RMOUG 2012 Revisited
As many of you know, I’ve been a bit busy since RMOUG Training Days finding a number of presentation opportunities and while I was at it, a new gig with Enkitec. I am finally sitting down and putting to paper what a great year the RMOUG Training Days conference had for 2012.
As everyone is still reeling from the great keynote from Cary Millsap, (so glad I was wrong about screwing up my passenger pick-up schedule, thinking I’d left our keynote speaker at the airport!!) His speech was enlightening, enjoyable and worth every minute of a heavy morning commute to attend the initial morning!
First, kudos directed to TeamYCC and John Juenette for all their hard work for heading up the conference. John was this year’s conference director and it is a challenging endeavor ensuring all goes smoothly. There is a ton of moving parts as the conference comes together and if these are not coordinated effectively, the conference will be left less than enjoyable for the presenters and its attendees. John decided to add the challenge of performing his duties from Vermont, where he moved earlier in 2011 due to his own career opportunity, so he’s a real trooper and will be sorely missed on the board of director’s next year.
My next shout-out goes to all the folks in the social media arena that were wonderful, ensuring to participate in tweets, blog posts and messages in regards to presenting and attending the conference. Last year, I was able to count all the “tweeters” on one hand, (also prompting me further to run for the board…) where is this year, there were literally hundreds of posts, tweets and blog comments.
Third, I want to thank all the ACE and ACE Directors, many of who heard my plea to come to RMOUG and present, (they are so patient with me… :)) during Oracle Open World and either submitted abstracts, attended or did both and marketed the conference for RMOUG. I appreciate the support they give to this great “grass-roots” conference and all that it has to offer.
Finally, I want to thank the great board of directors that I get to be a part of and the user group as a whole. We have an incredibly impressive, versatile and supportive membership that drives the conference to be more than it was before, yet keep what makes this area a great place to live as a technical specialist in our respective arena. The continued hard work of the board, including our wonderful administrative assistant, Heidi Kuhn, deserves a round of applause.
The conference as a whole was a local Goliath with the lineup, alone! It was the first time since 2004 that Jonathan Lewis, Pete Sharman and a few others have presented or even attended. This year we had Maria Colgan, Graham Wood, Riyaj Shamsudeen, James Morle, Marco Gralike, Guy Harrison and a mantra of impressive presenters- more names than I can list. We had a record year for ACE and ACE directors, along with an incredibly high amount of OAK Table members. The content and quality was amazing, as seen at the second day’s lunch when each ACE/ACED was assigned their own table for questions. My coworkers had narrowed in on Jonathan Lewis’ table early on and I enjoyed watching Jonathan keep up with our resident “Tsunami” Developer’s comments.
My two presentations for first day both went well. My first one, on EM12c was quite packed and did well- well enough that it’s been picked up for a number of conferences, including MOW and KSCOPE this year. I thoroughly enjoyed giving my “Sherlock Holmes for DBA’s” and appreciate my bud, Riyaj Shamsudeen offering to be my Dr. Watson if I ever need one, (considering the man’s technical skills, Holmes would prevail every time!!:))
I really enjoyed a number of presentations, including those given by Dominic Delomino, Don Seiler, Pete Sharman, Alex Gorbachev and Marc Fielding. I seemed to have my own presentations scheduled up against Jeff Smith, Gwen Shapira , Jonathan Lewis and even Tim Gorman’s. I had a chance to sit with Gwen Shapira a number of times, along with Marc Fielding and Karl Arao, (my new coworker!!) at many of the presentations I attended.
I ensured that I “stalked” Jean-Pierre Djicks, as often as he has stalked mine in the past. I keep waiting for an email from him, pointing out my frustrated comment regarding system stats, calibrate IO and the chaos that this poorly designed area of database IO information has become, but so far, I’ve been spared.
I finally got to meet Gaja Krishna Vaidyanatha ,serving as his stand-in room ambassador….for about 10 minutes, then his assigned one showed up and I told him he did not need me any longer and explained that I must show up for Kerry Osborne’s presentation, (which I’m sure he now understands the importance of my attendance… :)) It was still very flattering that instead of “DBA Goth Princess”, he just referred to me as “DBA Goddess”…Yeah I’ll take that any day!
The actual Training Days Conference, post set up, always starts with the Presenters/Volunteer Appreciation banquet at Wynkoop, a local brewery, which I always enjoy. It’s a chance for many of the presenters to unwind after traveling into town and visit with each other, along with the Training Day’s volunteers. My partner was picking up folks at the airport for the conference, so I walked down to the event with a number of other folks from the hotel, including Don Seiler, Jeff Smith and Kris Rice.
The ACE dinner, Wednesday evening was excellent, even if I was knocked half unconscious by a new RA medication, (yes, I practically fell asleep at my first, “official” ACE dinner!!) OTN chose one of the newly recognized, top restaurants in Denver, Row 14, so dinner was exceptional. Peggy King finally made a few excuses for me after I kept nodding off and I went back to my hotel to sleep it off, (thank you, Peggy!)
The last day was busy and fun- Got to meet and work for a short time with Jeremiah Wilton on his Oracle vs. SQL Server Recovery competition project, met fellow “Yooper”, Jonathan Gennick of Apress and then packed the SUV to go up to the mountains for “FOAK Table” and skiing, (fun and chaos of over 30 people in a house in Breckenridge for the President’s Day Weekend! :))
I’ve already started to plan out a few ideas for RMOUG Training Days 2013, (Feb. 11th-13th, I believe are the dates!) as the plans are being formulated for me to try on the Training Day’s Director hat. There are so many great conferences out there, all with their own unique flavor and I hope Training Days can keep the best of what it has to offer and still have a few more surprises that will keep everyone coming back for more!