ukoug

Technical people tend not to enjoy Keynotes at conferences. We are allergic to content-light “there has never been a better time to invest in our products” fluffy, frou-frou, big picture talks. We want how-it-works meat on the bones of what is served up to us.

OK, it’s a very poor photo but the best I have of Dom presenting. Sorry Dom.

This last few days I’ve been analysing how well received previous presentations (since 2006!) have been at the UKOUG tech conferences. It’s interesting to look at the information. I’ve learnt some interesting things about all those well-known-names :-)

I’ve just noticed a new page about me popping up on the UKOUG web site – It’s in the section about volunteer case studies, alongside people like Joel Goodman, Simon Haslam, Carl Dudley, Jason Arneil, Brendan Tierney and others who have been stupid good enough to give time and effort to the UKOUG.
{You can get to the page by going to the UKOUG home page (www.ukoug.org) and clicking the Membership or Member Activities tab and Case Studies & Testimonials under that and finally Volunteer Case Studies. Phew. Or follow the link I gave at the start and click on the other names.}

I’m not sure how long I’ve been up on there but only a couple of days I think.

I’ve been blogging now for almost 6 years and presenting at conferences for… 12 years (really? Good grief!). I’ve even written and delivered several courses, ranging from 1 day to 3 days in length. However, up until now I’ve never been what I would term published – ie managed to persuade another organisation or person to publish something I have written.

<.. The tech15 committee and my role
<…. Who plans the Tech15 content

The call for Papers for UKOUG Tech15 has gone out. This is how most of the content for a large conference is sourced, by asking the community to submit abstracts for consideration. With smaller conferences and user group meetings the organisers can often get enough talks by hassling asking people they know.

<..Who are the Tech15 committee and my role
….submitting an abstract..>

When you go to a conference like UKOUG Tech15 there are hundreds of talks given over several days and a dozen or so streams. Who decides what is presented and how do they decide?

….Who plans the content of Tech15>
……Tips on submitting and abstract>

At the end of last week I was contacted by the UKOUG who asked me if I would agree to be on the planning committee for the annual technical conference this year – Tech15. Not only that but I was privileged to be asked to repeat my role from Tech14 and be the Lead for the Database area. I am of course happy to do so.

There are a few user group meetings coming up in the UK over the next week or two.

Note, you need to register to attend any of these, follow the links.

First is Club Oracle London, which are evening sessions held in London with 3 talks plus free beer and pizza. The next meeting is Thursday Feb 26th at 103a Oxford Street, kicking off at 18:30. You can register for this free event here and also see more details. In brief, Simon Haslam is talking about Oracle Database Appliance, Martin Bach on 12C new features the marketing guys don’t push and finally Phil Brown giving a virtualisation case study, how NOT to do it.

I think 2 years is long enough to wait between posts!

Today I delivered a session about Oracle Exadata Database Machine Best Practices and promised to post the slides for it (though no one asked about them :). I’ve also posted them to the Tech14 agenda as well.

Direct download: UKOUG Tech14 Exadata Security slides

As I mentioned in my last post, we tried to organise a thread of intro talks into day one and two of this year’s UKOUG Tech14 conference (you can see the agenda grid here). It was not complete but I thought I should pull it into it’s own post and add in what I would recommend from the overall agenda for people who are relatively new to Oracle RDBMS.

Monday 8th