Today was the official day for my book to be published and we had a small launch party in Finland at the Miracle office.

We were ready for the guests an hour before the start…

And then they arrived…

I gave my speech and told about the writing process etc.

Then Jaripetri Kalske from Oracle Finland gave a fantastic speech about the importance of database design and about the fact how proud the local Oracle is that the author of the book is a Finn. Thank you, Jaripetri!

After the official part we all enjoyed some finger food my masterchef Mother made for us and talked about database design and Data Modeler.

Thank you all for attending! And I hope you like my book 🙂

– Heli

The Wildcard conference was once again a great experience. Thank you Vladimir, Natalija et al!

I was more nervous than usually because the audience was not my “regular” Oracle audience but developers of different technologies. I prepared a completely new session for them: Managing the changes in database structure. The audience was extremely good and interested in the topic. The questions during and after the session were excellent. Thank you Natalija Knaidele for taking this photo!

In the end of the session I signed and gave away a copy of my brand new book. Guna was kind enough to help me to pick the lucky winner: Andris Enins. I hope you like the book, Andris!

Once again the conference was great and I really had no reason to be nervous: the audience is always fantastic in Latvia! Thank you for inviting me!

On Friday I will fly to Riga, Latvia to present on Saturday at the Wildcard Unconference 2015 (#wcuc15). I am extremely honored because the speakers were not selected by the organizer but by the attendees!

This time my audience is not the typical Oracle audience: it will be developers with different backgrounds and technologies. Because of that I have prepared a special presentation for them: Managing the changes in database structure. In my presentation I will share my vision of managing changes in database structures and show how that can be done using my fav tool Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler. I hope the audience likes it and can use that knowledge to better manage their changes.

I hope to see you there too! http://wildcardconf.com/e/201505/program.html

Cheers

Heli

Once again I am sitting at the airport, this time in Prague. I had a wonderful week and I feel extremely blessed.

On Tuesday I flew to Bucharest, Romania for the Oracle University Romania Expert Summit. I arrived in the afternoon just in time to meet Chris Date and a Romanian friend of mine Mirela Ardelean. Mirela took us for a sightseeing walk and for a lovely meal. Oracle was very kind to us and sent some wine and fruits in our rooms. After the nice tour and meal Chris and I ended up to the hotel room drinking wine and talking about relational theory and everything. The next morning the Summit really started for me and Chris: he was presenting and I was attending his session on Aspects of Relational Theory. Chris mentioned there are at least two articles by Codd that everybody should read once a year; I think everybody should attend this session once a year! It is so easy to forget the basics and make terrible mistakes.

It was not an easy decision to attend Chris’ session: at the same time Pete Finnigan was teaching Oracle Database Security Audit and Jonathan Lewis explaining how to write optimal SQL. After the long and very useful day I gave a talk at the local user group (RoOUG) about agile database design. The audience was absolutely fantastic! I had so much fun that without my friend Ciprian (president of the Romanian Oracle user group) I would have talked until the morning and missed the speakers’ dinner Dan, Cosmin and Joel organized for us in a lovely Italian restaurant.

Thursday was “my day”: I talked the whole day about database designing and Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler. I was quite surprised to see the room was totally packed! After all there was Chris explaining Time and Relational Theory and Pete continued his talk about security at the same time with me. When we finished teaching both me and Chris realized we are too tired to attend the Big Data roundtable led by Alex and instead ended up having a glass of red wine.

In the evening there was a light festival in Bucharest: a lot of lights everywhere and people having a party. I, Chris and Mirela went for a late dinner in old town. The late dinner turned out to be very late because the chefs were too busy since everybody wanted to eat out that evening and we really waited for the meal very long. But the meal came and it was delicious. Then we had to get to sleep because Chris had an early flight in the morning and I wanted to attend Alex’ session on Big Data the next morning.

Friday was the Big Data day: Alex was the only speaker and did get the room full with people interested in the topic. Unfortunately I had to leave in the middle to catch my plane.

I must say the Expert Summit was really worth doing! It was an excellent event and Oracle really made me feel like a member of royal family! Joel, Dan, Cosmin and the team: you really were spoiling us! Thank you! I only have one more thing to say: please invite me again to an Expert Summit! Thank you Oracle University!

In April (21-24) I will be speaking in Bucharest, Romania. That is an Oracle University Expert Summit. “7 seminars – 5 Experts – 4 Days”

To me this is like a dream come true: I will be speaking with several of the heroes in Oracle community. My friend and the biggest hero in the whole IT industry, C.J.Date, will be there as well as the performance tuning guru Jonathan Lewis and the security guru Pete Finnigan. I do not know Alexandru Ciobanu yet, but I have heard he is a guru on big data area. And because of all these gurus I am also called a guru in the add 🙂

I am so excited about this. During “my day” I will show how Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler works and what you can do with it. We will also talk about reporting, comparing, versioning etc.

And I have never been to Romania before! I am so looking forward to this. I will meet the local Oracle user group during my visit and I hope I will also have a chance to see a little bit of Bucharest too. Bucharest: I will see you soon!

If you want to join us, please read more information here:

http://www.oracle.com/ro/education/eblasts/ro-bucharest-summit-170215-ol-2421861-ro.html&intcmp=EMEAOUSPOTBAN3

P.S. Thank you Joel Goodman for including me to this amazing event! And thank you Cosmin Apostol for taking such a good care of everything!

I am home after a fantastic OUGN conference in Norway.

I flew to Norway on Wednesday for a nice speakers’ dinner by the sea. Thank you Ann-Sofie and the rest of the board for a lovely dinner!

On Thursday morning we took a taxi to the harbor where our cruise ship was waiting. This year the ship was even bigger than last year… The day started in the nightclub where we saw several presentations and keynotes before we were split into parallel sessions in conference floor. We were given our cabins during the lunch break, before the parallel sessions started and I had to rush to my cabin to change my dress. (thank you Hanne! The cabin was lovely!). In my cabin I had a gift from OUGN board waiting and a thank you card. OUGN board does know how to make us speakers welcome!

New this year was the exhibition area which actually worked extremely well: we met the sponsors there and were able to have a car race, shooting, golf, fresh juice etc. Lunch was also served in the exhibition area.

I had two completely new sessions at the OUGN15: Reporting with Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler and Comparing designs and databases with Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler. My first session was on Thursday at 3pm. I had a lovely room with sea view…I was a little worried I will be a bit absent in my own session because of the scenery… In the beginning the room was half full but there were more and more people coming in so eventually I think the room was pretty full. And I was not distracted by the view because the audience was far more interesting. I think the session went well and I made it in exactly 45 min as planned. I hope my audience understood the fantastic capabilities Data Modeler offers for reporting.

After the days sessions the OUGN had their annual meeting and they elected a new board. Then we had a networking event in exhibition area and a nice dinner in one of the many restaurants on board. I had a pleasure of dining with my son, Gurcan Orhan, and Brendan Tierney. It was an extremely nice and fun dinner. After the dinner I had to go to bed because I am not 100% well yet and need a lot of sleep.

The next morning I was up early and had my breakfast at 7 with Joel Goodman and Patrick Barel. At 8.30 I was invited to a WIT session lead by Kellyn Pot’Vin-Gorman. Unfortunately I had to leave in a middle of an interesting conversation for my next session that started at 9.30, again in that lovely room with a view… During my session we arrived to Kiel, Germany. I had a good audience again and I was extremely proud to see Jacco in the audience. I guess he liked what he heard and I hope more DBAs will see the value of Data Modeler in their work too… I probably need to prepare a session for DBAs… And I cannot be too thankful to Alex Nuijten who always attends my sessions and is such a good friend. After the session I met some nice OUGN members and I hope I helped them with their problems… the best part of traveling is meeting people and helping them.

Last year I did not visit Kiel but this year I thought I should, especially because Björn Rost was waiting at the harbor with some sandwiches and gin… I, my son and Gurcan walked down to meet Björn and his “team”. Björn is always such a nice person to see! We had a nice meal and a chat, we did some shopping in Kiel and then back to the ship.

At the end of day two there was a networking event in exhibition area and I still cannot believe this: I won an Apple Watch! I won it because the picture I tweeted. The jury found it the best. It must be because of my son. He is in the picture and smiles.

After the networking event we had a delicious dinner. I had a pleasure to eat with some of the best people in the world: my son, Brendan, Gurcan, Mark Rittman, Philippe Fierens, and Jan Karremans. After the dinner we needed to talk about serious things and Philippe, Brendan, Gurcan and I moved to one of the bars to have a chat. I am sure the world is much better place after our talk J

The next morning Brendan and I continued our talk about something…it might really happen…who knows…you will be the first to know if so… Now it is still a BIG secret.

The ship arrived to Oslo at 10 am and I and my son took a taxi with Alice Rossman to her house. We left our luggage there and walked all the way to Holmenkollen. There was a world cup about to start. A lot of people, party going on and the sun was shining. We walked to the top and had a sandwich in a café. Then we walked back to Alice’s house to make some waffels and brown cheese (yummy!). Luckily we still had some time and Alice took us to see a farm house where the first prime minister of Norway used to live. A lovely place! I must visit it at the Christmas time when they have a Christmas market and everything… After that we went to see “the park of naked people”, it is a beautiful park full of statues of naked people, the Vigeland park. It was really worth seeing! So far we had walked almost 20 000 steps in just one day, half of that uphill J

Unfortunately now our time was full and we needed to take a train to the airport. Alice took us to the railway station. We bought our tickets and went to the station to wait for our train. At this point I must admit the only “public” transportation I am capable to use is taxi J I see the timetable and it says that the airport train comes in 20min BUT there are several other trains coming and stopping at the airport. WHY would I wait for 20 min if I can take a train now?! So we jump in to the next train to the airport… We are sitting in the train and checking from the map it really goes to the airport, yes it does. After a while a person comes to check for the tickets and it turns out that there are two railway companies and my ticket is only valid in the other one. It also turns out the other train is faster and twice the price of this train…hmm… Luckily this man was very nice and he lets us travel with our tickets for the wrong (and expensive) train company until the airport. I promise to him next time I will buy a ticket to their company J

We arrive at the airport and once again too early: in Oslo they open the bag drop no earlier than 2h before the plane leaves. I knew that but did not remember. Well, it is always better to be too early than too late…

The flight is on time and I arrive home before midnight on Saturday. I am so ready to sleep J

I want to thank everybody who attended my sessions during the OUGN and I really hope you liked and learned. I enjoy sharing the knowledge and solving problems other users might have. Attending these events is also a chance to meet many of my friends. I am so grateful to have friends like this and to have the opportunity to meet them around the globe. I want to thank user groups to make it happen and the Oracle ACE Program for making it possible for me to attend these amazing events. This time especially thank you Oyvind! You are one of a kind! I wish you all the best, you are a great man.

Last week I was speaking at the Riga DevDay. That was an event in Riga, Latvia for software developers. The venue was a movie theatre inside a shopping mall (I did not buy anything:)) and there were more than 400 attendees. Quite a number!

I spoke about Data Modeler and 9 use cases for it. This time I adjusted my session a bit because I realized not everybody in the audience knew the tool so I cannot jump to details immediatelly. This time I had a very special audience in many ways: it included my younger son. I was a bit nervous how he sees my presentation and will he be very embarassed (he is a teenager)… He enjoyed the session and afterwards told me that most, if not all, of my sentences were meaningful and he enjoyed my session a lot. He also pointed out that I was the only female speaker in this event and that makes him especially proud of me. I hope the rest of the audience enjoyed too 🙂

Riga DevDay was a great start for a new year and I really enjoyed it very much. I want to thank the organizers for everything and especially the best speaker’s gifts ever: a red and white woolen scarf (I love it and I wear it every day!) and a cooking book for Latvian food (one of my favorite hobbies is cooking…).

Unfortunately I must cancel my sessions and travels on February due to my health issues but in March I will have the full power on again and heading to both Norway (OUGN) and Ireland (OUG Ireland)… I hope to see you in either of those conferences…

On Nov 18-20 I attended the User Group (DOAG) event in Nuremberg, Germany. The event was amazing. The content was super quality, plenty of people to network with and such a great hospitality from the organizers.

On Tuesday I presented with Jeff Smith from Oracle Corp. We were showing how Data Modeler can be used in collaborative work with Subversion and with Microsoft Excel. I think the presentation was very well taken and I always love speaking with Jeff: he is fantastic. And I am glad Maria Colgan found our presentation both informative and funny:) Thank you, Maria, for your great feedback! In the evening we had the speakers’ dinner in a lovely small restaurant. We had a fun and enjoyable evening!

On Wednesday I did not have any presentations but I attended the user group presidents’ meeting that DOAG was kind enough to organize. The meeting was excellent and we shared a lot of ideas and concerns. In the evening we had a great conference party with plenty of food, drinks, football and music. And a lot of networking. FUN!

On Thursday I gave my database security talk in the biggest room. That was quite scary. See yourself…

The content in the conference was excellent and everything was just perfect but I think the most valuable thing in visiting events is meeting people. I met many of my friends and I made so many new friends it makes me happy. And I must say the Nuremberg airport was a great place to be on Thursday evening to meet the rest of the gang:-) It was so nice to see you all!

Thank you DOAG for your support to the Oracle Community! And thank you for inviting me!

Tomorrow I will present in an event organized by Oracle Finland and Miracle Finland. We will talk about upgrading to 12c, ODA and Exadata. This event will be in Tampere, Finland and for a change I will speak Finnish. Will I see you in Scandic City Tampere at 8.30? Come and say hi!

Last week I attended my first OTN Tour as a speaker. We travelled to Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland. Every evening we changed the country and in the morning we started with a new conference. And again in the evening (when other attendees started to eat and drink J) we took a taxi to the airport and flew to another country. The speakers were selected by the user groups involved. My speaker colleagues were: Jonathan Lewis, Debra Lilley, Simon Haslam and Joze Senegacnik. My special skill on this trip was Swedish. I was quite surprised I still knew how to speak it:)

On Sunday we flew to Stockholm, Sweden. Jonathan was kind enough to wait for me at the airport and we took a taxi to a beautiful Japanese SPA where the conference was held the next day. The other speakers arrived a bit later. I made a reservation for dinner while waiting. Unfortunately the hotel was quite full and I got the reservation at 9pm (and we were starving!). To make the time fly faster Debra and I took a fish treatment (the fish ate our feet), that was funnyJ Finally it was dinner time. Everybody in the restaurant was wearing a kimono (the same kind of kimono) and it actually felt very nice: no need to worry what to wear… Sushi was excellent but I think we all agreed the main course was not the best one. The reason could also have been that we were already quite tired. The next morning we started with a breakfast and then to the conference, some of us (Debra, Simon and I) wearing our kimonos. I am very happy with my sessions. I presented about database security to a very good audience. Somebody from the audience tweeted that it was the topic of the day! And personally I was very happy to see an old colleague of mine (Ove) in the audience and it was so nice to hear he is doing very well in Sweden (he moved there 14 years ago). After the sessions it was time to take a taxi to the airport and fly to Oslo, Norway. I think it was a long 24h since Simon asked me at the airport: “Heli, do you come here, Copenhagen, very often?”. I think this question summarizes very well how we all felt during the week: confused…

My hotel room in Sweden:

We arrived to our hotel in Oslo about 9 pm and the OUGN board was waiting for us and offered us a lovely dinner. After the dinner we were all ready to bed (ok after some work, because even we are traveling and speaking we still need to take care of our day to day work and also polish the slides for the next day). Next morning it was breakfast again and to the conference. I think Norway had the biggest audience of all. I had my security session for a full room (the biggest room they had!) and a keynote about agile database design (also for a full room). The audience was excellent, I had so much fun. After my sessions somebody from the audience came and gave me a chocolate as a present. That was such a nice gesture! Norwegians are amazing! After my keynote I ran to the taxi (all other speakers were waiting for me) and the other attendees stayed for food and beer…

Here is a view from my hotel room in Norway:

And a picture from my presentation about database security about 5-10 minutes before we started. This is about half of the room.

About 9 pm again we arrived to our hotel in Copenhagen. It was a really nice small hotel. The board of DOUG was waiting for us and we were served a surprise menu which was excellent. I tried not to eat too much main course because I heard we will have chocolate cake for desert but the huge desert plate was still too much for me… The next morning we had a breakfast and then took a taxi to the local Oracle office where the conference was held. My both sessions were well attended (database security and agile database design) and the database design was so popular some people had to bring their own chairs… and I had my second chocolate from the audience… Thank you! What was special in Denmark was that my dear friend Mogens Norgaard (I owe him a lot! I would not be the CEO for Miracle Finland without him) invited us for a quick dinner before we flew to Finland. We had a delicious meal in his friend Ali’s restaurant and then took a taxi to the airport.

This is how Denmark looks like from my hotel window:

We arrived to Helsinki, Finland about 11 pm. My hubby came to pick me up at the airport (home!) and the rest of the gang walked to their hotel at the airport. The next morning we met at the venue which was a nice small building by the water. The temperature outside was minus something Celsius but inside it was warm and nice.

Even the phones were cold and dressed for the Winter…

I was super-brave (maybe because it is my home user group or maybe because we were all getting very tired) and gave both my sessions about Data Modeler just presenting demos (LIVE! demos). I think it worked very well. I had one or two slides and thanks to Simon I have one photo of me presenting…

After the conference we had a lovely dinner and then I was totally ready to bed.

I think the tour was excellent. All the organization was very good and travelling with other speakers was really nice. This tour made me very happy. People still valuate the database design. And I want to thank Ms Hanni Makkonen from Oracle Finland to make me speak about other topics but just database design. My security session was very well taken and I enjoyed it very much. In four words: I love my job.

I also want to thank the Oracle ACE Program: Vikki, Jennifer and Roland for making this possible. Thank you! The user groups for organizing the tour (Orcan, OUGN, DOUG and OUGF) and my fellow speakers (Debra, Jonathan, Simon and Joze) for making the tour an amazing experience. I had a great time! And I feel very privileged to call these amazing speakers my friends!

On Friday morning I was back at the office again. Not a bad place to be either…