POUG18

18/09/2018 2 Comments

So that was POUG18 – the Polish Pint with Oracle User Group. This is the 3rd annual conference (and the 4th event) I have attended. IMG_4748A new location, many new speakers but the same vibe, energy and level of fun. Taking place in Sopot on the Baltic Sea, it was simply excellent and has to be the most fun Oracle conference in Europe. Its just a good size. Not too big, not too small.

We were lucky with the weather, which was mostly warm and sunny – this always helps lift events!

 

 

But the conference was again simply excellent. Great work by Kamil and Luiza (and everyone else involved!)

IMG_4762Packed rooms, amazing presentations from excellent speakers and personalised beer. What’s not to like!

Pretty much the only thing missing was POUG fixture Martin Widlake.IMG_4761

 

So as the sun sets on another POUG, we look forward to the next one. Where will it be this time? Front runners are the unpronounceable Wrocław, Poznań,  Łódź or maybe in somewhere the mountains.

Thank you for inviting me.

Next… SpOUG – the Spanish Oracle User Group Tech Day next week. Hurrah!

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Off to Poland…

04/09/2018 Leave a comment

This week I will be speaking at the Polish Oracle User Group annual conference in Sopot, Poland. It looks like a beautiful location for what is a really fun conference. As well as being surrounded by some of the most knowledgeable and excellent technology speakers in the world, there’s also plenty of fun and dancing taking place.

If I am extremely unlucky, I’ll end up swimming in the Baltic Sea. If you are unlucky, you’ll see me swimming in the Baltic Sea. Where I am from in the England there is an expression “It’s Baltic”, which means it is very cold outside. Very cold. So it is because it’s cold, OK. 🙂logo

I hope I’ll see you in Poland – fantastic place to visit with lovely people.

And don’t forget the parties and the dancing. Oh yeah!

And don’t believe all you hear about the vodka and axes, it’s much worse than that!

 

 

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High Five POUG: Polish Oracle User Group Conference?

06/09/2017 Leave a comment

I’ve just returned from presenting at the 2nd annual POUG Conference, this time in Krakow, Poland (the first was in Warsaw). This is the Polish Pint with Oracle User Group conference and is exactly what a conference should be. Educational, Informative, Well-executed and Fun.  It was based in a lovely city, with a wonderful friendly people, good food and great beer!

The Speakers gift was very thoughtful - a personalised t-shirt which my wife has declared too good to wear!

As you might imagine, with a name like Pint with Oracle User Group, there is beer to be drank. But in this case it was as available as the tea and coffee – and completely free! Several hundreds of litres of it were consumed over the course of the 2 day conference, a tiny little bit of it by me. I suppose this is the side effect of having a conference in a micro-brewery. Talk about organization skills!

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Brewery and Conference Location!

There were around 30 speakers giving talks, many of them well-known Oracle ACEs of various hues but a couple of first-timers who were excellent too.  It also reminds me that you don’t need to be an expert to speak at conference. You don’t need to know the n-th level of detail like Jonathan Lewis. You just need a story to tell about something you did that was interesting! I assume we’re all doing something interesting in our jobs from time to time? If you are not, you might want to try to find a job with interesting things to do, then talk about them!

One unique thing was being walked onto stage to a thumping good tune (I picked Human, by Rag’n’Bone Man) by an anthropomorphisation of the POUG Logo – basically a IMG_1571young ‘Oracle’ dressed like Obi-Wan Kenobi. They were also there to help out the delegates and speakers with any queries or problems they may have. Usefully they were all current or recently completed students on their way to being a doctors, vetenarians or structural engineers. High quality help indeed!

Many thanks to Kamil, Luiza and everyone else at POUG for a wonderful conference to remember.

IMG_1536I was debuting a new conference talk about Histograms. The talk went well, I think, but there are a couple of tiny kinks to iron out for the next time I present it – in Slovenia and Croatia – next month. Best remove the POUG-specific slides too, right Adam!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

oh, and the talk of the Conference was…Martin Widlake, with a gigantic beer!

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Martin Widlake giving a rather good talk about the parallels (and perils) of Beer and Development

 

 

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Appearances 2017

28/08/2017 Leave a comment

and wp

I’ve not written a post in a while. I’ve been a bit busy organizing several UKOUG events, including several Special Interest Groups 1-day events and Tech17 (and doing paid work for clients!)

I have been accepted to speak at a number of conferences over the next couple of months so I though I would share that with you and hope you’ll be there to learn, share, network and enjoy the conferences.

Events

1st-2nd September 2017. POUG (Pint with Oracle User Group) Krakow, Poland

27th September 2017. UKOUG RAC Cloud Infrastructure and Availability SIG. London, UK
(note: I’m not speaking at the SIG, just the Chairperson)

16th-18th October 2017. SiOUG. Portorož, Slovenija

18th-20th October 2017. HrOUG. Rovinj, Croatia

21st-24th November 2017. DOAG. Nuremberg, Germany

3rd-6th December 2017. UKOUG Tech17, Birmingham, UK.

Previous Appearances 2017

23rd Feb 2017. UKOUG RAC & Database joint SIG. London, UK

23rd-24th March 2017. UKOUG Ireland Conference. Dublin, Ireland

27th April 2017. UKOUG Northern Technical SIG. Manchester, UK (Chair Only)

8th June 2017 UKOUG RAC & DAtabase joint SIG. Reading, UK (Chair Only)

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Oracle Conferences

13/12/2016 1 Comment

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 – 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-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 – 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.

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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!

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UKOUG Ace Dinner

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!

 

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POUG 2-day event

24/07/2016 Leave a comment

Just a quick post to let you know I will be speaking, with a lot of other Oracle ACE and other excellent speakers at the Pint with/Polish Oracle User Group (Chapter IV), taking place on 7th/8th October in Warsaw. Click on Buy Ticket link to see some of the other speakers, or look at the images below.

Hope to see you there! Should be fabulous.

 

poug_speakers_1poug_speakers_2

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