IOUG blogs

After a full day of seminars and meetings, I along with the other Collaborate ‘06 guests found our way down to the closing party this evening. Wow! There were dozens of serving tables and bars decked out with plenty of good food. There was literally something for everyone (and then some) with plenty of Southern recipies as well as lobster, crab and prime rib. Even though there were probably 4000 to 5000 people in the room, I had no problem finding several buffets and a bar with a short line near the stage area.

The first couple to dance was IOUG President Ari Kaplan and his two year old daughter Tova. She was dancing circles around Dad (literally) and reminded me of how supportive our families are and how nice it will be to get home tomorrow.

Pretty soon, however, the pace of the music AND the volume picked up a notch as the dance floor quickly filled. It seemed to me that many folks worked off their dinner dancing to country style then rock and roll music. The three bands hired for this event were great, though I suppose I should expect nothing less from Nashville.

The confernce finishes tomorrow with a track of University sessions and a debate about Linux versus commercial Unix. I plan to continue to network with members of other user groups, in particular a few representatives from Mexico who want to learn about the IOUG’s web site hosting initiative.

My final conference blog entry will be tomorrow.

regards till then,

Tony

Well, today’s entry in the blog is also rather late because this conference has had me involved in one meeting / seminar after another for the last 16 hours. It started at about 7:15 this morning with a SIG “kickoff” breakfast and finally ended late this evening after a pleasant dinner. The pace is pretty wild, but from what I can tell not unusual among active volunteers and many attendees. We don’t often get this opportunity to participate in so many educational and networking events so why not take advantage of the opportunity.

One of today’s highlights was the morning keynote address byOracle’s President Charles Phillips. Charles thanked the IOUG, OAUG and Quest for their support and feedback and complimented the groups for cooperating and hosting this event. With over 400 user groups world wide, supporting fewer larger events is mutually advantageous.

Charles went on to say that he hears the customer base calling for increased visibility of Oracle’s plans, increased choice when implementing systems, good product value and time to adopt new technology. In response, he announced Application Unlimited, a policy whereby Oracle will continue to support and offer new releases to its current applications so that application customers may continue without being forced to upgrade.

In my opinion, this approach is a good one because it recognizes the logistic and financial difficulty many organizations have with major software upgrades and provides time fo Oracle to meet the challenges of developing Fusion. I suspect user group feedback was instrumental in shaping this policy, and that’s a good thing.

After the keynote, I served as room monitor for three sessions and had lunch while networking with other business leaders. That left just enough time to visit a few booths at the vendor fair where I believe the vendors are very pleased with the overall user interest and traffic. I wrapped up the day at an Oracle hosted reception which was quite pleasant.

More tomorrow…
Tony

Sorry about the late posting, but Monday was a very busy day for me. I started out as room monitor for two sessions on new features in 10G then attended the annual luncheon meeting for Regional User Group leaders, a focus group and International Oracle User Council meeting.

After that, I presented my paper on deploying production applications in Oracle Application Express (formerly HTML DB) and discussed formation of an Application Express Special Interest Group with several interested users. We have a website at apexsig.oracle.ioug.org if you are interested.

The big event of the day was our keynote speaker Jamie Clarke who is certainly an accomplished adventurer, author and inspirational speaker. Jamie shared some of the stories and photos from his three trips (one to the summit) of Mount Everest and his 800 mile camel trip across the Arabian desert. I found it quite amusing that someone with the endurance to accomplish these nearly impossible feats also found it daunting to navigate the halls of this Gaylord resort!

Jamie was extremely entertaining and left us with some valuable advice. Based on his life experience, he advises everyone to set lofty goals but reminds that we must always understand the adventure that is present in the current moment. That’s good advice, in my opinion.

Following Jamie’s session, the impressive crowd of over 5000 users migrated down to the vendor area where over 250 vendors were set up to demonstrate an incredible suite of products. In addition, drinks and refreshments were served. Yummm!

More tomorrow…

Tony

Today was a day to meet and greet the many friends, volunteers and fellow Oracle users who arrived early, registered and began to sort out their many options for the next few days. I volunteered as a “room monitor” for one of the University sessions which gave me a little more interaction with others than just attending the session.

Oddly, my first and most popular question was “Where are the bathrooms?” I must admit, I had not yet figured that out, so when the opportunity arose I decided to familiarize myself with the location of the facilities. This was more difficult than I expected it to be!

Don’t mis-undersgtand… The Gaylord Opryland Resort has plenty of “necessary rooms”. They are just well hidden, generally tucked around an innocous corner with a small sign pointing the way. I presume this is so that nothing detracts from the beautiful indoor landscaping, but I found it somewhat ironic that the bathrooms are harder than usual to find in a building where the sound of running water is EVERYWHERE. You get my drift?

After walking around today, I can offer another piece of advice to conference attendees. You should dress in layers as the climate can vary greatly in a place this size. Most of the open areas are a bit warm and humid, but conference rooms can get chilly when the air conditioning kicks in. It’s hard to find a thermostat setting to please everybody, therefore I recommend you bring your own temperature control (e.g. a sweater) just in case.

My next stop is the IOUG volunteer reception, hosted by our Presdent Ari Kaplan. I’m looking forward to the meeting and greeting (and drinks/appetizers) over there.

Tony

After a non-eventful (the best kind of) flight from Chicago, I arrived with two fellow Board members at the Gaylord Opryland Resort in Nashville.
Seeing as we arrived before check-out time some of our rooms were not yet ready. That was no problem, because I knew we could use the next two hours to familiarize ourselves with the facility prior to our Noon Board of Directors meeting.

Well, let me say again – this place is even bigger than I remembered! We walked through the acres and acres of lushly landscaped INDOOR space and finally found ourselves in the area being set up for registration tomorrow. It was pretty cool to see all the work that goes on behind the scenes and I have an even better appreciation for the hard work of our staff in planning this event.

We then took a short boat ride around the “delta” area of the hotel during which our tour guide provided us with numerous intriquing bits of hotel trivia and history including:

1. There are 2881 rooms here and even more beds.
2. This is the biggest non-gambling (for that you need to wait till Collaborate ‘07 in Las Vegas) resort under one roof in the world.
3. Our boat was cruising along in only two feet of water which is harvested of $15 – $20 thousand dollars of coins each year.
4. There are large albino catfish in the water but they prefer to stay in the shady areas (we’re inside… but this place has a glass roof).
5. Even bigger catfish live in the boathouse where the water is six feet deep. One of them weighs over 50 pounds and another exceeds 85 pounds (please hold on to your small children)!
6. Don’t worry about storms, the glass roof can withstand 125 MPH winds and golf ball size hasi. (If it gets any worse there are underground tunnels for shelter.)

I think you get the picture.

The IOUG Board of Directors meeting went nicely, but I won’t bore you with the details. I will acknowledge the excellent “chemistry” we share as we coordinate the sometimes complex business of running a user group. (list of IOUG Board members)

It’s gonna’ be a GREAT conference!

Tony

There is still time to join me at Collaborate ‘06 – by far the best value in furthering your Oracle education. You can register at onsite and receive a substantial discount if you are (or become) an IOUG member. For more details about the conference go to http://www.ioug.org/collaborate06
Catch a last minute plane or bus and join your colleagues from around the world at this event. With hundreds of IOUG sessions plus hundreds more from our partners OAUG and Quest, rest assured that you will find more than enough to keep you busy.

Tony Jedlinski
Executive V.P.
Independent Oracle User Group

Hi! I’m Tony Jedlinski and I’ll be your official blogger for the IOUG portion of the Collaborate ‘06 Conference. I’ll be writing from a unique perspective because in addition to attending the conference to learn from the impressive array of technical speakers I will also be presenting a paper on Oracle Application Express (formerly HTML DB) and participating in running the conference as Executive V.P. of the IOUG.

At this point, I am still in Chicago getting ready for next week’s events. I have entered my personal itinerary at http://www.ioug.org/collaborate06/education/schedule.cfm and volunteered to be a room monitor for many of the sessions. Being a room monitor is pretty easy. Mainly, you are there to watch the door and collect survey forms as people exit. It’s fun and you still get to hear the presentation. I printed my itinerary and double checked for conflicts with other activities. It’s going to be a very busy conference!

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to preview the Gaylord Opryland conference facilities while attending another conference. Note to self… be sure to bring comfortable walking shoes as this place is HUGE. Getting to the hotel is easy ( there is a shuttle from the airport every 20 minutes or so). Once you arrive, however, be prepared to spend some time getting oriented as it is easy to lose your bearings in a place this large. It is a very open environment, feauring a lot of garden and water features. If you want to swim, there is a fully equipped health center outside the main lobby. Otherwise, the water is just for show

I leave Saturday morning and will be busy with an IOUG Board meeting to review plans for the conference and other user group business. There are a lot of people working hard to make this event a success. I look forward to seeing them, making new acquaintances, networking etc.

Travel safely. I’ll see you there!