Youtube | The ORACLE-BASE Blog

YouTube : 6 Months and 1000 Subscribers!

That’s right, it’s been a touch over 6 months and my YouTube channel has just hit the 1000 subscriber mark. 🙂

This YouTube experience has been quite odd. My plan was to try and upload a video every weekday for the first 2 months, and I came pretty close to hitting that target. Once I had got a bit of content on the channel, I was inevitably going to kick back a little. After all, there is the website, the blog, life and that annoyance they call work to consider. I think a realistic target is to aim for is 1-2 videos a week.

There will inevitably be periods (like this last 2 weeks) where I don’t hit that, but just like writing, I’m not going to beat myself up about it. It’s the normal ebb and flow of things.

So far the technical videos have almost all been based on command line examples, which is similar to my approach when doing technical presentations. That’s suited me while I’ve been finding my feet, but over time there will be a number of different formats. I’m probably going to avoid having my image in the videos. I don’t like being in front of the camera that much, as I have to suck my gut in for extended periods of time. 🙂 I liked doing the car videos, as I was less self conscious about the camera while I was concentrating on the driving, but the sound quality was really bad, so I’m not sure if I’ll do more of those. We shall see.

The channel content will become more eclectic over time, because the DBA job is quite eclectic. There’s no point trying to bullshit about being a specialist, because I’m not one.

I would quite like to try my hand at some totally non-technical stuff, like a vlog maybe, but if I do that, it will probably end up on another channel, so it doesn’t dilute this channel too much. We’ll see what happens.

Anyway, to everyone who has subscribed so far, thank you. Thanks to all the folks that have done cameos for me so far. I’ve got a whole bunch more coming. If you’ve not already seen my channel, give it a try and see what you think.

Here’s to the next 1000 subscribers!

Cheers

Tim…

Multitentant (Pluggable Database) Videos

It’s been over 2 years since 12c was released and there still seems to be a lot of confusion about the pluggable database stuff. I think most people know the top-level concept, there’s only so many times you can see the memory stick analogy before it gets burned on your skull, but that doesn’t do much to help with the reality of working with it day-to-day.

I’ve written a whole bunch of articles on pluggable databases (listed here), but even then I think there is quite a bit of text for what in many cases is a feature that consists of a single statement. 🙂

I’ve recently been pushing out some videos on this stuff and I’ve got some more already recorded for release while I’m at OOW. Of course, the articles allow you to copy/paste your way through an example, but I think the videos give a more accurate representation of just how simple some of this stuff is from a functional perspective. If you are interested, all the multitenant stuff will be added to this playlist as it is released.

Cheers

Tim…

YouTube Cameos : My Channel Needs You!

I’ve spent the last couple of months uploading videos to my YouTube channel.

At the start of each technical video, I introduce myself by saying something like, “Hi. It’s Tim from oracle-base”, and I use a video clip of someone from the Oracle community saying, “.com”, to finish off the website name. I then put links to their blog, twitter, website etc in the description box. It’s just something fun and stupid to lighten the tone of the videos and to give a shout out to people in the community. 🙂

If you take a look at the clips, you’ll see they vary a lot. Some are simple and straight, just filmed on a webcam or phone. Others are a little more elaborate, like the one filmed under water. Some come with some funny outtakes I put at the end of the video. 🙂

Here’s a montage of all the clips I’ve used so far.

If you want to be included in one of the videos, send a clip of yourself saying “.com” to me (tim (at) oracle-base.com) along with your blog and twitter URLs and I’ll include it in a future clip.

I don’t mind you using some casual company branding, like wearing the t-shirt, but this is really about community, so don’t send me a McDonalds advert! 🙂 Any user group clips, like the one I got from Auckland are great too.

I try to use them on a first-come-first-served basis, so get in early before I start gathering clips at OpenWorld. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Update: Whoops! I missed out my crazy uncle Martin Widlake. You can see his clip here.

SQL for Beginners : Videos and Articles

I’ve been saying for some time I should do some more entry level content, but it’s been kind-of hard to motivate myself. I mostly write about things I’m learning or actively using, so going back and writing entry level content is not something that usually springs to mind.

Recently I’ve got involved in a number of “grumpy old man” conversations about the lack of SQL knowledge out there. That, combined with a few people at work getting re-skilled, prompted me to get off my ass and give it a go. It’s actually quite difficult trying to get yourself into the head-space of someone who is coming fresh to the subject. You don’t want to pitch it too low and sound patronizing, but then pitching it too high makes you sounds like an elitist dick.

Anyway, after completing the Efficient Function Calls from SQL series of videos, I decided to jump into a SQL for Beginners series. I’m also putting out some articles, which are essentially transcripts of the videos, to allow people to copy/paste the examples. More importantly, they have links to articles with more details about the subject matter.

Once I’ve done a quick pass through the basics, I’ll start adding a bit more depth. I’ll probably dip in and out of the series. If I stick with it too long I’ll probably go crazy from boredom. 🙂

If you know someone who is fresh to SQL, can you ask them to take a look and give me some feedback? It would be nice to know if they are helpful or not.

Cheers

Tim…

YouTube : Rags to Riches in 1 Week?

If you’ve followed me on Twitter you will have seen me posting links to videos on my YouTube channel. You can see me talking about starting the channel in the first video.

One week and 5 videos in and I’ve just hit 50 subscribers. Watch out PewDiePie!

One thing I didn’t mention in that video was my hopes/expectations as far as subscribers are concerned. As I said in one of my writing tips posts, Oracle is a niche subject on the internet. If you put out some half-decent content on a YouTube gaming or fitness channel, you would probably expect to get a few thousand subscribers fairly quickly. That’s not the case for an Oracle channel. Before I started this YouTube channel I did a little research and the biggest Oracle-related channel I could find was about 30,000 subscribers and that was Oracle’s main YouTube channel. After that some were knocking around 1000-4000 subscribers. Below that were a bunch of channels that were pulling double or triple figures of subscribers. Starting an Oracle-related channel is *not* a good idea if your master plan is to dominate YouTube! 🙂

OK. With that bullshit out of the way, how have I found my first week?

Making YouTube videos is hard! It takes a long time. I’m estimating about 1 hour of effort per minute of footage. The first 3 minute video took 3 days, but that included learning the technology and getting to grips with editing. Hopefully I’ll get a bit slicker as time goes on. 🙂
Doing the vocal for a video is a nightmare. After a certain number of retakes your voice ends up sounding so flat you start to wonder if you are going to send people to sleep. I listen back to my voice on some of the videos and it makes me cringe. It’s monotone and devoid of personality (insert insult of your choice here). As I get better at the recording thing, I’m hoping the number of retakes will reduce and my vocal will sounds less like I’m bored shitless. 🙂
I love the fact I can do “quick” hit-and-run videos and not feel guilty about not including every detail. I’m putting links back to my articles, which contain more detail and most importantly links back to the documentation, so I’m happy that these videos are like little tasters.
I’m being a bit guarded about the comments section at the moment. When I look at other channels, their comments are full of spam and haters. I can’t be bothered with that. I’ll see how my attitude to comments develops over time.
I’m hoping to do some beginner series for a few areas, which I will build into playlists. This probably won’t be of much interest to regular followers of the blog and website, but it will come in handy for me personally when I’m trying to help people get started, or re-skilled into Oracle. I might be doing some of that at work, hence my interest. 🙂
I’ve tried to release a burst of videos to get the thing rolling, but I don’t know how often I will be able to upload in future. Where Oracle is concerned, the website is my main priority. Then the blog. Then the conference thing. Then YouTube. The day job and general life have to fit in around that somewhere too. This is always going to be a labour of love, not a money spinner, so I have to be realistic about what I can achieve.

So there it is. One week down. Five videos. Four cameos by other members of the Oracle community. Superstardom and wealth beyond my wildest dreams are just around the corner… Not!

Cheers

Tim…

Note to self: Why is this a blog post, not another video? 🙁