Recent Posts by Heather VanCura

Oracle supports employees getting involved with their communities through numerous volunteer opportunities that focus on education, environment, and community. Oracle employees can find a cause they are passionate about and either join an existing project or lead one of their own. In July 2019 I partnered with one of my Oracle colleagues, Vice President of Go to Market, Dev Patel, and her 16 year-old son Deven Parkin for a unique volunteer project.   Deven took the lead on a...

  Oracle’s Redwood Shores Women's Leadership (OWL) and Oracle Volunteers celebrated International Women’s Day 2019 with Richmond’s Beautiful Minds Girls Coding Club   The theme for International Women’s Day 2019 was Balance for Better. A balanced world is a better world. We celebrated women's achievements at Oracle, but also considered how we can forge a more gender balanced representation of women in technology. We focused on providing role models to middle school aged girls...

  In October, Oracle celebrated  International Day of the Girl, at two of the Oracle Bay Area headquarters campuses - Pleasanton and Santa Clara.  International Day of the Girl is celebrated annually at four Oracle campuses to include a focus on STEM for local middle school aged girls in underserved and nearby schools. This is a field trip for girls from program such as TechBridge Girls and Girls Who Code organizations to include a STEM workshop, role model activity with...

This October, Oracle Women's Leadership (OWL) celebrates the International Day of the Girl 2017 at Four Campuses throughout California.   International Day of the Girl at four Oracle campuses will include a focus on STEM for local middle school aged girls in underserved and nearby schools. This will be a field trip for girls with TechBridge Girls, ALearn, GAINS program in Santa Clara, and Girls Who Code organizations to include a STEM workshop, role model activity with women,...

The Java Community Process (JCP) program celebrates success. Members of the community nominate worthy participants, Spec Leads, and Java Specification Requests (JSRs) in order to cheer on the hard work and creativity that produces ground-breaking results for the community and industry in the Java Standard Edition (SE), Java Enterprise Edition (EE), or Java Micro Edition (ME) platforms. The community gets together every year at the JavaOne conference to applaud in person the...

I have been a remote worker for nearly fifteen years - I was surprised to realize that it has been so long. During this time, I have worked from remote areas along the Central California coast, from  Southern California, the San Francisco Bay area, and all over the world, since I travel internationally as a speaker and attendee of developer conferences. There is a huge amount of gratitude I feel for this time - it has given me freedom, flexibility and a creative work energy...

We will have a planning meeting for JUG leaders participating in the August 19 vJUG Java 9 Hack Day. *Planning for August Virtual Hack Day* Friday, July 28, 2017 10:00 am | Pacific Daylight Time (San Francisco, GMT-07:00) | 1 hr Meeting number: 745 046 855 Meeting password: Java92017 Link to Join: https://myoracle.webex.com/myoracle/j.php… *Join by phone* Primary Dial in Number: 1-8666824770 (US) Alternate Dial in Number: 1-4087744073 (US)https://jcp.org/…/comm…/intercall/global...

For my first post of 2017, I start with a very important topic. Technology reflects the people who make it. Today women make up 52% of the world population; however, most technology is designed by men. Women hold approximately twenty percent of technology jobs, and earn 28% less than what men make. Yet, is is proven that teams with both men and women are more profitable, smarter, faster, more innovative - their collective IQ rises. As technology becomes more pervasive and we...

Since my role requires some business travel and I like to minimize my time away from home, I often complete very short trips, both domestically and internationally, with very little recovery or downtime. I do get asked about my strategy for doing this successfully.  I am not going to go into Global Entry, TSA pre-select, airline or hotel rewards programs, although they do have very nice benefits and I do recommend them. Rather, here are my top ten tips or hacks for healthy...