OOW14 is now done for me. Sitting at the airport and waiting for my flight to depart.

Yesterday I attended the Bloggers’ meetup very briefly and then joined an early dinner with some friends. I decided not to attend the party since I was very tired, had a lot of work to do, needed to pack and last but not least had three sessions to present on Thursday. On Thursday I had a breakfast with a friend at 7.30 and then I checked out from my hotel and walked to Moscone. I had my first presentation at 9.30 and then I had some user groups meetings. The next session was at 12.00 and the last one at 1.15 pm. I want to thank everybody who attended my sessions during the OOW! I really hope you learned something new and that you enjoyed.

After my sessions I walked to the hotel to have some drinks and snacks with friends before heading to the airport.

Thank you ACE Program! I had fun and I can say without hesitation: this was the best OOW ever!

Safe travels to all and hope to see you soon again!

I think this has been my busiest OOW ever. I did not have had time to tweet, blog or anything. Now I took a short break before the Bloggers’ Meetup to do it.

I have not had time for sessions, I have had so much social to do. On Saturday I had a breakfast with some Finns and then joined the Finnish group to vineyards. My first time. That was just amazing. Beautiful scenery, lovely wines and food, and fantastic company.

I started my Sunday with the Bridge Run organized by That Jeff Smith. Because Debra Lilley was so excited we started our walk already at 7.30 and finished about the time the runners started. The Bridge was fantastic. We saw the sun rise and we enjoyed the lovely weather and lovely scenery. Excellent start for a day and for a conference. I visited the user group pavillion several times during the day to say hi to my friends, I met lots of people, attended the ACE dinner and the Finnish dinner.

On Monday we started with breakfast at 6.30 and then the Bay Swim by Oraclenerd Chet (unfortunately he was not there:(, Chet we missed you!) at 7.30. After that we needed some hot coffee:) I once again met lot of people, had luch with a dear friend, polished slides for my session on Tuesday, attended 4-5 parties and went to bed early.

On Tuesday I started with the IOUC Support Committee Meeting at 7.30. Then met some people and gave my first session at 10.45 for a full room. Thank you all who attended! Then we had the traditional ladies’ lunch at the Cheesecake Factory, some preparations for the presentations, lots of meeting people and 4-5 parties again. But early to bed again.

Today is Wednesday and I met a friend for breakfast at 7.30, then prepared our demo with That Jeff Smith, attended the Sustainability Innovation Awards session (I have been one of the judges for many years), attended a birthday party lunch, got my book signed by Brendan, had some birthday cake and now preparing for the bloggers’ meetup. On my way soon…

I am in San Francisco now. I arrived on Wednesday afternoon and had a lovely family dinner with my Oracle family: my amazing and lovely Mom (Debra Lilley), my Dad Tim Hall who has a huge fan club (on tours my Mom keeps the line in order when people wants to get his autographs) and my ever-young and legendary grandfather Graham Wood (I call him Gram). I am so proud of my family and hope to have many, many family dinners with them in the future.

On Thursday my first two day Oracle ACE Director briefing started. If you want to hear it in short: wow! Biggest plus: Thomas Kurian. Biggest minus: not hearing enough Maria Colgan.

The ACED briefing was exactly what I expected but also much more than that. As a rookie I am still not quite aware what I am allowed to say and what not so I do not talk about details at all. I only tell you that cool things are coming and I am very convinced that Oracle knows what they are doing so keep on betting Oracle.

On Thursday we heard about Oracle Development Tools, all kinds of clouds, middleware, WebCenter, BPM, WLS, Coherence, Exalogic, OAUX, SOA and finally Thomas Kurian came in…
It was all interesting and I learned very much. The OAUX team was as amazing as can be and I was thinking this cannot get better…but it did. Before I say more I tell you I started Thomas Kurian fan club and it is already quite populated…
Thomas Kurian entered the room. He smiled and said hi to all. The whole entrance was quiet, polite and very modest. In that point I was already curious. I have seen his keynotes and presentations but I have never met him in this kind of event. Thomas started his presentation. Without slides, without notes. The way he told the whole story of Oracle products and product families now and in couple of years was facinating. He moved on logically, clear and peacefully giving us all the impression he knows everything about Oracle product, all of them. Because nobody really can people were asking him tough, deep technical questions, and he replied them all with pleasant voice and knowledge that made me speachless. He was not in a hurry. He had all the time in the world to answer every question people had. Larry, I hope you realize what a jewel you have!
So because of Thomas I cannot say much more about Thursday: I am still without words.

On Friday I was looking forward to the update in database and especially Maria Colgan. Unfortunately she was too busy and could not stay more than a few minutes (people were asking questions to keep her there longer). I understand that she was busy right before the OOW so I am not complaining;) but Maria just happens to be one of my favourite persons so I would have liked to hear more…
We heard about MySQL, met Bob Evans (chief communication officer), learnd about BI platform, APEX, Linux, virtualization and Steven Feuerstein’s inspiring YesSQL message. Stay tuned, this will be interesting!
I think the hightlight of the second day was Dan McClary explainig us Big Data and everything around that. He did a great job! I should have written about Data Modeler on my blog when 4.0.3 came out, I realized it on the briefing. Data Modeler supports (among others) Hive and people did not know that (external table of type Hive)!
I always think that if I know something everybody knows it. Not a very good feature for an expert:(

This experience was fantastic and I will remember it for a long time! Thank you OTN, the ACE Program and the organizing team!

I am waiting for my first Oracle ACE Director Briefing to start. Exciting! I woke up at 3am to be sure I will not miss it (starts at 8.30):) Jetlag is a wonderful thing….

I was really lucky to have booked the same flights with my friend Julian Dontcheff who is a “senior” ACED and was able to brief me about the briefing. Now I am looking forward to it even more than before…
Also Fiona from UKOUG was on the same flight from London to SFO. She is such a fun and nice person! Had a nice chat and I look forward seeing her during the OOW. Oh, BTW, all you wonderful EOUC presidents: thank you for your supportive emails and great ideas! I will get back to them after the OOW. I love working with user groups!

I just checked the agenda for the briefing. The briefing will be two interesting days at the Oracle HQ and we will hear about EVERYTHING, not just about our own speciality. I really like the idea because I am interested in everything but unfortunately do not have time to learn about anything else but my own area. And now I do! So looking forward to this…

And once again special thanks to my very own Oracle-Dad, Tim Hall, who gave me this idea to write blog posts while travellig and posting them when possible. It works so well! And thanks for the wonderful family dinner last night, Tim, Debra and Graham. I was really tired but enjoying! But since I am the kid I am allowed to be tired, right?:)

I am in London waiting for my flight home.

This was my first Kscope as an attendee and as a speaker. I loved every minute of the conference! It did not start very well, probably because June was really busy for me. First of all I did not book the hotel in time and could not get a room from Sheraton. Well, I did get a room from Westin and that hotel was really nice. Secondly I forgot to book the flights and did it at the last minute (and I payed for my mistake quite dearly) by a help of a travelling agent that found me from Twitter. Isn’t that cool! Well, unfortunately that was not all… Next I realized I had not registered for the conference and the registration was closed already. Thanks to Lauren who seems to understand us speakers better that we do ourselves handled everything and there was no issue at all. I could have stopped here and try to be smart but no… Two hours before my session I went to check the conference app to see that I have the right version of my presentation there…no…it was not the right version, in matter of the fact it was a completely wrong presentation. Yep. I did upload the right one but updated it with the wrong one just before I left Finland. Well, I uploaded the right one and one more time checked that my slides on my laptop were the right slides. Now I was getting nervous: what will happen next? Mr Murphy was obviously very fond of me.

I was a panelist on WIT panel hosted by Kellyn Pot’vin. I think this panel was really good. We had a huge audience, both women and men, and they really were interested in the topic. A lot of interaction!

I had my session, 9 Use Cases for Data Modeler, right after the panel. I was quite nervous, which I am usually not. But when I started to present and my audience was just fantastic I was not nervous at all: I enjoyed. I had a great audience! Thank you! You really inspire me!

The content of the conference was very high and everything was so fluent. I will need to ask ODTUG board for some advice on getting sponsors and more attendees. I do not think many user groups today can say they have more attendees every year and sponsors signing already for next year. Well done!

It is always important to have good content and plenty of good food in conferences but still I think the best is to meet friends and make some new ones. I was so happy to see many of my friends and finally to meet some of my ‘virtual friends’. I attended several sessions and learnt a lot. I gave a couple of interviews on WIT and on ACE program. I met my publisher and my tech editors. I had a great dinner sponsored by the ACE program (thank you, Vikki!) and I even drunk some beer (luckily Jeff Smith came to help me out, I was quite desperate:-), I do not drink beer and I do not like it). And I was so glad to see Mike Riley and I wish all the best to him and his family.

Thank you ODTUG for having me as a speaker and letting me to attend and experience this amazing conference! And thank you for the great party! Cannot wait Kscope15 and Florida!

What I do not get is why do they say it always rains in Seattle?

Done with the BGOUG conference. The content was amazing with several international and exceptionally big number of local speakers (fantastic!). And the organization was as excellent as always when my friend Milena Gerova has something to do with it. Thank you! Absolutely great conference!

This evening was one of the hightlights of my journey on user groups. We had several nations sitting in the same table (Bulgaria, Serbia, Poland, Belgium, Romania, Finland, …) and sharing their visions on European history and different cultures. I can tell you that none of this was taught to me when I was in school! So today I really learnt that history the way it is written and taught might not be the real truth. User group events are not just learning about Oracle but also learning about your own history and different cultures. I enjoyed this evening very much and I want to thank Milena and her team and those people who educated me this evening. I am sure I learnt very much. And I did make many new and good friends today.

And BTW I believe my sessions went well. At least they were well attended and I was told by many that they enjoyed and learnt. I am very happy about it. Thank you for letting me speak! I love my job!

Now it’s time to pack. I am travelling home tomorrow morning. Good night!