As a regular reader of Jonathan Lewis’ blog, I like the way he prefixes seminar announcements and the like with ‘Advert’. (I looked for an example to make sure it was ‘Advert’ and not ‘Advertisement’, but he deletes them after a few days!) That’s not to say he’s the only person who follows this practice, but I think that’s where I first noticed it. Adverts aren’t very common round here, so I’ve never thought it an issue, but as there are one or two adverts in this post, now is the time.
I noticed that the speaker list for next year’s Hotsos Symposium has been published and I’m delighted to see Alex on there. In all the friendly banter about beer and the like, it’s easy to lose sight of just how highly I think of Alex, both technically and otherwise. He’s a seriously smart chap, although he won’t welcome me pointing that out! That’s why I was pleased to see this, too 😉 (Well, actually, I just want to see him wearing that red fleece next time he goes back to Russia!)
I don’t plan on going to Dallas this time (purely for financial reasons) but I was tempted by the chance to meet up with Alex so I had a look to see if I could justify it. I might still go in the end, but was a bit disappointed that Jonathan won’t be presenting this year, which would definitely have been among the highlights for me. Then again, Tom Kyte’s doing the training day …
Speaking of Tom, I see he’s coming back to London again (as well as Madrid and Berlin) for a seminar in the Master Class series that Oracle University have been running for a while now, including events from Jonathan Lewis, Mark Rittman and others and then I noticed an Oak Table friend, Carel-Jan Engel, will be doing one on Data Guard. That should be excellent because Carel-Jan knows the subject intimately, based on practical experience. Oracle have been asking various members of the community whether they’d be interested in giving seminars and I think it’s a great anti-dote to the necessary but rather tired fundamentals curriculum. Once you’ve had good quality training in the basics, where do you go next? (Believe me, I work at a lot of client sites where all of the staff have attended the base courses from Oracle and are looking for something a little different for this year’s training budget.) So I was extremely pleased when I was asked, not least because I have really missed teaching.
Yes, I’m doing one too.
I’ll no doubt blog about it a lot more later, including technical blogs, some of the thinking that went behind my choice of subject, the difficulties of writing a course and why I think such apparently simple features can fill two days when others are attempting complex subjects in a single day. That’s for another time, though …
Doug,
Are you only running this in Prague? Not that that’s a bad thing, better than London or Reading…
Cheers,
Pete
Peter,
Just Prague for now. I think the way it works is that the course marketing people post a list of possible courses to individual countries and they decide which they want to run.
I’m pleased it’s Prague on the one hand, because it’s a place I’ve never visited and have heard only good things about it.
To make another generalisation, it also makes me nervous because I’ve always found people from that part of the world to be very smart and very inquisitive so I expect it’ll be a challenging course. I wouldn’t really want it any other way though.
So, Prague for now, but I wouldn’t say no to other locations in future.
Hi Doug,
Good news, it sounds like an excellent seminar, particularly if you deliver in it the same way as some of your recent user group presentations. From my experience, putting the material together is a pretty big job – it’s like writing eight user group presentations in one go – but once you’re produced the material and delivered it a couple of times, it’s great fun and very rewarding. One thing that is better about delivering 2 day seminars is that timing isn’t such an issue – if you overrun on one session, you can always catch up later.
I’ll be out in Prague in January delivering my BI Seminar, if it’s anything like Bratislava it’ll be a great venue. Good luck with the preparation and the event itself.
cheers, Mark
Mark,
From my experience, putting the material together is a pretty big job …
That’s not an area I have a lot of experience of, but I was a Tech Editor for a couple of courses for Learning Tree, so know a bit about the challenges I can expect. I don’t think I’ll be blogging as much for the next few months!
One thing that is better about delivering 2 day seminars is that timing isn’t such an issue – if you overrun on one session, you can always catch up later.
I have a lot more experience of the course delivery. I think I’ve taught about 50 courses in all for Oracle UK and Learning Tree, so I’m looking forward to getting back to it 😉
Congratulations!
When are you going to go to Poland? It is not far away….
Paul
Congratulations!
Save that until the course is done 😉
When are you going to go to Poland?
As soon as I’m invited.
Back to teaching! Well done mate. Congratulations!
And thanks for your compliments.
Btw, I still see you can’t keep secrets. Right? 😉
I still see you can’t keep secrets.
Yes, but some secrets aren’t worth keeping 😉