Be Careful What You Have Volunteered For

Straight after the Ireland conference I flew to Germany to visit my daughter, so my next event for the Benelux User Group was just a 4 hour train journey, no waiting around in an airport, which was two hours away anyway. 

The event for OBUG was in Eindhoven but first I had a favour to carry out for Alex Nuijten, who was to be my host for a few days.

Alex works for Ordina, a large IT company in the Netherlands with a big Oracle practice. They often have learning sessions on sight and in fact the week before Maria Colgan had been there at the invitation of MarcoGralike to talk about in-memory. Alex had asked me if I would speak to a few of his colleagues about Cloud Apps, and pleased to be able to do something for Alex after he had created from scratch a session on using APEX with EBS for me, I happily said yes.

When we were in Dublin, Alex casually mentioned that his ‘few colleagues’ looked to be about 50! I was shocked but then quite excited, if 50 turned up I would be on a par with Maria, and its not often Apps can compete with Database for audience size!

Alex met me off the train in Utrecht and we were going to go sightseeing, but I still felt groggy so we went for a coffee. I had been splicing different sessions together on the train so my slides ran as one and wanted to add something. When I opened the file it appeared I had not saved on the train so there I was polishing slides at the last minute. We raised a toast to the slide-polishing king, Doug Burns. Out of sight but not out of mind.

We did look around the cathedral, and walk through the canals, and ate icecream in the beautiful spring sunshine.

The session was from 6 – 9 pm and it was just me, so I was so excited, people who wanted to hear about Cloud Applications in their own time. Gerard, who had asked Alex if he could in anyway arrange this didn’t realise what great friends Alex and I are, and was genuinely excited to have me at Ordina, telling me that I was on the home page of their intranet and that 72 people had registered!

They had drinks and food to start with and then I began my story, how Oracle started the Fusion Path, Apps Unlimited, FMW, early adopters, UX and the move to Cloud Applications. A number of presentations I have given but strung into a 150 minutes. Then it was beer to finish with. There were lots of great questions and I felt it had been a good evening. Gerard said thankyou with the most enormous jar of traditional Dutch sweets and some wooden tulips, luckily I was flying home British Airways and have a good luggage allowance!

I stayed with Alex’s family, not for the first time, and they are so welcoming. It was almost like being in the RMOUG cabins from yester year, Alex heated traditional Dutch caramel wafers in his new fire place and I have to say they were yummy.

And then it was time for OBUG.

OUG Ireland - My Home Conference

Favourite Conference in March was Ireland, this is my home conference, and this year we were back at Croke Park, a beautiful stadium that means so much to the Irish.

Faye Wood was the project manager and this is her last Ireland conference, and I want to say a big thank you to her, she is still working with the Irish community SIGS.

Roel Hartman

The evening before the event there was an ACE dinner funded by OTN where we invited the few local end users who were presenting. It was a lovely dinner and I should say, nice to catch up with people, although I had seen Alex, Roel and Brendan in Norway. Thankyou OTN.

Tim Hall

Tim Hall did put in an appearance but simply flew in and out the same day as did Jonathan Lewis, Tim is making the point that if you live in the midlands or further North a day trip to Dublin booked in advance is cheaper than the train to London.

My first presentation in Ireland was on behalf of Jeremy Ashley, the VP of User Experience. The UX team are great supporters of UKOUG but did not have a presenter available and I was honoured to be able to help as a OAUX.

My second presentation was about how being a Cloud Customer is different, and I was not well enough prepared. I have already written about this, but have learnt and did better the next time.

Alex Nuijten

Our keynote speaker was Jon Paul from Ireland telling us where Ireland fits into the wider Oracle story and there are some great customer stories emerging.  We also had Nadia Bendjedou who is another great supporter of UKOUG and always the one EBS users want to hear. On the tech side we had Maria Coglan, a local girl done good. Maria is originally from Dublin and we have tried many times to get her over from Oracle HQ, and in fact the date this year was driven by Maria’s availability.

Following on from last year’s success with a one-day master class from Tom Kyte the day after the event, Maria did the same for us. Thank you.

After the event those who were not flying straight out went for a meal and I suddenly felt very tired and unwell, I put it down to exhaustion from owning the Ireland event but by the next day knew I had an awful cold. I blamed it on Brendan Tierny who was ill when we arrived but clever people told me you are not contagious when you have the symptoms, but I would like to point out that Brendan was also in Norway with no symptoms. I wouldn’t normally mention this except it got worse over the weekend and when I arrived in Holland I was worried my voice would not hold out. I think however I then passed the germs to others as the Tierney lergy made its way around the ACE program.

Finally My PaaS4SaaS Workshop Blog

I know this posting is a bit late but at the end of January I took part in a proof of concept workshop for PaaS4Sass and it’s been a rollercoaster ride ever since.

When I was thinking about moving to Certus one of the things that attracted me was there intent to write extensions for Oracle’s CloudApplications using the just announced PaaS4SaaS solution.

I attended Oracle Open World with an open mind and trying to learn as much as I could about the solutions. The Larry Ellison demo was really impressive but then Oracle has always been a brilliant marketing company.

I came back to UK and set about validating what was available, some of the components Database and Java Cloud had been available for a while but I wanted or would want to also use the Process and Integration Cloud offerings.

As regular readers of this blog will know, I am an OracleApplications User Experience advocate and am very committed to the user experience work that goes into Oracle Cloud Applications.  Extensions delivered by Certus will have this same user experience and I made this video on the half of Certus.

The user experience team have been given funding by Thomas Kurian who is personally committed to making PaaS4SaaS work, to carry out a number of proof of concept workshops with Oracle partners. The UX team asked Certus to be part of this. Certus have not been a development company and so in the same way customers come to us because we are the best at implementing cloud applications we looked for a partner to help us with development, and weselected eProseed who have the same commitment to UX as we do.

The workshop took place in London at the end of January with four people from each of Oracle UX, eProceed and Certus taking part. We work through a use-case taken from an existing Application from one of our customers who is considering modernising this and moving it to the cloud. In three days we were able to build a working application and prove to ourselves that when the customer says, “go” we will be able to deliver what they need.

Oracle UX team have in their blog already covered the workshop and I have also written about it in the AppAdvantage blog I am a guest author for. The following month I took part in the Partner SOA Community Forum in Budapest when we had the opportunity to work with product management teams of both the Process and Integration Cloud offerings and further validate our approach, understanding the possibilities and the constraints. The UX team also had a stand there.

I was very pleased on behalf off both Certus and eProceed to accept the first Community Cloud award. These awards are a bit like the Oscars and awarded to individuals Lonneke from eProseed and myself, however we had a similar thank you to all those involved in our acceptance speech.

The Community Leader Jurgen Kress said:

I awarded my first SOA Community Outstanding Contribution for Cloud to Debra Lilley of Certus Solutions and Lonneke Dikmanns of eProseed because they not only took on board the messaging of PaaS 4 SaaS from the last Oracle Open World, but also their collaboration between an Applications partner and a Middleware partner, sought out answers and training and with Oracle Development giving feedback and  validating their approach in this area. All good things but bringing that back to the community and sharing is the outstanding contribution.

I have written a White Paper, which will be published for Collaborate in a few weeks and Certus along with Oracle UX Will be presenting this twice both for  OAUG and Quest. I’ve also had an article published in this month’s Profit Magazine.

Thank you to the UX team and the SOA Community. I’m still not technical enough to do this but I am technical enough to understand that PaaS4SaaS is a game changer and will continue to be seeing more and more in our community.

Norwegian User group Cruise

My next trip was for OUGN.  This is, one I have done before and I really want to support their growing apps community, unfortunately I was too late to get ACE funding so this one came at my own pocket (well with a bit of help from Airmiles).

OUGN is on the boat ColorMagic, and she sails between Oslo and Kiel. Internet is patchy and out at sea non-existent, but knowing that in advance makes it easier to deal with.

Traditionally there is a speakers' evening the day before the sailing. Here is the chance to meet the local community and the other speakers taking part. It seemed odd not to have Tim Hall with us this year especially as this boat means so much to us, but there were lots of other people lots of other friends both new and old.

The organisers sent a taxi for us the following morning to take us to the boat and we then had the keynote presentation before getting to our cabins. James Morle gave an excellent keynote on how the world of IT especially data is changing and I’m sure it gave everybody something to think about.

Then there were sessions for the rest of the day but I wasn’t speaking until the second day. The first evening late at night when the normal cruise guests had eaten we had an amazing dinner with different wines for every course. How anyone is expected to function the next day always amazes me.

 

The next morning I had my first session which was on ‘Are Cloud Applications ready and I had a full room which was really great and lots of really interesting questions. Cloud Apps are still very new in the Nordics, data residency has not yet been ironed out but people are curious and starting to look.

The boat then docked at Kiel in Northern Germany and you are able to get off for a few hours.  Here BjoernRost was waiting for us for what is the now traditional gin party. This may seem very self indulgent but actually the discussion was about arranging the next OTN EMEA tour. We were joined by others who also think of OUGN as an annual 'must go' event, Tim and Kellyn Gorman, Dan Morgan, and new comers like Gurcan Orhan

I wandered into town with Michelle Malcher who was over to speak from the States and then it was quickly back to the boat for my second session, the first outing of my PaaS4SaaS session. It went OK and I had good questions always my guide level but a few people looked lost as I started and I had this horrible understanding that it was too technical for the audience. Luckily I was able to switch into a more ‘why’ than ‘how’ mode and recovered. Not something I ever thought I would do.

I had intended to go watch Alex Nuijten in his session but got caught up talking to some delegates, they really are working hard on their apps community and I was pleased to be able to help. Having missed the start of Alex’s session I peeped in through the door and decided he was in full flow so I took this picture through the peephole.

The boat is great, the conference side of it makes money and they are every well equipped (except for the already mentioned wifi), I loved the notice to speakers, which basically says ‘ if you need anything to drink, wine, beer or water, just let us know’.

The exhibition for the conference has grown over the years and was too big for the area outside the classrooms, so it was held on a car deck! Food at lunchtime was served here and it got quite a buzz. I was really happy I won an iPhone in the Cognizant draw, although Heli came out top she won an Apple Watch!

Dinner the 2^nd night was not quite so formal and since we had a lie in the next day we decided to explore the ship. Having spent a few minutes playing lego in the children’s play room we moved on upto the adult playpit known as the disco. I cannot remember the last time I danced at a disco and a purist would probably find it hard to call this dancing, but Michelle, Alex, Roel Hartman and I gave it our best. I gave it my best until midnight and then left the rest to party on.

We docked the next morning and again the OUGN provided transport to the train station, most people had flights that day so just went to the airport but Michelle and I had all day to wander around Oslo, see the Scream (again) and then after lunch in the harbour we spent time at the old fort, before rounding off a fantastic day drinking coffee in the sunshine albeit with a blanket to keep warm.

I stayed a final night and then flew out Sunday afternoon, having spent the day working in the sunshine.

Thank you OUGN for another wonderful conference.