Post eastern Insync 2013

It's been over a month since my last confession - mainly due to a lot of interstate travel.

The reason for most of the travel was the AUSOUG Insync Conference Series - on the eastern coast anyway. So in the past month I've been to Sydney (and surrounds), Melbourne (twice) & Brisbane (extra 90 mins to fly home).

The conference series was due to begin in Sydney on the 15th, but unfortunately due to a number of factors (which I won't get into here) it had to be cancelled, along with the Canberra and Adelaide legs. Perth preparations are still going strong, and we look forward to bucking the trend.

This turned out expensive for me because I had promised my wife would come over on frequent flyer points and we'd spent time driving through the blue mountains and other touristy type things. And extra two days of that when the company can't sport for accommodation before I head to the Melbourne gig after the weekend - bummer!

I'll just say Sydney was beautiful and treated us to lovely weather - but we had no success whale watching day.

Melbourne was cold, and the conference numbers were lower than previous. Penny (my boss) was still happy with the turnouts to our talks and networking engagement was reasonably successful.

My presentations went well, and for those coming to Perth and want to join any of the half-day workshops (eg: DB 12c, JDeveloper & APEX) I recommend you bring your laptops and become aware of software needs before hand to make the most of the time. See further comments below.

Some presentations I'm keepto keep an eye out for in Perth in November:

1. Penny Cookson - Redesigning core on-line systems in ADF JDeveloper - if you ever want a case study on a ADF migration project - this is the perfect chance
2. Scott Wesley (me) - APEX in your Hands - another case study on an APEX application preparing for deployment on a tablet. We hope to get our client involved with the intro to this in Perth
3. Chris Muir (et al) - The Future of Oracle Forms: Upgrade. Modernize, or Migrate - if you still use Oracle Forms, come even just to keep yourself informed on where things are at and what's truly available.
4. Mark Lancaster - APEX 4.2 Building Responsive application using Twitter Bootstrap - a good overview of a framework worth incoroporating into your applications - it's not hard.
5. Penny Cookson - New Optimizer Features in Oracle 12c - A technical look at tuning features in 12c, with a funny twist. Uber nerd alert.
6. Kylie Payne - ADF for Newbies - I know there are plenty of you out there. Fresh perspective from an Oracle professional.
7. Connor McDonald - CloneDB - a new one from Connor, let's place bets on the slide count.
8. Jeff Kemp - APEX and row level security - presenting the works of an excellent blog post
9. Phil Robinson - Testing the limits of testing - everybody should be incorporating more testing.

We have a few more to be confirmed from Oracle ACEs.

Workshop tips

1. DB 12c - Martin Power - bring a 64 bit laptop with plenty of gigs free. Download his recommended files first and do your best to get VirtualBox booting beforehand. He brings a thumbdrive with a pre-built image, but it will take a while to copy, initiate, boot.
2. Forms -> ADF - Penny Cookson - Read her setup instructions and try your best to come prepared
3. APEX Plugins - Scott Wesley - the easiest to prepare for - just bring a laptop! You can also do it easily in your own 4.2 environment, just grab a few files beforehand so you can play along.

For those in the east - also good was

1. Guy Harrison - Avoiding death by Big Data - a lighthearted but effective 1000 ft view of how big data is shaping our world. I enjoy his talks, and try to incorporate some of his style in mine. Imitation is the sincerest form flattery, they say...
2. Tim Daniell - Being Productive in IT - a different, thought provoking comparison of the human brain and an Oracle database.
3. Connor McDonald - SQL Tuning 101 - if you missed it last year, too bad - a fast paced, humorous look at SQL basics that everyone will learn from.

SAGE will be exhibiting in Perth and will continue our fine form of booth design, thanks to Branka.

Scott

ps - to all Australian readers - happy footy finals month.