Tag: #ukoug_tech17

UKOUG Tech17 : It’s a Wrap!

Just a quick reflection on the UKOUG Tech17 event…

Here are the posts I wrote over the event.

Things went pretty well for me this week. My timetable allowed me to come for two full days, which was nice. It’s a lot less stressful when you are not trying to rush in and out from work like I was on Tuesday.

It’s funny walking around the event as it feels like every couple of steps I see someone I want to stop and talk to. I could probably spend the whole event in the lobby just talking to people. 🙂

As usual, some quick thanks:

  • Thanks to UKOUG for letting come to present again.
  • Thanks to all the people that came to my sessions, came to speak to me during the event and the folks that filled in the session evaluations last year, making my head swell even more. 🙂
  • Thanks to Oracle Academy and UKOUG for letting me come and present at the Oracle Academy sessions.
  • Thanks to the Oracle ACE Program for organising the briefing and for letting me continue to fly the flag at these events, as well the Developer Champion Program for dragging me into the new world. 🙂
  • Thanks to all the other speakers for sharing your knowledge and saving me a load of time Googling…

Next year’s event is in Liverpool, so I’m not sure how that will work out for me. If colleagues still want to come I will probably only be able to come for a single day. If they can’t face the journey I will be able to come for the whole event and stay in a hotel. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

UKOUG Tech17 : Wednesday

Wednesday started with a quick trip to the doctor, then I got a bus into town for the conference. I kept bumping into interesting people and chatting, so I didn’t manage to get to any of the early sessions.

I missed picking up my Best UK Speaker award and the group photo yesterday, so I picked it up today and did a photo with Linda and Jennifer, two of the ladies that keep the Oracle ACE Program and the Developer Champion Programs running smoothly. While I was in the exhibition hall I got into a discussion about APEX, and rather than just talk I opened my laptop, headed to apex.oracle.com and did an impromptu demo. One APEX talk and it’s gone to my head. 🙂

Then it was time for me to head up to the Oracle Academy sessions. UKOUG and Oracle Academy put on a program for students and Brendan Tierney and I agreed to help out and each do a short talk for them. Some of the students got “lost” in the conference (or at the German market), and of the ones that did turn up I recognised all of them from either the BCU talks I’ve done recently, or the UKOUG NextGen session I did in 2014. 🙂

From there it was off to lunch, then I had a two hour Oracle ACE Director briefing. It was a mix of public and NDA stuff, so I’m not going to say anything about it (or the Oracle Games Console #OGC) for fear of getting disappeared…

That pretty much wrapped up the conference. I popped into Starbucks to chat to Mia, Debra and Fiona, then it was a bus home and that was that.

Cheers

Tim…

UKOUG Tech17 : Tuesday

Tuesday was a work day for me, so I was in work until the late afternoon, then left for the conference to do my APEX session. A little while later I was sitting in traffic thinking, “I’m not going to make it!” The traffic opened, I got a parking spot really quickly and I made it with 3 minutes to spare… 🙂

The session was based around API first development for APEX. I was quite nervous about doing a talk in the APEX stream, because I have a long history of being bad at APEX and I know some of the things I say contradict the way some APEX developers like to work. The session was based around a number of things already on my website, but I might put them together to put out an article that aligns with this session, even if it just ends up as a glorified links page. I enjoyed giving the session and I spoke to a few people after it and got some nice feedback. Remember, it’s all just my opinion, not the law. 🙂

After the session I spent some time speaking to Gert Poel. He had done a session in the APEX track the day before, which had a lot of crossover with mine. Great minds think alike. 🙂 Then it was coffee, more talking, and the evening bash. Not surprisingly I spent a lot of time chatting to people, eating some food and had a couple of sneaky diet cokes. At about 22:00 I drove home and crashed for the night.

So Tuesday was a short day from a conference perspective for me, but I got to chat to a lot of people, which is the best bit about any conference. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

UKOUG Tech17 : Monday

I couldn’t face the traffic, so I walked to the station and got the train into town. I got to the event in time for the first sessions, but got waylaid meeting people, so the first session for me was the morning keynote, where I got my 30 seconds of fame as they announced the speaker awards.

After the keynote I grabbed a drink and went to watch “Flashback Features in Oracle Database” by Connor McDonald. Connor is always good to watch, although I felt a little cheated as he only used about 260 slides over the 50 minutes. It was practically sedate for him… 🙂

Next I went to see Pete Finnigan with “GDPR for the Oracle DBA”, who had a full room. As a techie it’s really easy to focus on the tech aspect of GDPR, but it’s such an expansive subject, spanning all aspects of the business. After the session someone tweeted,

“So you could say the architecture that underpins Oracle technology is not GDPR compliant, or did I miss something”

My reply was,

“I think you missed something. I don’t think any app is GDPR compliant itself. It’s bigger than that.”

I’m struggling to see how companies will even scratch the surface of GDPR…

After lunch I had my session called Multitenant : What’s new in Oracle Database 12c Release 2 (12.2). It was in the big auditorium, but most people sat towards the front of the room, so it didn’t feel like I was just presenting to chairs this year. 🙂

After me came the community keynote “Solving the Most Common User Request …. Make it go Faster!”, which was a tag-team made up of Connor McDonald, Chris Saxon and my sister-in-law Maria Colgan. I think this format is fun, and the general message about us needing to be more user-driven is important. At one point Connor was talking about instrumentation and showed a screen with V$SESSION information on it, asking the audience how anyone could tell which row represented the problem session. I shouted out it was row three as a joke, and it turned out to be true. I am available for performance tuning work. I don’t need to see you’re system. I am data-sensitive… 🙂

From there I went to see “Making the APEX Universal Theme Your own” by Marc Sewtz. I’m possibly the worst APEX developer in the world, so I have to keep throwing in APEX sessions, just so I feel a little less guilty… 🙂

On the way out of the previous session I got talking to Stew Ashton, and we missed the last session of the day chatting, mostly talking about #SmartDB. From there we headed up for the drinks and mingling. A little before 20:00 I headed across to the Oracle ACE Dinner, where we had a family table. 🙂 Having a large group of presenters in a room is not a good way to keep the volume down. 🙂

A short taxi ride home and Monday was done for me. I’m at work on Tuesday, but I will be in to present my session called, “Using PL/SQL and ORDS to Develop RESTful Web Services for APEX? Why?”, in the APEX stream.  I understand the irony of me being a crap APEX developer and doing a session in the APEX stream, but if you see it I think it will make sense why. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…