I’m now sitting in my hotel room in Melbourne, so the Sydney experience is complete.
Originally I was told the Oracle University classes would be cancelled if there were less than 10 people. In Singapore I got 9 people, which was the smallest class I had ever taught for Oracle University. I immediately beat that record in Sydney by having 7 people in the class. I’m guessing that from an expenses point of view, the costs are lower because I’m doing four courses in what amounts to a single round trip to Australia. If this were just a single class requiring a requiring a return flight from UK to Sydney it wouldn’t have happened. Anyway…
Day 1 went smoothly. I got a few questions that made me think, which is always good. Once I had finished the class, it was straight off to the train station to get into town to speak at the Oracle Meetup organised by the Pythian guys. The train journey took longer than I expected, so I arrived about 20 minutes late, by which point the projector was irretrievable locked away. So instead I did my presentation with my laptop pointing at the people around the table and did a lot of zooming. 🙂 Despite this setback, which was totally my fault, it seemed to go OK.
It’s always good to meet new people, but I was especially happy to finally meet Nuno “Noons” Souto and Gary Myers, whose blogs I’ve been following for ages and who have both helped me in the past by correcting my numerous mistakes. After the presentation finished and we had an informal chat, it was back to the train station and then the hotel.
Day 2 of the course went smoothly enough. I had finally got something resembling sleep, so I felt a bit more on top of my game. As always, I over ran. If they gave me 3 days I’m sure I would still over run. 🙂
This morning was a 06:30 flight to Melbourne, so I had to get up at about 04:00 to get ready and get the taxi to the airport. I actually woke up at 03:00, so I guess I’m going to feel a bit rough later. Luckily I’ve got the rest of the day off to recover before I start the Melbourne class tomorrow.
Melbourne was the first class to confirm, so I’m guessing it has a minimum of 10 people, but you never know. Perhaps I can break my record again. 🙂
On a slightly worrying note, I’m having a bit of trouble with my credit and debit cards. I warned the banks involved that I was travelling so my usage might look a little odd. I also banged some cash onto them to preempt any problems with bills coming in while I was away. Even so, it’s all been a bit random as to which cards are accepted and which cards fail. If all else fails I’ll get Larry to fly me over some cash… 🙂
Cheers
Tim…
Good to meet you at last. And don’t worry, we all enjoyed your session and the informal chat afterwards.
Always good to catch up with the latest news: this type of event is not that common anymore in NSW, since Oracle decided to move all the conference events to other states.
With the GFC, it’s nearly impossible to get anyone to sponsor trips to conference events other than the native state.
Unless of course one is a CTO or CIO – in which case conferences become totally inconsequential anyway, what’s important is the golf game…