Being Encouraged - but does it need to be as a woman?

I am a lucky person, I have just celebrated reaching 58 and I'm not ready for retirement yet.

I found being 55 very liberating. I could retire if I wanted to. I told myself I would continue to work whilst I was enjoying what I did, but I didn't see myself looking for anything new.

At that time I worked for Certus and loved it. I love Mark and Tim and the team they had built up at Certus, and I loved our customers. There was no shortage of projects and I loved the diversity. I spent much time advocating Oracle as an ACE Director and that included the privilege and opportunities to speak around the world. 

Certus was acquired by Accenture almost 2 years ago, although we didn't transfer across for another six months. I posted a blog when I reached the one year point and it is funny to read that back now. It has got easier, but I still get lost, not just in the processes, I spent 15 minutes looking for a specific room this morning in London!

I have been through the first appraisal process and it was more successful that I thought it might be. Despite having a well met target of failing more policies than most people know existed, I have delivered value to the organisation and it is recognised. For me that recognition and opportunity is more important than the tangible benefits.

Then just before Christmas I discovered I had been nominated as one of a pool of talent at my grade, to be coached for the next level. Accenture held a 3 day workshop last week in their Madrid Learning Centre to kick of this 'Insight Program'. Recognising how we got there, what is required of us and then beginning the journey to promotion, through skills, encouragement and building a network of peers.

A lot of work had gone on to put us into teams of similar roles and I found it refreshing to be in a group of strong personalities all working in technology applications. I was the only Oracle expert but we all complimentary skills. We will stay in these informal groups for 9 months as we are encouraged to create and own our plans to succeed.

What makes this program unique is that it was for women. I was sceptical at first, if I am going to be promoted, it needs to be because I am the right person, not to fill a quota or for positive discrimination. Day One quelled many of those fears, we were encouraged by successful women who have made the journey before us, sharing their stories, which I suspect would not have been as honest had it been a mixed audience. We looked at the barriers we believe we have to achieving what our organisation thinks we are capable of, and looked at the phycology behind that and strategies fro overcoming them. It was a very encouraging and a very valuable day.

Day two, looked more at the skills we would need in the next role and here I was less convinced. I understand why a diverse workforce is more valuable, and this is what is being promoted. However for example, one workshop was about financial decision making and impact on the business, we worked through a gamification workshop in our groups and it was a lot of fun and very competitive. However by excluding men it wasn't representative of the diverse workshop it was striving to promote.

I was unable to stay to day 3 as I had to run back to London to speak at #OOWLON but I would have preferred perhaps day one restricted to women, remove their perceived barriers and encourage them, and then do the skills workshops as a mixed cohort.

Having said that, I am very honoured to have been selected and look forward to the rest of the program with my Team 23 colleagues and thank those who believe in me. 

My lovely colleagues from around Europe and LATAM, I am not in photo as I had left by then.

Thankyou Accenture for the investment in your talent.

2019 Sangam - My Thoughts on the conference

My third trip to India and the best yet. Thank you Super Sai for inviting me and the ACE program for the sponsorship.

Sai asked me to speak at Sangam, and told me he wanted something different. He wanted me to cover to SaaS announcements from Oracle Open World and after some discussion we agreed on 'What I had learnt from SaaS customers'.

I travelled to Sangam with Alex Nuijten and Roel Hartman, direct from UKOUG Techfest. It was a good journey although we arrived very early in Hyderabad, which was good for the traffic.

The conference centre was amazing, I loved these mixed use venues. Next to us were several weddings over the 3 days and if you have never seen the excitement of an Indian wedding, make that your resolution for 2020.

Traffic is bad in India, I may have said that before, and is one of the reasons the days are so long at the conference. They pack 3 days of content into two 12 hour days.

I started this with a mention of 'Super Sai' - Sai Penumuru,  he is unbelievable. for the past couple of years he has been living in the UK and yet still runs this growing community like clockwork. he doesn't do it on his own, he has an army of volunteers, but you need a great leader, and he fits that bill perfectly.

The event is well supported with speakers from both Oracle and the ACE Program and Sai certainly makes us work for our supper (and boy, is the food good). There were several panel sessions I took part in and even facilitated the same session as at Code One, “Embracing Constant Technical Innovation in Our Daily Life”.

My session on OOW was really just a pathfinder session, what I found important and lots of links to videos and based on my blog at the time.

What I learnt from customers was more interactive and I loved it. Just before the event when I was trying to make sense of my thoughts Martin Widlake blogged about how presentations shouldn't be based on a formula, a challenge I felt so organised my presentation as a list of 'C's'. It was great, lots of questions and validation of what a lot of people were thinking.

Jim Grisanzio from Oracle recorded my thoughts on this and the ACE program, quite long but I think worth a watch.

A big objective this year was to encourage the local Oracle community to engage with the ACE community, or rather step up and be part fo it. There are great knowledge sharers in India who just need some encouragement. We had a full room of people who wanted to know more about the program so I hope this will bear fruit.

I also attended their WIT session with Jenny Tsai from Oracle. It was great to hear both men and women encouraging each other.

The All India Oracle User Group is excellent, and they have posted a video of memories. It was such fun. I have every intention of going again.

After the event Sai had arranged some sight seeing and we had the great Rao as our tour guide and photographer. We got to see Golconda Fort, Qutb Shahi Tombs and Charminar in Hyderabad City.

All too soon it was over and the three of us left for our return journey.

All Change at the Top

The last 15 months have been full of change on the board at Oracle.

Thomas Kurian, who I much admire, left to go to Google.

Mark Hurd, after a long illness, sadly passed away in October.

Larry Ellison hinted that a replacement would be an internal appointment but I was hoping for an external hire and was pleased to see the announcement of Vishal Sikka being appointed.

Latest is Safra Catz being confirmed as the sole CEO, (she previously shared this with Mark).

There will be lots of changes, there is no point changing your board for everything to stay the same.

So I look forward to 2020 to see what it brings in the Oracle world, although I'm not a fan of moving Oracle Open World.

2019 SAOUG - Next Generation

I have always been interested in the Next Generation for our industry.

I love what Oracle do in their Academy, and with UKOUG tried a few initiatives, including free student places at this year's techfest and early this year tried something really different with a university in Australia.

This week at SAOUG I came across another initiative for the next generation and I loved it.

The Oracle cloud graduate program within South Africa gives graduates the opportunity to do oracle training and find a placement with a partner who gives them real work to do.

Ahmed from Edge, The Graduates and Sean Amm from SAOUG

The SAOUG worked with one of those partners, Edge to bring 6 of their placements to the conference.

What an amazing initiative.

back to main SAOUG page

2019 SAOUG - The Location

This year SAOUG was in Vanderbijlpark, at the Emerald House resort.

With Dina's mum

When they first announced the location, I recognised it as somewhere I had been with my friend Dina, it was were she lived and I had visited several times before. However Dina has now emigrated to Canada but it seemed too good an opportunity to miss out on. I spoke to Dina and her son picked me up at the airport and we spent the day with her mother. It was so nice to be able to give back to a friend.

The resort itself is small, not a Sin City at all, but a small rural resort. I chose to be in a bush lodge for two reasons, first it sounded so 'African' and secondly I wanted to be as far from any casino as possible. To be fair, I only saw the casino on the way in and out but the bush lodge was the right decision. It was amazing. There were deer outside the door, what a wonderful way to wake up.

On the first evening there was a boat down the river Vaal, so lovely, sunset, cocktails and friends.

On the last evening we had a braai, a South African BBQ and it was amazing, each bush lodge had a braai area so this was an easy event to pull off. Not too many people just SAOUG committee and a few speakers, sponsors and delegates.

They also had a small zoo and animal park. On the last day I did the game drive which was tame by South African standards, there were no creditors but lots of animals to see really close up. I was a bit perturbed before I went to the resort as they treat over 50s as old, with special casino offers but it also meant I got a pensioners' rate in the zoo. I was also the only guest on my game drive so had the ranger to myself, she was very knowledgeable and it was a great hour spent well before the journey home.

Wolfgang took me back to Johannesburg and then it was a long overnight flight back to London. 


Back to main SAOUG page

2019 SAOUG - South Africa

This is one of my favourite events, SAOUG, this year held in Vanderbijlpark.

The organiser, Wolfgang, asked me to come back, speak more on cloud but make it more personal to the majority of members who had no intention of moving to Cloud.

But don't under estimate the Difference A Cloud Makes, Oracle announced a data centre coming to South Africa in the next 12 months, and they were really excited by it.

The first key note was from Jan Jaap Dekker who is responsible for Apps Unlimited sales in EMEA. Yes you read that correctly, there is a team that sells App Unlimited licences, they are not dead. I am really pleased about this because there was a period of time where we as partners joked the only way to get an extra licence was to be audited. There are customers who have real business reasons to extend their investment, normally through acquisitions.

My first presentation was the always popular ' Should I go to SaaS Cloud?'. The room was full, they needed more chairs and the conversation was excellent. Two large corporations sat with me during the event exploring this further and Jan gave me the feedback it was a very balanced presentation.

Wolfgang also asked me to talk about PaaS with an emphasis on using it with Apps Unlimited. People are already moving their extensions out of the applications and the most common tool is APEX, which I love. In my PaaS presentation no surprise chatbots was the most exciting tool.

I suggested to Wolfgang the conference finish with a Cloud Panel session to answer the unanswered questions. I did get the session, but it was a panel for one!! Again a full room and lots of questions I was able to answer with real life examples.

On the second day there was a keynote from a senior Oracle executive in South Africa. This is always a tricky ask, a user group wants a country leader, they want to know company strategy and they want a local angle; what they don't want is a sales pitch. Well they certainly hit the jackpot with Phakiso Mataitsane, he was engaging, motivating and talked at the very end about how the Oracle community and Oracle themselves can help South Africa. HIs presentation on Hope in South Africa, and how in some small way we are all part of that future, including Oracle, was hands down the most inspiring Oracle presentation I have heard. That doesn't mean none of the other's have been but, this wiped the floor

It was a great conference and I loved what they did for the Next Generation. Thanks to everyone and I hope to be back next year.

2019 - Cloud Applications Experience Event

On 6th November UKOUG held their first Cloud Applications Experience Event in London.

I am very passionate about all UKOUG communities but my heart is in the apps. 

I'm not sure I personally agree with the decision to split the apps and tech conference, but I understand it was based on user feedback. Although the techies still get their techfest in December the Applications people as the better half, have to wait till next summer.

However all is not woe, there have been many events over the year and although my time on the board is well over, I am still supporting.

The Applications community can be split many, many ways, product, industry and many combinations but in general the main areas of concentration are:

• Those using apps unlimited, EBS, JDE & PeopleSoft
• Those moving or interested in moving to Cloud or SaaS applications
• Those who are 'Living in the Cloud'

The last group, is really important to me, I have worried that when users move to SaaS we bleed them dry for their journey story, but what do we do for them? That is what this event was all about.

As with events, there is a committee and we were led by Phil Wilson from Inoapps, not too hard a task master but got us all to pull together and delivered along with the rest of the committee and the office, a great day.

What was special about the day was that most presentations were by end users. The morning looked at product pillars and the afternoon at a couple of industries. 

Phil Wilson kicking off the event

A colleague of mine attended the EPM track and shared this snippet from a presentation from Fruit of the Loom - their big issue was that 1 USD is about 23000 Vietnamese Dongs, and therefore the money fields weren’t big enough, and Oracle had to extend them in the core products to make them useable in Vietnam.

I facilitated the HCM track and that kicked off with a great presentation from Patrick Haston from Scottish Natural Heritage. Not only did they implement the full HCM portfolio but also Learning Cloud, when of the first in the UK.

Nigel Watson from DHL talked about how they have been early adopters of the Newsfeed UX. I loved this, I was involved in their original implementation and even shared the stage with Nigel at Oracle Open World 2017. 

Remember the idea of the event was to have something for those already in the cloud and these presentations hit the mark.

Then we had a round table to hear what the end users wanted from UKOUG and yes they want the community. 

In the afternoon I was looking after the Public Sector stream and had to stand in for West Midlands Police as due to an operational issue Dean Sweet was unable to present. I wasn't with Accenture when this was implemented but I just love the story and how they have extended their investment and am working with them now on their next chapter.

I also gave a presentation on 'switching on chatbots' within SaaS, one of the things this community can do next.

Thanks to Ian Hayman for photo

After the Public Sector Roundtable the day closed with networking drinks after a successful panel session.

UKOUG photo

The best thing about the day was Cloud customers talking to cloud customers and loved that 2 came from Denmark just for the networking.