ODTUG Kscope15 Review: It was the best of times, it was the best of times!

Last week AuraPlayer headed south to attend ODTUG’s annual KScope conference in Hollywood, Florida. It was very exciting to play many pivotal roles; serving as an ODTUG Board member, an Exhibitor, a 2 time speaker and an Oracle ACE Director. The event was definitely a highlight – I truly learned a lot and, of course, had a lot of fun.

With that being said, so much happened that it would be nearly impossible to provide an in-depth account of the entire conference. Instead, I’m going to focus on what I felt were KScope’s top events, including the top tech moment, the top fun moment, my top personal moment, and the top AuraPlayer moment of the conference. That way, you guys can hear about all of the highlights and I won’t be writing all week. 🙂

Let’s get to it!

Top Tech Moment

Before

Bright and early on Tuesday morning (despite the urge to take advantage of a golden opportunity to sleep in being without my 3 kids for the week) I attended the “Build Something! IoT = Internet + Oracle + Things” hands-on training session put on by C2 Consulting’s Anton Nielson, at 8:30 am.  Now that’s commitment to technology!

It proved to be well worth the wakeup, as it went on to win the conference’s award for Best Session. Anton was certainly very deserving of the honor; his premise was very cool. To put it simply, they had us hook up resistors, a thermostat and LEDs on a wifi-enabled circuit board – then interact with it through a simple Oracle Application Express (APEX) application we built. The high and low temperature set points were controlled via the application, meaning, A hot temperature would trigger a red light, medium temperatures elicited a yellow light, and cool temperatures prompted a green light. In the APEX app, the

After

users could change the values for hot, medium and cold. It was especially interesting because we had to build the electronic circuit, which involved connecting the LEDs and the chip. It was fun to put together the electronic portion and actually build the device as well as connect it to the Apex and ORDS back end.

What was especially nice about the “concept to completion” was that Anton made it a family affair. His son was walking around helping people, while his daughter did the welding. Several people from the Apex PM team as well as his own consulting team were also on hand. I was really impressed by the company and the amount of effort they put into this hands on session. We’re actually going to meet up with them in Boston to do some cool Oracle Forms IoT using AuraPlayer so stay tuned ….. should be interesting.

Top AuraPlayer Moment

The best part of the conference for AuraPlayer as a company was the re-occurring theme of meeting with customers that we had spoken to in the past who were finally ready to begin their mobile journey. Many of them had been speaking to us for the past 2-3 Kscopes about the possibility of mobilizing and modernizing their forms systems, but just didn’t have the budget or weren’t prepared to take that initial step. It was great to see that this year, many were finally ready and energized to move forward and modernize their user interfaces and mobilize their back office EBS applications. It seems the world of retail have finally grown tired of managing inventory using post-it notes. It was especially exciting for us to have our new Implementation manager, Andrew Keating, on board to take the lead on getting these customers on the right track for their modernization and mobilization projects. If you want to get basics on how you can use Oracle Mobile Framework to Modernize Oracle Forms you can check out the slides from my session “Using Oracle Mobile Application Framework (MAF) to Enhance Your Legacy Applications” here. I’ll never stop being surprised that I need to convince people that systems that are over a decade old need to be refreshed / modernized but if you need convincing you can checkout the slides!

 Top Personal Moment

The Oracle Forms Community Team

My personal highlight of the conference was being awarded the Best Speaker for the ADF  Track. This was the first year that Kscope awarded best speaker by content type; typically, the best speakers come from EPM or APEX track, since most of the conference participants are in those sessions. However, since they divided it by track this year, I had a shot and to sneak in a win for Best Speaker for my presentation, “What’s in a Word: Mobile/Cloud Terminology For Dummies.” I’m happy to see that that session was liked by all the participants; especially since I showed up a few minutes late after being held up moderating my Lunch and Learn session with the ADF community. A big thank you to the community for voting for me for Best Speaker – even-though time was against me. 😉 You can download the slides for my session “What’s in a Word: Mobile/Cloud Terminology For Dummies” here.

Most Fun

The conference’s most fun moment was easily the Wednesday night WHITE party – wow, does ODTUG know how to throw an event! YCC and the conference committee – especially my girl Natalie – thought of EVERYTHING! I mean champagne was being poured from the ceiling literally!  I don’t think I had fun like that since my freshman year in college! It was nice to mix some pleasure in with the business; after such a grueling week full of so many community and technical events. There was great music, games, fire throwers, and more – all of the ingredients to make for an incredible time! And what could be more fun than watching fellow board members Cameron, Monty and Dave ROCK IT OUT!

Our Conference Techy MVP

Before I wrap this post up, I have to mention how great it was to have Michael Ferrante, the Oracle Forms Project Manager, on location with us and to be able to listen to his conversations with customers about their challenges and fears going forward. Michael as always our fearless leader (checkout the alligator wrestle <-) had his work cut out for him with disgruntled Forms users coming at him, most of which ended up leaving looking relieved and with a smile. It was particularly great hearing how he has been able to take Forms into the next generation with Forms 12c, and plans for versions beyond that. He certainly calmed many fears about the future of Forms,and it is great to see this type of leadership looking ahead with Oracle Forms. A big Thank you to Michael for his support of the Forms community – we really appreciate all that you’re doing!

Our Conference MVP

My MVP overall had to be the amazing YCC staff (My Ladies, you know who you are !) and conference committee who thought of EVERYTHING to make my days in Hollywood the best they could be. From airport pickups to tuxedo wearing strawberries I was treated like royalty. Although being on the board of ODTUG is a labor … of love ….you guys make it so much fun. Especially the HUGE boxes of kosher food for lunches 😉

Between building my own electric circuit and reuniting with familiar faces, another great Kscope has come to an end, and I’m looking forward to next year. Although I’m told the hotel is already sold out! So I may be out in the cold unless you guy vote me back onto the board (Yes subtle hint)

The ADF / Mobile Community

Regrading next year, we got some incredible feedback about the ADF track and what types of things developers are looking for. Currently, Oracle and the content committee was under the impression that people were interested in learning about all the future Cloud/mobile development stuff and therefore have been focusing their efforts and sessions on that. However, in our ADF ACE director panel, we heard from you – the real users – that you actually want more technical drill-down into ADF with use cases, input from experts about what they’re up to, and deep dive development based sessions, as opposed to Oracle vision or marketing based material. This was definitely some amazing feedback, and we will be taking it to heart as we plan next year’s conference and approach Oracle Open World.

If there’s anything else that you guys feel like you’d like to see in future conferences, or any suggestions regarding what we, the ODTUG Board or the KScope Conference committee, can do better, please let us know in the comments below. If not, we hope to see you all at Oracle Open World in a couple of months! And if you want to chat with anyone from the Oracle Forms community or the AuraPlayer team you can reach out at info@old.auraplayer.com.