UKOUG Conference 2008 Roundup

Mark Rittman

Dec 6, 2008 • 5 min read

I'm writing this sitting on the train coming back from the UKOUG Conference & Exhibition 2008, and whilst in previous years I've tried to do a daily update, this year has been so busy for us I'm only just catching up now. This morning I finished off my conference sessions by running a two-hour data warehousing masterclass, now it's finished I'm off home and looking forward to seeing Janet and the kids.

In general terms the conference seemed busy albeit with numbers, on individual days, seemingly a little bit down. Some of it was probably due to the economy, but a lot was also due to the conference being run over five days meaning that, for example, the BI sessions were spread over the entire week but with the same number of attendees overall. Next year my understanding is that the event will go back to three days, concentrating in Birmingham on just apps and tech, with the "acquisitions" moving to their own events at other times during the year but under an overall "UKOUG Conferences" banner. At the end of the day the Oracle community, and the UKOUG, has got so big over the years what with the acquisitions that a single conference is no longer feasible (at least with venue sizes in the UK) and so next year, it's likely that the user group will end up running a series of events under a single conference "brand". A fairly sensible idea to my mind which will also bring the Birmingham event down to a more manageable number of days.

This year was special for us as it was our first as exhibitors in the main hall. We've sponsored SIG events and special events before but this was our first with a proper booth, demo ground staff, hired furniture and freebies, and I have to say that Borkur, Jen and Ragnar did a sterling job along with myself and Jon in running the stand for four days. I'd worked on a stand for my previous company for several years but it was still a surprise how much work went into getting everthing in place in time; we already had a nomadic stand and some marketing literature, but we had to sort out shirts, t-shirts, pens, giveaways and so on, as well as all of the furniture (tables, chairs, screens etc) for the stand as all you get is a empty stand with a name badge and a bit of carpet. Jon and I traveled down on the Sunday afternoon and got to the ICC around 7pm, helpfully the furniture hire company had delivered and set up the bar area, chairs and tables, setting up the stand took around half an hour and after an hour we were ready to go. The exhibition hall opened up for exhibitors around 9am the next day, then after a quick team meeting, briefing on the demos and so on, we were open for business at noon.

Probably the masterstroke of the conference for us was Borkur's sourcing of 500 bottles of Rittman Mead beer, which we started to hand out at lunchtime and led to our stand becoming the unnofficial meeting place and bar for the exhibition hall. Monday night was the opening night party which also took place in the exhibition hall, this was a good chance to catch up with a few old friends and meet some of the delegates who hadn't had a chance to meet our team yet.

Tuesday was our first day for conference sessions, with my session on Extending and Customizing the Oracle BI Applications just after lunch, and Jon's one on A Better BI Methodology scheduled for just afterwards. In the event though Jon got a 24-hour stomach bug which meant he had to miss his sesssion, we'll be posting the slides on the website soon though and Jon is looking to deliver it at the next UKOUG BIRT SIG, if you're around and still interested in the session.

Apart from our own sessions I didn't really get to see any others except those that I was chairing, this was a shame but I guess the reality when you've got a stand to run. In the end what with the beer and our central location I got to meet most people I see at the conference, and the two I did see - Andrew Bond's one on DW Architectures and Lillian Hobbs' one on column-based databases - were certainly excellent.

Another highlight of the week was the Oracle ACE/Oracle ACE Director dinner organized by Todd Trichler and the OTN team. Debra Lilley and I sorted out the restaurant (Shimla Pinks, a posh Indian restaurant just down from the ICC), and I ended up sitting next to Steven Feuerstein, Marco Grailke, Andrew Clarke and Todd. A very good evening, lots of Oracle and non-Oracle discussions, I ended up leaving just after 11pm though as I was due to present again the next day.

Getting my sessions down to 45 minutes was a bit of a challenge, though. For historical reasons most of the sessions at the conference are 45 minutes long, which is great in terms of encouraging people to speak (an hour is perhaps a bit daunting, when you're starting out) but it does tend to limit how much you can get through, especially if the session you are delivering was originally designed for a full hour. My BI Apps presentation was originally written for one of the IOUG ninety-minute slots at Open World and so I had to do a bit of judicious editing to get it to 45 minutes, whilst my OBIEE session which was new for this conference originally had forty five slides in it, which I really needed to get down to half that. I guess it means that you get to the point quickly but you do tend to skip much of the detail of the presentation.

Anyway, so was the week worth it? Of course, as it always is, and the UKOUG conference (apart from the 45 minute sessions, and the rubbish food this year) has got to be one of the best organized and best intentioned events I go to. It was great catching up with characters such as Mogens, Alex and Doug, Oracle made a good effort and the exhibition and stand were very successful for us. We've still got about three hundred bottles of beer left and a number of t-shirts, so I'll be bringing these along to events during the next year to give out as prizes; our stand team did really well and due to my judicious use of early nights I don't feel too bad today. So now, it's back to reality and one last project sprint going up to Christmas, a couple of trips abroad and then some well earned rest at the end of December before it all starts again.

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