Thursday 25 September 2014

My Oracle Open World Objectives


Every year I plan a modest OOW experience, promising myself I will keep time in my agenda, but then reality hits and here I am as ever turning down invites to really cool off-piste sessions and meetings because my dance card is full.


I always explain this is because I am wearing so many hats.

  • Oracle ACE Director*
  • Oracle Applications UX Advocate
  • Usergroup Leader
  • Speaker
  • Partner - My new job
  • With Analysts
  • Just for fun
  • As a mum

It also means arriving earlier and earlier and I am already in Redwood at Oracle HQ. I never get bored of visiting here, sunshine and beautiful walks.

Oracle ACE Director Briefings:

Two days of the best information briefings from Oracle Executives, not PowerPoint normally mainly Q&A, including a kick off from Thomas Kurian for an hour. Just how cool is that? Many of the ACEs come for these briefings and don't stay for all of OOW, this is more valuable use of their time.

Why these work is because we are a group of people who have proved our expertise in our areas through the nominations process and so the sessions are deep, under NDA and certainly not marketing. If I attend a session I don't understand (not being technical) I have a network of ACEs I can go to for the information. To me it isn't really about learning more about my area, I am all ready plugged into development there, it is more about filling in the gaps of my wider Oracle understanding.


Oracle Applications UX Advocate:

Traditionally this happens the day before the ACE briefings and I have found this the best way to understand where Apps development is, is going and how customer feedback influences what they are doing. I talk about UX all the time this is my sweet spot with Oracle.

This year is their biggest audience to date as people in the field are realising UX is the differentiator of Oracle Cloud Applications (Fusion).

The are also UX Exchange events during OOW I will attend.

Usergroup Leader:

Oracle traditionally held their usergroup leader meetings in January but this year have moved to this week before OOW. That clashes with ACE briefings so I am not attending but that isn't a bad thing, UKOUG has 2 representatives attending (James Haslam and Fiona Martin). However throughout OOW I will be thinking about what every announcement means to our members and what we need to be addressing and communicating.

On Sunday which is Usergroup Day EMEA user groups have some cool sessions that end with a double session on 12c database. 12 short talks by 12 of the best of EMEA presenters. What other session is going to have so many experts in one place?

      1. Upgrading to 12c: What Will It Break? Jonathan Lewis, Oracle ACE Director, OakTable
      2. The Optimizer in 12c. Christian Antognini, SOUG, Oracle ACE Director, OakTable
      3. Data Pump Enhancements in 12c. Osama Mustafa, MEOUG, Oracle ACE
      4. Pattern Matching in 12c. Gurcan Orhan, TROUG, Oracle ACE Director
      5. PL/SQL Security Enhancements in 12c. Alex Nuijten, OGH, Oracle ACE Director
      6. Data Redaction in 12c. Oded Raz, ilOUG, Oracle ACE Director
      7. A Case for the Multitenant Architecture, Even with a Single PDB. Tim Hall, UKOUG,        Oracle ACE Director, OakTable
      8. How Does Oracle SQL Developer Manage Multitenancy? Ami Aharonovich, ilOUG, Oracle ACE
     9. Multitenancy: Impact on SaaS.   Kashif Manzoor, MEOUG, Oracle ACE
    10. Oracle Multitenant in Standard Edition: (How) Does This Work?    Julian Dontcheff, OUGF, Oracle ACE Director
    11. What Features Will 12c Offer Traditional Oracle Apps?  Bjoern Rost, DOAG, Oracle ACE Director
    12. In-Memory—Enables Us To?  Dimitry Volkov, RUOUG, Oracle ACE


These are sessions UGF8949 & UGF9221

Oracle Open World Speaker:

I am taking part in two other sessions:

I am a regular blogger for the AppAdvantage team and will be joining them on a panel session, talking about using FMW with Apps Deliver Business Innovation while Reducing Upgrades’ Risk [CON8534]


I have been a UX Advocate for a long time and will be a demo babe showing the Simplified UI in their session - Oracle Applications Cloud: First-Time User Experience [CON7972]
Partner:

Now I am with Certus I am responsible for enabling their growth into ERP Cloud and PaaS extension apps for ERP and HCM, so these areas are important to me. I am meeting with lots of development and partner enablement people. Hope to learn lots to for this at ACE and UX events.

There are many receptions and events to attend as well, one of the great things about OOW is everybody is there.

I hope to make a partner video about PaaS.

With Analysts:

I work with several analysts throughout the year and will catch up with many and share with each other how we think Oracle are preforming. Ray Wang and Dennis Howlett

Just For Fun:

All these communities have given me many great friends and OOW is a chance to catch up with some of them. Organised fun outside of the official parties are the Bridge Run (which I will walk) on Sunday and swim in the Bay Monday. Depending on my final schedule I will also do Chi Gung each morning.

And as a mum:

My daughter is in the Military and just come home from a long deployment, so she is also going to San Francisco, and celebrates her birthday Tuesday. Not sure how much time we will get together but Saturday we will cycle the bridge, something I have done but she hasn't.

* Oracle ACE Program funds my trip to HQ & OOW







 

2 comments:

John Hurley said...

That sounds like fun but very busy. Although I have been president of my user group for a couple of years now I had not until recently heard about this IOUC summit thing. For me though it's a timing and financing problem as having to pay to attend something like that is a big hit. Maybe I will make OOW 2015 if I can get work to support me attending!

Debra Lilley said...


John which usergroup are you aligned to? IOUG? You need to talk to them as they would be responsible for sharing that information.