ODTUG KScope 2011: looking back

Last week the yearly ODTUG KScope conference took place in Long Beach, California. I always need to time to let this wonderful event really sink in. The number of sessions and the wealth of information that you get is really quite extraordinary.
In this blogpost I will highlight some of the sessions that I attended.

Sunday

Sunday is always a symposium day, this year I attended the APEX track. The Oracle Application Express Development team filled us in on what to expect from the next APEX release, 4.1. The most exciting, or at least to me, is the improved exception handling.

Monday

The “real” conference starts with the Opening General Session. This session wasn’t in the conference center, but in the Long Beach Performing Arts Center and what an opening it was…. My colleague Marco filmed parts of it, simply hilarious.
After the General Session, I attended Cary Millsap’s “My case for Agile Methods”. It is always very enjoyable to listen to Cary. One of the other sessions that I look forward to seeing what Patrick Wolf’s “Improved Error Handling in Oracle Application Express 4.1”. Can’t wait for the 4.1 version to be released and use it for real.
In the evening there was the Database Guru Panel, with Cary Millsap, Steven Feuerstein and Tom Kyte. These guys are truly awesome, the knowledge they share is just fabulous. Some very interesting discussions filled the evening.

Tuesday

The first session in the morning was my own, “Who’s afraid of Analytic Functions?”. Around 60 attended my session and I was very pleased with that.
The Oracle ACE Program organized a very special lunch, a so called “Lunch and Learn” session. In different rooms, different Oracle ACE’s and Oracle ACE Directors had panels. Together with Eddie Awad and Steven Feuerstein, I was in the Database Development panel. Sometimes it can be quite a challenge to eat lunch and answer questions at the same time.

Wednesday

Carsten Czarski did a great presentation “It’s all about Location: APEX, Spatial, and Maps”. Nice demo’s and clear explanation.
The other session that I really enjoyed was Eddie Awad’s “Five Features you ought to know about the Oracle Scheduler”, great examples, great explanation. Great job, Eddie!
Doug Gault’s “Creating a Spark Line plugin from Scratch”, where he shows how to create a plugin for APEX was a fantastic way to end the day. End the day? Well, not completely…
The Wednesday evening is always reserved for the Grand Event – All aboard the Queen Mary, a magnificent party with fireworks to top it off.

Thursday

The closing session I did attend. What the real shocker was, was that I got the “Best Speaker Award – Database Development Track”,.. still can’t believe it.