This is a guest blog by Oracle ACE Director Debra Lilley
This year UKOUG Conference ’23 was a little different – UKOUG was celebrating 40 years and the conference was hosted by Oracle at their biggest UK Campus in Reading. Fantastic for the Oracle ACE Program was having Jennifer Nicholson, Director, Database Program Manangement here in person!
There were two ACE Adventures on the day before the conference started, but I personally wasn’t able to attend them. You can read the UKOUG Conference 23 Day 0 ACE Adventure blog post by ACE Pro Zahid Anwar for details.
Then, that evening we had our ACE dinner. The location was inspired, we had dinner in a narrow boat, one very long table that we all sat around, very sociable. Although I was a bit worried when Connor had us all line up on one side for a photo, worried that the boat may tip over into the very cold water. There were a few new additions to the ACE community at dinner and it always fantastic to welcome them in person.
The UKOUG event was held over two days and more than 20 ACEs were speaking! Jennifer Nicholson, who now earning plenty of points herself as a presenter, had a good group of people interested in what the program was and how to get involved, explaining the ACE Program in detail during her session.
Then immediately afterwards she hosted an ACE briefing. I could not attend that as I was presenting myself, but she had three Oracle speakers which gave most ACEs attending a chance to learn something outside of their own field, which to me is a great opportunity we should take more often.
I had three sessions. The first wasn’t really mine, as I stepped in for fellow ACE Director Mia Urman who was unable to travel, her session was on RPA.
Then I had the chance to deliver a presentation I have done many times – a rather personal look at the Oracle story. At work, when you have grads or new starts with no Oracle background – it is a fun way to help them understand a little and join up the dots. At KSCOPE last year a delegate told me he had no idea about Oracle and had simply been sent to learn as much as he could and he didn’t know where to start. I had been thinking for a while to take the session public, so I did a zoom call with him a week later to get his feedback. He enjoyed it, so my next audience was the staff of ODTUG and now UKOUG. I had a great crowd and I tried to keep Oracle people out, but Jen insisted on staying. 😊 Afterwards she told me she enjoyed it, so hopefully I will get other opportunities.
My final session was on extending Oracle SaaS inside & out, much more my day job. Again a good turnout.
In between the two days there was the UKOUG 40th birthday party – nice to catch up with people I have known for so many years and congratulations to UKOUG on reaching that milestone!