Tag: otn

OTN APAC 2014 – Auckland – Day 1

So it was really day 2 of the conference, but it was day 1 for me, so that’s the way I’m naming it… 🙂 There were seven tracks available, but I’ll be speaking about what I saw…

First up was the keynote by Tim Ebbeck called 10 Rules of Transformational Leadership. I’m not the biggest fan of keynotes, but this one was pretty cool. To summarise:

  1. Nothing beats being as good as you can be. Get off your ass and do it.
  2. Expect less of other people’s leadership and expect more of your own. Be a self starter. Don’t rely on others to lead you.
  3. You always have a choice. Make positive choices.
  4. Manage and protect your personal brand. Do other people perceive you as you perceive yourself.
  5. Life’s not fair. Get over it.
  6. Settle for nothing less than you deserve.
  7. Keep perspective. Never take things personally. Avoid it becoming about ego.
  8. Do it differently and innovate.
  9. Balance the game. You need a work/life balance.
  10. Make up your own rules.

Pretty cool. I agree with everything, but he forgot to mention number “11. S.T.F.U. and R.T.F.M”. 🙂

Next up was DBA 101: Calling All New Database Administrators by Gustavo Rene Antunez. I’ve met Rene a few times, but I’ve never seen him present, so this was a great opportunity. It was a really nice introduction Oracle and the DBA job. His slides are really fun and informative at the same time. I really like his presentation style. I’ll definitely make the effort to see him present again in future.

My PL/SQL performance session seemed to go quite well. After presenting recently to groups of people where English was a second language, it was liberating to be able to speak quicker and in a more relaxed manner again.

After lunch I went to see Gustavo Rene Antunez speaking about Getting Started with Database as a Service with Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c. It’s a subject that I’m interested in, even though I have very little experience of it at the moment. I think the important point Rene made is you should be trying to reduce the number of offerings in the service catalog to a manageable level, so you can cope with 80% of your systems that represent the “standard stuff”. There is no point defining templates for the one-off things, since DBaaS probably isn’t the right place for that. Once again, one size does not fit all. Some interesting decisions to make in terms of management and governance…

Next up was Stuart Speers talking about Oracle database on AWS (Amazon Web Services). He started off talking about the pros and cons of RDS for Oracle, then moved on to a case study where they deployed conventional Oracle installation on AWS to support an APEX application for a customer. I’ve played with most of this AWS stuff to kick the tires, but that’s different to the experience of doing a production app on it. It was interesting to see the approach and architecture of the application in the context of AWS.

Next up was Jennie Vickers speaking about The Fear Factor – Getting Past Legal Concerns About the Cloud. She’s a lawyer, not a computer geek, so the idea behind this session was to help us identify problem areas that may need legal attention, not turn us into technology lawyers. This stuff is very scary and very interesting. She broke the identification of problem processes down to 8 key areas.

  • Business or Consumer (B2B or B2U)? : There are different legal issues around this. It’s often easier to protect yourself from other businesses than from consumer rights? Some consumer law is not defined in your contract, but part of the statute. There is some cross referencing to do.
  • Global or Local? : Legal jurisdictions are important. Are you bound by the law of your country, the country of your service provider or the country of the user.
  • Goods, service, experience or community? What are you actually selling?
  • Brands : Support not damage the brand. Your service shouldn’t compromise the values of the brand. Does the cloud affect your brand in a negative way?
  • Online, physical or both for sales? Some countries treat internet sales differently to physical sales.
  • Selling a technology product, or technology enabler? It makes a difference.
  • What data? Does privacy even matter for the data you are putting into the cloud? Lots of data is irrelevant from a security perspective.
  • Who owns the data? Does it belong to your business or your customers? It makes a difference.

Depending on your answers to these questions, you are going to have a different attitude to the cloud. It was pretty neat getting a talk about this from a lawyer, not a geek pretending to understand the law!

From there I went to my session on virtualisation. It’s a nice and fluffy session to end the day. 🙂

After the last session, there was a social gathering in the foyer for a bit of networking. I went and grabbed some with Chris Muir, before going back to the hotel to bed down for the night…

Cheers

Tim…

OTN APAC 2014 : Auckland Day Off

The first day of the Auckland conference was made up of hands-on labs and workshops. I wasn’t presenting, so I arranged to meet up with some friends and have a play day. 🙂

On my way out of the hotel I saw Osama Mustafa, who is still looking buff like a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. On the way to the station I met Anton Els, which was a pleasant surprise. We chatted for a bit and he gave me a lift around the corner and dropped me off at the station. After stuffing my face at Subway, I got on the train to Papakura, where I met my buddy Stan and we went to his place in Pukekohe.

The great thing about meeting up with good friends is you don’t have to say or do a lot. Just hanging out together is fun. It’s been about 8 years since he moved to NZ and about 3 years since I last saw him in person, but you just kick back into gear. It was a really cool low pressure day with him and his family. They have a 12 acre lifestyle block with some cows on it, as well as some cows grazing the neighbouring blocks. It’s funny watching the stages of development in cows. The young ones gallop and skip around like chunky gazelles. At about one year old they are more sedate, but occasionally revert back into the child like state and jump and run around, which is very impressive considering their size. Once they are adults, they are like tanks made of flesh…

In the evening I was planning on getting the train back to Auckland, but I was reading the wrong timetable and missed the last train. I could have stayed the night, but I wanted to get back so I took a taxi. It was a little sad to say goodbye, because you never really know when you will see each other in person again…

For me, the NZOUG conference starts tomorrow. Like the Perth event, I’ve got four presentations in total. Two on each day. It’s amazing to think the tour is nearly over…

Cheers

Tim…

OTN APAC 2014 : Bangkok to Auckland

I left the Bangkok event straight after my session, went back to my hotel to get my luggage, then got a taxi to the airport. I was a little worried as people said the traffic would be horrific. Luckily I beat the worst of the traffic and my hotel was very close to the highway. I got to the airport with about 3 hours spare, which sounds like a lot, but for Bangkok airport I think that is a good amount of time.

I got through check-in pretty quickly, but the queues for passport control and security were pretty horrific. There were a couple of large groups of Chinese old people traveling, who seemed to surround me and scream at each for over an hour. I mean properly scream. I felt like I was in the middle of the seagulls in Finding Nemo. I just wanted to shout “Mine! Mine! Mine!” at them. What with that and the constant shoving, I was amazed I didn’t clobber someone. Once through security and passport control, they all scuttled off to the gate for Shanghai, my ears got a much needed rest, and I decided going on a killing spree was probably not necessary… 🙂

The first leg of the journey was a 9:15 hour flight to Sydney. We boarded late, but the journey ended up taking 8:22, so we arrived on time. Apart from being deathly boring, it all went OK. I had an aisle seat and it was an Emirates plane, so that was fine. It did feel a bit like a plague pit. One young boy threw up at the start of the flight and a number of people were coughing and sneezing a lot. The airline staff are really jumpy at the moment, so when I took a pre-emptive Lemsip to stave of a headache, I got the third degree…

On arrival at Sydney, I headed straight for the next flight where I bumped into Pete Sharman and Chris Muir. Pete was on my flight, but Chris was on the next one. Pete and I boarded the plane, then waited while they offloaded the baggage for a missing passenger. By the time we landed, Chris had caught up with us. They managed to lose Pete’s luggage. 🙁 Chris and I took a cab to the hotel, then when out to get some food and chat.

Guess what I have in my apartment?

WashingMachine

First load done and draped around my room to dry. I’m so happy!

Cheers

Tim…

 

OTN APAC 2014 : Bangkok

I spent a long time in bed last night, but it was quite fitful sleep. As a result, I slept in late this morning, which wasn’t really a problem as I was not speaking until 14:45.

The Bangkok event was a single-track event, with the following running order.

I arrived just as Dan was finishing his session. I’m sure I’ll get to see it in Auckland. It was a rapid-fire event, with a few small breaks. It was nice to get to see everyone, but it would have been better if I was not so rushed for time. As soon as my session was over I only had time to take a few pictures, then I was rushing off to the airport to start the next leg of my journey. Next time I will try to stay longer…

Thanks to everyone in Bangkok for organising the event and keeping everyone on schedule. It would have got really tricky if things had run behind schedule. 🙂

So tonight I start the journey to Auckland. I’ve got about 6 days left of the tour and because of the way time zones work, about 3 days of that time is on a plane. I could have done with the Auckland event being in the middle of the tour, so I would be half way home now, rather than travelling to the furthest point before heading home. I’m sure it will be worth it. The Kiwi event is good fun and I will hopefully get to meet up with some of my friends who live in NZ.

Cheers

Tim…

OTN APAC 2014 : Beijing to Bangkok

The day started at 03:00. Once everything was packed and ready to go I typed up some blog posts to fill my time before the taxi arrived. I had checked out the night before, so there was no drama getting out of the hotel.

The great thing about travelling early in the morning is there is very little traffic. The cab to the airport took about 20 minutes. Everyone had suggested it would be 40-60 minutes, which of course it would have been later in the day.

Airport security went relatively smoothly. They wanted to scan my cables several times. Joel got one of his power-banks (mobile chargers) confiscated. Interestingly, they confiscated the small low-power one, saying it was dangerous, but let him keep the bigger, high-power one. Go figure…

The flight to Bangkok took a little under 5 hours. There were some quality passengers as always. One guy decided to get out of his seat to look through the window about 1 minute before we landed. Others got out of their seats and started to collect there hand luggage as soon as there wheels hit the ground. It seams there is no cure for being a dumbass. 🙂

When we boarded the plane in Beijing the air was cold and dry. On leaving the plane you were instantly hit with the hot and wet air of Bangkok.

Bangkok airport is quite large and very busy. The immigration line was *very* long, but it moved quite quickly. Joel got to the front of the line and was then told to go somewhere else, so I picked up the luggage and waited for him to arrive. He joined me about 15 minutes later and we went through the customs etc.

The taxi to the hotel took about 15 minutes, with only a couple of near-accidents, but I was too sleepy to care. I checked into my hotel and was told I had a free upgrade to a suite. The room is amazing. I have:

  • A lounge/office room.
  • A bedroom with a balcony.
  • A massive bathroom with a bath, separate shower, makeup mirror, Dalek style toilet with controls on the wall
  • A walk-in wardrobe.
  • Two TVs with cable.
  • A bowl of fruit.

It’s like my own little flat. If it had a washing machine I would move in permanently.

I’m only in Thailand for about 24 hours, so I’ve not got time to do any real sightseeing. I took a walk around the hotel, which is very posh. I walked around the nearby park, which was quite hard work in the heat, while dressed completely in black. I also walked along a couple of small streets, which were full of rather interesting establishments. I popped into a big shopping mall to cool down and bought some posh bread, then grabbed some diet coke from a 7 eleven near the hotel. That’s dinner sorted!

I’m back in the hotel now and I’m going to bed soon. Tomorrow is going to be a long day. I go straight from the conference to the airport for a 9.5 hour flight to Sydney, then a 3 hour flight to Auckland. It’s going to get really messy if I don’t sleep on the plane!

I’ll check in tomorrow with another post where I moan about my lack of sleep… 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

OTN APAC 2014 : Beijing – Day 2

For some reason, unknown to me, I could not sleep. I left the restaurant at about 22:00 and switched between attempting to sleep, watching TV and playing on the computer until 06:00 the following day. I have no idea why. When 06:00 eventually came I went down for breakfast, then got back to my room and attempted to sleep again. This time I went out like a light and was woken by Bjoern at 12:00 asking if I was coming to lunch. Of course I did not turn down food, so I threw on some clothes and went with him. After that I hit the shower, then was ready to start the day…

I had no presentations on the second day, so I originally planned to work most of the day. That didn’t happen…

I went along to see Giuseppe Maxia speaking about MySQL replication. The MySQL track had a great turnout of attendees. Giuseppe asked about usage of a few different technologies to get a feel for the audience. Interestingly, when asked who uses Hadoop, the crowd didn’t seem to react, but when asked about MongoDB, lots of hands went up… I’ve had some time to speak with Giuseppe over the tour and he’s given me some ideas about what I need to look at next to improve my MySQL installations. The networking at these things is really the best bit. 🙂

Following that session we did some mingling and some group photos and the event started to wind down. Bjoern must have taken a photo of himself with every woman in the place. He was loving the attention. In the evening we did a quick walk around the local area, including looking at a high-end shopping mall that was pretty much empty of customers… 🙂

Then it was back to the hotel to check out and book a taxi for 04:00 the following morning…

Big thank you to all the folks in Beijing for making this happen. This event certainly has a buzz about it now and I hope it keeps going from strength to strength. I look forward to coming again to see how it progresses in future.

Tomorrow I’m flying to Bangkok…

Cheers

Tim…

OTN APAC 2014 : Beijing – Day 1

Having an extended period of sleep was really good. After a week of minimal sleep I felt vaguely human again…

On my last visit to Beijing in 2011 the conference had about 500 attendees registered and we used translated slides and live translation of the speakers. This time it was a much bigger event. Over 1000 people registered, split over 3 tracks. The keynote room held in excess of 1000 people and there were people standing. Quite impressive. Also, there was no slide or live translation for this event. I was going to use my Chinese slides from Shanghai, but the organisers said they preferred the attendees to listen to English and read the English slides. That is quite a change in 3 years.

Another encouraging sign was the number of slots for English speakers was quite limited. The aim of the Oracle ACE program is to encourage a stronger local community, so ultimately it would be good if overseas speakers were totally surplus to requirements. It certainly looks like China is moving that way, which is great. Interestingly, they do not seem to have any interest in the apps side of Oracle. It seems to be purely a tech conference.

In addition to the growth of the conference, there was also a growth in the vendors having stands at the event. It’s kind-of freaky looking at Dell’s Spotlight running with Chinese text. 🙂 I think the growth of the event is really encouraging. I hope it continues to grow.

Since most of the sessions were in Chinese, I spent most of the morning playing catch-up with some stuff for the website. I met up with Bjoern for some food at lunch time, then went to do my session. The room could hold about 500 people. Tom was in the room before me and not surprisingly he had it packed out. I had less than half that number for my session, but I was pretty pleased with that considering it was a straight PL/SQL session and I’m a foreign speaker competing against native speakers.

In the evening we went to the Hotel’s Brazilian Barbecue. 🙂 It was a meat-fest, but there was plenty of Chinese veggie stuff for me to eat and I took full advantage of it. 🙂

I was expecting a really easy night with loads of sleep, but things didn’t work out that way. More about that tomorrow…

Cheers

Tim…

OTN APAC 2014 : Tokyo to Beijing

Not much sleep last night. When I know I’ve got an early start I don’t sleep well because I’m worrying about waking up late. 🙂 At 04:00 I started getting everything ready to leave. I met Bjoern in the lobby and we took the airport shuttle to Hanada airport. Once again, I piggy-backed on Bjoern’s lounge access to get some free drinks and breakfast. 🙂

It was my first flight on Air China and I can’t say I was too impressed. With one exception, the stewardesses were as miserable as sin. If they tried to smile they would have cracked their faces. I was attempting to get my one and only piece of hand luggage into the overhead locker and I was told twice to get out of the aisle so people could carry on boarding, and of course put their 75,000 pieces of hand luggage into the storage bins. By the time I was able to try and put my bag away without being moaned at there was no space. Needless to say I got the right hump and will do my best never to fly with them again!

The flight itself went OK. I got between 1-2 hours sleep during the 3 hour 40 minute flight. On arrival at Beijing we took a taxi to the hotel, dumped our stuff and went in search of food. Being the adventurous types we are, we settled on Pizza Hut. 🙂 Bjoern wasn’t feeling too well, so I was forced to eat his food too. 🙂

It’s 15:00 now, but we’ve both come back to the hotel to crash. I’m planning on sleeping for the rest of the day and night. Conference starts tomorrow…

Cheers

Tim…

PS. I’m back behind the Great (Fire)Wall of China again, so I’ve got limited access to social networks and emails for a few days…

OTN APAC 2014 : Tokyo – Day 2

db tech showcase tokyo 2014Day 2 of the English speaking track of the Tokyo event began with:

  • Tom Kyte : Oracle Optimizer : What’s new in the Oracle Database 12c?
  • Mike Dietrich : Hitchhiker’s Guide to Oracle Database Upgrades

After Mike’s session we went out for lunch at a Tempura place. I had vegetable tempura. Very nice!

Tom took great pleasure in saying things like, “You’re only saying that because you get those cheques from Oracle every month…”, after everything I said. 🙂 For those that don’t understand the joke, read these blog posts (Fanboy, Oracle Bitch, Follow Up).

The afternoon sessions were:

Presenting so late on the second day was really tough. I just wanted to climb into bed and sleep. I had to miss a couple of slides out as I ran out of time, but it’s all backed by an article, so people can fill in the gaps later if they are interested.

After the event we went out to eat and few brave souls went out to Karaoke.

I’d like to extend a big thank you everyone involved in the setup of the event, especially Noriko, who went out of her way to make everything as simple as possible for us. I look forward to seeing you all again.

Tomorrow is an early start for the flight to Beijing, so I’ll probably post an update once I land and get into the hotel there.

Cheers

Tim…

OTN APAC 2014 : Tokyo – Day 1

Day 1 of the Tokyo event started with a taxi ride over to the conference venue. The traffic was not as bad as I expected, based on the stuff you see on TV. Does that mean TV has been lying to me all this time? Who’da thunk it? 🙂

db tech showcase tokyo 2014The event has 1 (mostly) English speaking track and 3 Japanese tracks, which cover a whole bunch of technologies including RDBMS engines, NoSQL engines, Hadoop and hardware. It’s a general database tech event, hence the name db tech showcase 2014 – Tokyo.

On the English track, first up was was Craig Shallahamer talking about “Memory Structure Control: How it works (latches & mutexes)”, followed by Bjoern Rost taking about “Oracle Hard Partitioning Technologies”.

At lunch we went out to a noodle bar which was pretty interesting. You pick your food from the menu on the wall outside, buy the relevant ticket from a vending machine, then walk into the restaurant, present the ticket and eat. 🙂

After lunch it was Francisco Munoz Alvarez speaking about “Everyone talks about DR – But why so few implement it”, followed by me doing the first of my two PL/SQL performance sessions. After a short break it was Bjoern, this time with “Setting up RAC properly to avoid application downtime”. After that the rest of the track was made up of Japanese speakers, so we kind-of ditched. 🙂

After the event we headed out for some food and networking. We got some drinks and food, then played bingo. I was hoping one of our group would win the bike or TV, which would have been funny, but we didn’t. Craig won a Chromecast though! After the bingo we were given glow-sticks and had a show by a girl group called Symphony-5, who had impossibly high voices and were very kawaii. Many of the attendees were very formal during the day, but the drinks and the show loosened everyone up, which gave us a chance to speak to a number of people, which was really cool! It was a really fun evening!

We popped back to the hotel to dump our stuff, then went across to a tall government building to get a night-time view across the city. I took photos, but I’m not sure how good they were yet. You can see what I’ve got here.

Cheers

Tim…