Tag: Latin America

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

The morning was a little confusing. I got up and went to breakfast, but there was no Debra. Once I had finished I got the front desk to call her and found out her clock was an hour behind. Chile has changed its timezone to match Brazil, but some Apple devices don’t seem to realise this, even if they are set to auto-update. One of those devices being Debra’s phone. When we asked at the hotel, they said it’s been a problem for a number of people. 🙁

Francisco drove us to the venue and we moved straight into the auditorium. After an introduction by Francisco, it was time for the first session. It was a three track event, so I’m just going to talk about the sessions I was in. 🙂

  • Kerry had a different version of the agenda, which had him on at a later time, so he hadn’t arrived by the time his session was due to start. I was originally down as the second session, so we switched and I went first with my “Pluggable Databases : What they will break and why you should use them anyway!”. Being in a auditorium is always hard unless it is full, as people spread out and you feel like you are presenting to empty chairs. 🙂
  • Next up was Kerry Osborne, with his “In-Memory In Action” session. I had to duck out of this early to get to across to my next session, which was on the other side of the building.
  • My next session was “It’s raining data! Oracle Databases in the Cloud”. This was in a much smaller room, so it felt really full and much more personal. As a result, the audience interaction felt a lot better. I spent quite a bit of time talking to people after the session, which is my favourite bit of this conference thing.
  • I got over to see the tail end of Ronald Bradford‘s session on “Testing and verifying your MySQL backup strategy”. I’ve got a couple of things I need to check in my own MySQL backups now. 🙂
  • Next up was Kyle Hailey speaking about “SQL Performance Tuning”. Kyle has a very visual approach, which works for me!
  • After lunch it was back to me for “Oracle Database Consolidation : It’s not all about Oracle database 12c!”
  • Next up was Kyle Hailey with “Database performance tuning”, which focussed on using ASH to identify problems and was once again, very visual.
  • The final person up was Debra, with “Do Oracle Cloud Applications Add Up?”. The answer is yes, they do add up, to 42!

After the final session, we hung around for a prize giving and a quick photo opportunity, then had to say our goodbyes and go straight off to the airport to get our flight to Lima.

Thanks to Francisco and the folks at CLOUG for inviting me, as well as all the attendees that came to my sessions and spoke to me during the day. I love speaking directly to people about the technology, so when people come to ask questions I’m in my element. 🙂 Big thanks to OTN and the ACE Program for helping to make this happen for me.

Cheers

Tim…

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…

OTN Tour of Latin America 2015 : GUOB, Brazil – Day 1

I woke up pretty early again, spent a bit of time working, then headed down to meet the wife at breakfast. I was gabbing away, when she mentioned it was time to register. I had a mad dash to get back to the room, shower and head down to the GUOB event. Thankfully, I am stopping in the conference hotel.

This was a three track event, so I tried to get to sessions that I hadn’t seen at other events.

  • The event opened up with Pablo Ciccarello discussing OTN and the ACE program.
  • My first session for the day was “Pluggable Databases : What they will break and why you should use them anyway!” talk. I was introduced by Alex Zaballa, Brazil’s latest Oracle ACE Director. Well done mate! I was incredibly nervous for this talk. I think it was because of the rushing around before the session. Once I got going I calmed down a lot. I think the session went well. People were a bit shy about questions during the session, but people came up to me after the session to say hello and ask questions without being in front of the audience. The questions you get are the best bit of doing these conferences. In answering questions, you learn a lot yourself.
  • After speaking to a few people I headed (a little late) into Kerry Osborne‘s session on “Controlling Execution Plans (without touching the code)” Part 1. The room was too full for me to get into this session in Argentina.
  • After lunch I headed on to see Dana Singleterry speaking about “Development Platform in the Cloud – Why, What and When”.
  • Next up it was me with my “It’s raining data! Oracle Databases in the Cloud” session. I really like doing this talk. It’s not a heavy technical session, but I like to think it brings a bit of sanity to the Database on the Cloud discussion.
  • After me came Alex Gorbachev speaking about “Benchmarking Oracle I/O Performance with ORION”.
  • After a short break, it was on to Kerry Osborne‘s session on “Controlling Execution Plans (without touching the code)” Part 2.
  • Next up was Alex Gorbachev speaking about “Big Data and Hadoop for Oracle Database Professionals”.

The last session was in Portuguese, so I ducked out and spoke to a few of the attendees instead.

After saying our goodbyes to some of the folks, we headed out to a Brazilian barbecue. Obviously, it was a meat-fest, but it was a good place to eat as a vegetarian too. Unfortunately, I drank one and a half drinks that were designed to injure humans. 🙂

It was a long, but fun day. Big thanks to the organisers and attendees at the GUOB event. I hope to see you again! Thanks also to the ACE Program for getting me here!

I’ve got a ridiculously early start for Chile tomorrow! 🙂 Goodbye Sau Paulo!

Cheers

Tim…

OTN Tour of Latin America 2015 : GUOB, Brazil – Day -1

As I mentioned in the previous post, I got to bed at the hotel in Sau Paulo at about 03:00. I woke up at about 07:00 and did some work for a couple of hours before hitting breakfast with the wife. At breakfast we were joined by Francisco and his son. 🙂

After breakfast, Debra and I went on a sight seeing trip. I was in Sau Paulo about 2 years ago, but I saw nothing of the city as it was such a short visit. I did have a few photos from the event in 2013, as well as a couple people sent to me (here).

Trying to do Sau Paulo in 4 hours pretty much means sitting in the car a lot. 🙂 Even during the day the traffic is heavy. Added to that, the temperature was in the low 30’s. With the lack of sleep and the temperature combined, we were struggling. Added to that, our driver started to feel ill. I did get some photos, which you can see here. Once again, wide angle is on, so don’t assume everything in Sau Paulo is bowed. 🙂

Despite our struggles, it was really nice to finally see something of the city!

When we got back from sightseeing, we popped across the road to get some food and bumped into Francisco, his son and Alex. 🙂

Then it was back to the hotel, with a plan to get some sleep. Instead, I started to catch up on blog posts, as well as spending £54 (or $84 USD) on washing. 🙁 It’s a sad day when you have to pay someone to do your washing! At least this way I should have enough clothes to complete the tour. 🙂

I’ll pretty soon be off to bed, ready for the GUOB conference tomorrow. Happy days!

Cheers

Tim…

PS. I’m going to us the English spelling (Brazil), rather than the Portuguese version, as it’s the only way I have a chance of staying consistent. No offence meant by spelling the name of your country “wrong”. 🙂

OTN Tour of Latin America 2015 : AROUG, Argentina – Day 2

I mentioned in the previous post we were spending the day sightseeing today. Last time I was in Buenos Aires I did a bus tour. You can see some of the photos here.

This time Debra, Mike, Cindy and I went on a private tour in a minibus. I took the GoPro with me, so I’ve got a bunch of super wide angle photos (here). I’m sure anyone who does photography will laugh at them, but they look fine to me, so long as you look at them on a large screen. 🙂

It was a really nice day. We got back early, so Mike could go back to the conference to do his final session. Debra, Cindy and I spent the rest of the day chilling in the executive lounge at the Hilton, taking advantage of the free internet. It’s good when you are with people to have a good honors (not honours) status! 🙂

We were there for a few hours, but at about 20:00 we headed off for the airport. Debra also gets access to the lounge at the airport, so we spent 25 minutes there before heading for the plane.

I’ve already posted all my thank you messages, but once again, thanks Argentina! I hope to see you soon!

On the flight I watched Project Almanac, which was kind-of predictable, but good. After a little over two hours we were in Sau Paulo. Last time I came to Sau Paulo the taxi ride to the hotel was very slow as the traffic was a nightmare. Travelling at 02:00 meant the roads were quiet and we breezed through to the hotel. I was in bed by 03:00. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

OTN Tour of Latin America 2015 : UYOUG, Uruguay – Day 2

I woke up early and started working on the computer. I wrote a couple of blog posts and logged in to work to check some stuff out. I also re-recorded the vocal for the ALL, ANY and SOME video. The mic I was using wasn’t too good, but I was keen to get it done, rather than wait until I got back to the UK. Overall, it was a pretty busy morning.

I then headed out for my last session of the conference. It was a panel session with Ronald, Mike, Nelson and myself. Putting Ronald and me on a panel together pretty much guaranteed nobody else would get to say anything. I thought the panel went really well. Having someone from a MySQL background on the panel added a different dynamic. Most of the discussion was focussed on why you would pick MySQL over Oracle or vice versa. There was a surprising amount of agreement and some good banter. 🙂 The reaction from the crowd was very positive. 🙂

That marked the end of the UYOUG conference for me. I hope all the attendees enjoyed the event. I know I did. Thanks very much to everyone for organising it and thanks to the Oracle ACE Program for getting me here. Big thanks to Edelweiss and Nelson for looking after us! 🙂

From there we got some lunch and I went back to the hotel to do some more work.

At about 17:30 we headed off to catch the ferry to Buenos Aires. I was meant to get a little video footage, but I forgot. 🙂 It took a little over 2 hours to complete, then it was a walk across to the hotel. I did remember to get some footage of that! 🙂

I got to bed a little after midnight, which wasn’t too bad. Tomorrow is the first day of the AROUG conference in Argentina!

Cheers

Tim…

OTN Tour of Latin America 2015 : UYOUG, Uruguay – Day 1

After 15 hours of sleep I still managed to feel tired. 🙂 I went for breakfast at 6:30, then started to feel a little weird, so I took some headache pills and headed back to bed for a hour before meeting up with Debra and Mike to head down to the venue for the first day of the UYOUG leg of the tour…

The order of events went like this:

  • Pablo Ciccarelo started with an introduction OTN and the ACE program, which was in Spanish, so I ducked out of it. 🙂
  • Mike Dietrich speaking about “How Oracle Single/Multitenant will change a DBA’s life”.
  • Me with “Pluggable Databases : What they will break and why you should use them anyway!” There was some crossover with Mike’s session, but we both emphasised different things, which is interesting in itself. 🙂
  • Debra Lilley with “PaaS4SaaS”. The talk focused on a POC for using PaaS to extend the functionality of Fusion Apps, which is a SaaS product.
  • Me with “Oracle Database Consolidation : It’s not all about Oracle database 12c”. I think this is the least technical talk I’ve ever done and that makes me rather nervous. Technical content and demos are a reassuring safety blanket for me, so having them taken away feels a bit like being naked in public (why am I now thinking of Bjoern?). The session is a beginner session, so I hope people didn’t come expecting something more than I delivered. See, I’m paranoid already!
  • Mike Dietrich on “Simple Minimal Downtime Migration to Oracle 12c using Full Transportable Export/Import”. I think I’ve used every feature discussed in this session, but I’ve never used them all together in this manner. I think I may go back to the drawing board for one of the migrations I’ve got coming up in the next few months.
  • Debra Lilley with “Are cloud apps really ready?”. There was some similarity between the message Debra was putting out here and some of the stuff I spoke about in my final talk.
  • Me with “It’s raining data! Oracle Databases in the Cloud”. This was also not a heavy technical session, but because so few people have experience of running databases in the cloud at the moment, I think it has a wider appeal, so I’m not so paranoid about the limited technical content.

So that was the first day of the UYOUG conference done. Tomorrow is an easy day for me. I’ve got a panel session in the middle of the day, then I’m done. 🙂

Thanks to everyone who came to my sessions. I hope you found them useful.

Having slept through yesterday’s social event, I will be going out to get some food tonight. They eat really late here, so by the time we get some food I’ll probably be thinking about bed. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

OTN Tour of Latin America 2015 : The Journey Begins – CDG Airport

ace-directorI’ve been in Charles de Gaulle airport for about three hours now. Only another four to go… 🙂

I tried to record another technical video, but you can hear kids in the background. Now the timings are sorted, it should be pretty quick to re-record when I get to a hotel, so that’s good I guess. I’m not sure I can face doing another one today.

My YouTube channel is on 199 subscribers. About to ding to the magic 200. 🙂

Perhaps I should get the GoPro out and do some filming of the barren wasteland, which is the K gates in Terminal 2E.

Cheers

Tim…

OTN Tour of Latin America 2015 (Southern Leg)

ace-directorI put out a brief video a few days ago (re-uploaded today to fix typos) about my participation in the OTN Tour of Latin America (2015). I’ll be on the southern leg this year. Sorry to those countries who make up the northern leg. I will be back soon I hope.

Anyway, the southern leg of the tour shapes up like this.

  • 3/4 August Uruguay UYOUG
  • 5/6 August Argentina AROUG
  • 8 August Brazil GUOB
  • 10 August Chile CLOUG
  • 12 August Peru PEOUG

I’m looking forward to seeing everyone. See you soon!

After the Peru leg, the wife and I will be going off to see Machu Picchu.

Cheers

Tim…

OTN Tour of Latin America (Southern Leg)…

Hola (that’s all my Spanish used up).

Olá (and my Portuguese too).

The Oracle ACE program has approved my inclusion on the OTN Tour of Latin America (Southern Leg), so in about a month I will visiting:

  • Santiago, Chile
  • Lima, Peru
  • Montevideo, Uruguay
  • Buenos Aires, Argentina
  • Sau Paulo, Brazil

Apologies for the English spelling of names. 🙂

I did the Northern Leg of the tour last year and it was great fun, but incredibly tiring, so I’m starting to get the fear over this trip. I know I’m going to love it, but it’s going to be really hard work as well.

Can wait to meet everyone!

Cheers

Tim…