Tag: Amersfoort

OGh Tech Experience 2017 : The Journey Home

I woke up really early so I decided to head straight for the airport. It was a 20 minute bus ride to the station, then a train to the airport, or so I thought. It turned out there wasn’t a straight through train, so I had to go via Utrecht. Once at Utrecht I got on a train the the airport, but it stopped early due to work on the lines, so I had to change to a third train for the last bit of the journey. I was now really glad I had set off early. 🙂

Even with the unplanned changes to the journey, I still arrived a couple of hours early for my flight. The airport bag-check area was chaos. I had done an online check-in, and I didn’t need to check bags, but it took quite a bit of time to negotiate the hordes. Once past the bag-check, it was a smooth run through security, although I did get the most thorough search I’ve ever experienced. I think I may be married now, or pregnant!

My gate was really close, so I didn’t have much to do other than wait a couple of hours, listening to the conveyor saying, “Mind your step!”, every couple of seconds.

The flight home took a little over an hour. No dramas. From there is was a taxi home and the OGh Tech Experience 2017 was done!

As I said in the last post, I’m sorry to everyone for not being more involved in the event. It was out of my hands! Thanks to everyone at OGh for inviting me. This trip was self-funded, but I would still like to thank the Oracle ACE Program for continuing to let me fly the flag. Thanks to the attendees that supported the event and thanks to all the speakers for doing what you do! I hope to see you all soon, but in better health next time! 🙂

Here are the posts I put out during this trip.

Cheers

Tim…

OGh Tech Experience 2017 : Day 2

I woke up on day 2 feeling pretty dreadful, but I lay in the bath for a while, waiting for a dose of Lemsip to kick in. By the time I got out of the bath I was feeling OK-ish.

By the time I finished the 20 minute bus ride and the short walk to the venue I wasn’t feeling so great, but the adrenalin started to kick in, which always helps. I sat for a while chatting to the people in the speaker room.

My first session was “It’s raining data! Oracle Databases in the cloud.” It went a lot better than I expected. There were a lot of people in the room and I managed not to cough too much and generally stayed snot-free. 🙂

After that there was a gap of about 2 hours until my next session. I hid in the speaker room for most of it and had another dose of Lemsip before my next session.

My next session was “Pluggable databases – What they will break and why you should use them anyway!” By this point the adrenalin was starting to wear off and I started to find it a little harder to find my words, getting a little tangled up a couple of times. Hopefully it wasn’t too bad for the audience.

From there I went back to the speaker room for five minutes, then headed back to the hotel to sleep.

I’m glad I managed to get through my sessions, but I feel bad I was not able to contribute more to the event. The fun thing about most events is interacting with everyone, as well as watching some of the other presenters. Instead I was pretty much absent for the whole event. I’ve had a few people message me asking where I was. 🙁

Sorry everyone!

Cheers

Tim…

OGh Tech Experience 2017 : Day 1 – Rumours of my demise

For those that missed me, I did actually turn up to the event today. I arrived at about 11:00, got my badge, sat down in the speaker room for a bout 2 minutes, then left and came back to the hotel.

I was ill most of last week and I thought I was a lot better, but the flight yesterday and the heat since I’ve been here have really put me back. My sinuses feel like they are going to explode and I have zero energy.

I seem to be jinxed where the Netherlands are concerned. Last year I got ill between the AMIS and OGh events. This time it’s come slap bang on the OGh event.

Unless something changes drastically overnight, my plan for tomorrow is to arrive late, do my two presentations, then leave and get back to bed. I fly home the following morning.

Cheers

Tim…

OGh Tech Experience 2017 : The Journey Begins

For a change I was able to book a flight at a reasonable time of day, so I didn’t have to get up stupidly early. The downside of that was I didn’t do anything the night before, so I spent the morning rushing around getting myself ready, which included a cold bath since my boiler has broken. Amazing luck I’m having recently! 🙂

I had a good chat with my taxi driver on the way to the airport, which makes the journey so much better. At the airport I was presented with massive queues for security. Fortunately they moved pretty quickly, so it was not as bad as it looked.

Once through security I went to get some coffee, which is where a douchebag in a suit with a phone at his ear walked straight past me, obviously waiting to be served, and ordered a coffee. I’m about 6 foot tall in shoes and weigh 18 stone. I would have thought that was pretty hard to miss, but aparently I’m invisible to entitled arseholes!

The flight to Amsterdam was pretty straight forward, taking a little over an hour. There were some issues with the plane, so we had to use a smaller one instead. We were a little late leaving, but nothing major. It was a 50 minute train ride from Schiphol to Amersfoort, then a 10 minute taxi ride to my hotel.

The OGh Tech Experience 2017 conference starts tomorrow, but I don’t have any presentations until the following day, so tomorrow is an easy day for me. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…