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