Highlights and Thoughts from OTN Latin America Tour

I have just come home from my OTN Latin America tour and wanted to share my highlights and thoughts

Highlights

Quito, Ecuador – my first glance of South America filled me with excitement and loved the thought of being so high and on the equator. The Angel was so majestic, very moving, and the hills so unique.

Cartagena, Columbia – didn’t want to leave, the relaxation and the sunshine were heaven, Robin was a wonderful host despite the boat incident. The walled city was wonderful.

Lima, Peru – so full of history and what I actually expected South America to be like. Not brave enough to try the guinea pig but won't live to regret it.

Sao Paulo, Brazil – amazed at the size and the strong investment. Never expected the Japanese influence. Enjoyed the football museum, and again surprised by that.

Montevideo, Uruguay – the hospitality and the gorgeous coastline. Their football game and the atmosphere, loved the new airport architecture.

Santiago, Chile – the breathtaking views of the Andes and later the ocean. Oracle supporting IT in universities.

Thoughts

The Latin America usergroups may not be very old, but they are every bit as dedicated to their members. The hospitality from each group was fantastic, they kept saying what an honour it was to have the speakers on the tour but I felt I was the honoured one.

OTN is encouraging this growth with their Spanish and Portuguese content which Pablo was marketing at each event.

The translators were fantastic; really don’t know how they do it especially with acronyms and technical content.

Another thing you notice is that in these conferences there has been a much higher number of young people and % of women. They are appealing to grass roots and that is something we in the West need to achieve. However a trend in South America is that it is difficult to retain staff, most work as contractors, but once you reach age 40 it is difficult to find work, people want the youngsters, a problem that might bite them back in a few years.

I was also had the priveldge of representing UKOUG and sharing ideas with the different user group leaders. Ronan and I had met them before at IOUC Presidents meetings and they all have that raw energy that drives success. It was wonderful in some small way to help by bringing content. I have many ideas to take back to UKOUG.

Thank you Oracle ACE Program and Fujitsu for letting me take part. To the Oracle UX team for my content on Fusion Apps and all who contributed to my 42 Real Life Examples of FMW with Applications presentation. To Francisco for organising the event and to everyone I met; I made lots of new friends on the tour and definitely want to do it all again.

Santiago, Chile

 
I had to hold my breath as the flight approached Chile, we flew over the Andes and the view was unbelievable. The sun shone and our flight was quiet enough that Graham, Kai and I had a row each and the best views ever. This was the #1 highlight of the whole tour experience.

The shuttle Graham had arranged turned out not to be, but we soon had that sorted and speed towards the city. We stayed in the Marriott and I asked firmly but nicely for a mountain view and they came up trumps.

We arrived early afternoon and quickly went back out to take a bus tour of the city. It was very interesting, more modern than most of the cities we had been to, but still had its old world and traditional charm. 

 After two weeks on the road, and another time change, the 3 of us decided we didn’t want another restaurant meal, so when the bus dropped us back we went to a supermarket, bought bread, cheese, ham and of course Chilean wine and had a picnic in my room with the intent of watching the sunset; except in Chile sunset and sunrise lasts approximately 1 minute, like a switch being thrown. It was great to have a relaxed evening and an early night.

 
Hans arrived later that evening and we caught up with him at breakfast. The user group event was held in a nearby private university, which is important as there were protests at the public universities about the introduction of fees, we had seen riot police in the city during our tour. The university was beautiful and we saw most of it as we were led through a rabbit warren of stairs up and down by our host Filipe, we finally ended up just 50 metres from were we started; poor Graham had dragged all his luggage around.

The day was good; we were met by the Dean of Engineering from the University, who wants to make the university the home of the user group. His top student Ricardo Pérez was presented with a bursary from Oracle to enable him to complete all the OCP exams. The facilities were great and although the audience wasn’t the biggest they were very attentive.

We had lunch close by in a very traditional Chilean restaurant and a quick chance to see a local market before the afternoon sessions. Graham left to go home after his session and Hans, Kai and I went back to the hotel. We wandered around the fantastic shopping centre for a while but had a quick McDonalds before another early night.

I finally managed an early morning swim the next day before meeting with Kai and Hans at breakfast, time to say my last goodbye as they were leaving. I had one more day, Chile is were Francisco who organised the whole tour is from, and I wanted him to show me the city. Unfortunately for personal reasons he had had to pull out of the tour, but I found a tour to Valporise and Vina del Mar, which was a great day out. Valporise is a UNESCO heritage town, built literally into the hills all 41 or 42 of them (depends who you ask), and many escalators (funicular railways). We did a lot of walking, and came down to the harbour on an escalator I am sure has not had a safety inspection in years.

Then we went to Vina del Mar and had lunch by the ocean, and I had the chance to try a Chilean Pisco Sour. They believe they came up with it, just like the Peruvians do. Which was best? Not sure would need to do more research. All too soon it was time to go back to Santiago; another walk around the shopping centres which was full of outdoor restaurants and live music on a Saturday night. Then I had to pack for my long journey home the next day. 13 hours to Madrid, 5 hours wait till my flight to London and another 5 hours before my flight to Belfast; but a small price to pay for the most wonderful experience.

Well This is Embarrassing....

Just a few minutes ago I posted about the disappearance of useableapps content, and then I looked at email to receive this:

After a migration effort, I'm happy to report that our external website on Applications User Experience at Oracle is now operational again!

Please feel free to visit:  http://www.oracle.com/usableapps

Lots of useful information about what we are doing, by product line and much, much more!
Please feel free to pass it on to anyone you feel would benefit.

I could just of deleted my posting but I won't instead I leave it as a reminder about how the web is a powerful tool, a place to share concerns as I did, but more importantly a place to share knowledge, like the UX team do.

Global Warming at Oracle?

There are worries that as the ice caps melt through global warming, we will loose a whole continent of natural history, putting many many animals in danger of extinction.

This is a disaster we can stop if we the world want to enough. Easier to fix is the threatened extinction of content at Oracle:

I have heard from friends that usableapps.oracle.comhttp://blogs.oracle.com/usableapps/entry/usableapps_web_site_down is down. I hope I have heard wrong because just as the interest in Fusion Apps is ramping up and people are seeing the real value of the UX program, the ability to look at the postings made during the development process is so important. In this blog I tried to explain why the questions about Fusion Apps are asked over and over again, and just like needing to answer a user’s question when it is right for them to ask, they need to have the information you have been posting.

My Product Development Committee are working on a user group guide to available information, and we certainly intend to include this blog as part of it. Simply moving the content would not be the same, it is about how the process developed in real time.

The UX Advocates training for the ACE Program is also very linked in here,and my colleagues Sten Vesterli and Ron Batra have also commented here.

My company Fujitsu are a member of the European Oracle Usability Advisory Board (OUAB) and the content for that is unavailable.

At the recent ODTUG I arranged for Madhuri Kolhatkar from UX team to present on design patterns used in Fusion Apps, it was one of the most successful presentations of the day. Design patterns are also missing.

Back to the Tour - Montevideo, Uruguay

The journey to the airport seemed so long and we were late leaving as the driver had to pick up Pablo first, and so I nodded off in the taxi, but that could be more to do with falling asleep at 7pm after the football (or rather the drinking), and then waking up at 11pm and working for 3 hours before trying to go back to sleep.

At the airport our airline Pluna appeared to be a no frills Easyjet equivalent, if you wanted to get on the bus first there was a charge of $4. I have to say Brazil was the most expensive country so far. My daughter has a large collection of havaianas flipflops which are made in Brazil and yet they cost $16 a pair there, scandalous.

On board the aircraft I paid $8 for the worst sandwich in history, it was advertised as salami but honest it was the pits, with more stringy, spongy, wet gherkin than any meat.

However Montevideo was a real surprise, the airport is very modern and beautiful to see. A taxi driver was waiting to collect us and when they saw our luggage decided that we didn’t need the van that was booked we could fit in a taxi so gave us money to give back to our hosts. A very welcome surprise. The hotel too was very nice, a Tryp Hotel which we had also stayed in whilst in Brazil, but a much nicer hotel.

Our hosts (L-R) Pablo, Nelson, Edelweiss, Bruno and Daniel were fantastic, nothing was too much trouble for them, and they certainly went out of their way to make us feel so welcome.

The first night we went out to dinner to a very small restaurant where we had our own room, and for one stop only we were joined by Patanjali from the UX team. We have often spoken together and our content overlaps so we had to have a quick check we were not doing so in Montevideo.

The conference was in their telecom tower and if was a very impressive auditorium. One thing that has struck me throughout the tour is the length of the days, this one started at 8.30 and went through to 8.30pm, which is good as Uruguay were playing in the semi finals of the COPA cup that night. Cindy went out to buy football shirts and we ate that night in a Pizza House and the atmosphere was what we were hoping for in Sao Paulo and even better because Uruguay won. So Sunday I will wear my shirt again even in Chile for the final.

The event was very well organised and a good crowd attended, I had a number of EBS questions and there was an interest in accelerators which I only mentioned once; but being asked questions is the real value of presenting, when people get the information they need.

We ate a local dish of Chivito which is referred to in guide books as a Heart Attack on a Plate, and yes it looks like it. One of our hosts Bruno is a national Tango dancer and has to eat a lot, and he did. This picture is from a traditional BBQ the last day, and I think he ate more than the other 11 of us put together.

 Montevideo sits on the coast, although not really as it is actually a river not an ocean that separates Uruguay from Argentina. But the coast line is stunning and this is a must, must go again place. The only down side is that it was winter and with the wind, freezing, I had to go buy warm clothes.

Our hosts also showed us around the city and invited us back to their home, it was wonderful, very relaxed and a really welcome change from another restaurant, although to be fair, at lunchtime we went to a traditional BBQ house which I loved.

Then this morning it was time to say goodbye to Cindy and Ronald who are leaving the tour but travelling home via Argentina. Graham, Kai and I flew out together and Hans joins later today. Chile is our last stop on this tour.

OTN Photo Album of Montevideo

Quick Update on Fusion Applications

This article from Chris Maxcer, Techtarget suggests Fusion Apps are on General Release rather than Controlled Release which I commented on last month, and actually I don't care. Whoever buys a new product and doesn't have a conversation with the vendor to ensure they have the right skills does not deserve to have a successful project.

What I do want to comment on are the thoughts on the price list, yes it is very confusing and I have seen a few other reports on that. I urge Oracle, and I am very pro the product (just in case you were in doubt), to make the price list simpler. To me one the best features of the product is the User Experience, the ability to do everything from one place with a superior User Experience, yet the experience of reading, let alone understanding the price list is anything but. I have asked on behalf of all users to have this explained to us.

I present about how intuitive the product is and how you wont need to have long training sessions to use it, however we may spend that saved time, understanding the price list, and more importantly what features you loose if you chose not to take an optional element of technology. My great friend Floyd who is quoted in the article puts it very well - “I don't think we've heard the last of the story on Fusion Apps pricing."

Sao Paulo, Brazil

Next stop Sao Paulo; Graham Wood and I arrived in the evening, arrivals and immigration were simple (being non American we did not need visas), and our driver was waiting for us. The journey into the city was at dusk, and I was actually a little disappointed, so far my impressions of South America have been how different it is and yet Sao Paulo is very much like any city in the US; having said that, it was very impressive.

 
The next day, Saturday was the conference and we were all very impressed with the event. It was the biggest by far so far and very well organised. There was a speaker room which is so important when you are there for the whole day.

Regular readers of this blog know I work for Fujitsu, and they have an office in Sao Paulo, so I was really please that my colleague Armando Yoshicatsu Miyoshi was able to attend the conference and meet with me. It is so much easier to be part of a global team if you have physically met people. It was really good to understand the economics of Brazil which are so different from US and Europe; it is a rapidly expanding economy with a lot of investment. This is important for Fujitsu as Sao Paulo has the biggest Japanese population after Tokyo.

I had starting having issues with my laptop which kept freezing, and by Saturday (the day of the conference) I was not confident I would be able to do my presentations, so my friends Hans and then Kuassi helped out by letting me use their laptops as they were immediately after my presentations. Thank you friends.

My presentations went well and almost half the room knew what 42 meant, I thought they might as my friend Bruno Souza who runs the Brazil Java Usergroup has a blog call Life, The Universe and Everything Java. I had hoped to meet up with Bruno, but he had to be out of the city this weekend.

After the event which lasted 12 hours (very impressed that delegates give up 12 hours of their time on a Saturday), we had dinner with the board. It was a great evening and I thank Eduardo and his board for their hospitality. 

On Sunday the board had arranged a tour guide for Graham, Kuassi and I who were still in town, (the others had their tour Friday). We got a tour around town and some of the history explained, and a visit to the football museum which the boys really wanted to do. I was not so keen but actually really enjoyed it, they had a history section that showed photos and events of each world cup, put the football into context. There was also a kind of virtual pitch that we all had a go on. Cameras were not really allowed. We didn’t do very well at it and the only goal was an own one from me! 

One thing I noticed was that every street corner had a phone box, and photographing anything without them in the shot was a challenge. What I did like though was that they have some great community initiatives such as cycle routes and lanes on Sundays where many people participate, and the main link road through the city is closed to traffic on Sundays and used by cyclists, skate boarders etc.

The entire time we have been in Latin America has been the COPA Americas competition, and Brazil was to play Paraguay that evening. Graham and I wanted to find a bar to watch, our hotel recommended one in the local mall, and we headed over having had lunch and saying goodbye to Kuassi and Arup who were leaving the tour from Brazil. We were actually surprised that for a sport loving nation such as Brazil the bars were empty. The actual match was not exciting; Brazil played better but just never scored. When it went to extra time we rushed back to the hotel and carried on in the bar. Always keen to try the local delicacies I had another Caipirinha. The game went to penalties and Brazil lost.

OTN Photo Album Sao Paulo