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....logged under the "yes I'm an AUSOUG state committee member" department.
My first exclusive "you-heard-it-here-first" news post!
I'm happy to announce that Lynn Munsinger and Duncan Mills from Oracle will be presenting on JDeveloper at the Australian Oracle User Group (AUSOUG) conference in Melbourne and Perth respectively.
Last year Melbourne was very lucky to have Lynn present, and Lynn has decided to return again which is great news for everyone on the East Coast of Australia. For those who said to me they were impressed by what Lynn demoed last year, I'm pretty sure you haven't seen anything yet with the new JDev 11g release imminent, and these presentations straight from OOW.
For us West Coast Oracle developers, Perth is very privileged to have Duncan Mills, senior Principal Product Manager from Oracle, give us the low down on JDeveloper. Perth doesn't usually get to see such high caliber Oracle and Java speakers grace its fair shores. Do a little Google on Duncan Mills and you'll understand what I mean.
Given that I've seen zero JDeveloper presentations by local Aussie Oracle staff, this may be your only chance to see the latest for JDeveloper and ask the tough questions of very experienced Oracle staff. So make sure to sign up for this year's November conference in Perth or Melbourne, and I look forward to seeing you there.
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
AUSOUG 2007 conference JDeveloper presentations oracle
A little self promotion..... oracle
To all the SAGE Computing Services fans out there (hi Mum!) we've had a chance to update our website. What made me particularly excited about the site is we've managed to include flashing text, JavaScript menus, Flash animations, and audio of the SAGE team singing "row, row, row your boat".
On a slightly more serious note, we've gathered the last 3 years of the 40 odd Oracle papers, presentations and masterclasses we've run in Australia and internationally, which you can now download. I must admit we've been a bit lazy in indexing this list, because marketing isn't really our thing.
To the various user group members out there, we're more than happy to support your group and present for you. Why? Well lets just say we're a bunch of Oracle geeks. So if you have a topic that you know we specialize in, particular Oracle development, Oracle RDBMS tuning, SQL, PL/SQL, Oracle Application Express (Apex), JDeveloper or Oracle Portal, drop us a line, and we'll work something out. As long as we get a free bottle of wine out of it, we're normally happy (no white wine please).
Hopefully the updated site will generate us slightly more revenue so we can take next Friday off, rather than sitting here posting about our updated site.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
AUSOUG 2007 conference "yarn" + what's happening in 2008
It's now Sunday after the 2nd leg of the Australian Oracle User Group (AUSOUG) 2007 conference in Melbourne. The following is a bit of a "yarn" about the overall conference series format, and doesn't bother to mention speakers or personalities. If that's your gig, hit the back button now, otherwise if you're interested in Oracle User Group events in general, read on.
All in all the volunteers of the AUSOUG committee and staff need to be congratulated on a conference well done this year, building upon last year's successes.
This year saw both cities, Perth and Melbourne break the attendee records of the previous year, with over 400 and 500 attendees respectively in each (sorry, I can't remember the exact numbers). In 2006 AUSOUG decided to change the tired "all cities" conference series, run in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth to focus on a smaller (in terms of number of cities) but larger (in terms of the size of the event) program in Perth and Melbourne. This has paid off with falling delegate numbers arrested, instead the 2 city conference seeing a growth of 100 each for 2006 and 2007 respectively. It's no Oracle OpenWorld, but in my opinion not bad for a country that only has a population of around 20 million.
As a side note: Why the 2 city model rather than 1? Or more specifically why Perth at all given it's so far from the Australian action on the West Coast? It's a question of member numbers and geography. Perth has always enjoyed a strong support for AUSOUG with (at times) the largest state based membership base. In turn Perth is such a considerable distance away from the Australian East Coast, there is a fair risk that West Aussies just wont commit the time or effort to head to an East Coast only "1 city" conference model. As such AUSOUG is mindful of ensuring it still supports one of its largest membership bases, to ensure the overall success of the conference series, and to protect the future of the group. However on the East Coast, the Melbourne conference sees attendees from Darwin through Tassie, even Indonesia and New Zealand, so it shows the people on the "other-side-of-the-big-brown-bit" are much more willing to head anywhere on the East coast than the "sand-gropers."
Why Melbourne? Well it was a considered choice between East Coast cities, and Sydney is known as the "nightmare" city in conference organiser circles in Australia (success is far from guaranteed in Sydney and can be very financially risky or so I'm told), Melbourne was a natural choice in 06 and 07 as it has (at last count) the largest state based membership.
The other key benefit of the 2 city conference model and was recognized by the AUSOUG committee as a priority when it changed the program, is the new conference model is seeing more international speakers willing to make the trip across. To some Aussies it might seem strange that international guests wouldn't want to see all Australia has to offer once flying the kzillion hour leg to our fair shores. However in speaking to a number of such speakers, most can't commit the huge amount of time (and dollars) required to visit every city. Now with the advantage of only a couple of cities to visit, they are willing to make the trip.
The decision of which cities to hold the conference at is an incredibly difficult one, and one that I'm happy I'm no longer a part of having stepped down from the National committee. It's the usual "you can only satisfy 20% of the people 80% of the time" decisions, and will draw complaints no matter what (especially from the Sydney crowd).
However the fact of the matter is from the user group's point of view, the conference series has seen good growth showing membership satisfaction, continued commitment from Oracle and other exhibitors from local and abroad showing the worth of the conference to sponsors and vendors, and of course the generous commitment from international and local speakers, who are what the punters come to see after all (either that or those free Toad tshirts this year - hard to tell really).
As announced at the Perth leg of the conference this year, next year's 2008 conference location is not yet 100% decided, but the going bet is the Gold Coast (south of Brisbane in Queensland for the international readers), approximately 2 weeks after San Fran's OOW in September 2008. The format and timing of the Perth conference leg is still a work in progress. Please remember I don't sit on the AUSOUG National committee anymore, so I have no "special" window into what the National committee decides. If you wish to influence the decision you should contact your local AUSOUG state representatives and voice your opinion.... and from personal experience, they do listen.
Anyway, after a year of watching the 2007 conference series form, while I sat on the sideline of the organisational effort, I think the end result has been a good one, and I wish the user group all the luck for the 2008 events.
My cursed presentation
For the frequent readers of my blog, you may know more recently I've been running my "Take a Load Off!" presentation at Oracle Open World Unconference, as well as the 2007 AUSOUG Perth and Melbourne conference legs. This presentation took time out to look at load and stress testing the latest web technologies, in particular those from Oracle such as Application Express (Apex) and JDeveloper.
This presentation has turned out to be in fact "cursed". There's no other description that's suitable.
The presentation contained a significant amount of live demos ("oh-no" I hear you say). Yet regardless of the amount of preparation I put in and the number of successful dry-runs I had before my presentation, the live demos kept on failing right at the critical point of my "live stand up routine". First at OOW my database exploded taking 99% of my CPU making my presentation drag to a halt. Then in Perth Apache JMeter and JDeveloper refused to talk and I had to rely on good ol'Apex to demonstrate what I wanted to show. Finally in Melbourne my laptop's Firewall went nuts right at the last moment, and I later discovered I was running on battery power for the whole demo. This is of course not to forget the same morning my database Listener wouldn't talk to my database and I had to desperately call my boss and her ever handy DBA expertise to sort it out.
Read my lips: "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!"
There's a line in Australian television acting circles (I'm sure it crosses international barriers), that you should never work with animals or children during live broadcasts. I'd like to extend that to Oracle products during presentations for the foreseeable future! ;)
As somebody pointed out to me today though, the common denominator in the presentation wasn't the various technologies that failed, but in fact the operator himself. Being an Aussie, you can imagine my response to that ;)
Anyway, I've learned my lesson. From now on, it's all canned demos with Powerpoint content. At least until my confidence returns. I'd love to hear other presenters' "disaster stories" if you're willing to share.
For those overly keen on the whole load and stress testing gig, as well as checking the latest database tuning and Apex presentations from my boss Penny Cookson, head along to the Sage website to download the content. However I make no promise that my presentation wont destroy your PC.
Conference widows
Filed under "I'm really all pink and squishy inside."
I've just come off 3 weeks of conferences, having visited OOW in San Fran, the Perth Australia leg of the AUSOUG conference, as well as the Melbourne leg too. Conferences, whether you're just attending or actually participating, can take up a fair amount of work and home time in preparation, during the conferences and the lead up time. Multiple that by 3 and you'll know that I've recently had a very busy time.
In all the excitement of attending such events, it can be easy to forget the "significant other parties" who make a pretty clear sacrifice to allow us to attend these events.
My partner said to me the other day that she felt like a "conference window" over the last few weeks, having looked after our baby daughter, kept the house running with the usual array of chores, and working part-time to boot. All of this without me around to lend much of a hand at all while I swanned around the world. As you can imagine, an ever-so-small-incy-wincy-tiny-bit of guilt invaded my conscious.
So here's a small public thanks to my partner, and all the other wives, husbands, boyfriends, girlfriends, family, children, friends and work colleagues, who kindly and patiently put up with all of us who follow the conference trail, who understand and support us while we pursue our passions and interests, who nod and humour us when we return and rant about the latest Oracle 11g feature, the future of Fusion Middleware, or how many free Toad shirts we scored this year.
Thank you very much.
At least until next year of course.
Local Aussie Oracle related events
My family has made the big leap from Melbourne across this big brown country of ours to Perth. I had an excellent drive across the Nullarbor, one of the true beautiful desolate areas I've ever been. The Nullarbor is normally dry as a bone, but I crossed it during a long period of rain, with green everywhere (okay, it's still a brown-green), and fantastic sunrises and sunsets while dodging kangaroos and road-trains on the A1 highway. Oddly I even hit a snow storm in Victoria as I drove to South Australia, as well as huge amounts of rain from Coolgardie onwards in Western Australia.
Meanwhile the Oracle world moves on and there are a number of Oracle events happening in Australia that local readers may be interested in:
- Oracle Fusion Middleware Forum - Oracle is running a number of Fusion Middleware events during August in Auckland, Sydney, Melbourne and Perth. Thomas Kurian will be one of the presenters in Sydney and Melbourne, and Roland Slee in Perth and Auckland. I'm not usually a fan of these Oracle events as they prove to be more marketing than technically useful, but if I was in Melbourne or Sydney I'd take the effort to see Thomas. I also note past and present AUSOUG presidents Dennis Remmer and Martin Power are also presenting. For those who want a no sales-fuss approach to presentations Dennis will meet your demands.
- In an effort to support the local Western Australian Oracle User Group (AUSOUG), they are running with "Common Stuff-Ups & How to Avoid Them" presented by Penny Cookson (Oracle Educator of the Year 2004). Perth for its small size is blessed by a number of local Oracle talents including Connor McDonald an Oracle ACE and well known presenter at the UKOUG. Both Penny and Connor are known for their down to earth presentations and are very popular at conferences (both have won numerous presentation awards). If you haven't before check out Penny this August Wednesday 1st. (Disclaimer: I work for Penny at SAGE Computing Services - but it's my blog, so I can post what I like ;).
How to run a successful panel session at a conference?
Well it's that time of year again where I need to prepare for the Australian Oracle User Group (AUSOUG) conference series. This year I've the opportunity to run a panel session at the conference in November along with another presentation.
Having never run such a panel session before, I was hoping readers who have participated or attended a panel session could give advice on the following please?:
1) What to prepare for?
2) How to run the actual panel session?
3) What makes for a successful panel session?
4) What makes for a panel session disaster?
5) Is there any equipment that is essential?
I guess there is the obvious stuff like organising your panel members, and making sure they turn up, but I'm sure there's more others could suggest beyond the basics.
Any help and advice appreciated. Please leave comments in the blogs comments section and I'll publish them.
AUSOUG Conference 2007 presentations accepted
For the local Aussie readers, I'm excited to announce my presentation has been accepted for the 2007 AUSOUG conference in
In order to drum up an audience that doesn't just include my Mum, here's some details of my presentation.
Take a load off! Load testing your Oracle Apex or JDeveloper web applications
"Geeeez, after demanding you unit test, system test, black box test, white box test, test-test-test everything, your manager is now demanding you load and stress test your brand spanking new Oracle web application. How on earth can you do this? .... and stop your manager from nagging?
An open invite to present in Perth Western Australia
I recently made the jump from the Victorian Australian Oracle User Group committee to the Western Australian AUSOUG committee, which presents a unique set of challenges in user group activities.
In Victoria as the local President I had presentations a plenty; it wasn't hard to drum up any number of great speakers to present to the local Victorian members, from Melbourne, interstate and overseas.
Western Australia and Perth is a different story. As some may know, Perth the capital of WA, is the most remote city in the world. It takes ~5 days to drive from Sydney to Perth, ~5 hours to fly, and just over 5 minutes for somebody from the East Coast of Australia to realise that people from Perth couldn't care less how far they are from everyone else ;)
One of the problems for the local Oracle user group though, is that it's darned hard to get non local talent to present in Perth. With a population of 1.5 million, there is only so many local presenters before you have to beg your grandmother to present again, and grandma likes Bill more than Larry. And in turn somehow a 5 hour flight isn't that attractive to people outside of Perth for a 45m presentation.
Another problem for the local group, and frustratingly so, is that plenty of Oracle talent visit Perth each month on business, who would make great presenters, but come and go before we get a chance to nab them for a 45m Oracle stand-up routine. Dag nab it!
So we'd like to make an open invite to anybody who knows they'll be in town or would like to visit, to drop us an email, and we'd love to slot you in to one of our monthly meetings. For the international speakers, don't forget that Perth is near the Margaret River wine region, has some of the best beaches in Australia, and makes a great tax-write-off for your next family holiday.
If you're interested I can be contacted at chrisdotmuiratsagecomputingdotcomdotau (replacing the "dot" and "at" with the appropriate symbols). We hope to hear from you soon.
AUSOUG 2007 conference JDeveloper presentations
...logged under the "yes I'm an AUSOUG state committee member" department.
My first exclusive "you-heard-it-here-first" news post!
I'm happy to announce that Lynn Munsinger and Duncan Mills from Oracle will be presenting on JDeveloper at the Australian Oracle User Group (AUSOUG) conference in Melbourne and Perth respectively.
Last year Melbourne was very lucky to have Lynn present, and Lynn has decided to return again which is great news for everyone on the East Coast of Australia. For those who said to me they were impressed by what Lynn demoed last year, I'm pretty sure you haven't seen anything yet with the new JDev 11g release imminent, and these presentations straight from OOW.
For us West Coast Oracle developers, Perth is very privileged to have Duncan Mills, senior Principal Product Manager from Oracle, give us the low down on JDeveloper. Perth doesn't usually get to see such high caliber Oracle and Java speakers grace its fair shores. Do a little Google on Duncan Mills and you'll understand what I mean.
Given that I've seen zero JDeveloper presentations by local Aussie Oracle staff, this may be your only chance to see the latest for JDeveloper and ask the tough questions of very experienced Oracle staff. So make sure to sign up for this year's November conference in Perth or Melbourne, and I look forward to seeing you there.
A little self promotion.....
To all the SAGE Computing Services fans out there (hi Mum!) we've had a chance to update our website. What made me particularly excited about the site is we've managed to include flashing text, JavaScript menus, Flash animations, and audio of the SAGE team singing "row, row, row your boat".
On a slightly more serious note, we've gathered the last 3 years of the 40 odd Oracle papers, presentations and masterclasses we've run in Australia and internationally, which you can now download. I must admit we've been a bit lazy in indexing this list, because marketing isn't really our thing.
To the various user group members out there, we're more than happy to support your group and present for you. Why? Well lets just say we're a bunch of Oracle geeks. So if you have a topic that you know we specialize in, particular Oracle development, Oracle RDBMS tuning, SQL, PL/SQL, Oracle Application Express (Apex), JDeveloper or Oracle Portal, drop us a line, and we'll work something out. As long as we get a free bottle of wine out of it, we're normally happy (no white wine please).
Hopefully the updated site will generate us slightly more revenue so we can take next Friday off, rather than sitting here posting about our updated site.
AUSOUG Perth conference - from 45k down to 350
Day 2 of the Australian Oracle User Group (AUSOUG) conference in Perth is before me, and I thought I'd pen a very quick note about how the event is going.
I can't say my trip back from OOW was as bad as Babette Turner-Underwood's, but then as an Aussie I can pretty much say I blank the 19hrs of flying out of my life. Yes the flights are horribly long, yes the customs queues are annoying, but I did score a pair of socks from Qantas, so that made it all okay.
As Babette noted in a separate post, the move from OOW with ~45k attendees down to around 350 seems funny. So much so that in the opening keynote by Martin Power we were actually told where the bathrooms are. I don't remember Larry telling the delegates at OOW where the bathrooms were; Larry was rambling something about 30 years of innovation or something..... I guess it's the little things that make a great conference.
This year's Perth conference is up 100 on last year which is great growth over the 50 additional attendees in 2006. And a point I'd like to make is that I always think that at the small conferences, attendees get as much out of it as the larger ones. Presentations are a hit and miss affair, and you can only meet so many people in a day, so basically the end result is the same, though the tickets to the local event are far cheaper. In addition at a small conference like Perth's the atmosphere is much more friendly and far less corporate, which is the way we like it down here.
I can't say I caught too many presentations day 1 as I was hanging out with the SAGE crew, and also introducing speakers. I did sit in on my boss's (Penny Cookson) APEX presentation, where she demonstrated taking APEX to the extreme, and accused me of spending most of OOW at the pub. Strictly not true let me assure you ;) They don't have "pubs" in San Fran Penny, they're called "bars" :P
I also introduced and sat in on Duncan Mill's two JDeveloper presentations. Definitely numbers were up in these sessions this year, and I can see some people looking at the new feature set, particularly the new ADF Faces RC web pages with all the cool AJAX additions, and MDS customisations, and thinking "wow!".
Anyway, onto Day 2 of the conference. Today I present my Load/Stress testing paper "Take a Load Off!" which I presented at the OOW Unconference. Hopefully I've ironed out all the bugs this time. And finally I'll be participating in the "Great Oracle development tools debate" panel session where I'll be defending JDeveloper by tooth and nail.... should be good fun.
Next week is the Melbourne leg of the conference which will be bigger, but with better coffee, so all in all an event worth going to. I hope to see you there.
AUSOUG 2007 conference "yarn" + what's happening in 2008
It's now Sunday after the 2nd leg of the Australian Oracle User Group (AUSOUG) 2007 conference in Melbourne. The following is a bit of a "yarn" about the overall conference series format, and doesn't bother to mention speakers or personalities. If that's your gig, hit the back button now, otherwise if you're interested in Oracle User Group events in general, read on.
All in all the volunteers of the AUSOUG committee and staff need to be congratulated on a conference well done this year, building upon last year's successes.
This year saw both cities, Perth and Melbourne break the attendee records of the previous year, with over 400 and 500 attendees respectively in each (sorry, I can't remember the exact numbers). In 2006 AUSOUG decided to change the tired "all cities" conference series, run in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth to focus on a smaller (in terms of number of cities) but larger (in terms of the size of the event) program in Perth and Melbourne. This has paid off with falling delegate numbers arrested, instead the 2 city conference seeing a growth of 100 each for 2006 and 2007 respectively. It's no Oracle OpenWorld, but in my opinion not bad for a country that only has a population of around 20 million.
As a side note: Why the 2 city model rather than 1? Or more specifically why Perth at all given it's so far from the Australian action on the West Coast? It's a question of member numbers and geography. Perth has always enjoyed a strong support for AUSOUG with (at times) the largest state based membership base. In turn Perth is such a considerable distance away from the Australian East Coast, there is a fair risk that West Aussies just wont commit the time or effort to head to an East Coast only "1 city" conference model. As such AUSOUG is mindful of ensuring it still supports one of its largest membership bases, to ensure the overall success of the conference series, and to protect the future of the group. However on the East Coast, the Melbourne conference sees attendees from Darwin through Tassie, even Indonesia and New Zealand, so it shows the people on the "other-side-of-the-big-brown-bit" are much more willing to head anywhere on the East coast than the "sand-gropers."
Why Melbourne? Well it was a considered choice between East Coast cities, and Sydney is known as the "nightmare" city in conference organiser circles in Australia (success is far from guaranteed in Sydney and can be very financially risky or so I'm told), Melbourne was a natural choice in 06 and 07 as it has (at last count) the largest state based membership.
The other key benefit of the 2 city conference model and was recognized by the AUSOUG committee as a priority when it changed the program, is the new conference model is seeing more international speakers willing to make the trip across. To some Aussies it might seem strange that international guests wouldn't want to see all Australia has to offer once flying the kzillion hour leg to our fair shores. However in speaking to a number of such speakers, most can't commit the huge amount of time (and dollars) required to visit every city. Now with the advantage of only a couple of cities to visit, they are willing to make the trip.
The decision of which cities to hold the conference at is an incredibly difficult one, and one that I'm happy I'm no longer a part of having stepped down from the National committee. It's the usual "you can only satisfy 20% of the people 80% of the time" decisions, and will draw complaints no matter what (especially from the Sydney crowd).
However the fact of the matter is from the user group's point of view, the conference series has seen good growth showing membership satisfaction, continued commitment from Oracle and other exhibitors from local and abroad showing the worth of the conference to sponsors and vendors, and of course the generous commitment from international and local speakers, who are what the punters come to see after all (either that or those free Toad tshirts this year - hard to tell really).
As announced at the Perth leg of the conference this year, next year's 2008 conference location is not yet 100% decided, but the going bet is the Gold Coast (south of Brisbane in Queensland for the international readers), approximately 2 weeks after San Fran's OOW in September 2008. The format and timing of the Perth conference leg is still a work in progress. Please remember I don't sit on the AUSOUG National committee anymore, so I have no "special" window into what the National committee decides. If you wish to influence the decision you should contact your local AUSOUG state representatives and voice your opinion.... and from personal experience, they do listen.
Anyway, after a year of watching the 2007 conference series form, while I sat on the sideline of the organisational effort, I think the end result has been a good one, and I wish the user group all the luck for the 2008 events.
My cursed presentation
For the frequent readers of my blog, you may know more recently I've been running my "Take a Load Off!" presentation at Oracle Open World Unconference, as well as the 2007 AUSOUG Perth and Melbourne conference legs. This presentation took time out to look at load and stress testing the latest web technologies, in particular those from Oracle such as Application Express (Apex) and JDeveloper.
This presentation has turned out to be in fact "cursed". There's no other description that's suitable.
The presentation contained a significant amount of live demos ("oh-no" I hear you say). Yet regardless of the amount of preparation I put in and the number of successful dry-runs I had before my presentation, the live demos kept on failing right at the critical point of my "live stand up routine". First at OOW my database exploded taking 99% of my CPU making my presentation drag to a halt. Then in Perth Apache JMeter and JDeveloper refused to talk and I had to rely on good ol'Apex to demonstrate what I wanted to show. Finally in Melbourne my laptop's Firewall went nuts right at the last moment, and I later discovered I was running on battery power for the whole demo. This is of course not to forget the same morning my database Listener wouldn't talk to my database and I had to desperately call my boss and her ever handy DBA expertise to sort it out.
Read my lips: "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!"
There's a line in Australian television acting circles (I'm sure it crosses international barriers), that you should never work with animals or children during live broadcasts. I'd like to extend that to Oracle products during presentations for the foreseeable future! ;)
As somebody pointed out to me today though, the common denominator in the presentation wasn't the various technologies that failed, but in fact the operator himself. Being an Aussie, you can imagine my response to that ;)
Anyway, I've learned my lesson. From now on, it's all canned demos with Powerpoint content. At least until my confidence returns. I'd love to hear other presenters' "disaster stories" if you're willing to share.
For those overly keen on the whole load and stress testing gig, as well as checking the latest database tuning and Apex presentations from my boss Penny Cookson, head along to the Sage website to download the content. However I make no promise that my presentation wont destroy your PC.
Conference widows
Filed under "I'm really all pink and squishy inside."
I've just come off 3 weeks of conferences, having visited OOW in San Fran, the Perth Australia leg of the AUSOUG conference, as well as the Melbourne leg too. Conferences, whether you're just attending or actually participating, can take up a fair amount of work and home time in preparation, during the conferences and the lead up time. Multiple that by 3 and you'll know that I've recently had a very busy time.
In all the excitement of attending such events, it can be easy to forget the "significant other parties" who make a pretty clear sacrifice to allow us to attend these events.
My partner said to me the other day that she felt like a "conference window" over the last few weeks, having looked after our baby daughter, kept the house running with the usual array of chores, and working part-time to boot. All of this without me around to lend much of a hand at all while I swanned around the world. As you can imagine, an ever-so-small-incy-wincy-tiny-bit of guilt invaded my conscious.
So here's a small public thanks to my partner, and all the other wives, husbands, boyfriends, girlfriends, family, children, friends and work colleagues, who kindly and patiently put up with all of us who follow the conference trail, who understand and support us while we pursue our passions and interests, who nod and humour us when we return and rant about the latest Oracle 11g feature, the future of Fusion Middleware, or how many free Toad shirts we scored this year.
Thank you very much.
At least until next year of course.