In November I also attended the Sangam the first time. It all actually started in Norway at the OUGN event earlier this year. Sai from AIOUG was there and attended my session. Afterwards he came to me and said: “Heli, we need you in India!”. Because of Sai I was willing to skip one of my favourite events, BGOUG, that was at the same time with Sangam and decided to visit India.

I am glad I did. I really, really liked India! And Sangam was an amazing event. And I learned a lot about different cultures! In Delhi (I changed the plane there) I learned that you must have a tag (for stamping) in every hand luggage and in Bangalore I learned that in Finland we do not have any rush hours…

The venue for the event was a lovely hotel in Bengaluru:

Sai was extremely kind to us and organized us a wonderful sightseeing tour:

After the sightseeing tour we were ready for Sangam16!

One of the keynotes during the event was a guru explaining us the technology of happiness.

It was an interesting presentation. We also tried meditation and I am pretty sure I fell asleep 🙂

I gave again two sessions: my favourite SQL Developer features and database designing with Data Modeler.

It was a great event!

We enjoyed the ACE dinner:

and plenty of quality time with great people:

Thank you very much Sai and the AIOUG team, OTN and the ACE program for letting me to experience this! I really hope I can visit Sangam one day again!

— Heli