Oracle OpenWorld 2013 : It’s a wrap

I’m back home from my 8th Oracle OpenWorld. Here are the posts I wrote during the event.

Each OpenWorld has a different feel. If there wasn’t a single presentation or keynote this year it wouldn’t really have affected my experience, because it was all about the OTN Lounge for me.

As most of you know, I am at OpenWorld as part of the Oracle ACE program and I take that kind-of seriously. This year I spent the vast majority of my time in the OTN Lounge, doing both the RAC Attack and just generally chatting to attendees. It’s interesting to see how much help people need navigating the conference. Being a bit of a veteran I spent a lot of time speaking to people, helping them decide their angle of attack. 🙂 The OTN Lounge was smaller than previous years, but the location was excellent. In previous years there was more space, but it felt kind-of isolated. This year we were based in the Moscone South concourse, so there was lots of “passing trade”. I don’t know how others felt about it, but I thought it worked really well.

Here come the thank you messages:

  • A big thank you goes out to the whole OTN crowd and the Oracle ACE Program for sorting this out again. I am a big fan of what you are doing and I’m very grateful for being part of it.
  • Thanks go out to everyone involved in RAC Attack this year. There were a lot of people involved behind the scenes who didn’t make it to the conference. Your efforts are very much appreciated by all of us.
  • Thanks to the Dbvisit team for VIPing me at the appreciation event. I could get used to that. 🙂 A great night with a great group of people.
  • Thanks to everyone who let me bug them for information. The staff on the demo grounds and all the other Oracle ACEs are a great source of information, which helps speed up the learning process greatly.
  • Finally, thanks to everyone I met during the event who helped to make it fun.

Let’s see what next year bring! 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

 

 

Free Beta Exam Vouchers : The Winners

Just before I left for OpenWorld I started a competition to win 5 vouchers for an OCP beta exam, kindly donated by Oracle Certification. I’ve just got back, so it’s time to announce the winners.

(1) In first place comes Steve Karam, with not one, not two, but three entries, including one to the tune of Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. I met Steve at OOW2013 and he kindly offered to forgo the prize if I felt someone else was more deserving, but he was head and shoulders above the rest, so he simply must get a prize!

(2) Next up is Luís Marques with strong entry using rhyming couplets. I think that is what they are called anyway. 🙂

(3) Osama Mustafa comes in a solid third.

(4) Daniele Pasian snagged fourth place by cleverly mentioning he is trying to convert from the dark side (SQL Server) to Oracle. If nothing else you’ve got the sympathy vote right there. 🙂

The poetry stopped at fourth place, so I switched judging criteria and reverted to first-come-first-served…

(5) For being the first entrant in the competition, the fifth prize goes to Kristy Noms Silva.

If you check your mail boxes you should find your voucher codes there. If you think you won’t get to use them, let me know and I will pass them on to one of the other entrants.

Well done to all the entrants and thank you to Oracle Certification for providing the prizes.

Cheers

Tim…

PS. If you want another chance to win, a similar competition is being run for the same exam vouchers here.

Oracle OpenWorld 2013 : Thursday

I got up late, so I missed the morning gym session.

When I got to Moscone at about 08:30, I headed straight for the speakers room to play catch-up on emails, questions, blog posts and work emails. I expected that to take a few minutes, but it actually took me up to midday. It’s crazy how much time we spend on this community stuff. 🙂

I spent most of the afternoon in the OTN Lounge geeking out with a variety of people. I was initially expecting to spend the whole day in presentations, but it turned out I didn’t manage to get to a single one. I spent some time chatting with the ladies and gents from the RAC SIG about ideas for future directions for user groups and collaborative efforts like RAC Attack. It’s interesting to hear the different opinions and motivations of the people involved.

I had an interesting chat with Lenz Grimmer about a number of Linux related things. He was kind enough to help me out a few months ago with some clarifications on my Oracle Linux : Frequently Asked Questions post and was asking how I was getting on with the Oracle Linux migrations at my current company, which spawned a few ideas for some followup posts about the process we’ve gone through to move a variety of systems from RHEL, Solaris and HP-UX to Oracle Linux on VMware. Watch this space! 🙂

From the OTN Lounge the next stop was the “It’s a Wrap” party, where I had an emotional reunion with my dad.

IMG_20130926_172805

I’m still waiting for the 44 years worth of birthday and Christmas presents he owes me!

I’m back at the hotel now, feeling totally burnt out. I know it’s not very rock-n-roll, but I think I’m going to bed. 🙂 I’m flying back home tomorrow, so I’ll get back on Saturday UK time. Next week I’m back to work during the day and back to learning 12c during the evenings. Thank goodness for insomnia…

Cheers

Tim…

Oracle OpenWorld 2013 : Wednesday

A familiar morning. Up at silly o’clock, went to the gym, then read in my room for a while…

The plan for Wednesday was pretty much the same as Tuesday. Most of the day was spent at RAC Attack. I thought we were meant to be helping people install RAC on their laptops, but I quickly came to understand this was a cover for watching Yuri take photos of people jumping in the air… 🙂

A big thank you to all the people involved in making RAC Attack happen again! A lot of people helped in making the new 12c install notes. Lots of people dedicated two days of OOW2013 to this, rather than watching presentations or swanning off to the boat racing. Thanks also to the OTN crowd for giving up so much space to us.

After RAC Attack I popped in to see John Beresniewwicz and Kellyn Pot’Vin presenting, “Active Session History Deep Dive: Advanced Performance Analysis Tips”. I like listening to both these speakers!

From there it was back to the exhibition stands to hook up with the DBVisit guys, before returning to the OTN Lounge for the “Meet the ADF Team” session. David Peake was lurking there, pretending to be part of the ADF team. There’s a rumour there that is just begging to be started! 🙂

Then it was back to the hotel to dump my stuff before heading off to the Bloggers Meetup. I was only there for about 2 minutes, before I had to leave for the appreciation event, so sorry if I missed anyone. Having spent so much time in the OTN Lounge this year, I doubt there is anyone I’ve not met already. 🙂

This year I got to do the appreciation event in style as a VIP, thanks to an invite by the DBVisit guys. We were in the New Zealand suite at the top of the stadium, so I was an honorary Kiwi for the night. 🙂 I had a few drinks and ate vast quantities of food, without having to fight it out with the crowds. It was great! I’m always bigging up the DBVisit folks, but they really are a great group of people. Chris Lawless (formerly of the Oracle GoldenGate team) is a great addition to the team. He cracked me up all night. To show my support, I put some “temporary” Dbman tattoos on my arms. Turns out they are not so temporary after all. Two showers and some scrubbing and they are still with me. 🙂 You can see a picture of them here. I love that picture because it makes me look skinny! 🙂

During the event, I managed to find Nemo and watch Maroon 5 and The Black Keys. Adam Lavine from Maroon 5 has a really strange voice. When he sings it sounds fine, but when he talks he sounds like he’s been hitting the helium balloons. It’s like Alvin and the Chipmunks. Very odd. I’m not a fan of Maroon 5, so I was surprised that I recognised all but one of the songs they played. They were really good. The Black Keys where a lot heavier than I expected. I knew I had heard some of their stuff, but I wasn’t sure how much I would recognise. I think there were three songs I definitely recognised. Pretty cool.

I got back to the hotel at about 01:00, so this morning was a later start for me. Someone has been shopping again. Lots of boxes outside their room again this morning! 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Top 3 Nutters OOW2013

If there’s one thing I’ve learned during the last 8 visits to OpenWorld, it’s that San Francisco has the highest calibre of nutters walking the streets compared to anywhere else I’ve visited. To celebrate this fact I will present my top 3 nutters of OOW2013.

3) A solid third place goes to the guy who yesterday morning screamed, “I’m going to rip your fuckin’ eyes out of your head!”. I’m not sure what I did to solicit this response, but I would like to thank him for making me feel welcome in this great city. I am most appreciative of the fact he didn’t actually attempt to rip my eyes out!

2) Jumping straight into second place this morning comes an apparently normal woman, who as she walked past me was motivated to say, “What a waste. I wish nothing but horrible things for you. I hope you get shot in the face!” In a country where access to guns is so easy, it’s reassuring to know that their careful and considerate use is top most in people’s minds.

1) Taking an early lead and still holding off the competition was the beggar that followed me into a diner, sat down next to me and continued to harass me until he was forcibly removed by the diner staff. His persistence and odour were the perfect start to my breakfast at 03:00 on my first morning in San Francisco. I salute you!

Cheers

Tim…

PS. I’ve always liked San Francisco and I’ve always felt quite at home here, but it’s worth preparing yourself for some of the more interesting types you will meet. 🙂

Oracle OpenWorld 2013 : Tuesday

Another “groundhog day” morning. Up at silly o’clock, went to the gym, then read in my room for a while…

Tuesday was the first day of RAC Attack proper. We had 3 tables at the OTN lounge, all of which were full. There were a few teething problems with the new set of instructions, but we muddled through. In some ways, this is more fun than if things go too smoothly. 🙂 RAC Attack took pretty much the whole day. I hoped to go and see my adopted dad (Graham Wood) in the Real World Performance Group session, but that never happened.

I left RAC Attack and headed down to the demo grounds to have a bit of a moan at the Cloud Control guys. To my delight the stand was being manned by Pete Sharman. I’ve “known of” Pete for many years, but our paths have never crossed before today. It was a pleasure to meet him at last, but that didn’t stop me from having a moan about some bits of Cloud Control. 🙂

As I was leaving the Cloud Control stand I bumped into Jacco Landlust. When he’s not offending Cary Millsap and Tom Kyte, Jacco skates the fine line between being a DBA and WebLogic administrator. Being a WebLogic newbie, I always like hooking up with Jacco to pick his brains and validate that I’ve not screwed things up too badly. After pumping him for information, I now feel like I’ve graduated to post-newbie status. 🙂 Of course the big news is he’s the latest Oracle ACE to become an Oracle employee. It’s starting to feel like a recruitment program. 🙂

Next I headed up to the OTN Meetup, like I hadn’t spent enough time in the OTN Lounge already. 🙂 I spent some time talking to Connor McDonald, Chris Muir, Lonneke Dikmans, Marcelle Kratochvil, Doug Gault, Scott Spendolini and Liron Amitzi, to name but a few. I’d like to say I was intelligent and insightful, but I had drunk 3 beers and felt extremely merry, so I’m guessing I was talking complete nonsense, nothing new there. 🙂

As the OTN meetup drew to a close I walked back to the hotel with Liron Amitzi. He’s in the room opposite to me and I keep ribbing him about permanently having the “Do not disturb” sign on the door. We were discussing some of the installation oddities we’ve seen, as well as the Larry Ellison key note, that Larry didn’t turn up to

I had a quick chat to John Scott and Roel Hartman in the lobby of the hotel as they left for the APEX Meetup.

So that’s another day done. Tomorrow is the second day of RAC Attack.

Cheers

Tim…

Oracle OpenWorld 2013 : Monday

Monday started in a similar way to Sunday. I woke up at silly o’clock, went to the gym, then read in my room for a while.

Monday morning was spent flitting between the demo grounds and the OTN Lounge. I also filmed a short interview for OTN, which will probably appear at some point. It was a one-take thing, so it will annoy the hell out of me when I watch it back 75,000 times. 🙂

Later in the day I went to the Real World Performance Group session, then it was back to the OTN lounge to for some more networking/chatting. 🙂

On the way back to the hotel I popped into a bar to meet the AppsLab guys and David Haimes, who filmed my abortive attempt at using Anthony’s Google Glass here. It’s tricky when you have glasses. You either have to balance them outside your glasses, or not wear your glasses, so everything is blurred. It helps if you are not in a noisy bar when you are trying them. 🙂

I got back to the hotel and found my credit cards had been blocked. I tried and failed to get them unblocked, which led to a few very angry tweets!

Being tired and rather angry, I just went to bed rather than going to the “Friends of Pythian” event.

Cheers

Tim…

 

Oracle OpenWorld 2013 : Sunday

I arrived in San Francisco on midday Saturday. I basically lost a nights sleep, all but 1 hour, so I was not feeling on top of the world. I got some food and went to bed for the rest of the day. I started Sunday at 00:30, so Sunday was going to be a looooonnnnggggg day. 🙂

After getting breakfast at 03:00, hitting the gym and reading for a while, I ventured down to the conference.

The first session I went to was “Carry Millsap – Thinking Clearly About Performance”. I’ve seen variations on this session a number of times and I’ve been on a one day course with Cary, but it’s still nice to hear this stuff again. Every time you pick up something new. I already have a copy of Mastering Trace Data from when I did his course, but I ordered the revised version from Amazon.

Next up was “Kyle Hailey – Oracle Instant Database Cloning”. The Delphix virtual database stuff looks amazing! I thought I was down with the whole database cloning thing (duplicate, clonedb, clone PDB), but this stuff is another level. Wow!

After Kyle’s session I was part of an IOUG panel session called “What I wish I knew before I became a DBA”. I found it fun. I hope the audience did too. I ended up speaking to some people for about an hour after the session ended.

From there it was off to the OTN Lounge to do the “RAC Attack” introduction. I had to explain a little about the history of RAC Attack. I’m sure you will see a number of embaressing Ninja photos coming out. I am the fat ninja. 🙂

Then it was off to the Oracle ACE dinner at the Walt Disney Museum. It’s great to hook up with people I’ve not seen in a while. Put me in a room with geeks and I’m in my element!

I got back to my room at about 22:00 and basically passed out… As I expected, it was a long day! 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Oracle Database 12c: Installation and Administration (1Z1-062) beta exam : Free Voucher Competition

I’ve just been sent 5 free vouchers for the Oracle Database 12c: Installation and Administration (1Z1-062) beta exam! Here is an excerpt from the email…

“We are piloting this program with the Oracle Database 12c: Installation and Administration (1Z1-062) beta exam. … we have provided five (5) vouchers for free beta exams. You can use them for a giveaway on your blog if you like. Simply send the voucher number to the winner. They will enter this voucher in the appropriate field during exam registration at Pearson VUE. This beta exam is scheduled to end on October 19, 2013.”

I’m about to leave for OpenWorld 2013, so this is going to be brief. Here are the rules of the competition…

  1. The beta exam closes on the 19th October, so unless you think you can be ready to sit the exam by then, don’t bother entering. You’ll just be wasting a spot someone else could take.
  2. The voucher is only redeemable for the 1Z1-062 beta exam. You can’t use it for any other exam! You can’t wait and use it for the production exam! It’s just for this beta exam so you have to get your ass into gear!
  3. The competition will close on Saturday 28th September. I’ll announce the winners when I get back from OOW2013.
  4. You need to tell me why you need the free voucher in the comments below this blog post. Facebook and Google+ comments will not be included in the competition!
  5. Extra credit will be given for funny and/or rhyming entries. Even the slightest effort to rhyme will rocket you up the ratings, because it will make the judging more fun! You have a week, so try and be creative!
  6. I’ll be sending the voucher codes via email and confirming the email address and winning names with Oracle, so you must include a real email address and name when posting the comment.
  7. I may seek the help of friends and colleagues to help me judge the winners. I guess it depends on how many entries there are and how hard it is to judge. 🙂
  8. It’s late, I’m tired and I should be packing for OOW, so if I’ve forgotten anything, I reserve the right to modify this post a little, so keep an eye on it over the week…

Good luck!

Cheers

Tim…

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