Quiet before the Storm

So it is the day before conference opens but for me it starts in about 30 minutes. Ronan and I have to finish our introduction slides and have a quick rehearsal, then there is part 1 of a directors meeting, followed by a SIG volunteers meeting and then part 2. There are drinks for volunteers after that but Ronan and I can't stay long we are taking Dave Callaghan out for dinner.

However I have already had a night in Birmingham as the first flight in on a Sunday from Belfast would not get here in time.

The ICC looks quite different today than it will for the rest of the week, I can't say it is quiet as there appears to be a children's Christmas event happening. The directors have started to arrive and I keep bumping into people arriving and although the trains are pretty bad with the normal weekend engineering but the fog that affected my flight yesterday appears not to be affecting the airport, but we have already had one US speaker with a cancelled flight, although he has found an alternative route.

Farewell to a special Friend

UKOUG relies on volunteers, we do have staff but Directors, SIG leaders, speakers etc are all volunteers. Each of our Special Interest Groups also have an Oracle 'buddy' who is also a volunteer.

Thank you to all our volunteers.

But one of our 'special' volunteers retires from Oracle this month, Ian Smith,Senior Vice President for the Oracle UK Region covering the UK, Ireland and South Africa. Ian has always been a greta supporter of UKOUG and we will miss him.

(Seen here on the right with Paul O'Riordan, MD Oracle Ireland).

I am honoured to have worked with Ian and wish him well in the next stage of his life. I had the opportunity to say farewell last week in Belfast and Ronan presented him with a small momento from UKOUG the previous week

Oracle Award

I have previously said how proud I am to be involved in Users Groups and how my own group UKOUG is the best user group in the World. I am also honoured to be an Oracle ACE Director but this week I have been honoured even further. Oracle Magazine have awarded me User Group Evangelist of the Year.

I want to say thankyou to everyone who has helped me in this role, to UKOUG, IOUC and all the user groups who have given me the opportunity to present. To Oracle for keeping me informed and for Fujitsu who have always supported me in this role. I hope that in return I share the knowledge with everyone.

From Rock to Classical

In my last post I mentioned I met a rock star in Denmark. Oliver Weers is by day a DBA in Denmark but at night he is a rock star. Following his entry in Denmark's X Factor he has just released an Album 'Get Ready' which he sang from at the Miracle Beach Party.

Then when I got back to Belfast I was invited to a event as part of the Queens Festival and listen to Dmitri Alexeev and Nikolai Demidenko phenominal piano players.

So proof that variety is the spice of life.

We Know How To Party!

Every conference is fun, I love presenting and sharing information, I love partying, but last week I found a conference where they say it is 80%/80%, how does that work? Well what gives is the sleeping.

Miracle Oracle Open World in Denmark is a real hard core technical conference where most speakers are members of The Oak Table, so what exactly was I doing there?


Well this year they had a business track and I was able to talk about Fusion which is my area of expertise, and next year I hope to be back to talk to the technical guys about what that means to them.

I met up with old friends and made many more. After the event I was honoured to be invited first to an Oak Table Dinner and then to stay at Mogens house for the weekend. Mogens has been a phenomenal friend (if at times annoyingly frustrating) and one thing I had always wanted to do was to meet his wife, now I have and have added another true friend to the list. Their hospitality knows no bounds, and having sat around THE Oak Table all night I now understand the magic.

So what about these 80% parties? Well I met a Rock Star (see next blog), went to the Beach Party and once left the Party House before 3am - only to get lost finding my house in Lilandia (did I tell you the conference took place in a Centre Parks type holiday camp).

And what about the content? well in the Business track the first they have attempted there was good content, Why should you go to R12? A presentation given by Richard Weaver from Oracle, poor Richard had no idea what Miracle is all about and even though we told him all the things to expect it was still a bit of a shock but he joined in and partied like the rest of us. Well done Richard.

But the best presentation for me was Gert H.N. Laursen who talked about his book ' Business Intelligence', it is not yet available in English but I am having the first copy. It was excellent, he went through his model of BI design, aligning BI to strategy at different levels of the organisation - 'From Strategy to Data Sources'.

The best conference is were I learn something and I so did. This is another book everyone of my team will be reading.

UKOUG Partner of the Year Awards

As the song goes 'What a Night', we have just had our first UKOUG Partner Awards dinner and I like other directors who attended are so proud.

'To Serve the Oracle Community is the mission statement of UKOUG, and we believe that partners are part of that community. Earlier this year we started a Partner Forum as a response to feedback we had received and a discussion we had at last years conference. The partners wanted two things, an ongoing dialogue with Oracle as a community of partners and how they could get more value from their user group membership.

The UKOUG has a unique membership model where with low membership rates we deliver everything to our membership normally at no additional cost (platinum level), and we do this through a combination of membership fees and sponsorship. We rely on the sponsorship from our partners so it is important to listen to what they need to make events successful for them as well as for the attendees who traditionally hate marketing either from partners or Oracle.. One of their first suggestions was a Partner Award scheme that is voted for by the members, and we are proud not only to have delivered this but in a really short timescale.


The Ceremony Dinner took place on 16th October at Claridge’s, London and you can see the winners on our website. The after dinner speaker was David Blunkett MP who was very witty and yet thought provoking. He was amazed to be at an event where what should have been a room full of competitors was actually a room full of people who through UKOUG do 'Serve the Oracle Community' and that is quite a message for our Government

Many of our members voted for these awards and we expect next year's to be bigger, better and just as much fun.

HrOUG Conference

Another great user group conference, I only stayed till Thursday morning as we had a UKOUG event that evening (see next blog) but I attended enough to realise that if you are looking for best practice at how to enjoy yourself, you need look no further than to HrOUG! Set in the beautiful Rovinj, the setting as well as the event were superb.

Sessions ran from 10am (if you party all night any earlier is impossible) until about 8pm each day when everybody had dinner together, then the entertainment began for at least as long again!

When I left Thursday the leader of HrOUG Davor (on the right) had been for a healthy swim, except it was simply to wake him up as he had only been in bed for 3 hours! The hospitality was fantastic, and all the delegates were enjoying themselves. I only attended a few sessions as my Croatian is non existant.

I spoke on Fusion and usergroups and again I thought the numbers were on the low side but those who attended learnt a lot and asked even more questions. There was an interesting discussion on the impact Fusion Applications will have on bespoke system devleopment in the future. I quoted our own Ronan Miles who a few years back 'If Fusion Applications are a sucess, and Oracle will ensure they are, then it will change the way everyone writes applications.

I was interested to discoverer that the issues I have had obtaining resources for Hyperion install (not configuration and devleopment) are the same in Croatia.

Thank you to Vlado and Davor for their excellent hospitality.