The annual conference of AIOUG is over now and I have also come back to my home yesterday night. I didn’t get any time to post about the updates of each day individually so this is going to be a cumulative post.
The conference has always been very good and so far, the level of the conference has gone up only with every passing year. This year, the keynote was a little changed as instead of a 6 hour presentation or something like that, a full day event was there hosted by Tom Kyte, Graham Wood and Andrew Holdsworth. They presented Real World Performance seminar which is presented by them already all around the world. It was an awesome event and despite being that it went for the entire day, I don’t think anyone was feeling tired or something while sitting in it. All the three guys need no introduction as they are among the best of the best when it comes to performance tuning of Oracle database. Though Tom and Andrew had to leave the same day, Graham stayed as he was presenting two another presentations the next day as well. Before the full day seminar, there was a presentation from Rich Niemic which was also very good. The presentation style and on-stage sense of humour of Rich is just superb! He was also going to give a motivational presentation at the end of the first day which I had to miss as I wasn’t feeling well. Besides all the tech talks, there was a lot of social networking happening as well , which is also a great benefit of such conferences. I met a lot of folks whom I knew already and also met few new ones too! Finally, day 1 was over!
Day 2 started with the updates about the AIOUG’s current updates from the staff of the board followed by the presentation of Graham Wood. Actually, there was another presentation happening in the adjoining room but this was the one which I was attending. Following it, there were presentations from Vivek Sharma, Joze Senegacnik. Both the presentations were really really excellent! It was for the first time that I was attending a presentation from my friend Joze and I must say, besides being a really really knowledgeable guy, he is an excellent speaker as well! The way he started off his presentation, having a little humour added in the opening slides, it was just so good! After Facebook, it was the first time that me and Joze finally met in the real world and I can just say this that he is not just an excellently knowledgeable guy in Oracle database but a very nice person as well. We spent some time sitting together talking about a lot of things once the conference was over before I finally said bye to him.
As I mentioned, this year, I was also going to present. This was going to be my first presentation at any public conference. Though I am in a profession where I do the same kind of thing every week but still, it was a little different than that and to be honest, I was a little nervous too. But than I remembered the advice given to me by my dear friend Hans Forbrich, which was that take a deep breath and just go for it and I did the same. I believe, I was able to pull off the presentation okay! In the room next to me, it was Murali Vallath presenting so I didn’t expect too many attendees showing up in my presentation but to my surprise, the room was still almost full and since no one left in-between from the presentation, I guess they liked it as well. There were questions at the end and its a good sign that the topic was well received by the attendees. I shall upload the presentation soon here. I think, now since I have managed to break the ice, I shall try to keep the wheel rolling and shall present more often.
Overall, it was yet again two days filled with lots of learning and fun. I would like to say thanks and pass on my best wishes to the team of AIOUG for the next year’s conference. I am already looking forward for the next year’s conference as I am sure, it would be just as great as all the last ones!
. I must say, besides being so good in the oracle database, he is also a very friendly and nice person as well. It was an utmost pleasure to listen to him live for two days and I shall be looking forward to meet him any time soon. 
