UKOUG 2012 Birmingham

I had the fantastic opportunity to go to the UKOUG 2012 for a day and I can't thank the wonderful Oracle developer who arranged it for me enough.

What an incredible opportunity.  If you didn't read the reasons I gave for being a member of the  UK Oracle User Group then you should.

I had a day of intense learning and also discover a number of experts and Ace's completely new to me, but with so much to share and so many new websites and blogs to read.   As a full member you can spent 3 days here in solid learning.  But there is so much more.

There is an incredible feeling of motivation, everyone here is interested, wants to learn, wants to become the best they can be at their job.  You can stand and have a lengthy conversation with a stranger about your SGA issue, or whether huge pages is the way to go and not stand out as odd.  There were probably a 1000 of more people there but with so many auditoriums, stands and activities, there were no bun fights for seats, there was plenty of space, plenty of food and plenty of options.

In fact I recommend you plan a little bit of downtime into your day because you could fill every second for 8am to 11pm and not stop.

I wish I had taken more photos but I was just too busy learning, writing, and socialising.  I met a lot of people I talk to on line face to face.  It really helps to bond the self help community to actually meet people and have a moment to discuss Oracle face to face.  It is quite a strange feeling to recognise someone by their avatar as they walk past you and tweeting between presentations I discovered how many of the people I see scrolling past my eyes daily were there also.

Yet again I came back to work totally motivated, wanting to push a little bit harder, self-learn a little bit more.

 Although seeing Tom

 and playing scalextric

may have had a little to do with it.

 I have to say that discovering  Kerry Osborne via Controlling Execution Plans (without touching the code) and the Cache 'n' Query presentation by Jaromir Nemic actually stand out as high points of my day.

If you are a member and don't use your access to the main conference you should, and for non-members, well it's time to join.