This week I attended my first specifically APEX conference, APEX Connect in Berlin, Germany. Remember the Berlin Wall?

Our hotel was on the East side. I am sure I will remember this hotel FOREVER. Why? Guess.. 🙂

The first day started with a welcoming speech by Niels de Bruijn and his team. And then the stage was taken by “Tom” Chris Saxon. Chris gave a excellent talk about his experience on working on AskTom. My first talk was at 12.00 about Managing the changes in database structures in agile project with Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler. It is not easy to compete with lunch but almost a room full of people chose my presentation from lunch 🙂 Thank you so much for attending!

Before my next talk I attended Alex Nuijten’s Analytic Functions: Unleash the SQL Power, even though he was telling me not to. His excuse was that I have seen this session already. So what! Alex is a great presenter and I always learn new things in his sessions.

At 4.15 pm I was supposed to give a workshop on Top 10 Features of SQL Developer everybody should use. I say supposed because the room was getting fuller and fuller, more chairs were brough in and finally it was so full there was no extra space. I decided to just demo the features and give the slides to the audience to do the workshop part at home. I also agreed with the organizers (DOAG) that I will give this session in November at the DOAG event so that those who missed it this time will have a new chance to see it. Thank you very much for attending and thank you for all the questions and ideas!

The next morning started with the announcement of the winners of “APEX BI competition”. Congratulations to all the winners AND to all the attendees! Next it was the godfather of APEX, Mike Hichwa, sharing his thoughts of the APEX Vision; past, present and future. Mike is a great presenter and he definitely knew what he was talking about. Great keynote! After that I listened David Peake telling about the New Features in Oracle Application Express 5.1. As usual David was showing great demos for a full room. I could not get a seat so needed to listen the presentation standing 🙂

One of my favourite speakers is also Roel (“Rule”) Hartman. He knows what he is talking about and makes the audience believe they have understood everything 🙂 I went to see the presentation: Make your APEX Applications fly using JET components.

I though the day was perfect but no. The last keynote was simply amazing. Monkey See Monkey Do: Monkey Business at the work floor by Patrick van Veen. Using experiments with monkeys he explained human behaviour and gave great advice to IT projects, work and the whole life. Total Monkey Business!

After the monkeys it was time for a party! Dinner, show and plenty of music and fun!

The last day was full of great sessions. Of course I attended the sessions by Roel (APEX Developers: Do more with Less!!) and Alex (Structuring an APEX application). BTW I must attend all the session by Alex from now on: when I am in the room he remembers to tell the audience the right things  😉 If you add a new column, fill it up and change it to mandatory,…if you want to avoid performance problems, design your database,… 🙂

I also attended the session by Christian Rokitta, Lunchtime learn Q&A (which turned out to be lunch OR learn 🙂 ) and An Update to Universal Theme by Shakeeb Rahman.

Thank you all the organizers (GREAT WORK!) and thank you all who attended my sessions! Great event! Amazing community! I really, really hope I will be invited next year again!

— Heli

At COLLABORATE16 I gave my very first WIT talk. I have attended several panels on WIT, I have been mentoring etc. but never given a full talk about WIT. I was quite nervous before my presentation: what could I say that my audience would find interesting?!

I arrived very early to my room as did Anita, the representative for the sponsor. We had a great chat before the session started. The room was packed and I was told that there was a waiting list for another full room!  And not just women, plenty of men as well which I find great. Obviously WIT is a hot topic in USA. I am very glad COLLABORATE has noticed that and is giving the audience what they want.

I gave my talk and got plenty of questions during and after the session. And during the whole event people came to talk to me and said how much they enjoyed my session! That was a wonderful feeling.

Based on what I was asked and talked about it would say that the main concern for many of us are our children. We do not worry about the career and that kind of things as much as we worry about our children, no matter what age they are. Of course my audience was people already on IT so the concern for those who are not on IT but would like to be are different. And when I say we I mean both women and men.

Thank you COLLABORATE for inviting me and giving me the chance to give my first WIT talk!

— Heli

I am at the Las Vegas airport waiting for my flight home. It was a busy week but an extremely nice one.

This week I attended my first COLLABORATE (#C16LV). It was held in Las Vegas (did not see much of Vegas so no comments on that). I gave the WIT (Women in Technology) Keynote on Monday. The room was full and unfortunately not everybody who wanted to attend could do it because the seats were limited, the room can take only as much it can, not more. I was very surprised how popular WIT is at the COLLABORATE! I was very nervous before I started. I had prepared this session for weeks, and I mean weeks. Now I can tell you that preparing a regular tech session is MUCH easier than preparing a WIT session 🙂 Before I started I got a message from my husband saying: You will do great. When I started the presentation I was having a lot of fun! There was no reason to be nervous. The audience was simply GREAT! And the feedback I got…THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU! I am so glad I accepted the invitation to come and speak. Thank you so much for inviting me.

On Tuesday I had two sessions: a panel about communication and a talk about how to manage changes in database structures with Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler. The panel was organized by Michael Abbey. He is a great person and the panel was a success. Thank you, Michael, for inviting me to this panel!

My session about database changes went well too and I can proudly say that Mr Steven Feuerstein attended this session and did not fall asleep 🙂 Actually Steven came to me afterwards and gave me some compliments 😉

Wednesday was the day for meetings. I am the Ambassador for EMEA Oracle Users Groups and in that role I attended some great meetings. Thank you Mary Lou Dopart for inviting me.

Thursday was the last day of the event and I gave my favorite session about database designing using Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler as the last session of the event. I was surprised so many people still had the energy to attend the session and I am very happy for the feedback you gave me after the session.

During the week I also attended several sessions by other speakers, especially on Big Data. On Sunday I attended the OEM Hands on Lab (by Kellyn, Courtney and Werner) together with Jim Czuprynski. That was great fun! Jim is such a nice guy to work with!

On Monday I attended the keynote about trends and technologies, Rob Lockard’s security talk to mention some. On Tuesday and on Wednesday I attended a couple of big data sessions. And on Thursday I learned about JSON.

The parties (every evening 🙂 ) were great, I am sure, but as a first timer and a jet lagged person I needed to leave them early to be able to be energetic the next morning 🙂

Thank you very much for having me and thank you for attending my sessions!

I really hope I will get an invitation to speak at the #C17LV !

— Heli