It was meant to be ...

Well after an exceedingly great ODTUG Kaleidoscope conference that hopefully surpassed everyones expectations, it was time to head home. I didn't actually want to head directly home as my best mate from high school was over from Australia for a short visit with his wife, and was in San Francisco over the weekend before heading to Las Vegas, New York, LA and then back home.

I rang up our travel people and asked how much it would cost to change my ticket so I could have a night in San Francisco and on hearing it would cost $1,000 decided I would have to try my luck at the airport or fly to meet him in Las Vegas or New York.

Well I jumped on my scheduled flight from Monterrey to San Francisco on Friday morning (after checking they couldn't help me) and landed in SFO with only 45 minutes before my Chicago flight was due to take off. I thought I had no chance but decided to stand in line to ask the people at the counter. As I was standing there I watched the United message boards and saw they had 58 people on stand-by which gave me a chance.

I was sixth in line and then the second United person at the counter asked if anyone wanted to volunteer to take a later flight. I leaped to the counter and asked if I could be bounced to Saturday. The United representative was ecstatic I didn't want to get on a later flight that day as they were all full. He offered me a 2:00 pm flight, which was great but my mate was flying out at 4:00 pm to Las Vegas so I asked for a later flight. He then asked if I would mind going via Vegas which was perfect as I could fly to Vegas with my mate and then fly on to Chicago. Just to top off being bounced off a flight when you really wanted to be and placed on the perfect flight(s) he then proceeded to give me a voucher for a free return airfare.

Couldn't get any better one would think as I got to spend time with my mate and his wife, and rather than paying money was given a free ticket. But wait there's more - On getting the perfect bounce I jumped on the BART to downtown SF and called a good friend who lives in the city. This friend doesn't have a car and is always very busy at work, but I caught him at a bit of a lull on the work front. What's more he was baby sitting a car for a friend of his due to the issues with parking downtown SF. So not only was I able to meet up with two good mates at once but had a very knowledgeable local tour guide (with car no less) to show us all places we wouldn't have otherwise seen.

Ok at the risk of sounding like one of those TV Commercials ("If you buy within the next 10 minutes you will also get ...") Wait there's still more - As we were driving through Little Italy my Aussie friends said they had heard about this Italian restaurant (don't ask me the name I've forgotten, but it begins with 'T'). SF friend then proceeds to say that it is his favorite Italian restaurant so we decide we will eat there. Now this place is so popular that people stand outside for over 1 hour waiting for their table, unless you have a seasoned local who knows the inside track to reserving a table at a restaurant that doesn't take reservations. So we went and had cocktails for an hour and then walked back and sat down within minutes. Brilliant food, great company - what more could you ask for.

We then topped the night off with a "few" drinks at a place called "Gold Dust" (or something like that very near Union Square) where these three guys would play almost any song imaginable for a dollar. Even caught up with a couple of fellow Aussies from QANTAS in the bar. We stayed till closing - tortuous night - and then very wearily went out to the airport on Saturday to continue our travels.

A special thank-you to my friend in SF for making it such a memorable time for my Aussie friends and I - we all had an absolute blast.

All I can say is -- It was SO meant to be ...

Safe and happy travels to all :)

ODTUG APEX Symposium

The APEX Symposium at ODTUG Kaleidoscope was very successful again this year with 200 people in attendance (the biggest of all the symposiums). Scott Spendolini hosted a great day with lots of interesting speakers and a lively APEX Panel session.

We had a little extra surprise today as we handed out the first ever Oracle Application Express t-shirts. Hope to post some pictures from our APEX meetup on Monday night where we have encouraged everyone to wear their new t-shirts.

ODTUG Kaleidoscope is the most important APEX Conference of the year and we try and send as many APEX Development Team members as possible. This year Mike Hichwa, Joel Kallman, Marc Sewtz, Patrick Wolf, Scott Spadafore, Jason Straub, and myself are presenting sessions and conducting Hands-on Labs. We have also pulled out all the stops to prepare a comprehensive demonstration of some of the latest APEX 4.0 features we are busy developing {Finally relax and enjoy the rest of the week once we have delivered that one}.

Looking forward to a very busy week meeting lots of old friends and making lots of new ones.

Application Express Developer Competition 2009

Oracle Technology Network (OTN) are conducting the Oracle Application Express Developer Competition 2009. Click here to register and submit an APEX application for your chance to win FREE tickets to Oracle Openworld 2009 in San Francisco, October 11- 15, and APEX books.

This is your chance to not only win some great prizes but also the bragging rights that goes with it. There is also a chance that the 1st prize winner will get an "Unconference" session at Oracle Openworld and even a write-up in Oracle Magazine by Justin Kestelyn.

A special thank-you to our wonderful judges:

• Matt Chivers - Oracle


• Dimitri Gielis - APEX Evangelists


• Justin Kestelyn - Oracle


• Thomas Marshall - Auburn University


• Anton Nielsen - C2 Consulting


• John Scott - APEX Evangelists


• Scott Spendolini- Sumner Technologies

Get cracking writing your 'killer' application as the deadline for submission is 24 August 2009.

Good Luck!
David

Pensonalizing your ODTUG Agenda

For all of you attending ODTUG Kaleidoscope in Monterrey then take a few minutes to get your personalized APEX agenda.

Crystal Walton has been kind enough to send me the late breaking changes to the agenda.

• Consumer Reports can't make it to the APEX Symposium but Jan Navratil from CampusIT and BT Global Services is flying in from the UK at very short notice to talk at 1:00 pm on Sunday.


• Anton Nielsen will not be able to attend so Doug Gault is doing a session on performance 10:00 am Monday.


• Kathy Hunsicker is also unavailable so John Scott's session 'Dispelling Myths about APEX' originally scheduled for 3:45 pm Monday has been moved to 1:30 pm Wednesday. This allows everyone to attend Mike Hichwa's session 'Oracle Application Express 4.0' on Monday at 3:45 pm. Kathy's other slot at 8:00 am on Thursday will be filled so keep an eye on the daily updates.

Simply use this link to go to the APEX Conference Sessions application. Once there simply add the following columns - Date, Start Time, and Room, then download to CSV or PDF.

I urge everyone to try and get to the APEX Sysmposium on Sunday for a great lineup of speakers, rounded off with an APEX Panel session. There is also a surprise or two in store for all of those in attendance on the Sunday :)

Look forward to catching up with all of you.

David

OTN Developer Day - Database in Reston

I will be traveling to Reston, Virginia this week for the second time we have run this FREE Database OTN Develop Day on Thursday, May 21. Registration numbers are very high so hope to see a lot of people turn out.

Registration is required from the Event Details page.

We have an interesting agenda designed to appeal to a broad cross-section of IT Professionals.

If we are lucky, I may be able to persuade Mike Hichwa to come along to the event as an added bonus for all of you that attend the SQL Developer / APEX Track. Mike is based in Reston but is also exceedingly busy, as always, so no promises.

Cheers,
David

Oracle Openworld 2009 - Call for Papers Extended

As Justin Kestelyn posts, this is the first time in his tenure that a public call-for-papers has been issued for Oracle Openworld.

The deadline has recently been extended until April 26. So if you were thinking about writing an abstract but figured you were going to run out of time, you now have an extra week. Oracle employees aren't allowed to submit abstracts :( as we are given an allocation.

If you are from a consulting company you may want to consider doing a joint presentation with one of your clients as these are always appealing. Are you running on an 11g Database and can talk to the advantages of 11g, experiences upgrading, etc. - then include details in your abstract. Competition for sessions is always intense so your abstract needs to interest (sell) those doing the reviewing - Good luck!

For all of you submitting an APEX abstract please forward me your entry (with speakers). Last year I was very lucky to secure a few sessions outside of the normal channels. I have no idea whether I will have any opportunities this year - every year the rules change.

Regards,
David

Upcoming Conferences: Oracle Openworld Japan & Collaborate

I will be attending Oracle Openworld in Tokyo, April 22 - 24.
I have a number of presentations and hands-on-labs, plus will be Mark Townsend's official "demo bunny" for the Database keynote. Given that Mark is a Kiwi (friendly term for someone from New Zealand) and I'm an Aussie, the first time we did this in Moscow, our esteemed colleagues (other US based PMs) in the audience even had trouble following us as we slipped into colloquialisms (try saying that 3 times really quickly) - I did feel for the poor old translators after that one. We repeated the same keynote in Prague without as many local terms and it went very well, so hopefully the translators have an easier time in Japan.

Collaborate 2009 in Orlando Florida is up next, May 3 - 7. There are 16 APEX Sessions from many speakers. John Scott will even be signing his book after his session. To see all the Collaborate sessions, complete with dates and times, click here.

Hope to see you at the conferences,
David

Get the 'Latest' from APEX OTN Site

We have been freshening up our APEX OTN Home Page with lots of new content. These include 'Latest Highlights', 'Latest Collateral', and 'Latest Books'.

Today for example we put out a new white paper 'Integrating APEX with BI Publisher' thanks to Jason Straub. Read his posting here for more details.

Another new addition today, under 'Latest Highlights' is the new Oracle Store developed in Application Express. Our development team in conjunction with other teams have been rebuilding the old Oracle Store in APEX. This is the first release featuring Enterprise Linux and Virtualization (VM). This multi-lingual / multi-currency application is another nice example of an Internet facing Oracle APEX application.

Latest Collateral & Highlights also include a podcast with Mike Riley, President of ODTUG, and an interesting article from Profit Magazine on a very successful modernization project in Florida.

The Community & Partners pages continue to swell across all categories including some interesting new Internet Applications many of which look nothing at all like regular APEX screens - Check all the community pages out for yourself here.

So I strongly recommend you check in on the APEX OTN Pages regularly to keep tabs on all the latest offerings.

Regards,
David

Doing More with Less with Oracle Application Express

I will be participating in a webcast hosted by Redmond Magazine.
The webcast is on April 28 at 11:00 PST / 14:00 GST / 19:00 GMT.
The format will be a discussion / interview type format with moderator, Peter Varhol, asking me lots of questions.

The objective of this webcast is to discuss how APEX can be used to "streamline processes and lower operational expenses".

To register for the webcast simply click on the Title!
You could even win an iPod Nano simply by registering and listening to the webcast.

Speak to you soon,
David

Presenting APEX

We have just updated the APEX OTN Home Page with a few new sections: Latest Collateral and Latest Books. Under Latest Collateral you can access a PDF which gives a comprehensive overview of APEX together with a short video which is reportedly the most viewed video on OTN.

The Presentations page has also been revamped with the latest and greatest slides we have developed for presenting on APEX. One of the key additions is the seven new powerpoint decks at the top, broken into categories. They are designed to allow people to build their own presentation using slides from each deck based on their audience, how much time they have and what they want to concentrate on.


One of the other key additions is the APEX Conference Sessions application. This application lists all of the APEX sessions at major Oracle conferences since 2007. Where possible there are also links to the associated presentations or a link to the Conference site.



For upcoming conferences the addition of dates, times, and rooms will allow you to create your own agenda.

What started out as a post from Dimtiri Gielis: Is APEX still worth looking at? and was followed by John Scott: Charting the Rise of Application Express, led me to dust off the application I built to list all the Oracle Openworld Sessions last year {Thanks guys for the inspiration!}. I then added all the presentations available from Oracle conferences or those where the presentations are publicly available. For conferences such as Kaleidoscope I have added links to their site for the given presentation, unless they were given by Oracle. The Hands-On Labs have links to the actual Oracle By Examples that are used. Finally I have updated all the agenda details for Collaborate and Kaleidoscope 2009.

Please drop me a line with any missing / incorrect information.

Hope you find this collateral useful and informative.

Cheers,
David