Tag: conference

ORCAN Day 1 & 2…

Day 1 started with a bit of a shock. My demo VM would start. It was completely wasted, so I sat through 2 Steve Feuerstein talks trying to fix it. Fortunately I had a backup of the VM, so eventually I gave up and switched to the backup. It was a little old, but good enough to do all the demos. Panic over… Later I went to presentations by Anjo Kolk (SAN Stories) and Arup Nanda (RAC case study). My talk was the last session of the day. The combination of the mornings antics and the vibration of the boats engines made me feel a little jittery. I wasn’t totally happy with my performance, but I got through it with no major hitches.

Day 2 had new delights in store. I was first speaker on. I started up my VM and all looked well. Started the presentation and bang… No Oracle. I had a quick play but decided to continue without the demos. Fortunately, good advice by Andrew Clark meant that I always bring examples of what the demos “should” do, so I was able to continue without the database. I guess I should have been a little more distracted in this session because of the problems, but the result was I actually relaxed and felt a bit more focussed. I guess it had got so bad it could only get better. 🙂 I felt like this presentation, despite the technical problems, went a lot better.

Later in the day I got to see Sten Vesterli present “What’s hot and what’s not” in the development world. It was a neat summary of the technologies out there and seemed to go down well with the audience. He speaks really well and looks very natural in front of an audience.

So now I’m in the airport on the way to the OUGF conference in Finland and I really don’t know if I have functioning demos. Joy… 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

ORCAN Day -1

I started out from home at 03:00 this morning, so I decided it wasn’t a good idea to go to bed, in case I slept through the alarm. I’m now in Stockholm feeling incredibly tired, which is hardly a surprise. 🙂

I suppose I should have a look round as last time I was here is was raining and I didn’t take many photos. Maybe I’ll just go to bed though…

Cheers

Tim…

BGOUG Day 2 and 3…

I started day 2 a little later than the previous two days. After two late nights it was pretty difficult to drag myself out of bed. The presentation seemed to go down well. I managed to talk a little slower this time. 🙂 I spent a some time after talking with some of the attendees, about some topics raised in the presentation, which is always good.

In the evening we went out to dinner were I was educated in the intricacies of the Bulgarian language as well as some of the marriage customs. You never know when this type of information will come in handy.

Day 3 started with a little surprise… Snow…

So I got to see summer and winter in one visit. Cool! 🙂

I would like to say a big thank you to Milena and the rest of the BGOUG team for inviting me and running such a great event. It was a lot of fun and felt more like a family get together (without the fights) than a conference. I’d also like to thank Sve and Maria who helped me every step of the way, acting as driver, translators, tour guides etc.

I’m in Frankfurt airport now on my way home. It will be nice to get back to normal for a week, before my OU course in Slovakia, but I’m sure this isn’t the last time I’ll visit Bulgaria.

Cheers

Tim…

BGOUG Day -1

I’m now in the hotel in Sofia, the day before the Bulgarian Oracle User Group (BGOUG) Spring conference.

The flight from Birmingham to Dusseldorf took a little over an hour and ended with the smoothest landing I think I’ve ever experienced. Makes a change from the sort of the landings I’ve experienced recently, most of which felt like marginally controlled crashes. 🙂

The flight from Dusseldorf to Sofia was smooth until just before the landing. The plane started to rock just as we were going to touch down and I thought it was going to get messy, but the pilot pulled it out of the bag and it was a pretty good landing again. Two flights in a row with no problems. Looks like the trip home is going to be a nightmare to make up for it. 🙂

First impressions of Sofia are very good. The city looks very green from overhead, with lots of trees and parks. There are also some big and interesting looking buildings. I had just under 2 hours to take a look round before I had to get back to the hotel so I did a very quick pass of the city centre. I got some photos which I will post later if they look OK.

The city is swarming with police as there is a big energy summit on at the moment. Makes you feel extremely safe seeing lots of the police around. 🙂

I got a numpty tourist injury already. I was walking along looking at some building and didn’t notice the curb. I tripped and twisted my left ankle. Hopefully it amused the locals. 🙂

Off out for some food now…

Cheers

Tim…

CLOUG Day 2

The sessions I attended today were:

  • DB Time Based Performance Tuning – Graham Wood
  • A panel session about the Oracle ACE program. I was sitting in the audience for a while before I realized I should be on stage. You gotta laugh.
  • Creating a Technical Disaster Implementation Plan – Arjen Visser
  • Using Oracle Locator and Spatial with Application Express – Hans Forbrich
  • Advanced RMAN – Robert Freeman
  • My session 🙂

The whole event seemed to go down really well with the attendees and the speakers alike. This is the first CLOUG event of its kind in Chile and Francisco did a great job of getting it off the ground, so I would like to send a big thank you to him. Everyone I’ve spoken too is looking forward to the next event in Chile.

A special thank you also to Lillian Buziak from Oracle who paid all of her own expenses to be at this event to represent OTN on their stand and in the ACE panel session. If anyone at Oracle is listening, you really should reemburse her expenses.

So now I’ve got a day off before I have to suffer the 2 flights to get home.

Cheers

Tim…

CLOUG Day 1

Day 1 of the conference went really well. My presentation started a little late, so I missed out a few slides to try and get the timetable back on track. It was a bit unusual using a translation service for the first time. I speak quite fast so I think the translator needed a break once I was done. 🙂

I was on quite early, so I had the rest of the day to relax, chat to people and watch other presenters, including Dan Morgan, Robert Freeman, Hans Forbrich, Ben Prusinski and Graham Wood. The more I present, the more interesting I find watching other speakers. There are always lessons to learn.

In the evening we went out to dinner and I’m sure you will see a bunch of group photos appearing on people’s blogs over the next few days. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

CLOUG Day -1

It’s 10:50 am and I’m in my room in the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Santiago, Chile. The CLOUG conference starts tomorrow and I’m feeling a bit nervous. My last presention was in Sweden (ORCAN) in December, but it seems like an eternity since then. 🙂

I’ve already got a whole bunch of stuff lined up this year. The current timetable looks like this:

13th-14th April: Chilean Oracle User Group (CLOUG)

24th-25th April: Bulgarian Oracle User Group (BGOUG)

27th-28th April: Oracle University 2-day workshop in Slovakia (still unconfirmed)

11th-12th May: Swedish Oracle User Group (ORCAN)

14th May: Oracle User Group Finland (OUGF)

21st-25th June: ODTUG in Monterey, California. This is combined with a visit to Oracle’s head office for a briefing, which should be interesting.

11th-15th October: Oracle OpenWorld, San Francisco.

Things seem to be popping up all the time, so who knows what else will be in that list as the year progresses. The world tour continues. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Missing UKOUG…

I’m a bit hacked off because I’m missing out on UKOUG…

I got a free pass to check out the conference this year and I can’t go because I’ve got a cold. I spent the whole of yesterday in bed and I think I’m going back there now. I’m bored out of my brain, but every time I try to do anything other than sleep I feel really dodgy and my joints hurt.

It’s my nephews birthday tomorrow. If I miss that I’m going to be in all sorts of trouble, but it’s not looking good at the moment…

I’m off to Sweden next week for a conference over there. I hope I’m feeling better by then!

Cheers

Tim…