Finally I managed to write a post
A time for a post
Well, it has now been close to 5 months since I joined Rittman Mead Consulting. Right after I joined up, all my previous blog posts were migrated to the RMC blog. The ensuing blog silence on my behalf did cause some people to wonder and ask if I had been banned from the blog or if Mark and Jon took editorial power over my writing. The simple fact of the matter is that I somehow dropped out of any blogging mode and have been keeping my head down in the trenches, working hard. This is not to suggest that Mark, Jon and Peter have not been working hard and therefore they had plenty of time to blog :)
The last few months I have been dividing my time between a client in Brussels and another in London. The two projects are vastly different, so it has been quite refreshing to switch context every two weeks. In between I have also been tasked with writing new training material, delivering training to other clients, attending Oracle Partner training in Reading and the tedious task of attending user conferences and events. As a matter of fact, I am currently cruising at 35.000 feet over Lake Ontario on my way back home after spending a whole week in the heat and humidity of the fascinating (yet somewhat crazy) New Orleans, where Mark and I attended and presented at the ODTUG Kaleidoscope 2008 conference. Readers of the blog have, no doubt, read Mark's chronology of the week's happening. Let me just reiterate that the famous Hand Grenade drink, as well as the Hurricane, really are as advertised: dangerous in the hands of amateurs ...
The conference itself was really quite good. This was the second time that I attended ODTUG, the first time being the Washington 2006 event, but I was amazed to see so many familiar faces - both from the UKOUG crowd as well as people I had met 2 years ago. This was the first time that I presented at ODTUG and I am looking forward to submitting a paper again, next year. These events are a fantastic chance to catch up with "on-line" friends but more importantly, as a small business owner, for networking and meeting potential customers. I also had a chance to catch up a little bit with my good buddy Dimitri Gielis. Even though we both live in (or near) Brussels, we never seem to be able to catch up, as we are both very busy with our own work and travel.
The highlight of the conference, for my part, was probably the chance to meet up with Jean-Pierre Dijcks and talk about OWB and the roadmap and upcoming OWB11gR2. Also, I had a nice long talk with Mike Donohue about BI publisher and the really cool new features we are to expect to see there, like an online template builder. Also, I enjoyed the chance to spend some off-time with Mark, as we hadn't had any chance to catch up over the last few months.
After a hard week of attending talks, delivering talks, meeting people, chatting, having a beer (or two) and short nights, it will be good to get back home. Upcoming 2 months are booked solid for me, with more trips to London on the Eurostar and client work in Brussels. I plan on contributing some technical stuff later on, but this will have to do for now.
Cheers to everybody who attended ODTUG!