IOUG blogs

Hi,

Denver is a great city to visit. If new to the IOUG or the Collaborate Conference, don’t hesitate talking to volunteers, members of the IOUG or board members for any suggestions on how you can maximize your conference experience.

Being from Denver, I thought I would share some of the fun locations I would recommend while in Denver. My list of things to do in Denver while at the conference can be found at web.mac.com/george.trujillo. Click on the Travel Tab then Click on Denver. I’ve included:
1) Top ten places to visit in Colorado
2) Top places within a two hour drive of Denver
3) Favorite restaurants in Denver and surrounding suburbs – Denver has the Palm, Mortons, Ruth Chris, PF Chang, etc. in downtown Denver. My list stays away from the chains.
4) Cool places to try in Denver.
5) Shop till you drop locations.

A few pointers for Denver:
In April it can be 80 degrees or 20 degrees, great sunshine and pretty cold all in the same week.
Downtown has a pedestrian mall (16th st) that will goes east and west, so its a great way to get from one end of downtown to another. Regular free shuttle buses go back and forth. The conference is on 14th street so you are only two blocks from the 16th st. mall area. Most places are between 14th and 17th street in downtown. Most active areas for clubs is the west side. Go to 15th st and Larimer, 17th and Market and restaurants and clubs are all around these intersections.

I also have a post at trubix.blogspot.com about ways to “Maximize your ROI at Collaborate 2008″.

I hope you have a great time while in Denver!!!!

Now that the RMOUG conference is over, its now time to focus on the Collaborate 2008 Conference in Denver, CO April 13 – 17th. Collaborate 2008 is the largest Oracle related user conference of the year bringing together the three key Oracle user groups: Independent Oracle Users Group (Technology related – DBA, Fusion Middleware, Storage, …), Quest (JD Edwards, PeopleSoft, Oracle Utilities) and the Oracle Application Users Group (OAUG).

Part of the value proposition of this conference is that you can go to any of the groups and attend just their conference, or you can attend presentations from any of the user groups. This is a great users conference. There is heavy focus on the user’s perspective with not a lot of marketing. If you can only attend one conference a year, this is the Oracle conference to attend. Go to www.ioug.org to get more details.

With all the activity going on with VLDBs, Oracle Fusion Middleware, XML, Oracle Applications, Storage , etc. Oracle technologists need to know more and more. To be able to listen to the industry’s top leaders has a very large ROI. However, I believe the networking can be just as valuable as the presentations. Every year I have someone tell me that something they learned at a breakfast, lunch or evening dinner paid for the conference. To leverage your experience at a conference I highly recommend you try to volunteer in some way. Volunteering is one of the best ways to network and feel part of the conference.

RMOUG was a great conference. My comments on the RMOUG conference can be found at trubix.blogspot.com. Kudos to the RMOUG team for putting on such a great local conference!