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OTN Nordic Tour 2013 – It’s a wrap!

So the OTN Nordic Tour 2013 is over. Here are the posts I put out during the tour.

I’ve already done a bunch of thank you messages in the individual posts, but I just want to take this opportunity to say a big thank you to everyone involved once more.

Thanks to everyone at ORCAN, DOUG, OUGN, OTN and the Oracle ACE Program for helping to make this happen. Thanks to the other speakers for being involved and trying to help organise me. Big thanks go out to all the attendees that turned up to these events. I hope to see you all soon.

Cheers

Tim…

OTN Nordic Tour 2013 – Oslo

We got on the plane from Copenhagen to Oslo and met up with the OUGN folks for some food in the hotel. We spent a long time talking about non-Oracle stuff, like science and religion. It was fun.

The morning started with a long breakfast, which included me nearly throwing orange juice over Mike Dietrich and him succeeding in throwing tea over me. We both blamed the table, but in reality it was our secret desire for a food fight that caused it. 🙂

I went to Sten‘s session called “From Requirements to Tool Choice”, which as the name suggests, discusses which tools are a good fit for which types of development. He has some interesting statistics in the presentation, which are a good talking point. You might want to take a look at OraToolWatch, which he maintains.

My sessions were on Analytic Functions and WebLogic. I am incapable of keeping to any sort of schedule. Mike Dietrich came to warn me about leaving for the plane. I thought he was asking me to finish my presentation 15 minutes early, which for a 45 minute session is kinda difficult, so I brushed him off and carried on, only to find out at the end that I had overshot by 15 minutes. I’m now cringing as I write this because I must have looked like such a diva. Just so you know, it wasn’t me being a diva. It was me being a dumb-ass. After the session I spoke to Mike and it seems I had told him the wrong flight times, which was why he was especially concerned, thinking I might miss my plane. People should just shoot me with a tranquillizer dart when my time is up. Sorry to all those that missed out on their coffee break. 🙁

Once again, I went straight from my last presentation to the airport to catch my plane. This time it was for the flight home… I sat chatting to Lonneke and Sten for a while before I got my first plane. When I got to Amsterdam I had a 2+ hour stop-over. After about an hour, I sat down with a coffee and I heard, “Can passenger Hall travelling to Birmingham please board immediately at gate D6!” I ditched my coffee and ran like an idiot from D49 to D6. I started apologising to the staff, saying I must of got my times mixed up etc. They checked and it was another passenger called “Hall”, travelling to Birmingham on a different flight. I walked back to gate D49 feeling rather frazzled. 🙂

Big thanks to OUGN and the conference attendees to making me welcome. Thanks as always to OTN and the Oracle ACE Program for helping to make this happen.

Cheers

Tim…

OTN Nordic Tour 2013 – Copenhagen

I spent the first two sessions of the DOUG event watching Mike Dietrich presenting on 12c upgrades, pluggable databases and new features. I’ve seen some of his stuff already during the LAOTN Tour (Southern Leg), but his presentations have changed a little since I last saw them. To quote Noons,

“Mike’s talk is superb. No bull, just down to facts…”

I think that sums it up nicely. 🙂

After that I did my two sessions for this event. One on virtualisation and one on WebLogic. It was quite a strange day for me as I did two talks that had no demos and both were on areas that are not my main skill set. A mixture scary and fun rolled in to one. I literally finished my talk, put my laptop in my bag and got in a taxi for the airport, so I didn’t have any time to mingle after the sessions. I hope they went down OK. With a bit of luck I will get to do another conference in Denmark and spend more time talking to the attendees outside the sessions. 🙂

Note. The presentations rooms had bowls of sweets. Connor McDonald will know exactly what happened. 🙂

Thanks to everyone that came to my presentations in Denmark, to DOUG for inviting me and giving me loads of sweets. 🙂 Thanks also to OTN and the Oracle ACE Program for helping to make this happen.

Cheers

Tim…

OTN Nordic Tour 2013 – Stockholm

I didn’t sleep too well the night before the Stockholm event, so I woke up feeling extremely groggy. I think it was just the combination of excitement and adrenalin you get before starting a tour. I met Lonneke and Sten for breakfast, then headed on to the conference venue.

I watched Lonneke presenting on SOA for the first two sessions of the day. This is completely not my area of expertise, but I learnt a lot in these sessions. I now understand a lot of the buzzwords and a lot of the common pitfalls for the first time ever. I’ll never be a SOA guy, but it’s nice to know a little more, so that I can understand when people are leading me astray. You don’t have to know how to swim to recognise when someone is drowning. 🙂

After those two sessions, I presented three sessions in a row, including my first ever WebLogic presentation. Eeeccckkk! I made it very clear I was not an expert! The approach was, this is what I wished I had known in my first hour of learning WebLogic! I think it went well. I got some helpful feedback from Lonneke, which I’ve added to the presentation.

After my last presentation we went straight from the conference to the airport. There was a problem with the boarding scanners, so we had to be processed manually, which meant we were about an hour late in departing. That meant we were too late to have dinner with the Danish OUG folks, which was a pity. So it was straight from the airport to bed.

Thanks very much to everyone that came to my presentations in Sweden, to ORCAN for inviting me and to OTN and the Oracle ACE Program for letting me take part in the event. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

OTN Nordic Tour 2013

I got up this morning in plenty of time to get to the airport to fly to Sweden to begin the OTN Nordic Tour 2013 tomorrow. I then proceeded to wait and wait and wait for the taxi. Eventually it did arrive, but now the rush hour traffic had started to build up, so time was ticking by and we were standing still for a very long time. I tweeted that I would probably miss my flight and I really believed I would.

After a considerable amount of time, with me trying to ignore the nervous glances of my driver, the traffic opened up, I got to the airport and check-in was empty, as was security. I got through in time to grab a drink on the way to boarding. Phew…

After all that excitement, the flights were pretty uneventful. I wasted most of the two 1 hour flights playing Plants vs Zombies or reading my Kindle. I spent most of the 2 hour layover at Copenhagen airport juggling my carry-on luggage. I think this is the first time I’ve just used carry-on and I find it pretty hard going wrestling two bags and coat. Far easy to just check everything but the laptop in…

I spent some time in the hotel bar with Sten Vesterli chatting about life, the universe and ADF 12c. 🙂 Don’t tell him, but I spent some of the time enviously admiring his goatee beard. If only my face would go through puberty so I could grow one like that. 🙁

It’s bed time now. Tomorrow I’ve got to check out of the hotel, do 3 talks at the Swedish Oracle User Group (ORCAN), then shoot off to Denmark… 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

OTN Nordic Tour 2013

I’ll be representing the Oracle ACE Program as part of the OTN Nordic Tour this year. I’ve just booked my flights, so in a little over a week I’ll be starting the three date tour.

Oct 22nd : Stockholm, Sweden (ORCAN) – 3 Presentations
Oct 23rd : Copenhagen, Denmark (DOUG) – 2 Presentations
Oct 24th : Oslo, Norway (OUGN) – 2 Presentations

I put forward a few different papers each event picked different ones, so it looks like I could be presenting up to 6 distinct sessions over the tour. This next week is going to be very busy. I’ve got to put the finishing touches to one presentation, then rehearse all 6 a few times… 🙂

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…

OTN Tour of Latin America…

All the flights and hotels are booked, so it now feels very real. In a little over a week I will be taking part in the OTN Tour of Latin America.

I’m a little nervous because there are so many legs in such a short time. The tour lasts 13 days. In that time I’ll be taking 11 flights and visiting 6 locations.

Colombia
Ecuador
Trinidad & Tobago
Guatemala
Honduras
Costa Rica

I feel my stomach twisting as I look at the list. With so many locations in such a short time, the possibility of hiccups in transit seems rather high. Miss one connection and things get tricky…

I’m looking forward to meeting people, but I would be a liar if I said I’m happy about spending 2 weeks on a plane. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

OTN APAC Tour: NZOUG Day 1 & 2

The evening before the NZOUG conference was a bit chaotic. There was still no resolution to the Qantas fiasco and I was starting to believe I would have to cancel my sessions in Perth and try to fly home from Auckland. I tried to switch my flights, but everything was sold out.

By the next morning the Qantas strike seemed to be over, but there were reports of delays and disruption, so I was still not sure if I would make it to Perth.

NZOUG Day 1:

I was just about to start my first session (Clonedb) when there was a fire alarm. Fortunately it was resolved pretty quickly and I was able to get things back on track. From there is was straight on to do my second session (Edition-Based Redefinition), with no fire alarms this time. Both my sessions seemed to go down well. I got some good questions in each session, which is always cool, and some more later in the day and at the evening event.

I spent a little time chatting to some of the guys on the Quest stand and the guys from the DBVisit stand.

My first session of the day as an attendee was Graham Wood’s Exadata session. I saw this session for the first time a few years ago when it was known as the “Terabyte Hour”. With the hardware refreshes and a few software tweaks that have happened since then it now only takes about 18 minutes to complete the demo, so the name has changed. 🙂 My comment to Graham at the end of the session was, “Much as I hate to admit it, it’s really impressive.”

That pretty much took me to the end of the presentations on the first day.

Chris Muir told me to check my emails as my flights had been sorted out. Sure enough, when I checked Lillian Buziak from the OTN team had contacted Oracle Travel and fixed everything for me. She is a total miracle worker. If I was younger and more attractive (and she wasn’t already married) she would be mine, oh yes, she would be mine…

In the evening we all went to the conference dinner. The theme was “Murder Mystery”, which involved a few poor souls getting selected to be made a fool of in front to the rest of the audience. Unfortunately, I was one of the fools in question, along with Chris Muir, Debra Lilley, Bambi and a couple of guys. The compere and the ghost of the victim (my wife, murdered on her wedding day) lead us through various “role playing scenarios” to determine who was the murderer. The final decision for the murderer came down to me (the husband) and the chef, with the chef being voted the winner/loser/murderer. It was all very confusing, fun and embaressing, all roled in to one. 🙂

The whole event seemed to go down really well with the audience, who had plenty of comments (and photos). I have a feeling this is going to haunt (no punn intended) me for a long time.

NZOUG Day 2:

This was cut very short for me. My new Perth flight was arranged for 14:10, so I had to leave the conference at 11:00. I still got time to chat to a few people, mostly about the previous evenings events, and check out Ronald Bradford‘s session on the top 9 issues people have with mySQL databases. I’ve been a casual user of mySQL for years, but never really spent much time looking at it in any depth. I learned quite a bit from this session. Maybe I’ll spend a little more time playing with it in future.

Assuming the rest of the conference carried on the way it started, I would say it was a big success.

Perth:

The flight to Perth was pretty straight forward and I got to the apartment with no dramas. I took a walk over to the conference venue, which is significantly further than I thought. It took be about 60 minutes to walk it at a pace, with no bag in the (relatively speaking) cool evening air. I’m not sure what it will be like in the summer sun.

At 06:00 this morning I went out for a run along the river, then made myself look like a freak by doing sprints on the way back. Nothing like the sight of a fat sweaty bloke panting like a dog to turn heads. The locals were out in force, walking, running and doing boot camps on the banks of the river. Even at that time is was very sunny. I think it would be damn near lethal to try it at midday. The flies and mossies were out in force. If nothing else the swatting and endless ticks you develop when they fly round your face and ears helps you burn more calories. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

OTN APAC Tour: Beijing, China (update)

Following on from my previous post, once the OTN APAC event was over I managed to see some of the sights of Beijing and the surrounding area, including the Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, the Great Wall and Ming Tombs. I’ve uploaded some photos here, but it seems my photography skills are getting worse, not better. I’m ashamed to say these are the better photos. Let’s not discuss the ones I’ve not bothered to upload. 🙂

I have a few suggestions for any travellers to China:

Do not consider driving yourself. The traffic is crazy! I’ve never seen anything like it before. I experienced several “we’re all going to die” moments in every trip I took. Probably the worst was when two lorries moved together with our minibus between them. If our driver had not sped up in time, I’m quite convinced the ACE program would have lost several members. As you may have already read, some of the ACEs were in a crash, but came out of it unharmed. I was only able to wear a seat belt on one journey because all but one of the vehicles either had no belts, or belts but nowhere to plug them in. This takes a lot of getting used to.
If you have any sort of respiratory issues, it’s probably best to avoid Beijing completely. The pollution is very bad. It quickly makes you feel like you’ve smoked 40 cigarettes for breakfast. Even at the Great Wall (50+km from the city) it is still really bad.
Make sure you have printed copies of the Chinese names for any locations you want to visit. Having an English address is pretty much useless. Even with the Chinese addresses, it was often very difficult, especially if the print was small.
Don’t rely on any cloud services for your journey. You need local copies of everything and any apps you want to work with should have full offline functionality. Why? The Great Firewall of China is very effective at blocking a variety of services. Most Google services were trashed. Gmail was intermittently offline and I was never able to access attachments. Google Docs essentially doesn’t exist. Google Reader would work for about 5 minutes at a time, then fail bigtime. Most annoyingly, I was unable to use Google to search for anything. 🙁 I was able to search with Bing, but I could only see results in Chinese. Even when I switched to English, I still got results in Chinese. Like I said, be very well prepared because searching for information is not easy. I’m sure there are ways to cope if you are clued up, but I was a little naive and went with very little preparation as far as logistics were concerned.
Take money with you. I was able to get cash advances from my credit cards, but the ATM failed to get cash from any of my bank accounts.

I’m now stationed at my friends house about 40 minutes from Auckland. There are cows in the garden, including 6 new calves which are pretty funny, and two pre-school children who are pretty funny too. Although I’m very much a towny at heart, I must admit the change in pace and air quality is very welcome. Last week I was talking about Oracle and this week I’ve chopping down some trees, cleared some scrub and pretended (very badly) to be a farmer. I’ve nearly mastered saying, “Get off my land!”, or as the Kiwi’s say it, “Gt ff my lnd aye!” I’m trying to introduce vowels to the natives, but with the exception of the word “aye” that is added to the end of every sentence, vowels seem to be lost forever. 🙂

In a few days I will transplant to Auckland and start the NZOUG conference.

Cheers

Tim…