Oracle Conferences

So the conference season is all over for another year. I have had a bumper crop of conferences and have been a very lucky man to attend and present and learn.

ougn_lecture_view — OUGN – View from my 1st lecture

OUGN – The Boat – a 2 day conference on a ship. We’re all in it together, and nobody can sneak off after the last talk and avoid the party as we are all in the middle of the sea. So much fun, and the less said of me finding myself in a corridor at 1.30am, wearing only a sm… [redacted on public decency grounds]

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POUG – Pint with Oracle User Group Poland in Warsaw lived up to its name. So many good parts to it; tables of beer, way too much vodka, great organization but the engagement of the audience was the highlight for me.

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bgoug_dancing — BGOUG-How many dancing Aces can you see?

bgoug_group — BGOUG-Great location, group shot

BGOUG – Bulgaria’s twice yearly conference. This one was in Pravets, an hours drive from Sofia. I cannot sing the praises of this conference highly enough. Beautiful location. Kind-of like being at a family wedding with added learning and less fights 🙂

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DOAG – Flew straight from Sofia to Nuremberg to the biggest Oracle conference in Europe. Extremely good conference on the outskirts of a lovely city. So much to opportunity to learn, it was amazing.

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ukoug_audience — UKOUG – Audience arriving for DB Keynote

UKOUG – Obviously the very best conference in Europe, but I am biased as I help to organize this conference. This year I took a larger role leading the team pulling together the Database agenda, which was about 1/3 of the total content of Tech16. Lots of hard work, but it payed off with a bumper crop of speakers from Oracle, over 60 ACEs, a list of excellent topics and only a couple of room allocation problems where we got a bigger audience than we expected (but fortunately none in my streams)

As well as helping Organize UKOUG Tech16, I also run several 1-day community events each year as the Chairman of the UKOUG Special Interest Group (SIG) for RAC, Cloud, Infrastructure and Availability.

ukoug_communities — UKOUG Communities Meet

At the UKOUG we have a “communities” evening, with beer, wine and nibbles for a couple of hours. I also bring a bottle of whisky for people to taste (I like whisky) and several other speakers and delegates also brought favoured bottles, including Belgian and German Whisky. The German stuff was great!

I’d like to thanks all of the organizers, speakers and delegates for making the UKOUG and all of the other conferences for letting me attend, speak, learn and have a wonderful time this year.

Finally, thank to Jennifer and the Oracle ACE Program for helping all of our communities, big and small, to hold these events and provide Prawn Toast and Thai Green Curry at the UKOUG ACE Dinner 😛

I hope see all you in Ireland in March!