OTN Tour of Latin America 2015 : CLOUG, Chile – Day -1

We were due to leave the hotel in Sau Paulo at 04:45 today, so I was planning to get up at around 04:00. Instead, I woke up at 03:00 and couldn’t sleep. I think I was a little nervous about missing the flight.

The journey to the airport didn’t present any major dramas at that time. There was a little mixup with the size of the taxi, so we had to travel in two cars, but that was fine. Debra and I travelled with David Peake, who was leaving us at the airport to fly to Brasilia for an APEX conference. Francisco and his son were in a separate care.

We had just enough time to get a coffee before getting on the 4 hour flight to Santiago, Chile. I was tired and in a terrible mood. A number of things happened on the flight that really pissed me off, so I shall be writing a letter of complaint to TAM Airlines!

During the flight I watched Avengers : Age of Ultron, which I thought was pretty good. Although I liked it, I’m not sure where this franchise can go. It does feel a little samey! Likewise with Fast & Furious 7, which I also watched and liked. Both franchises feel like they’ve run their course to me…

We landed in Santiago, Chile to find TAM had lost one of Francisco‘s bags. Then the hire car company AVIS/Budget screwed up, so were were in the airport for a while. At this point I switched from tired and angry to just tired and “Whatever!”

When we got to the hotel, Debra and I dumped our stuff and went on the 2 hour bus tour of Santiago. It started cold and damp, but ended very cold and very wet. Being tired and cold made it a bit of a trial, but it was good to do something, rather than just go to bed and sleep the day away. You can see some terrible photos, including various bits of bus, here. 🙂

So it’s been another incredibly long day, after very little sleep. Time for bed before the CLOUG event tomorrow. We fly straight out after the conference, so this will end up being a very brief stay in Chile.

Cheers

Tim…

LAOTN Tour (Southern Leg) : CLOUG…

As you will have gathered by now, the first event of the southern leg of the LAOTN Tour was Chilean Oracle User Group (CLOUG) in Santiago, Chile.

After the initial keynote, the main room became the Michelle Malcher and Tim Hall roadshow. We both picked up extra sessions to fill the gaps left by Jonathan Lewis‘ absence, so we were like a tag team, alternating throughout the day. 🙂 As a result, the conference seemed to go really quickly for me.

In addition to doing the presentations, I got to speak to a few people in the breaks, which is always one of the nice things about conferences. You have to admire people’s endurance, spending most of the day listening to presentations in their second language (or via a live translation service) and still wanting to speak to you in the breaks.

In the evening we went out for some food with the conference organisers. Being a vegetarian who doesn’t drink is not the most natural fit for socialising in Chile, but it makes for good comedy value. 🙂 We had a really fun evening.

Big thanks to the organisers of the conference for inviting me and a big thank you to the Oracle ACE Director program for getting me here.

So that’s the first event over. Later today I fly to Lima, Peru.

Cheers

Tim…

CLOUG Day 2

The sessions I attended today were:

  • DB Time Based Performance Tuning – Graham Wood
  • A panel session about the Oracle ACE program. I was sitting in the audience for a while before I realized I should be on stage. You gotta laugh.
  • Creating a Technical Disaster Implementation Plan – Arjen Visser
  • Using Oracle Locator and Spatial with Application Express – Hans Forbrich
  • Advanced RMAN – Robert Freeman
  • My session 🙂

The whole event seemed to go down really well with the attendees and the speakers alike. This is the first CLOUG event of its kind in Chile and Francisco did a great job of getting it off the ground, so I would like to send a big thank you to him. Everyone I’ve spoken too is looking forward to the next event in Chile.

A special thank you also to Lillian Buziak from Oracle who paid all of her own expenses to be at this event to represent OTN on their stand and in the ACE panel session. If anyone at Oracle is listening, you really should reemburse her expenses.

So now I’ve got a day off before I have to suffer the 2 flights to get home.

Cheers

Tim…

CLOUG Day 1

Day 1 of the conference went really well. My presentation started a little late, so I missed out a few slides to try and get the timetable back on track. It was a bit unusual using a translation service for the first time. I speak quite fast so I think the translator needed a break once I was done. 🙂

I was on quite early, so I had the rest of the day to relax, chat to people and watch other presenters, including Dan Morgan, Robert Freeman, Hans Forbrich, Ben Prusinski and Graham Wood. The more I present, the more interesting I find watching other speakers. There are always lessons to learn.

In the evening we went out to dinner and I’m sure you will see a bunch of group photos appearing on people’s blogs over the next few days. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

CLOUG Day -1

It’s 10:50 am and I’m in my room in the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Santiago, Chile. The CLOUG conference starts tomorrow and I’m feeling a bit nervous. My last presention was in Sweden (ORCAN) in December, but it seems like an eternity since then. 🙂

I’ve already got a whole bunch of stuff lined up this year. The current timetable looks like this:

13th-14th April: Chilean Oracle User Group (CLOUG)

24th-25th April: Bulgarian Oracle User Group (BGOUG)

27th-28th April: Oracle University 2-day workshop in Slovakia (still unconfirmed)

11th-12th May: Swedish Oracle User Group (ORCAN)

14th May: Oracle User Group Finland (OUGF)

21st-25th June: ODTUG in Monterey, California. This is combined with a visit to Oracle’s head office for a briefing, which should be interesting.

11th-15th October: Oracle OpenWorld, San Francisco.

Things seem to be popping up all the time, so who knows what else will be in that list as the year progresses. The world tour continues. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…