The Riley Family, Part II

You didn't miss Part I, at least not here you didn't.

Many of you know Mike Riley. If you don't, here's a little history. He's the past president of ODTUG (for like 37 years or something) and for the last two years, he's served as Conference Chair for Kscope. Yeah, that doesn't really follow, but you know I'm a bit...scattered.

Did you read the link above? OK, well, here's the skinny. Mike has rectal cancer. Stage III. If it weren't for the stupid cancer part, the jokes would abound. Oh wait, they do anyway. Mike was diagnosed shortly after #kscope13, right around his 50th birthday (Happy Birthday Mike, Love, Cancer!). Ugh. (I want to say, "are you shittin' me?" see what I mean about the jokes? I can't help myself, I'm 14). Needless to say, cancer isn't really a joke. We all know someone affected by it. It is...well, it's not fun.

Go read his post if you haven't already. I'm going to give my version of that story. I'll wait...

So, Sunday morning, Game 3 of the World Series went to the Cardinals in a very bizarre way. I was watching highlights that morning as I had missed the end of the game (doesn't everyone know that I'm old and can't stay up that late to watch baseball?). Highlights. Mike lives in St. Louis. He's a Cardinal's fan. Wouldn't it be cool if he and his family could go to the game (mostly just his family, I don't like Mike that much). So I make some phone calls to see what people think of my idea. My idea is met with resistance. OK, I'll skip the people. Let's call Lisa (Mike's wife).

Apparently Sunday's are technology free days in the Riley household, no response. I go for a bike ride, but I take my phone, just in case Lisa calls me back. After the halfway point, my phone rings, I jump off the bike to answer.

So I talked to Lisa about my idea, can Mike handle the chaos of a World Series game?

We hang up and she goes to work. BTW, I asked her to keep my name out of it, but she didn't. We'll have words about that in the future.

She calls back (I think, it may have been over text, 2 weeks is an eternity to me). "He doesn't think he can do it."

So I call Mike directly (Lisa had already spoiled the surprise.)

"What about Box seats? You know, where the people with top hats and monocles sit? Away from the rift-raft, much more comfortable and free food and beer."

Backstory. Mike had finished his first round of chemo less than a week before Sunday. To make things worse, he decided it was a good time to throw out his back. He wasn't in the best of shape.

Mike said he thought he could do it.

OK, nay-sayers aside, let's see what we can do. I emailed approximately 50 people, mostly ODTUG people; board members, content leads, anyone I had in my address book. "Hey, wouldn't it be great to send Mike and his family to Game 5 of the World Series? We need to do this quick, tickets will probably double in price tonight especially if the Cardinals win." (that would mean Game 5 would be a clincher for the Cardinals, at home, muy expensive).

Within about 20 minutes, a couple of people pledged $600.

Holy shit!

At the prices I had seen, I was hoping to get between $50 and $100 from 50 people, hoping. I had $600 already. Game starts. Now it's up to $1100 in pledges. Holy shit, Part II. This might just be possible. Another 30 minutes and were about an hour into Game 4. Ticket prices have already gone up by $250 a ticket. Given that maybe 4 people have responded and I have $1600 in pledges, I pull the trigger. I bought 4 box seat tickets for the Riley family. (I had to have a couple of beers because I was about to drop a significant chunk of change without actual cash in hand, I could be out a lot of money, liquid courage is awesome).

Tickets sent to the Riley family. Pretty good feeling.

Like I said, I was confident, but I was scared. Before the end of the night though, there was over $5K pledged to get Mike and family to Game 5. Holy shit, Part III.

By midday Monday, pledges were well over $7K. I'll refer you back to Mike's post for more details. Shorter: jerseys for the family and a limo to the game.

Here's the breakdown: 35 people pledged, and paid, $8,080. Holy shit, Part IV. Average donation was $230.86. Median was $200. Low was $30 and high was $1000. Six people gave $500 or more. Nineteen people gave $200 or more. The list is a veritable Who's Who in the Oracle community.

Tickets + Jerseys + Limo = $6027.76

Riley family memory = Priceless.

So, what happened to the rest? Well, they have bills. Lots of bills. With the remainder, $2052.24, we paid off some hospital bills of $1220.63. There is currently $831.61 that will be sent shortly. It doesn't stop there though. Cancer treatment is effing expensive. Mike has surgery in December. He'll be on bed rest for some time. His bed is 17 years old. He needs a new one. After that, more chemo and more bills.

"Hey Chet, I'd love to help the Riley family out, can I give you my money for them?"

Yes, absolutely. Help me help them. I started a GoFundMe campaign. Goal is $10K. Any and all donations are welcome. Gifts include a thank you card from the Riley family and the knowledge that you helped out a fellow Oracle (nerd, definitely a nerd) in need. You can find the campaign here.

If you can't donate money, I've also created a hashtag so that we can show support for Mike and his family. It's #fmcuta (I'll let you figure out what it means). Words of encouragement are welcome and appreciated.

Thank you to the 35 who have already so generously given. Thank you to the rest of you who will donate or send out (rude) tweets.

Why I'm voting for Danny Bryant and You Should Too

I'm talking about the ODTUG Board of Directors.

This.



That's really all you need isn't it?

Fine.

Today wraps up the voting period for the ODTUG Board of Directors. If you're asking me what ODTUG is, stop reading now. If you are a member of ODTUG, then please give me a few minutes to pontificate (that's a word I heard Jeff Smith use once, hopefully it makes sense here).

Your favorite Oracle conference, KScope, is largely successful based on the efforts of the Board, along with the expert advice of the YCC group. In addition, if you think ODTUG should "do more with Essbase" or "charge more for memberships" these decisions are made and carried out by the board.

So if you like being in ODTUG, and you want to help it get better and grow, and be as awesome as possible, you only need to do one thing today. Go vote. Midnight tonight (10/29) is the deadline. Do it.

You get to vote for several people. I suggest you read their bios. I'll save you the time for at least one vote, and that's for Danny Bryant.

Besides that awesome photo (#kscope12 in San Antonio) up above, here are several more reasons.

1. He's into everything. OBIEE. EBS. Essbase. SQL Developer. Database. Not very many people have their hands in everything, he does. He will be able to represent the entire spectrum of ODTUG members.
2. He's a fantastic human being. It's not just because he takes pictures of himself wearing ORACLENERD gear everywhere (doesn't hurt though), he's just, awesome.
3. This (Part II)
4. He also always answers the phone, tweets, and emails I send him. He might be sick, or he might just be that responsive. The ODTUG Board member responsibilities will fit nicely on his shoulders I believe.

So go vote. Now.

ODTUG/Kscope Content Chair

So I have a problem saying No (No, No, etc, etc.).

ODTUG came calling this year and of course, I couldn't say no. I was asked to be the Content Chair for ADF/Fusion, APEX, The Database (like The Ohio State), Developer's Toolkit and Building Better Software. There is an entirely different track for BI/EPM stuff, that's being handled by Natalie Delemar.

Just in case I never mentioned it, I was the 4th (or was it 5th?) choice to lead the Developer's Toolkit track last year. My handlers made sure I knew that, presumably to keep me in line. Thankfully Lewis was much nicer, he never told me I was a 4th or 5th choice.

What do I do? Well, I have to get (wrangle) people to run each of those tracks mentioned above. They in turn will get (wrangle) 5-10 people to do their bidding, and by bidding I mean read and rank abstracts for Kscope 13. Then scheduling those sessions that were selected. Fun stuff.

Let's go over that list again:

• ADF and Fusion Development, John King
• APEX, Dan McGhan
• Building Better Softare, me and ???
• The Database, open Kellyn Pot'Vin (2012/09/25)
• Developer's Toolkit, Open Patrick Barel (2012/09/25)

Seems appropriate to add the sub-topics for each of those tracks too, so here goes.

ADF and Fusion Development
- ADF for Beginners
- Advanced ADF: Mobile, Cloud, Web, Services, etc.
- Customizing Fusion Apps
- SOA and Fusion Middleware

Application Express
- The Basics
- Advanced
- Infrastructure/Management/Security
- Plug-ins & Dynamic Actions

Developer's Toolkit
- Forms and Beyond
- IDEs
- Languages
- Version Control and Continuous Integration
- .Net

The Database
- DBA
- PL/SQL
- SQL
- Tuning

Building Better Software
- Agile
- Business Rules
- Code Generation
- Instrumentation
- Modeling
- Testing

Easy right?

I'm still trying to tie down people for The Database and Developer's Toolkit. If you're interested in leading a track, or just simply participating, yell at me.

It's a great way to get involved. It's a great way to help shape the direction you believe we're all headed. Do it. Get involved.

ODTUG @ Oracle OpenWorld

I really need to learn how to say no.

I, somehow, got roped (pun intended) into helping to put together a Sunday Symposium for ODTUG at Oracle OpenWorld this year. If you've been following along for the last couple of years, you'd know that I have this thing for DevOps (devops to me). For KScope 2011, I tried to put together a Sunday Symposium on this very topic. Lewis slapped me down though, "Tools Justice, tools." So we amended the Sunday Symposium to focus on the tools while doing those devopsy kind of things. Much better.

This year I tried to do the same thing. (Side note: The reason I am so "obsessed" with this topic is because I think things like testing, source control, and testing are done very poorly in the database world, the Oracle database world specifically. I know there are places that do it right, my first organization did it right, and then made me a bitter old cynic at each successive organization I came across. I also realize that doing some of these things on/in the database are much more difficult than wrapping up a binary or a web application. Data. It usually comes down to the data. Blah blah blah.). Kris Rice of Oracle SQL Developer fame ran KScope 12's Sunday Symposium...I gave him the topic, and he made it happen. Bonus points for Kris as he won the ODTUG Volunteer Contributor of the Year Award. You can find the slides from that Symposium here.

So here I am again, pushing the methodology or process involved around Oracle Database development. I think it's important. Very important. Fortunately I have a mentor who has spent way more time thinking about this than I. That would be Dominic Delmolino. Cary Millsap had sent me a presentation that Dominic had done at UKOUG in 2010. It was fantastic and about 23 hours worth of material. That was the original inspiration behind the 2011 KScope Sunday Symposium and I have tried to kept it going ever since.

So, back to the ODTUG Sunday Symposium at Oracle OpenWorld this year.

When: Sunday September 30th, 2012, 8:00 AM - 4:30 PM
Where: Moscone West - 2009
Who: Anyone can attend (provided you have an OOW pass of course)
Title: From Dev to Ops and Back Again: Insight into the Development Lifecycle from the ODTUG Experts
Presenters:

• Gwen Shapira - Pythian, Oracle ACE, Oak Table
• Dominic Delmolino - Agilex, Oak Table
• Timothy J. Gorman - Evergreen Database Technologies, Oracle ACE Director, Oak Table
• Robyn Sands - Oracle, Oak Table
• Stewart Bryson - RittmanMead, Oracle ACE
• Kellyn Pot'vin - Enkitec, Oracle ACE
• Dan Norris - Oracle, Oracle ACE Director Alumnus, Oak Table
• Cary Millsap - Method R, Oracle ACE Director, Oak Table

Pretty impressive line-up isn't it?

I'll be posting more details in the days and weeks to come. If you're heading to Oracle OpenWorld this year, check out one or more of these sessions, you won't be disappointed.

KScope 2012 Advanced Registration Ends June 9th!

It's almost here. Kscope 2012. Just 18 more days.

What's that? You're not going?

Need to justify the trip? Check out the bottom of the registration page here. There are some helpful hints for Developers, Managers and BI/EPM Professionals.

On June 9th, Advance Registration ends. If you hurry, you can save $300. Go now.

If you do sign up in the next three days AND show proof of such, I'll bring you an ORACLENERD T-Shirt (white on black, the classic). Limit 5. Donations always accepted (joke, I won't make you donate...unless I've had a beer, then I'll maybe hassle you for a few minutes, but nothing too harsh, I promise).

KScope + DevOps

Last year I had the pleasure of getting the Sunday Symposium together for KScope 11, this year, I have completed my takeover of the Database track by becoming the track lead.

I thought this was the best job ever, then I was attacked Nancy Kerrigan style by my handlers.

All that said, I think I've gathered a pretty good group of people to help review and select the abstracts for next year's conference (San Antonio, TX).

There will be 4 sub-tracks this year:
- Design/Data Modeling
- Maintenance (Performance, Tuning, Upgrades)
- MySQL
- (Dev)Operations

The one I am most excited about is the (Dev)Operations sub-track, aka, DevOps.

What is DevOps?

I'm glad you asked..

"DevOps" is an emerging set of principles, methods and practices for communication, collaboration and integration between software development (application/software engineering) and IT operations (systems administration/infrastructure) professionals.[1] It has developed in response to the emerging understanding of the interdependence and importance of both the development and operations disciplines in meeting an organization's goal of rapidly producing software products and services.

I am not necessarily a fan of the movement, but I am a fan of the principles behind it.

Every developer has a story about working with an evil DBA. LIkewise, every DBA has a story about some application that went to production where they were left completely out of the process.

But it is more than just a simple, "Can't we all just get along?" plea, this is about creating better software and streamlining processes.

My personal experience has been one of woeful cooperation, at any level. Our thought, our hope, is that this well help give other Oracle professionals better ideas on how to start down this road.

If you are interested in this topic, sign up. If you want to present on this (or any other) topic, register here.

KScope 11 Awesomesauce

I had planned on writing about each session I attended, but I just can't seem to pull it off. Previous years, I've blogged while on site...but it was difficult this year as I didn't have a lot of down time.

This was my very first Kaleidescope conference, and I would vote it as my favorite. The biggest difference between the others, intimacy. This event is smaller than COLLABORATE by a few thousand and smaller than OOW by a few million. I ran into Brent from Regina, SK, CANADA about 32 times. (He kept telling me it rhymed with...nevermind). I witnessed Brent drink a pint of Guiness in 3 seconds across the street from the convention center at the Auld Dubliner, along with a few others. Yikes. I can't, and don't, do that anymore.

But it was fun to run into him every 39 minutes as he would remind me that Regina rhymed with...

Of course there was work to be done.

Sunday was the symposium for the Database Development track, which I orchestrated (yo @ddelmoli, you like that?). You can read about my preparation here and here. I never did write it up officially, but it was fun.

Monday I did write up, here. Along with Cary Millsap's presentation on My Case for Agile Methods, Maria Colgan's presentation on Top Tips to Get Optimal SQL Execution All the Time and Jean-Pierre Djicks presentation on Managing Parallel Execution without Tuning in 11gR2.

One I didn't write up was Lonneke Dikman's Business Logic: The Debate Continues.... This one was fun because it was Lonneke vs. me, Eddie Awad, Mark Farnham, Dominic Delmolini and Paul Dorsey. If I didn't mention, Lonneke's presentation was in the Fusion Middleware tract...so I thought it would be fun. Unfortunately, those "put it in the middle tier" people didn't show up.

Here's Lonneke telling us how much business logic should go in the database



Then her reminding us that it should go over here, in the application tier



Seriously though, it was a fun hour. I think we all came away with a better understanding that the business logic should be in the database. :)

Did I mention the Queen Mary party, I mean event? That was fun, a lot of fun.

I'm going to work hard to participate in this again next year...

Next year's registration is open, FYI.

If you are a hardcore technical person, this is where you want to be. The people are great, the content is great and you can hear Brent tell you about Regina.

KScope 11: Managing Parallel Execution without Tuning in 11gR2

I've gotten to see Jean-Pierre Djicks speak a couple of times over the last month or so, and he doesn't disappoint.

Last month at the BI Forum, it was Big Data: Achieve the Impossible in Real-Time, which was really cool because he talked about the fusion of data capture/mining/whatever in regards to sailing, specifically the BMW-ORACLE sailing team.

It wasn't quite as exciting as that, but some pretty cool nuggets came out of it.

As a pseudo dba, or someone who's never had to manage some of the massive systems that many of you have to manage, memory management has been...well, intimidating (theme for the week, month and year).

Throw parallel into the mix and I'm pretty much a lost cause.

Now I can enable parallel, I have rudimentary knowledge of it...but you don't want me managing that on my own.

Enter Managing Parallel Execution without Tuning in 11gR2 (if I find the presentation, I'll link it up).

The one item that really stuck out at me was the idea of queueing. Prior to 11gR2, if all other resources were taken up by other SQL statements, your SQL statement would run serially. That's no longer the case (if enabled). Now, Oracle will queue up your SQL statement to run with the amount of resources that has been designated for it. In my experience, that's a good thing.

Prior to this release (and again, if you have it enabled), your SQL statement would run at the same exact time at the others, but since there are no resources for it, it would be slow as...well, slow. Now, you may have to wait a little bit for it to actually run, but it will run with the parallel resources that were intended (excuse my lack of articulation, I'm sure someone will correct me).

KScope 11: All Hail the Queen

The big event was hosted on the historic Queen Mary this year.

All I can say is, wow.

Let me try to run through a list of things to do on board...it won't be complete, I'm sure, but it should give you an idea.

- Food. +1 - lots of food, everywhere.
- Booze. +1 - again, everywhere.
-- Beers available: Corona, Heineken and something else. No fancy IPAs or anything, but I'm perfectly OK with that.
-- Wine and liquor was also available, but I rarely partake in either of those. This is especially true with liquor, it's why it took me close to 10 years to graduate from college. Bad things man...



- Events. +1
-- Ghost Tours - I didn't partake, but it was available. Check out the site for more details.
-- Live Band - I can't seem to remember the band's name, but they were apparently quite the hit. Playing requests from the crowd and heckling them a bit too.
-- Poker - Missed this one too, but many people did not. Reports suggest that the poker room was packed the entire night.
-- Dueling Pianos - I missed this one too, but rumor has it that Maria Colgan had quite the time there.
-- The Champagne Room, I mean VIP room. I believe this was for the Presenters and volunteers for KScope, a special section near the top (?) of the boat with a great view of the band and the aft side.
-- Don McMillan. +2 He had 2 shows, each with slightly different content tailored to the ODTUG/KScope crowd. If you don't know who he is, check out his page or watch this video.



Myself and Patrick Hurley (@phurley) were eating dinner and Mr. McMillan joined us for a spell. Remember, this is the guy (whom I didn't know at the time) who had interviewed me earlier in the week (oh yeah, I'm not that shy). I got to share my dream of being a comedian someday and shared with him my story of...well, I can't really share it here, but if you've met me and there was beer involved, you've heard it.

Throughout the day, we were told of a mystery guest...none of us could figure it out. Kathleen McCasland gave us a small clue, inadvertently, in a video address after lunch...it was a boy.

9:30 rolls around and the lovely ladies of ODTUG/KScope were trying to get us to go upstairs to where the band was, and the mystery guest would be making an appearance shortly.



Wow. Young MC. He seems to have the same problem as me...once a good looking, thin dude...now, not so thin. However, he was a huge hit and I have to admit it was fun seeing him live.

Sometime after that, I was caught in a "decent" picture of myself with a few others:



From left to right, that's Marc de Oliveira, Patrick Hurley, Dominic Delmolino, me, Cary Millsap and Eddie Awad. Picture by Sheeri Cabral.

To end the night, fireworks off of the back (aft) side of the ship. Awesome.

Thanks to everyone at KScope and ODTUG for a fantastic night. I had an absolute blast and many of the people I talked to did as well.

KScope 11: Top Tips to Get Optimal SQL Execution All the Time

This was my final session of the conference.

Prior to this one was Jean-Pierre Djicks on Managing Parallel Execution without Tuning in 11g Release 2. Conveniently, it was in the same room. Especially convenient given that it was in the same room the day after the Queen Mary event. I did want to see JP's other talk, Speed Up Your Data Warehouse with in-memory Processing, but it was just too much effort for me.

Besides, I had never seen Maria speak and I was trying to broaden my horizons. I wish I had seen her speak years ago...would have made life a lot easier.

Maria is not on Twitter but you can find her writing at the Oracle Optimizer blog.

The optimizer subject has always been a bit intimidating to me. I don't know why, it just has. I've mostly glossed over it.

No longer.

Despite my state (post Queen Mary event), a lot of things came together. The optimizer really isn't magic. Surprise!

The importance of statistics, which I've always known but never truly understood, was made clear. Extended statistics? Neat. Histograms, explained (better).

Awesome stuff...and really not as magical as you might think. Take a gander at the Optimizer group's Explain the Explain Plan for more details.

KScope 11: Day Uno

A few weeks ago I decided to rebuild my laptop. I never bothered to test the wireless connection at home, naturally. That leaves me carrying around a 4 pound brick plus the backpack...joy. I suppose it is good for my weight loss efforts.

Anyway, I am typing on a tablet so no links for you.

Like I mentioned yesterday, I had to be well rested for my first Cary Millsap presentation. I missed the keynote and apparently Don McMillan, an IT focused comedian. I mention that because later in the day, some super tall dude puts a camera in my face and starts asking questions...turns out it was Mr. McMillan. When I find the video I'll link it up.

Following that I had to head back to the hotel to deal with a small work emergency.

Then...a blur.

Oh wait, back to the conference...and the day's sessions were over. I walked around for a bit trying to find this fabled bar of 300 beers on tap. I couldn't find it, but I did find Kevin McGinley. He offered a beer, I accepted. (I was heading back to the conference hall to write up Sunday's events, so I was trying to be good.)

Seven rolls around which meant it was time for the Database Guru Panel:
Tom Kyte
Cary Millsap
Steven Feurstein

This was an hour and a half of answering questions from the audience, Yuri from Australia (via twitter) and Facebook. Of course I didn't miss the opportunity to ask this panel some questions.

Finally it was time for dinner (more beer) are the Congregation Ale House, which had a fine selection of beers I had not tried before.

Yay for KScope and ODTUG!

KScope 11: Cary Millsap

Today was a big day for me, my first Cary Millsap (@carymillsap) presentation.

I slept in, preparing my mind and body for the event (and missing the keynote) (it had nothing to do with beer consumed either).

My Case for Agile Methods

Not only is it my first time seeing him speak (yesterday counts, sort of), but it's something I can actually understand and have a very strong opinion about. Not that Thinking Clearly About Performance is way over my head, but it doesn't affect me as much as methodology does.

I fight with methodology on a daily basis, mostly resulting in me hitting my head against the closest wall.

I find that when I don't tweet or I'm not inclined to check my mail or twitter, something is going on that has my attention. That was the case this morning (minus a small family emergency that was eventually averted).

The slide deck itself was minimal, but very well done.

With his reputation as a technical leader in the Oracle community, you know you're going to get great content.

The good stuff is in Cary's style or delivery.

He tells stories.

I love stories. I live for stories. If you've met me, I'm sure I've told you a few as well.

It's easier, I think, to relate to stories. You can see yourself in the other person's shoes. Or something like that.

As to the content...I don't think it was anything ground breaking and I believe Cary knew that. What was ground breaking is the audience.

Database developers and DBAs in the Oracle ecosystem, seem to think it a dirty word. That's of course a gross generalization, but save for my very first IT employer, it's been true (1 for 8, batting .167 .125 (thanks Cary)) for me.

I want to see more of this type of talk, the "how" and "why" as opposed to just the technical details of doing a particular task. I can read the docs, I can figure that out. Putting it all into context is the hard part.

KScope 11: The Journey

Somehow I managed to fall asleep before midnight...which was good, because I had an early morning flight to California.

You might be shocked to learn but I didn't bother to pack for the trip or prep my computer ahead of time (VNC).at

I think I was in denial, I haven't flown since October, so the nerves kicked in again. Flying itself isn't too bad, its thinking about flying which bugs me. My mind concocts all kind of silly scenarios.

I typically just imagine all my other friends who do this way more than I do...which has a bit of a calming effect.

Yes, I find it amusing that someone so "logical" and stuff has these fears...whatever.

I'm currently sitting in Phoenix at Sky Harbor International debating whether or not I should have a beer so that i can earn my 5 State badge on Untappd,it is 1 PM eastern time, so technically not the morning for me. I'll probably pass this time, perhaps on the way back?

I'm very much looking forward to tomorrow...the Tools, Tools, Tools symposium which I got to help organize takes place. If you are at KScope, I certainly hope you will attend, it is going to be pretty fun.

Now, off to Long Beach.

ODTUG Kscope 11: Super Ambassador Program

Just received an email from ODTUG Board member Monty Latiolais (@monty_odtug).

Looks like a great opportunity to help out with the event this year.

Super Ambassadors

Many of you that have been coming to Kscope for years are familiar with our ambassador program. This year, we’ve stepped it up a notch and launched the Super Ambassadors! Here’s how the program works:

Duties of a Kscope Super Ambassador

• Commit to being present in the same presentation room for a half day (either morning or afternoon). You can pick the room where the sessions you were already planning on attending will be held.
• Assist the speaker, if needed, remind the participants to fill out session evaluations, and complete the session information form for each session.
• Report any problems/concerns to the conference staff.
• Ask the presenter if the slides he/she is using are the same as what is loaded on the Web site. If not, copy them on to the Super Ambassador flash drive. If the presenter has not loaded the slides, copy them on to the flash drive and tell him/her that we will load the slides.

To sign up as a Super Ambassador, log in to the Attendee Portal. Super Ambassadors will receive a special T-shirt, denoting their VIP status, will be invited to volunteer parties and receptions, and will have VIP access at the Grand Event on the Queen Mary.

Half day of work for VIP status? Sounds like a pretty good deal to me, appeals to my "only-child attention seeking" side.

ODTUG Kscope 11: Tools Tools Tools v2.0

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the cool Sunday Symposium I have been allowed to put together for KScope11.

Well, someone had to back out. I won't mention names, but they didn't really verify the time and dates. Said person had the audacity to take a vacation!

I wasn't going to name names, but I will, it's Jeff Smith, aka @HillbillyToad.

I'm not really mad (just don't tell him, I like to keep him on his toes). I like Jeff's presentation style a lot, he came down and spoke to our user group about a year ago. He makes me almost want to use Toad. Almost.

Anyway, since he couldn't speak, I had to find another speaker.

Hmmm...

Ideas?

Wait, I heard there was a big name attending last week didn't I?

That's right, none other than Mr. Thomas Kyte.

Maybe he would "fill in" for Jeff?

As is my mantra, the worst thing anyone can say is "No."

So I asked, and he accepted (and I must find a gift for his wife...).



So to recap:

Cary Millsap will be kind of a facilitator. Kris Rice will be speaking twice. Robyn Sands, Sten Vesterli, Sue Harper, Marc de Oliviera and finally the Dominic Delmolino. Wow. It's gonna be a great day!

How to Use Social Media to Increase Productivity

I kept seeing these announcements on Twitter for ODTUG Kaleidiscope 2010 and the call for papers.

Since I have nothing better to do right now, I wrote something up just to see what happens.

---

How to Use Social Media to Increase Productivity
Social Media has been on the rise over the last few years, but many in the development community (especially Oracle) have yet to truly embrace it. I would like to convey my own experiences with Social Media (specifically Twitter and Blogging) and how it has helped me to become a better Oracle Developer.

Abstract
In the past year I have received free passes to COLLABORATE 09 (http://www.oraclenerd.com/2009/03/collaborate-09-oaug-forum.html) and Oracle OpenWorld (http://www.oraclenerd.com/2009/07/whos-going-to-oow-09.html). I have also been able to have conversations with some of the industry experts, solely because of my use of Twitter. I had a great email exchange with Cary Millsap on the differences between Logging, Debugging and Instrumentation, which I eventually posted on my blog (http://www.oraclenerd.com/2009/07/logging-debugging-instrumentation-and.html).

Christian Berg, of OBIEE fame, saw my plea for help on Twitter and responded with a full explanation via email. Read it here: http://www.oraclenerd.com/2009/03/obiee-how-to-migrate-your-rpd.html

Thanks to Twitter or my blog, I have been able to have (technical) conversations with some industry heavyweights: Alex Gorbachev, Eddie Awad, Chen Shapira, Jake Kuramoto, Matt Topper, Lewis Cunningham, John Scott, Dimitri Gielis...I could go on and on.

I would like to encourage other Oracle people to add these tools to their repertoire and show the real benefits that can be achieved through their use.

Summary
I would like to encourage other Oracle people to add Blogging and Twitter to their repertoire and show the real benefits that can be achieved through their use.

Benefits
Benefits of of using Twitter.
Benefits of Blogging.
Building your social/professional network.

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This being my first submission, I have no idea if it is what they want or need. As far as content, I believe Blogging and Twitter in particular, are underutilized. There is a vast community of Oracle experts out there who love to help...why not help others tap into that?