community

community, conference, oracleace, OTN, Uncategorized

Sitting at Birmingham after a great UKOUG Tech16 and for once using the time to update my much-neglected blog 🙂

Had  a great time again this year both in terms of content and social interaction. Session highlights – in no specific order I’m not ranking here:

  • Query, Integrate & Visualise All Your Data Using Hadoop – Mark Rittman
  • Kafka’s Role in Implementing Oracle’s Big Data Reference Architecture on the Big Data Appliance – Robin Moffatt
  • Data Streaming From Oracle To Kafka – Chris Lawless
  • Source Control, Code Deployment & Concurrent Development for OBIEE 12c – Robin Moffatt
  • Advanced Visualizations With Oracle BICS & Data Visualization – Antony Heljula
  • A Post – Big Data Analytics Platform & Use Of Oracle Advanced Analytics – Brendan Tierney
  • Community Keynote Business Analytics: How to spot the signals that tell you what’s REALLY going on in your business – Philippe Lions and Duncan Fitter
  • Advanced Analytics in Oracle Data Visualization Desktop – Philippe Lions
  • Oracle BI Analytics – An Update From Product Management – Mike Durran
  • Reduce European Flight Delay – Real Time ODI, OBIEE and D3 – Jerome Francoisse
  • OBIEE 12c Upgrade Experience At Liberty Global Case Study – Francesco Tisiot

Phew that’s all. It was refreshing to see that we finally reached the post-hype – and hence post-marketing-sales-BS stage – for Big Data and generally the next evolution of Analytics with many very pertinent real-life talks. Room assignment to Business Analytics talks could have been a bit better though as several of us including myself for one talk were in rooms with 11 person capacity and people standing squeezed up against the wall, in the door or even outside in the hallway.

Personally I did two talks about BI Server Query Execution and OBI Security respectively. For the latter I was joined by Gianni Ceresa for the coveted slot of 08:50 on Monday morning. Very good audience presence for both talks and some good questions which shows that foundation / core topics are still very much in demand rather than being skipped.

Content aside it was an excellent chance to meet up with several people again whom I hadn’t seen in a while and to do some more things for the OTN and ACE networks – more on that in a separate post to come. Tuesday night I hosted a meetup for Analytics geeks which drew a nice crowd in spite of numerous conflicting parties. Probably since we didn’t just “beer & business” around as usual but – being geeks – also had good fun with some card games. h/t to Jerome for bringing along a nice new one I hadn’t tried yet. Definitely something I’l lkeep up

UKOUG completes this year’s conferences and what a year it has been. Be seeing you all in 2017 at one of the Oracle User Groups, independent conferences or the mothership fest that is OpenWorld!

community, event

I’m currently sitting in yet another very good talk at the Polish User Group 2016 conference – first of it’s type ever to happen in Poland. Second-to-last of my conferences for this year according to current planning I have to really tip my hat to the team here for a very well organized conference with a brilliant line-up of speakers and topics. Especially if you’re considering that it’s their first one ever. Massive turnout in terms of participants as well! ……looking at you there SOUG. Learn from your peers guys.

I think Robin’s gesture here speaks for itself.

In terms of content I’ve managed to grab a number of sessions:

  • “DBA, Heal Thyself: Five Diseases of IT Organizations and How to Cure Them” – Jim Czuprynski: I really hope he uploads the slides so speakerdeck or slideshare. Basically he spent the hour denouncing management stupidity, procedural ridiculousness and political rubbish and why + how this destroys your project, your initiative and generally IT in general.
  • “Introduction to graph databases” – Hans Viehmann: Heard it several times already but it’s always nice to see how Hans makes a rather extra-normal topic in the Oracle family accessible and understandable as a concept to people who have never run into it.
  • “(Still) No Silver Bullets : OBIEE 12c Performance in the Real World” – Robin Moffatt: What can I say on this one. “I agree” or “+1”? Or basically: IF you don’t get this please leave the industry. NOW.
  • “Why has my plan changed” – Neil Chandler: Brilliant analysis of just how badly many things around the optimizer…many times…are gotten wrong, ignored etc. As I said on twitter: Something to give your DBA to ponder.
  • “Analyze This! Practical Examples of Oracle Analytical Functions” – Jim Czuprynski: Another great talk by Jim. I really think analytical functions – even when you’re just talking about PIVOT/UNPIVOT or windowing – are in many cases where a proper analytical environment doesn’t exist just underused. Let alone all the 12c stuff which has been added.
    And with him and his twitter handle “TheWhyGuy” it’s really all about what I constantly preach: WHY you should do things in what way is all that it’s about. Not brainless repetition of things someone said or you’ve read or heard.
  • “Tips on Bulk Data Processing with SQL and PL/SQL” – Martin Widlake: Currently ongoing but as it is with Martin: Very down-to-earth and to-the-point. No flamboyant rubbish or embellishment. Because this is just how things work. Couldn’t agree more.

All in all a very good conference. Very glad I invited one of my client teams to participate in these two days and introduce them to conferencing and the Oracle community! I really wish POUG all the best for the future. A new proud member in the family of Oracle User Group conferences.

Oh yeah. And the beers. Good grief. A place for Jeff Smith 😉

community, kscope

The ODTUG KScope16 speaker evaluations just arrived in my inbox and I wanted to take a moment to express my gratitude to everyone who came to listen to my sessions and for their magnificent feedback.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart – this is why I do these conferences!

Thanks also to everyone from ODTUG and all my friends from the community. I hope to see you all next year in San Antonio for KScope17.