Tag Archives: conference

Techfest 19 & ACED

06 Friday Dec 2019

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TF_speaking_twitter-01This year’s UKOUG TechFest 19 conference is over.  The first time in a number of years where the user group conference hasn’t been a combined Tech, Apps and JD Edwards event.  I have to admit that I was a little concerned with the separation of Tech and Apps as some of the tech stack overlaps for the two groups – for example, Integration Cloud.

That said, the situation being what it was, I got involved with the committee for planning the event including inheriting the stream lead responsibilities for Dev (in the sense of modern development e.g. microservices etc) and what had been historically referred to as middleware (Integration Cloud, Digital Assistant, Helidon, WebLogic) with a lot of support and input from Mark Simpson, Grant Ronald and Susan Duncan.

From my perspective, I  don’t think there was a concern (and this isn’t an attempt at being self-congratulatory) as the hard graft is done by the UKOUG office staff.

As the number of people was smaller, we had a smaller venue rather than the ICC in Birmingham or the ACC Convention Centre in Liverpool – which actually worked out well. The problem of the ICC and particularly the ACC is that main community spaces had been very large as a result atmosphere suffered. This time the Grand Hotel in Brighton was really busy and vibrant as a result.

Reception Desk

 

We had a good blend of sessions covering traditional integration, low code, cloud, microservices, API, UI with people from customers, partners and Oracle travelling in from all over Europe and the US to participate and present.

In terms of my presentations and the ones, I managed to see, I’d particularly recommend checking out in the UKOUG library …

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EMEA PaaS Forum 2019 in review

15 Monday Apr 2019

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Image by @motivcx

Image by @motivcx

Another Spring means another excellent Oracle EMEA PaaS Forum for Oracle partners. Every Year Juergen Kress organizes the event, finding really nice venues to host several hundred people over four and half days.

The event is split into several parts,  Monday afternoon normally involves Oracle Ace’s presenting on best practices, insights on applying the various technologies etc.  For me this meant presenting on the London Developer Meetup, looking at how it worked, what has been successful, and what hasn’t.  For those know have read my blogs on the subject (here) will know about our Drone initiative.

Picture by @AmyGrangeX

Then Tuesday is a single stream day where Juergen has managed to pull in SVPs and Senior Product Managers from around the globe to provide a high-level view of what has been going on with their products. For anyone consulting in the Oracle domain, this is incredibly useful. For example, there is a clear strategy coalescing around AI and Machine Learning both as a service proposition to users, but also how these technologies are being made available and used within other products.  Other areas such as OIC and SOA CS have stability and maturity, and the road map is about maximising connectivity with the newer products.

But before the sessions start, Juergen starts with opening remarks, and demos’ something engaging.  In previous years this has been things like Digital Assistants/Chatbots and so on.  This year, we have been fortunate to be an active contributor by demoing the drone through the use of APIs and talking about the ideas.  The dry runs of the demo on Monday went without a problem, but when it came to the main show, the drone was a little uncooperative – we think because the air-con had really kicked in.  But importantly, even not achieving the desired result, the message of engagement made it home.

Wednesday is split into streams with in-depth sessions from the different Product Managers, he amount of insight gained from these sessions is tremendous, some of which is very much protected by safe harbour statements or not for public disclosure such is the honest and open discussions. The day closes with an Ace Director initiative which demonstrates the application of Oracle Cloud products to a plausible use case, and Luis Weir (Capgemini Oracle CTO) is part of. This session has become something of a tradition now.

The day’s business concludes awards, and for a second year the UK Capgemini team have taken home two awards for APIs and PaaS Contribution.

Luis Weir with his API award

The final two days are then a choice of Hackerthon or 1/2 day training sessions on different products with the relevant Product Managers, and an excellent opportunity to pick the brains of the presenters as well as get hands-on experience with the different products.

The week isn’t without it’s social and networking activities of course …

UKOUG Conference 2018

04 Tuesday Dec 2018

Posted by in API Platform CS, APIs & microservices, General, OIC - ICS, Oracle, Technology

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With the start of December comes the UK Oracle User Group conference, or to be more precise the Independent UKOUG.  This year the conference is back in Blackpool, a slightly smaller venue than the ICC in Birmingham, but in many respects that made the event feel more vibrant and busy.

The user group also announced some of the changes it is making going forwards reflecting the changing needs of its members – SIGs being largely superseded by multi-stream single day events (Summits) with the Call for Papers for the first of these here.  A wider list of Oracle related Calls for Papers is available here.

Of course being a UKOUG Volunteer, I have been presenting and co-presenting.  The slides from my presentation sessions can be found at:

This was an abridged version of the an update on my presentation here 

My second presentation was a review of Oracle Integration Cloud, in which I presented some customer use cases of OCI  as part of a wider presentation on OIC by Sid Joshi. 

This was followed on the second day with two API based sessions, the first being a deep dive into custom API Policies on the Oracle API Platform.

The final session, was another short one looking at Apiary which was primarily a demo of what the solution can do.

On top of trying to keep up with my usual workload – a very hectic couple of days.

UK Oracle User Group Annual Conference

01 Thursday Nov 2018

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As we rapidly approach the end of the Year.  We’re still pretty busy.  The UK Oracle User Group Annual Conference covering Oracle Technology (Tech18) ranging from Database on premises to Polyglot development in Oracle and other clouds passing through Hybrid Integration, SOA and so on.  Alongside this is also Apps18 which covers Oracle Applications from EBusiness Suite and Seibel to the Fusion cloud solutions such HCM, Financials, Taleo and so on. Then finally the 3rd part covering all things JDEdwards.

tech18

Being on the committee for the conference means that I have been heavily involved in developing the conference agenda and choosing sessions.  So I can say with great confidence that there is a very diverse range of sessions from highly respected SMEs and presenters along with new blood presenting on subjects from Oracle JET to Robotic Process Automation (RPA) for example.

I hope we’ll see you there.

UKOUG Tech 18 Conference

08 Tuesday May 2018

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The call for papers for the U.K. Oracle User Group’s 2018 Conference in December is out. The committee are looking for papers across not just core Oracle technologies like the database and SOA Suite but newer technologies such as Event Hub. With Oracle’s engagement with developers and the commitment to open source the UKOUG has moved to engage with these users as well. So the committee will welcome submissions about open source tech that maybe run on an Oracle platform. You can submit your proposals here.

If you’re considering making a submission but want some advise or suggestions then reachout to the UKOUG and its committee members – contact details are here.

Terch18

We look forward to seeing you in Liverpool in December.

2017 into 2018 as a Geek

30 Saturday Dec 2017

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It seems that it becoming common for people to write a personal review of the year. If you’re old school Christmas Card sort then it gets printed and put in the card. If you’re a bit more hip then it’s a Facebook post. For those trendier than that, who knows?

Anyway, I thought I’d use my blog to reflect on what has happened and what we hope to be upto in 2018.

So the big headlines for us …

  • 1st book published as a co-author about ICS, started another book project which should be finished in 2018.Artwork-front
  • Packt have been talking to me about another book project (even though my contribution to book 2 not yet finished!) Have to admit what is being suggested is intriguing and a bit different
  • Then there was the UKOUG Journey to the Cloud event. Having been postponed because of venue flooding it was good to see this happen. Not to mention it being one of s number of events I have presented at this year.39178284831_45be4e943c_m
  • We attended and presented at the Oracle EMEA Partner Conference for the 1st time and presented with my co-author on ICS.
  • Contributions to supporting the UKOUG as part of a SIG committee member, reviewed for Oracle Scene. Being involved in a SIG committee also meant helping plan the conference.
  • Writing hasn’t just been about the books, we continue to write our own blog posts, content for Oracle-integration.cloud plus several journals including Oracle Technology Network,
  • Presenting at Oracle Open World for the 1st time, and signing copies of our book on ICS
  • Promoted from an Oracle Ace Associate to a full Oracle Ace.

So where will 2018 take us, well somethings we’re confident of …

What do we hope to pull off …

  • Another year presenting at Open World,
  • UKOUG Tech 18 presentations
  • Articles for Oracle Scene
  • Submissions accepted at Oracle Code London
  • Presenting at Oracle EMEA Partner Conference

A busy 25 hours at UKOUG Conference

05 Tuesday Dec 2017

Posted by in General, OIC - ICS, Oracle, Technology

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I’ve just come to the end of a very busy 25 hours at the UK Oracle User Group (UKOUG) Conference in Birmingham. Four presentations – interestingly the same subject area, that of Oracle Integration Cloud (OIC) / Integration Cloud Service (ICS) started and ended the day.  Between this we also covered some approaches to start working towards Microservices in a Monolith World and Oracle Messaging Cloud.

Below are the presentations on the Microservices and ICS/OIC. The piece on Oracle Messaging Cloud was largely demo based, so rather than sharing the presentation slides, which won’t tell you too much. The best way to find out about this is to read the 2 articles about the capability in the OraWorld magazine (issues 6 & 7). With issue 7 perfectly timed by becoming available in the last couple of days.

With the Oracle Messaging Cloud article, there is one word of caution. When the article was written and submitted I used a free cloud service (which using contemporary terminology we’d describe as Serverless) called WebScript.io.  The WebScript piece served to make it easy to consume the webservice calls illustrating the PushListener feature.  This service however is being closed down – a shame as it was an elegantly simple solution.  Given this I am currently working on a blog post which will show how another services can take the place of WebScript.io; whilst not finalised, this maybe Google Cloud Functions.

If this wasn’t enough we also squeezed in the keynote presentations, a meeting with several other contributors to OMESA (Open Modern Enterprise Software Architecture) , a lunch conversation with our Publisher (Packt) and several other Oracle book authors, Oracle Ace dinner (great food with a lot of brilliant & friendly people), some very valuable incidental conversations and some work for a customer.

Microservices in a Monolith World

Look at Oracle Integration Cloud – its relationship to ICS. Customer use Cases an Insight into why ICS

I’ll be presenting at UKOUG Conference with …

18 Saturday Nov 2017

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I will be presenting at the UKOUG Conference this year as an Oracle Ace and Snr Consultant from a award winning Partner of the Year. I’ll be speaking about:

  • ICS (now part of Oracle Integration Cloud)
  • Microservices and WebLogic
  • Oracle Messaging Cloud Service

I also have colleagues from Capgemini covering IaaS and SaaS among other things. I hope that we see you in Birmingham. Full details of my sessions :

Integration Cloud Service (ICS) Customer use Cases an Insight Into why ICS

04/12/2017 09:00 &

05/12/2017 09:00

In this session the presenters will talk about several applications of Integration Cloud Service (ICS) with customers from Capgemini. Whilst presenting the use cases, the reasoning for adopting ICS over other integration options will be explained and some of the design considerations that had to be addressed in the application of ICS. Whilst looking at the example cases, factors involved in deciding which iPaaS offering to adopt based on needs.
This session will be presented by Phil Wilkins one of the authors of the book Implementing Oracle Integration Cloud Service and supporting blog.

Microservices in a Monolith World

04/12/2017 15:25

Whilst microservices are mainstream thinking, many organisations make significant long term investments in application containers such as WebLogic and can be resistant to moving on from such investments. So how do we realise the microservice thinking with such constraints? This presentation looks at several approaches that can allow us to leverage microservice thinking without sacrificing the existing investment.

Why Should I Consider Oracle Messaging Cloud Service as an Integration Solution?

04/12/2017 17:55

Oracle Messaging Cloud Service is an often-overlooked service in the family of iPaaS options, but why? So, what makes it worth considering and makes it more contemporary than JMS with Java Cloud Service? This presentation will look at what differentiates MCS from JCS and Event Hub and others and does it offer that makes it distinct and worthwhile option?

Presentations from Oracle Open World

05 Thursday Oct 2017

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With Oracle Open World 2017 over the ICS presentation is available at – Oracle integration cloud service (ICS) best practices learned from the field (OOW17)

We saw a lot of exciting new features and capabilities coming from Oracle in the ICS space. So keep an eye on the site as we publish new articles.

The API Platform presentation that was co-presented with Luis Weir is here…