Tag: OUGN

With the exception of a 5+ hour layover in Amsterdam, the trip home was pretty straight forward. I flew to Amsterdam with Lonneke Dikmans, Ronald Luttikhuizen and Roel Hartman. During my rather excessive layover, I played catchup with all the internet stuff I missed during the trip… 🙂

I must say OUGN 2014 was a pretty cool event all round! The speaker lineup was incredible. The location (on a boat) was fun. I’ve not done that for a while. In addition to the presentations, I got a lot of time to talk to people about technology, which is what I love doing, so that made me happy…

Big thanks to the organisers of the event for inviting me and paying the bill for the boat and hotel room! Thanks to all the speakers and attendees that managed to put up with me for a couple of days. On a boat, there is nowhere to run! Thanks also to OTN and the Oracle ACE Program. They didn’t fund this trip for me, but I’m still happy to be flying the flag on their behalf. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Day 2 started really early. Having got to bed about 02:00, I was up at 05:30 and thinking about my 08:30 session. The previous evening’s conversation with Brynn was playing on my mind a little (in a good way), thinking how that conversation should/would affect my session. The session itself seemed to go well. I enjoyed it anyway. 🙂

From there it was more conversations with people, including a chat with Martin Bach, Martin Nash and one of the attendees (sorry, I forgot your name) about some Exadata issues he was having. I freely admit to knowing nothing about Exadata, but I do know about most of the technology stack that makes up Exadata (like ASM, RAC etc.). Since a number of the issues people have are not really “Exadata” issues, so much as “RAC” issues or “ASM” issues, it’s surprising how much you can get involved in these discussions, provided you don’t try to pretend to be something you are not!

After that I attempted to catch up on some sleep, which didn’t really work out, so then it was off to lunch.

After lunch it was time for an open database panel session. This is the first time they’ve done this sort of thing at this event, so I’m not sure what people expected, including us panalists. 🙂 I think this sort of thing needs to run for a few conferences to let people get a feel for it, before you make a decision about whether it is going to work or not going forward. You have to give it an opportunity to mature… 🙂

After that it was off to Martin Bach‘s session on Oracle 12c, features that didn’t make the top 10. There were some things I already knew about and some things that passed me by. Food for thought!

Next up was Martin Nash speaking about what an Oracle DBA should know about Linux administration. I was pretty confident I was going to be so ahead of the game here, but he mentioned a number of things I’ve not played with. I’ll probably end up downloading his slides and working through some stuff.

Then it was my WebLogic session. Marcus Eisele did a session called WebLogic 101 in the morning and after a quick discussion I decided that we were effectively giving the same talk. I’m always a little nervous about doing WebLogic talks, but this made me even more nervous. As it turned out, with the exception of one person, I got a different crowd to him, so it was fine.

After my last session of the conference, I inevitably did some more chatting and then went off to see “Oracle Cloud Oddessy“. From there it was dinner, chatting to Mike Dietricht in the bar, then off to bed to sleep through the overnight ride back to OSLO.

Cheers

Tim…

PS. I think I got married to Debra Lilley by the ship’s captain…

The journey to Norway was pretty straight forward, but during the second flight, from Amsterdam to OSLO, my nose and eyes started to stream. I didn’t feel ill, but I was starting to worry I might be getting ill right before a conference. I landed in Norway, got the train to the centre of OSLO and walked to my hotel. I was meant to go out to dinner, but I figured bed might be a better option…

The next day we met up and headed off to the boat to begin the conference. After boarding, we went to the keynotes. Since these were in Norwegian, a few of use ended up at the back of the room chatting. 🙂 As soon as I got access to my room I headed on up to check it out. I’ve been on one of these ferry/cruise ships before and I think they are kind of cute.

After some food it was off to the first sesson of the day. I went to Connor McDonald speaking about Analytics. I’ve been to a number of different talks on analytic functions over the years, including my own. It’s kind-of cool to see how different people approach the same subject and what they focus on compared to you.

Next up it was my session. Compressing a 60 minute session, that I always overrun on, into 45 minutes was a challenge and I had to miss some stuff out, but it’s all good. I got some good feedback after the session, which is also nice for the ego. 🙂

From there is was on to Lasse Jenssen‘s session on version control in the database. I really enjoyed this session as it raised lots of important discussion points! After all these years, there is still not a single product that really does everything, but there are a number of products like Red Gate SQL Source Control, that are coming closer to the mark.

After that I got locked in conversation with a number people and missed the next session. I spent a long time talking to Cary Millsap about a whole bunch of stuff unrelated to technology. Then it was off to the evening drinks and dinner, where I sat with Cary and Connor. Once again, lots of chat about none technical stuff. Pretty cool!

At about midnight we decided to head off to bed and I bumped into Brynn Llewellyn, who asked if he could have a quick word with me. Two hours later we eventually knocked that conversation on the head and I actually went to bed. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

I’ve had some papers selected for the OUGN Vårseminar 2014 event in April, so I will be there representing OTN and the Oracle ACE Program. There is an impressive array of speakers lined up for this event already. Should be fun!

I’ve got a couple of months to practice my Captain Jack Sparrow impression. I wouldn’t want to look out of place on the boat!

Cheers

Tim…