Monthly Archives: April 2015

My first Oracle Expert Summit

24 Friday Apr 2015

Posted by in Events

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Once again I am sitting at the airport, this time in Prague. I had a wonderful week and I feel extremely blessed.

On Tuesday I flew to Bucharest, Romania for the Oracle University Romania Expert Summit. I arrived in the afternoon just in time to meet Chris Date and a Romanian friend of mine Mirela Ardelean. Mirela took us for a sightseeing walk and for a lovely meal. Oracle was very kind to us and sent some wine and fruits in our rooms. After the nice tour and meal Chris and I ended up to the hotel room drinking wine and talking about relational theory and everything. The next morning the Summit really started for me and Chris: he was presenting and I was attending his session on Aspects of Relational Theory. Chris mentioned there are at least two articles by Codd that everybody should read once a year; I think everybody should attend this session once a year! It is so easy to forget the basics and make terrible mistakes.

It was not an easy decision to attend Chris’ session: at the same time Pete Finnigan was teaching Oracle Database Security Audit and Jonathan Lewis explaining how to write optimal SQL. After the long and very useful day I gave a talk at the local user group (RoOUG) about agile database design. The audience was absolutely fantastic! I had so much fun that without my friend Ciprian (president of the Romanian Oracle user group) I would have talked until the morning and missed the speakers’ dinner Dan, Cosmin and Joel organized for us in a lovely Italian restaurant.

Thursday was “my day”: I talked the whole day about database designing and Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler. I was quite surprised to see the room was totally packed! After all there was Chris explaining Time and Relational Theory and Pete continued his talk about security at the same time with me. When we finished teaching both me and Chris realized we are too tired to attend the Big Data roundtable led by Alex and instead ended up having a glass of red wine.

In the evening there was a light festival in Bucharest: a lot of lights everywhere and people having a party. I, Chris and Mirela went for a late dinner in old town. The late dinner turned out to be very late because the chefs were too busy since everybody wanted to eat out that evening and we really waited for the meal very long. But the meal came and it was delicious. Then we had to get to sleep because Chris had an early flight in the morning and I wanted to attend Alex’ session on Big Data the next morning.

Friday was the Big Data day: Alex was the only speaker and did get the room full with people interested in the topic. Unfortunately I had to leave in the middle to catch my plane.

I must say the Expert Summit was really worth doing! It was an excellent event and Oracle really made me feel like a member of royal family! Joel, Dan, Cosmin and the team: you really were spoiling us! Thank you! I only have one more thing to say: please invite me again to an Expert Summit! Thank you Oracle University!

Is this the 21st century?!

18 Saturday Apr 2015

Posted by in General

≈ 4 Comments

This is an excellent article and these ladies are smart people:

http://www.forharriet.com/2015/04/9-black-women-game-changers-in-stem.html?utm_content=buffer50632&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer&m=1#axzz3XgE6Wpya

But for some reason this article made me very angry. Well, not the article itself but the fact that this needed to be written. Why do we need to prove that ladies can be smart? Why do we need to prove that people who does not have a white skin are smart? The smartness or stupidity is related to your brains, not your gender nor your skin color.

When I was at the elementary school (about 11 years old) I had a school mate: a boy with a black skin. He was absolutely the worst in mathematics. We had a very smart teacher who realized that he was not actually bad in mathematics but he THOUGHT he is because everybody said so. This smart teacher came to me and asked if this boy could sit beside me and I could teach him a little during the mathematics classes. Of course I said that is fine (I have always loved both mathematics and teaching). Next time we had an exam he got an A-. It was not because of my superior skills in teaching but with the fact that he was not fighting against learning when I was just talking to him and explaining things and I believed in his skills. He found the motivation when he realized that he is not actually bad in mathematics at all.

Some years later another teacher was thinking the same and asked me to teach another boy (white in skin). I seriously tried but he just did not understand mathematics at all. He was not talented in mathematics but he was very talented in handicrafts.

People are talented in different areas and it has nothing to do with their skin color or their gender, it has everything to do with their brains and… with the MOTIVATION. If you tell others they cannot do something, finally they cannot, even though they might be very talented. Do not do that, please! Let people try if they are talented or not, do not judge them beforehand by facts that have nothing to do with their brains and talents. Do not judge based on gender, color of hair/skin/eyes/.. Do not judge in any reason, just let people try!

The article is excellent and will give motivation to many people who has been pressed down by ignorant people. Thank you for writing it! And thank you to those nine ladies for being such a great example to us all.