One month ago, ODTUG Kscope18 was getting started, and one month ago was the first time in two years that I was not the Conference Chair, and today, I can say that my friend Opal did a damn good job at taking the ODTUG Kscope conference to the next level. Thank you Opal for your leadership and making this Kscope, like all others before it, “The best one ever!!”

As with each ODTUG Kscope, we kickoff with Community Service Day. This year, we renamed this event to the Kathleen McCasland Community Service Day, in honor of Kathleen McCasland, a pivotal member of our ODTUG family.

 

Our partner this year was UP Orlando. This organization has the noble mission of providing 360 degrees of service to those in poverty. Volunteers had the opportunity to work in the Member Grocery Center, where we unpacked in the warehouse, broke down boxes, and stocked and cleaned shelves. This is always a very rewarding experience. If you want to make a donation click here.

And of course the Oracle ACEs were there:

–Gotta love twitter for snagging pics–

Of course there were some other social and networking activities before we really got started. Let’s get to it!

Sunday

ODTUG Kscope content begins with the Sunday Symposiums where Oracle is center stage. They bring Product Managers from various lines of business to share with conference goers product roadmap, features, and tips and tricks to get the get best from your Oracle product suite. It doesn’t get much better than this. I focus on the Database side of the house, so if you are interested in some of the Sunday Symposium content you can check out the links from ThatJeffSmith and SQLMaria.

Monday

Monday kicked off the beginning of three hectic days of Oracle strategy meetings, presenting my first of 3 sessions, having a brief cameo in a fourth session, and trying to attend a few sessions.

One thing we have been doing with Kscope is exploring ways to introduce new or emerging technology, and this year it was Blockchain. I knew a little bit about the technology, and I recalled a comment made by my friend, owner of Red Pill Analytics, Stewart Bryson. He said something to the effect of, if you really want to learn about something, submit it as a conference abstract. If it gets selected you are on the hook. Taking that advice I submitted a session on Blockchain: “The True Value of Blockchain … and It Ain’t Bitcoins“.  The turn out was great and the conversation sparked between attendees on things like security, SHA256 Hash collisions, etc was phenomenal.

You risk getting heckled, but biggest treat is to see your friends and colleagues attend. Thanks Kent G, Justin B, Troy L, Craig S, Maria C, Holger F., and Chris S. If I missed anyone please forgive me.

Here is a abstract summary:

Many people think of Bitcoin when they hear blockchain, but that’s not where the real value of the technology lies. This session will take a look at the concepts being applied to blockchain technology by walking through the process of rolling your own blockchain. We’ll also examine how organizations are taking advantage of this technology.

After my session, I hightailed over to make my cameo appearance in, “Save ‘The Beverage Company!’: How to Impress People with SmartView in PowerPoint”. This was actually a session on the EPM side of the house.

I also made it over to check out a real world use case presentation for blockchain which was amazing. There was even some audience participation by our board member Jake.

The day ended with the Community Night events where each ODTUG community takes time to appreciate and fellowship its member with some fun activities. I manages to catch these two guys enjoying the Database/BI trivial event:

Do I see a very bright “First Time Attendee” ribbon??? -Cody

I snagged this one from Opal’s blog because I thought her caption, included below, was sooooo funny.

(I think it’s pretty clear that I’m the taller one. Thanks to Jorge for the pic!) – Opal Alapat

Tuesday

Day 3, I took the opportunity to listen to Holger Friedrich’s presentation on, “Assessment of the Autonomous Data Warehouse Cloud by an Early Adopter” where he gave us an overview of some cloud data warehouse solutions, one of which is the company I work for, Snowflake. Most importantly, we got a walkthrough on provisioning the recently released Autonomous Data Warehouse Cloud Service offering by Oracle.

My doctor told me to take 500 mg daily for the pain in my arm after a surgery. I`am order valtrex online, this has completely resoved the issue. At first, I had a funny feeling in my head, a bit like being drunk, but it went away quickly once I had adjusted to my daily dosage.

In true self torture fashion, I then went off to prepare for my second session of the conference: “Contain Your Test Environment: Using Docker and Oracle DB 12c”. In this session, I talk about using Docker to deploy and Oracle database and a suite of development tools:

Have you ever been faced with the need to quickly and constantly deploy an Oracle DB for testing, but you want to avoid the hassle of repeatedly installing the database? Use Docker to deploy an Oracle DB for your test environment.

Wednesday

Back to grind again on day four of Kscope18 and moderating a panel of technology influencers as we discuss “Careers and the Changing Landscape Panel for DBA/Developers”. I’d like to thank @thatjeffsmith for the session summary meme:

Bottom line here is, change is constant, and as a DBA/Developer, you need to change as well. Learn new technologies. Reinvent yourself. Architect instead of Administer.

Thanks guys for participating:

Jeff Smith, Oracle Corporation
Stewart Bryson, Red Pill Analytics
Anton Nielson, Insum
Dan McGhan, Oracle Corporation
Kent Graziano, Snowflake Computing

If you’ve ever been to Kscope before, you know that Wednesday is the day that goes on forever.

Andretti’s for the Appreciation Party. I am almost as tall as the “robot”

Mango’s for the after party where I met an enthusiastic Spiderman

and somehow, this was my room at 4:00am … Don’t ask.

 

Thursday

The closing session is upon us, where our illustrious ODTUG President, Natalie announced our conference award winners. This year was bittersweet though.  We started the week off honoring Kathleen and we ended the week by announcing the retirement of, my dear friend and all things ODTUG, Mike Riley effective at the end of his 2018 term on the Board of Directors. Two really big influencers in the birth, growth, and history of ODTUG are passing the torch. So I’ll end this post with a thank you Mike:

Enjoy!