The Data Warrior

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Archive for the category “User Groups”

Hurry – Only 24 Hours Left to Get a Free Conference Registration

As I have written before, I love Oracle User Groups.

My two most favorite groups are the Oracle Development Tools User Group (ODTUG) and the Rocky Mountain Oracle Users Group (RMOUG).

These two groups put on what are arguably the best annual conferences for users of Oracle technology – by users, for users.

Over the past 20+ years I have attended most of their events – and NEVER paid a registration fee.

This was very helpful when my boss said there was no money for training. I just said “I get in free”.

So would you like to attend one of these events for FREE?

All you have to do is submit an abstract to present a session. If you get selected, your registration fee is waived. This is worth over $1000.

But you have to hurry, the deadline for submission is Monday October 15th, 2012.

Details:

RMOUG Training Days is  February 11-13, 2013 in Denver, Colorado. (Right in the middle of ski season!)

Go here to submit an abstract.

ODTUG’s KScope event will be June 23-27th in wonderful New Orleans.

Go here to submit an abstract.

I have submitted multiple abstracts to both events.

So what are you waiting for – go submit now!

See you in Denver and New Orleans in 2013.

Kent

P.S. My Kindle ebook  started out as a user group presentation. No telling what you might do with your presentation.

Oracle OpenWorld 2012: User Group Sunday

Yes, today was the first day for #OOW 2012. Affectionately known to many of us as User Group Sunday. Along with a ton of other activities, this is the day the various Oracle user groups get to “own” the agenda and put together the sessions they think Oracle customers, and their members, might want to see.

By users; for users.

For the 2nd year,  ODTUG asked me to curate their agenda. I was fortunate enough to “recruit” some great track leads who invited and vetted speakers and sessions to fill five rooms for most of the day. It was quite successful. (Thanks for the hard work guys.)

I attended quite a few myself and captured a few photos and thoughts. I was tweeting all day so you can also go to Twitter and search on @Kentgraziano to see my twitter stream.

After checking in at the User Group kiosk, I went to my first session given by Gwen Shapira and Robyn Sands who spoke about Flexible Design and Data Modeling. Great topic. They gave some very practical advice on do’s and don’t if you want to be more agile.

“Just good enough” does not scale.

Plan for Change

Worst Practices for Database Design

If you want some more modeling best practices, check out my ebook on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Check-Doing-Design-Reviews-ebook/dp/B008RG9L5E/.

Next I went on to see Kellyn Pot’vin and Stewart Bryson do a DBA vs Developers show down with No Surprises Development.

Release Planning Questions

Best advice – practice your deployments several times before going live…

Next: Guy Harrison talked about Hadoop, Bug Data, and Exadata. This was a very helpful intro talk about the space. I have been trying to wrap my mind around Hadoop, NoSQL, unstructured data, etc. and how we deal with it. Lots of great diagrams and examples to help explain.

Google’s Software Architecture

The Hadoop Ecosystem

Sigh…more to learn.

Next was a very interesting session by Mark Rittman about the Oracle Endeca software and how it can be used in a BI environment and how it compliments OBIEE.

This gives a quick view of what is involved with the Oracle Endeca Platform.

Oracle Endeca Information Discovery Platform

It looks like a very interesting platform that uses key value pairs to store the data. This enables search and analytics on some realtively unstructured data stores (i.e., not relational tables)

Final talk of the day (for me) was Jon Mead telling us about how they helped a customer develop event driven analytics using ODI and OBIEE and the Oracle Reference Architecture for data warehousing.

After all this, a  little break and networking, then on to the opening keynote.

It started with the Corporate Sr VP of Fujitsu  who talked about some cloud applications they have deployed in Japan. They have the Agricultural Cloud project to help farmers be more efficient and bring more and better crops to market. They also have developed a Healthcare Cloud Service for optimizing patient care and early diagnosis.

Very cool cloud applications.

Last up was CEO, Lary Ellison who announced Oracle 12c and Pluggable Databases (to support cloud deployments). I had heard about these (under NDA) at the Ace Directors meeting so now I can share a few pictures related to those since it is now public information.

Oracle 12c

Bigger, badder, faster…

Oracle Cloud Ecosystem

Pluggable Database Architecture

With PDB, you can develop a plug and play database. Many cool applications for this one.

To end out the day, I went to the 9th annual Oracle ACE dinner hosted by Oracle at the St Francis Yacht Club. Great food, drinks, and networking was had by all. Then back to the hotel to write this blog post.

Now off to bed so I can swim the bay with some other crazy people tomorrow morning. Wish me luck. Brrr.

Later.

Kent

Oracle Music Fest Schedule is Out & My Oracle OpenWorld Schedule

Happy Friday!

Yes Oracle has finally relased the schedule of artists and DJ who will grace tha attendees at OOW 2012 with their talent.

Suffice it to say – WOW!

You get all the details over at the OOW site – here.

And I have finally put together my tentative schedule of events, sessions, meetups, and concerts. I plan to focus on data warehousing, BI, and SQL Developer (no surprise there). Looking forward to learning about some new tools (Endeca), and more about Exalytics.

Also looking forward to seeing and networking with longtime friends and colleagues.

And of course, hearing some GREAT music (followed by early morning Chi Gung to keep healthy and energized).

You can see my schedule by clicking the link below (PDF).

OOW Schedule

I added a bit of color to differentiate the fun stuff from the work stuff…

There are few other dinners, etc on my agenda too (Stinking Rose anyone?), but some things you all do not really need to know <wink>.

Have a great weekend.

See you in SFO.

Kent

Fun and Education at Oracle OpenWorld 2012 and the 1st OOW Music Fest

Hard to believe, but here we are again – almost time for Oracle OpenWorld 2012.

Will you be in San Francisco September 30 – October 4th? I will.

This year, along with the usual keynotes, exhibits, and sessions, Oracle is introducing the first every Oracle Music Festival. Like the famous SXSW festival in Austin, Texas, this festival has a stellar lineup of exceptional performers who will be playing at venues all around downtown San Francisco.

Something for everyone – rock, jazz, pop, blues, and reggae. And the hottest DJ’s in SF.

All free for attendees.

Check out the details here.

Of course  the real reason we all go is to network with colleagues and Oracle folks and get the scoop on the newest stuff.

Once again this year, my  favorite user group (ODTUG) has put together an outstanding lineup of speakers giving presentations throughout the week as well as five stellar symposiums running in parallel on Sunday.

We’ve got APEX, BI, Fusion, Database Development, Hyperion/EPM.

We’ve got ACEs, ACE Directors, and just the best and brightest Oracle developers in the world.

Hope you are registered and ready to get in on the action.

Look me up in San Francisco!

Kent

P.S. Anyone up for Chi Gung? Drop me a line if you are.

Big Blunder means extended discount opportunity for Data Vault fans

Sometimes the best laid plans…they just don’t quite work out. Here’s what I mean:

If you were at my Data Vault session at the recent ODTUG KScope conference in San Antonio, you got a special code to enter at http://www.LearnDataVault.com/kscope12  to get $200 off the new online Data Vault Implementation training class. (For more on the training check out this post).

That deal was supposed to end this week on July 31st.

Well…

I was just informed that there was an error in the code on the BUY button.

Error in the code? Say it isn’t so! (Hey – I did not do the programming)

If you went to the link and put in the code you got some sort of an error message. If you forgot the code and just pushed the button you went to Dan’s offer to try the first module for only $7.00 (USD) – which is a really great deal on its own.

As you may imagine, I was not happy to hear that the Kscope participants were unable to get the discount I promised them and that there are only a few days left for this deal. 😦

So as compensation for this mistake, I was able to negotiate an extension of this offer until August 30th.

So that means you now have until August 30th to take advantage of the $200 discount.

Just go to http://www.LearnDataVault.com/kscope12 and put in the secret code. All the details about the course are there on the page for you to review.

And don’t forget, Dan offers a 7 day, 100% money back guarantee.

So if you have been putting off investing in this course, you just got a 30 day reprieve to get the $200 discount.

Don’t waste it. There are not that many 2nd chances.

Kent

P.S., Since speakers at KScope do not get attendee lists and emails, I have no way to directly contact the folks who attended my session. So do me a favor, help me get the word out. Please re-post and tweet this to your networks so we can be sure no one misses out. Thanks a bunch.

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