amongst many things she has done for ODTUG she took over from me as lead for the Innovation Incubator Committee (new ideas), and was the leading light for both the ACE Alliance launched just before conference but in full swing in the ACE lounge, and the APEX Boot camp initiatives. Her partner in crime on the boot camps, Product Manager Jayson Hanes was awarded the Oracle Volunteer Award. Both so well deserved.

Then there was a magician, or rather Keelan Leyser is a World-leading Tech Magician, Mentalist, Digital Illusionist and Optical Illusion Expert. I was a bit sceptical as I don't like magic as I need to know how things work, but I actually really enjoyed his show. 

Back to sessions and then the evening there was more networking (and dunking for me), the ACE Dinner (more about ACE activities here) and then community events such as Open Mike and the very popular Silent Disco. Obviously there was also the traditional Werewolf games played into each night.

Tuesday and Wednesday plenty of education content starting very early, I don't get the opportunity to attend as much as I would like as the board try and meet with each Product Management group whilst they are on site and look at what they can improve and work on together over the next year. This is so important as these relationships are key to our success. I truly believe that improving what we do between the conferences in the communities will make the annual KSCOPE even better.

The special event Wednesday evening is something everyone looks forward to. This year the theme was Stars over Texas and there were many interpretations from celestial goddesses to 4th of July. I went for the later. Love this picture from the official photographer of myself with Wayne Van Sluys.

My board task for the evening was to get everyone who wanted to go back to the resort on the buses. Easier said then done when everyone had had such a great time. The venue was inspired, food and drink flowed and the drone show was magic. 

Thursday morning, had yet more sessions but more community focused and then we had a final session where top presenters were acknowledged. A tradition from KSCOPEs before that had been missing for a while. Back by popular demand. Monty, you and your team delivered a great event.

Now, if I can just get elected again for next year......

If you want to know more about KSCOPE this is the video for you.

ACE DIrector Duties / Fun

I am very proud of being an ACE Director but sometimes I wonder if we look to others like an elitist group of speakers just having fun. So I thought I would share my last few weeks as an ACE Director during a couple of user group conferences, ASCEND and KSCOPE. 

The ACE program, in my words, is an advocate program run by Oracle recognising those with Oracle knowledge that share it.

The official description - "It recognizes, rewards, and promotes technical experts and community leaders for their amazing contributions to the Oracle community".

There are currently three levels which recognise the varying contributions to the community, which can be blogging (technical), Articles, webinars and presentations, books etc. ACEs are also recognised for their contributions creating the community, user group leaders etc. Your contribution is reviewed each year. 

I am an ACE Director, the top level which requires a constant flow of sharing, it cannot be crammed in to get over the requirements line. The number of ACE Directors is just under 100 but varies as people come and go, often by going to work for Oracle itself. You can see who is in the program here.

One benefit at ACE Director is some funding towards attending events. There are strict rules and it doesn't cover all the costs but much appreciated. My attendance at ASCEND was partially funded by the program. They also sponsored some at KSCOPE but as I am on the board and they rightly exclude sponsorship for board members.

At most conferences there is an ACE dinner, for all ACES, and at ASCEND we left the resort and a big thanks to Jen Nicholson who runs the program for Oracle and Connor McDonald who is responsible for the group photos on this post.

AT KSCOPE we stayed on site, and had a great evening.

Sometimes we also have ACE Adventures, a fun outing where there are a number of ACEs attending. At ASCEND conference our ACE Adventure was to the Kennedy Space Centre. I was hoping it would be more than a theme park and didn't really know what to expect, and I was surprised at how interesting I found it. The area I enjoyed most was the area remembering astronauts who have died. For each one there was a display of things important to them, not just their space program credentials. Very human.

Then we did the Shuttle Launch Simulator, and I didn't want to do it. I hate rides, but with gritted teeth I got into it. It was pointed out to me that there were children under 10 on it so it couldn't be too bad, and that made me realise i was being daft. Actually it wasn't too bad, a bit like a flight in economy with a child kicking the back of your seat the entire time!

These social events are fun, but they are also a chance to discus what we are up to and innovation in Oracle technology dinners. There is no fluff, these are experts, I can ask people questions in other areas without feeling stupid and they ask me application questions.

When the event also has Oracle Product Managers, the ACE Program try to arrange an ACE only briefing, no marketing, deep technical and open questions. KSCOPE which attracts more Product Managers than any other conference is an obvious place to have these.

Where possible there is an ACE session at events, the opportunity to encourage new people to join the program. I wasn't officially on the panel at ASCEND but attended to support and found myself upfront sharing my thoughts. Jen Nicholson who runs the program, attended both events so was able to talk to so many people who are interested.

At KSCOPE there was an Oracle area in the exhibition hall and included an ACE lounge where people could come and chat to ACES on duty about the program and see how they can get involved. I had several conversations with people who want to support the community this way. One gentleman took his photograph at an ACE poster which he says he will share when he reaches his ambition and gets into the program, it is seen as valuable. ACEs are expected to recruit others, look out for those they think are contributing and encourage them to look at applying. ODTUG has recently launched our ACE Alliance to support those wanting to join, but also help those who want to move through the levels. 

Two ACE members who have benefiting from ODTUG are Sarah Dow and Lydia Maksoud and here they are celebrating their recent promotion to ACE Pro at the KSCOPE special event.

Obviously I need to keep up the contributions, the speaking which I love, so in between the fun, I had many presentations to deliver and at KSCOPE with my other board members busy behind the scenes. No rest for the wicked!

If you have any questions on the program, look at the information available and feel free to reach out.

E Business Suite Thoughts from ASCEND User Conference

 

ASCEND is the conference for OATUG and OHUG. It covers a wide remit of applications and underpinning technology and is the unofficial home of Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS).

The sell out session is the Strategy and Update session from Cliff Godwin, SVP, EBS Applications Development.

This is my high-level review of his session and a later ‘ask the Experts.’ It does not do justice to the content and examples he packed into the two hours. His slides are available if you want to see more.

Nuts and bolts

The only 10 years of life for EBS myth has been put to bed and ‘rolling 10 years support’ seems to be understood. This means you will have at least 10 years notice if they decide to stop it.

All release 12 is supported, but 12.2.7 is the earliest release for Error Correction support. Lower releases are still supported but may have to wait longer for patches than later releases.

In general, there is an annual release of EBS—the last was 12.2.14, September 2024.

Enterprise Command Centers (ECC) are updated every 6 months. These dashboards let you drill into your data. There are currently 165 dashboards and over 36 Command Centers. No cost from Oracle and you don’t have to be on latest version to take ECC updates, just above 12.2.4.

Oracle Development look at EBS Ideas on My Oracle Support for new functionality inspiration. But you need to vote. Currently only 1% of ideas gets 20+ votes.

Most customers upgraded to 12.2 as a technical upgrade without taking new functionality, which is often true for point releases too—15 years of development investment going unused.

However there is a great resource to explore consolidated Release Content Document. Plus this Transfer of Information Document for level of training on these enhancements.

Digging deeper into ECC

Cliff gave several examples of ECC functionality. I believe Oracle are frustrated at the low uptake on ECC, and have previously discussed my theory that organisations are instead opting for investing in their own customisations or third party reporting tools, but I also see a move towards retiring customisations as a long term strategy in getting ready for SaaS. ECC could be a big part of that.

Here are just three ECC examples Cliff shared: 

• General Ledger budget dashboard. This summary of budget v actuals is a superior way of visualising the data and drilling through to details.

• Receivables cash application dashboard. Radically improves how you can manage unapplied receipts, especially useful when written or verbal instructions have been given of where payment should be applied. 

• The dashboard with the most votes for development was the enhanced ordering and billing or returning and cancelling internal sales orders. 

ECC helps you manage by exception in these operational dashboards.

Cliff made the point that if you have exposed this data via a third-party reporting tool, it isn’t integrated, and you can’t drill down to action. 

EBS trends and highlights

Cost and Profitability is worth highlighting as scenario planning on margins could help with tariff planning. EBS could do this previously, but with additional cost and needed OBIEE, an EBS native solution is coming soon in 12.2.15.

Cliff shared that 40% of EBS customers use OCI hosting. The move is quick and delivers improved cost and performance. Remember you are only paying for what you use and don’t have to size it for the highest peak load.

Ask EBS

The ability to ask Natural Query Language questions against your EBS, is not an EBS product, but a use of OCI AI Service with EBS. There is a small cost, OCI service and instance of autonomous database. 

Find out more here: Enabling Natural Language Query of Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) Release 12.2, Leveraging Oracle Generative AI (MOS Note 3059877.1). Always look at most current version of the document as it is being updated frequently.

One new myth has surfaced that you need to be on OCI to use this Ask EBS. You do not.

I spoke at Ascend, comparing AI in EBS to Fusion. My conclusion? If you want to use AI pervasively in your organisation, it may be time to reconsider your move to SaaS. You can use AI services against EBS data, but you need to build out each use case.  AI in Fusion SaaS is more embedded and with AI Agent Studio you can orchestrate your own AI processes within the safety rails provided. Watch an earlier version of that webinar here.

EBS on 23ai

The second new myth is that once you are using EBS on 23ai, you won’t need to follow the process to create the new AI schema. Not true, EBS does not have a ‘translation layer’ that AI can use to understand the data. To understand more, check Inoapps’ AI with EBS blogs. 

Technology Stack

Cliff suggested that over the next 2 years EBS customers should plan to move to 23ai database. Maybe not possible today as not all platforms have 23ai, so the EBS team cannot certify it. This delay is the 23ai release, not the EBS team. Today it is available on OCI and Exadata.

Currently an upgrade is application and technology combined. Oracle is separating these so a technical upgrade won’t affect on your code. It is currently being tested on Oracle hosted customers and will be available to all customers in due course. Another thing to plan for.

EBS and APEX

An enhancement that has appeared because of the work done to enable AI, is the ability to embed APEX extensions into your EBS application, same browser tab. This is done from a OA container frame – to the user looks like EBS, more natural. Some of the functionality is available from 12.2.7 but  the full functionality is from 12.2.14.

My take away from these sessions and conversations I had with many EBS organisations. If you are planning to stay on EBS for a while, look at your customisations. Compare them with what Oracle has delivered in the application and ECC and see if some can be retired. Then with what is left consider if you will need them in Fusion (ask a trusted partner like Inoapps), and if they will still be required consider extracting them from the EBS code today, rewrite in APEX or Visual Builder and co-exist. Make use of that new APEX embedding. These steps will make your eventual move to SaaS much easier and give your users a better experience in the short term.

My Thoughts About Oracle CloudWorld Tour London

It won't surprise you I'm going to talk about is AI. It was the topic of the Oracle CloudWorld (OCW) Tour in London and in particular for me, the AI Agent Studio which was announced on the day of the London event 20th March. 

Rather than just read the announcement I suggest that you watch this short video from Bob Evans where he discusses the AI Agent Studio with Steve Miranda. Bob has a great ability to get points over easily and make them stick. 

What I really want to talk about is the general narrative around AI in Fusion Apps.

There was a partner call the week before the event, when Steve Miranda shared his strategy and hinted at this upcoming announcement. Steve also said conversations around AI he was now having with apps unlimited customers is getting them excited in a way that previously they haven't been and as I said in my recent webcast on AI in EBS; I think this could be the tipping point.

 

The day before the main London event Oracle kicked off with the partner summit and Chris Leone again hinted at what he would be announcing in the keynote. He built up the excitement, and when the announcement came, the ability to extend and orchestrate agents in your system at no additional cost, he did not disappoint. This is again, continuous innovation delivered by Oracle

As I talked to many people, Customers, Oracle and other partners, everyone was talking about the announcement. I did hear some feedback from a couple of people that they felt things had been repeated in every session so whilst they enjoyed each of them, the 1st ten minutes was the same message and the same slides. I think this is just where we are in the cycle of AI, you must set the scene, you must make sure that everyone's on the same page. What the different flavours of AI are and the evolution of what is being delivered. The pace is so fast so you can easily miss an announcement, or your thinking remains where you last heard about it.

I’ve been using the Oracle Slide above to set the scene between Classic and Gen AI but now I think my favourite Oracle AI slide of the moment will be this one:

Despite what I think, OCW was not just about applications, Oracle is the whole stack. I attended the keynotes where, as you would expect, we heard about the latest AI in all the Oracle offerings. 

It was impressive that Oracle UK had Baroness Jones, minister for the Future Digital Economy on stage talking about how AI and specifically Oracle can help the country grow and support the UK Government deliver on its vision for AI innovation and adoption. This was the theme of another recent announcement where Oracle is investing £5billion in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, OCI, in the UK.  

 

Everything delivered in Apps is built on OCI, but Oracle have embedded it for us and for free, and now we can link or extend them to address our needs. 

 

I later attended a over subscribed hands-on-lab and switched on AI and played with it in a demo system, not my first time obviously, but switching it on isn’t the difficult bit, it is which bit makes sense for you, your organisation? 

 

The day after we had a HCM Strategy partner day led by Yvette Cameron, and there was an open discussion on AI adoption. Nothing I heard changes my mantra that it should be challenge lead and not just what 'can you do with this shiny new tool'. But equally many customers are coming to us with a ‘we need to adopt AI’ approach, as if there is a single switch. You still need to drive adoption. We also discussed governance, your organisation will have an AI strategy and that will include approvals to use it. Oracle will pass any bar set but you need to address them. Then which of the over 150 innovations added in the last 12 months makes sense for you?

 

These are conversations I love to have and if it resonates with you, reach out and let's have a chat.

So a busy few days, and the pace doesn't slow down, by the global OCW in October there will be new things to hear about and customer stories about how Oracle brings those promised benefits. 

 

 

Goals for 2025

As 2025 is about to begin you will see lots of plans that people have and I do too, but a little bit different.

I have a new role at Inoapps as thought leader and advocate, not hugely different than what I do today except all of my work will be planned and executed in sprints, because my goal for 2025 is to (scuba) dive my bucket list.

 

When I reached 60 many of my peers we're retiring early, COVID caused us all to reassess what was important and for many that was slowing down. For me the thought of giving up work, which I love was horrifying, but I'd also had 18 months when it was difficult to engage in my passion, my leveler, my time out, my scuba diving.

 

I did manage to dive occasionally during lockdown or between lockdowns. I don't live that far from the sea but it's the North Sea and the amount of kit that I need for always less than 10°C water was quite a struggle. Once we were able to travel it was about choosing somewhere that was open, dealing with the restrictions and just getting out there and into the water. There are so many places I still wanted to dive and signs of getting older in my joints made me think I ought to do them sooner rather than later. I didn’t learn to scuba dive until I was 50 (as a dare) so I did have a lot of catching up to do.

 

Inoapps allows you to buy extra vacation, which I took full advantage of, and I would manage 3 or 4 proper diving trips a year. Normally on a liveaboard where you eat, sleep and dive, repeatedly for a week at a time. Then a great friend gave me a series of presents, a book, “fifty top dive sites to dive before you die” and a diving map of the world and I felt that this should form my bucket list. At this rate my body would give out before my list was completed so perhaps, I did need to retire and get it done whilst I still could. 

 

So, in 2022 I started on a plan, 2025 would be my bucket list year. I visited a few dive shows and collected brochures of the different places I fancied going to. Then in 2023 I started to book those trips, in fact the last trip in 2025 is to the Great Barrier Reef and I had just put down an obscene deposit on three weeks for the November. Before I'd even paid that credit card bill, I had a fall at home and broke my shoulder. My first question to the doctor, when I finally saw one, was how long I would be out of the water, and he was the first of many medical people to say “at your age you can't expect a full recovery”. I was devastated, did this mean that I wouldn't be able to do dive again, let alone do my bucket list? After much physiotherapy I got back in the water eight months after breaking my shoulder and I was more determined than ever than 2025 would be my year.

 

At the start of 2024 I told my boss that I was retiring at the end of the year and that if after a year I still wanted to come back I would consider contracting. After much laughter and hilarity later, and having originally being told no, we discussed it seriously. I was reminded about the many arguments at work as to when I could and couldn't travel during my long recovery. It had also taught me how much I loved my job. So quite quickly retiring morphed to being a gap year.

Initially it was suggested I just take a sabbatical but one thing that is important to me is my ACE Director and the access that gives me to things I really enjoy, sharing my knowledge and so taking a full year out would make that difficult. My plan is that I will travel for six weeks, come home for a month repeatedly through the year, so we looked at how we could make this work. With a lot of help from HR and the Inoapps leadership team we worked out that I could continue to do the things I loved, talk to customers, provide content, tell stories, speak at events and still do my year away. 

So, I've changed my contract, I'm now only working a total of 18 weeks through the year some of that is just keeping up with what's going on, after all that Oracle continuous innovation needs keeping up with. I've already got webinars set up with Inoapps and with Oracle during my first work Sprint at the end of February which will include CloudWorld London, the summer is a little more fluid as I have a few more things to work around and obviously I'll be around at CloudWorld in Vegas. 

 

I cannot believe how amazingly supportive Inoapps have been, but one of the things that I tell my mentees is if you're adding value then you can have say in how your job looks.

 

And where do I start? I'm flying to Singapore on New Year's Eve and hoping that British Airways will celebrate each midnight as we pass through them. On to Thailand for my first liveaboard and then three locations within Indonesia. Some of the trips are on my own but once you've spent a week with nineteen other divers on a boat you've made friends for life and some of the trips are organised with people that I've met on previous trips.

2024 UKOUG Thoughts

Last week was UKOUG annual conference and it was back to its traditional date, the first Monday in December, Super Sunday was back and it was back in Birmingham.

I know how hard it is to put on a usergroup event and this was a really good event. It felt busy, there were lots of conversations going on and looking at the LinkedIn posts people really enjoyed it.

There did seem to be a lot of streams so attendance in each session was not enormous but I had good attendance for my sessions, so I was happy.

Super Sunday is a very technical day and I went along to learn. I didn't attend too many sessions but did have a chance to catch up with a lot of the speakers I haven't seen for a while. 

Monday the main event kicked off and I had the first time slot for my All You Need To Know About Oracle presentation, which I gave for the first time publicly at UKOUG last year and it got me shortlisted for best session. Again I had a good turnout and whilst I recognised a few faces, there were newcomers to our ecosystem and I hope they learned something.

In the afternoon I was on a panel for long term mentoring, sharing ideas and stories to encourage others to become or ask for a mentor. I was joined by Sarah Dow who is my mentee from the ODTUG WIT mentoring scheme but also a SHINE mentor, Neil Chandler from the MASH Program and his mentee Rishin Mitra, who is actually an almost neighbour of mine in N Ireland! We were excellently facilitated by Grace Honeysett.

Tuesday I spoke on the value of Redwood, and was a little nervous there were several sessions on Redwood, second only in volume to AI! It demonstrated how important Redwood is to organisations using Fusion. I wrote a little more about this on LinkedIn.

I then supported Sue Duncan who did demos on Visual Builder, the technology behind Redwood. My last contribution was to support the HCM Executive Round Table where there was more discussion.

There wasn't a lavish party. but there was the opportunity to network on the Monday evening and the event finished on Tuesday with a motivational speaker Bonita Norris, the girl who climbed Everest. 

Actually it didn't finish there, UKOUG have put a lot of effort into their SHINE mentoring program and there were a couple of sessions and a celebration of their two cohorts. Bonita stayed to be on panel and it was lovely to see so many men stay on.

UKOUG wasn't back at the traditional ICC in Birmingham, numbers and sponsors have to return to much higher levels to make that affordable. This decline had started before Covid, and affects a lot of usergroups.

In keeping with my trip down memory lane I stayed near the ICC and walked through it everyday. Part of me wishes I hadn't, that perfect date has been taken over by the SAP usergroup. They are growing, and why? Well I talked about this in an article a while back, but it is still true, A usergroup needs an engaged community, all year round and not just an annual event. 

UKOUG had a number of executive round tables, turn them into Special Interest Groups and get the people together every few months. 

Thankyou to the Oracle ACE Program and my employer for supporting me to attend.

2024 SAOUG Travelogue

It was a real privilege to be asked to be keynote speaker at the revamped SAOUG, and it was a real whirlwind trip! When they asked and said it was end of October, I checked my calendar and thought, that’s great, then once I had made the commitment, I turned the page and realised I had to be in Dallas for a meeting early on the 1^st November. But I had made the commitment and "Commitment is doing the things you said you'd do, long after the mood you said it in has left you" Bear Grylls. 

The flights to South Africa are overnight both ways so I flew Saturday arriving early morning and Tony Cook from FudgeLearn collected me. As my friends know I am not good as a car passenger (blog on my travel woes) and I am a bit nervous about the reputation of public transport in SA. I saw Tony on the agenda so reached out on the off chance he was on my flight and we could travel together but he has a team in SA and was already there but would have someone to pick me up. When I cane through passport control, there he was. A great welcome, thankyou Tony, and to your colleague who drove us.

 

The event was at Misty Hills outside of Johannesburg, I have been there before with Dina Blaschczok who was the first person to host me in South Africa. The location has an amazing restaurant Carnivore which `I didn’t have time to eat in this visit but highly recommend.

 

The event kicked off with a dinner for those there the night before the conference and it was great to meet people and learn a little bit about what they were using Oracle first.

 

South Africa has something called ‘Load Reduction’ with planned power cuts, but in all my visits what I have learnt is that power cuts come unannounced and hopefully your hotel has a generator. This hotel did but for power cuts after 11pm they don’t use generator until 5am and my biggest 1^st world worry is that my phone goes dead, so it was always plugged in. Obviously locals are used to this, and when the power went off the first time (happened 4 times in the 50 hours I was there), everyone just carries on chatting and wait for that generator to kick in which is about 10 minutes. That included the band at the gala dinner who were cut off half way through a song.

I got to meet lots of amazing people but one that was really exciting was meeting a colleague of my ODTUG mentee. Kim Kannemeyer from Brovanture.

On the final day, I had hoped to stay till the end but British Airways bought my flight forward and along side the city traffic, took the opportunity to have a lift back to the airport with the SAOUG super volunteer Daniel Robus, who was the event MC.

And there it was, just 2 1/2 hours in South Africa for every hour flown. But worth it.