Well the Polish Oracle Users Group conference was quite a success. This year they held it in Sopot right on the Baltic Sea. Here are a few of the stand out things about this conference and POUG in general.
- The Baltic Sea is cold. It’s just my nature, if there is water, I’m going to get in. When I saw that POUG was holding the conference in Sopot, the first item to make it into my carry on was my swimsuit. I decided to take an early morning swim Wednesday, running across sand that was like talcum powder I dove right in, swam out about 20 meters and decided this water is just effen cold. So, out of the water and into a hot shower to bring my body temperature back to normal. 🙂
- When I arrived to the speakers dinner, it looked like a who’s who of people in the Oracle community. These are some of the sharpest minds in the world. Heli was there to speak about machine learning. Bryn was there to talk about wrapping your data in a secure shell. Roger Macnical was there to talk about full table scans and so many more. The educational opportunity was only limited due to having to pick between sessions that were running in parallel.
- The food, I had lost about 40 kilos, and after a week in Sopot, I found 5 of those kilos that I had lost. Who knew they went to Poland. 🙂 Really, the food in Poland is fantastic.
- The sessions, Timur Akhmadeev did a great presentation of “Defaults, bloody defaults.” That exposed some gaps in my knowledge. It’s always good to learn something new.
- The networking, I had been chewing on a problem that I’ve been having with analytics on blockchain, and ran into Christian Berg who is the analytics guru in Switzerland. We don’t get to chat as much as I like; however at the after party, we dove into the problems with running analytics on blockchain data and think we may have come up with a solution. Once we run some test in the lab, and confirm you’ll read more. At POUG, you have the opportunity to chat with experts from all over the world and resolve your issues.
- The panel session at the end of the conference. Why do I keep volunteering to sit on panels? This is an opportunity to get opinions on may subjects. This time, the discussion revolved around why learn the internals. Of course you should understand how Oracle works. Now some people take it farther than I do. So when I need to understand something a bit deeper I know there are people I can go to and ask difficult questions; like Kamal Stawiarski. If he does not know the answer; you know he will find the answer and help you out.
- The overall organization and execution of the conference. Luiza Nowak rocked it yet again. Luiza is the face, brain, and muscle behind making sure POUG goes smoothly. I’m constantly amazed by her ability to organize a complex conference and keep calm.
- The best speakers gift, having a beer named after me.
Thanks guys, I’m looking forward to coming back next year.