Carl Backstrom's Blog

Well alot of people have been giving day by day reports about this years ODTUG (where do they get the time). So I figured I'd just post a weekly roundup on the proceedings.

ODTUG

The ODTUG 2008 event itself was alot of fun and very well organized.
From Tom Kyte's opening keynote , which was a very cool and non technical , looking at why we always need to question how and why we do the things we do because the way you used to do it might not be the right way anymore and it's our job to always make sure things are done in the right way.

To the closing night get together, complete with band , fortune tellers and beads the event was just very interesting with the right amount fun to keep everybody looking forward to what comes next. And the infrastructure of the event was put together so that getting to the sessions or events you needed to took the minimal of effort or fuss. I recommend this event to anyone interested in any of the tools that Oracle provides.

APEX @ ODTUG

All I can say is "WOW"!! I knew people are using and interested in APEX but the amount of interest and usage is amazing. Almost every APEX session had a full room and many were standing room only. Many times I would just end up standing outside the door looking in just so I wasn't taking up a seat , that's the type of guy I am ;). I would say everybody at the event was surprised at the interest and energy of the APEX crowd including the APEX crowd itself.

During the sessions I'm amazed at the things people have done with our product, both from the people that just use the stock out of the box features. To applications that don't look or act like APEX at all until you look at the URL in the browser.

Both of these scenarios are perfect examples of the awesome cross section of APEX developers and uses, from the business user just trying to solve a business problem in the quickest / cheapest / reliable way around, to the advanced developer using custom javascript and/or third party libraries to provide APEX based RIA. APEX runs the gamut. Trying to be everything to everyone is hard and from everything I saw at ODTUG I would say that APEX is doing a very good job of it.

Carl @ ODTUG

Well here I have and will to be my own worst critic , unless someone else wants to jump in just try and make it constructive. I'll start with where I felt things were bad, and then mention the good. I wasn't as happy with my presentation as I should have been, and it was 100% my own fault, I will do better next time.

The Bad.

Two things I learned for giving presentations.

1. Never rewrite your whole presentation the day of the presentation. This seems such an obvious statement but this was my second presentation ever and I've made this same mistake twice now, I will not do it again.

2. Make sure that your mic is adjusted correctly before you start. Trying to adjust a mic in a very hot room 5 minutes into you presentation , while already a bit nervous, wastes too much time, makes the presenter even more nervous and compounds the problem. Next time mic will be right on the collar and everything will be perfect.

The Good

Rewriting my presentation was the right thing to do, I just should have done it earlier. The presentation I had , which I will eventually show , was very flashy and whizbang and would have been useless to pretty much everybody, though would have made me look great ;).

What I wanted to do ,and did, was show people some nuts and bolts examples of how things can be done in APEX, not how to fix or build particular things but to give people ideas of what can be done. Using an interactive report as the example I went through the features that are in APEX that allowed us to build them.

It ended up being a short and sweet session (48 min) but the room was very hot and it was the end of the day so I think the timing was near perfect in that respect. And I had enough people come up to me afterwards to ask questions and/or ask for the application that I think I did fairly well.

Thanks to everybody that attended, it does make one feel good to know that so many people are interested.

One thing I will do next time is Dietmar's suggestion , and how he did his session, which is to use screencasts of the functionality, live demo's are great but a screencast will show the same thing without the issue of having to jump back and forth between applications.

After a bit of cleanup I'll be putting both the slides and the application out for everybody to take a look at , plus to ODTUG so they can host on their site as well.

New Orleans

This was my first time to New Orleans and I had a real nice time. There were some very good restaurants and watering holes and I only had time to sample a few of each. The French Quarter was very cool with some of it's old style architecture. Bourbon Street was a experience in itself , and considering how crowded it was on just a random week I couldn't imagine being there during Mardi Gras, it must be insane.

Being from Vegas we have a joke , "Sure it's 120 f (50 c) but it's a dry heat!" , if New Orleans taught me one thing , that is not a joke! Vegas might be 120 but New Orleans at 82 felt alot hotter. I will tell that joke again in the future, but it will be a cold shiver down my spine as I remember what a non-dry heat feels like ;).

Lakers @ ODTUG

Congratulation's Boston.

Game 6 just happened to be the same night as the APEX meetup , which made going to a place with a TV mandatory. I was the only Laker fan in attendance at the APEX meetup and I remember all the names and faces of you haters :D

Hand grenade

A horrible yet intriguing drink, the name should be enough to keep you away from it, you have been warned.

Overview

At events like this it's the people that make it worthwhile , both the people in attendance and the people giving the session's, and this years ODTUG is no exception. Some of the most interesting ideas / questions / comments come outside the sessions, though the sessions are the catalyst. I learned quite a few new things about APEX and how people use it , along as with some other Oracle technologies and can't wait to start putting this information into action.

If you want more detailed accounts try searching through APEX Blog Aggregator or the Oracle News Aggregator there are many postings with much more detail on specific sessions.