We are almost ready for the OUGF Harmony…

Tomorrow it all starts with a lunch and some sightseeing with some of our speakers and then a dinner with all the speakers. The dinner will be served in a viking restaurant. There might be interesting pictures in Twitter tomorrow…

The OUGF Harmony will be a very special conference in a middle of a Finnish forest. First of all the speakers will be top quality (what else!) and the content will be extremely interesting (yep, yep, I have heard this before…nothing special…). There will be six tracks plus three more in tents (What!). Secondly there will be the Oaktable World, RACAttack (special sauna edition! Have you ever installed RAC in a sauna? This is your chance…), world premier on SE HA (with special, numbered t-shirts!), among others. Thirdly the speakers will spend the night in a tent in the middle of the forest (I just hope they do not like it too much and stay there forever:)).

And of course I do not need to mention that the dinner will be served outside by an open fire and by a beautiful Finnish lake. And attendees may take a sauna and a swim on the lake either before or during the dinner. And there is one more surprise nobody knows yet. Do not tell anybody… We will have THE Oracle band playing live music during and after the dinner…

Oh BTW did I say that THE C.J.Date will be there and explain temporal data? I cannot wait!!! He is definitely one of my personal favourites…and he travels all the way from California just to be here for us!

This will be a conference one of a kind. I am very sorry if you will miss it:( But do follow Twitter to see what is going on (#OUGF14).

Now we just hope for a good weather. Fingers crossed!

Have you always wanted to speak in a great conference but never had the courage to submit a paper? I think you should do it now. UKOUG is looking for new speakers, first timers. This might be your chance…

Why not submit now: http://www.tech14.ukoug.org/default.asp?p=11590

The closing date is Friday 23rd May 2014.

My first presentation at the UKOUG Tech was 2013 and I can tell you it is worth submitting. It is a great conference and the audience is fantastic!

I am so excited about the coming Harmony conference! It will be awesome!

Many of the top speakers in the world in a middle of a Finnish forest sharing their knowledge and experience. Amazing!

We will have topics on database, DW/BI, application development,…

Plenty of ACE Directors, ACEs and ACE Associates. The Oaktable World. RACAttack (special sauna edition!). Roundtables, sessions,…

Dinner outside by a lake (#DineWHeli :-)). Sauna, swimming in a lake.

Several excellent keynotes. 6 tracks + 3 tracks in tents.

And last but not least THE C.J.Date will give a seminar on Temporal Data in the Relational Model and SQL.

And all this on the same fee!

Who can afford to miss this?!

Register NOW:

http://www.eventbrite.com/e/ougf-2014-harmony-tickets-10410222255

The next four weeks I will only travel inside Finland to speak in various Oracle events but May 20th I will fly to Sofia, Bulgaria for the EOUC presidents’ meeting.

EOUC stands for EMEA Oracle Usergroups Community and I am one of the two ambassadors/spokespersons for the Community. It is about the time to start preparing the meeting on behalf of the user groups. Most of the content for the meeting comes from Oracle but we also have some slots of our own. And since those slots are not big they must be used wisely and prepared well.

I already know people want to share best practices, talk about their issues, share the information on their future events and speakers. They want to know about the different tours we are planning in EMEA, vote for the new logo for the EOUC, hear about the OOW14 preparations and to meet each others. What else would be valuable?

I will be speaking about engineered systems in an event organized by Oracle in April and about backup and recovery in May in several cities in Finland.

I will also attend the EOUC presidents’ meeting in May. This year the meeting will be in Sofia, Bulgaria.

In June I will speak in three events:
OUGF
BGOUG
Kscope

And in October I will be one of the five Oracle ACE Directors speaking on
The Nordic ACED Tour (4 countries in 4 days).

no other plans for the Autumn yet….

All I want to say is: I love my job.
I am so grateful to the ACE program, user groups and Oracle that I can go and speak about things I know and love and that I can share my knowledge and help other people on it.

I love speaking and sharing knowledge. I love the Oracle community!
So thank you, thank you, thank you!

I just attended the OUGN (Oracle User Group Norway) event with a presentation about database design and Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler. My audience included That Jeff Smith, The Bryn Llewellyn and ACED Brendan Tierney  amoung others. I am sure you can imagine the pressure:) But I enjoyed every second of my presentation! The audience was amazing! They did ask (excellent!) questions… I guess I did not do too badly because Jeff bought me a wine afterwards and said that he can see that I have been teaching. He also corrected that he meant it as a compliment. As a Finn I sure recognize a compliment when I hear one! I was very happy with the presentation and I hope the audience was too.

I attended several excellent presentations at the conference including the keynotes by Andrew Sutherland from Oracle and the duetto by Kellyn Pot’Vin and Tim Gorman.

Connor McDonald was as excellent as always, and the same I can say about Kellyn Pot’Vin, Jeff Smith, Bryn Llewellyn and all those great guys (in Oracle world everybody is a guy, even girls) I always go and listen. But it was the first time I heard Brendan Tierney speaking. He is great! I suggest you register for OUG Harmony (June 5-6) and come to hear him speaking!

During the OUGN14 the OUGN members elected a new board. Congratulations Alice Rossmann, the new chairperson/president of OUGN!

Thank you OUGN board and volunteers! Especially thank you Oyvind Isene for the excellent conference! And just to make you all jealous: I have been invited to speak at the OUGN15! Until next March!

I was asked by Oracle to give a presentation about database security to C-level audience. I have come across to that topic many times during my career and I found the idea very tempting so I did agree on doing it. I was very nervous because of two things: this is not what I usually talk about and I was asked to present in Finnish. But I am glad I did it. Preparing the session itself was already an interesting and eye opening experience but the audience really liked the presentation and many people came to me afterwards to say that the event was much, much better than they expected. I encourage you all to take the opportunity to talk about something else every now and then. You will learn a lot!

We had the annual IOUC (International Oracle User Groups Community) meeting at the Oracle HQ in January. I was there representing EOUC (EMEA Oracle User Groups Community) and OUGF (Oracle User Group Finland). This meeting is so great because I have the change to meet my friends and colleagues around the globe.

The next meeting will be combined with the OOW2014, it will be held Thu-Fri on the previous week.

Thank you Oracle for organizing these meetings!

I just realized that I have been speaking in at least 8 events in 2013! No wonder I have been so busy! And what makes it even more impressive is that I was really sick in the beginning of the year and needed to cancel all my sessions. So actually I have been speaking in at least 8 events between April and December.

UKOUG Tech13 (3.12.2013)
DOAG 2013 (19.-21.11.2013)
OOW 2013 (22.-26.9.2013)
OakTable World 2013 (23.-24.9.2013)
Wildcard Conference 2013 (13.9.2013)
ilOUG Tech Days 2013 (10.-11.7.2013)
UKOUG Scotland 2013 (12.6.2013)
OUGF Harmony 2013 (25th anniversary) (15.-17.4.2013)

And these are the ones I remembered now. I should be more organized to keep a list of the events in the future…

Let’s see what 2014 brings…I have some new plans. Let’s see what happens…