The OTN Yathra 2013 is taking a group of Oracle ACE Directors across all of India. From New Delhi to Chennai and four cities in between, this AIOUG (All India Oracle User Group) enterprise brings high level Oracle technology content to Oracle developers and database administrators throughout India.
The tour is sponsored by OTN – the Oracle Technoloy Network – and put together by Murali Vallath. At the time of writing, the Yathra has hit Pune, which means that after today we are half way through with Bangalore, Hyderabad and Chennai still to come.
And so far it has been a great experience, for the presenters and I believe for the attendees as well. From the University sites in New Delhi and Mumbai to the ultra modern office of Oracle Financial Services in Pune, our hosts have been wonderful and the audiences appreciative. It is certainly a great pleasure to be in this traveling circus.
The OTN Yathra has at the core speakers on various areas of expertise:
- Edward Roske, USA on ESS Base, Hyperion and many other components in the Oracle Business Intelligence portfolio
- Murali Vallath, India/USA on Database and RAC
- Hans Forbrich, Canada on Oracle Linux, LDAP, Database and several other topics as well as semi professional Opera singer
- Raj Mattamal, USA on APEX
- Lucas Jellema, The Netherlands on Database Development and Fusion Middleware
In each city, these presenters are complemented by local or regional Oracle ACEs and ACEDs and other specialists, such as Harshad Oak, Aman Sharma, Vijay Sehgal and many others. Together they put on quite a show: a wide range of topics, a vast amount of experience, a passion for the technology and for sharing their knowledge on it and a strong desire to inspire people and help them improve themselves. Added to that some fine examples of improvisation, for example when Raj started doing a fairly advanced presentation of APEX and got asked by the audience to instead to an APEX 101 introduction talk; he changed course in mid-flight and accommodated the audience.
It is interesting that this band of warriors, that for the largest part had not met (at any length) before, turns out to be pretty much on the same wavelength. Crossing several cultures, national boundaries, ages and Oracle specialties at the same time we are much in tune. Between the five of us, as well as with many of the members of our audiences, we have discussions that range from Oracle to more Oracle as well as history, politics, family, culture, books and more. Most of these subjects are shared between all of us – our common involvement with Oracle technology apparently a stronger unifying factor than our differences are at dividing us. And fortunately that even applies to humor as well.
Among the people attending the three conferences we have done so far are very experienced Oracle professionals (15+ years under their belt) as well as students still working on their studies and young professionals with just a few years of experience. So far it seems that the database is the most popular topic on which the audience has the most experience – both from the administration (and architecture) side as well as from a development perspective (SQL and PL/SQL). Topics such as EssBase and OBI EE as well as APEX appear to be quite unexplored by the delegates. With Java development and administration of middleware infrastructures there appears to be an intermediate experience and interest.
We are visiting some special locations. For example the venue in Mumbai was at the Technology Institute of the Women’s University with 3000 female students. It was a wonderful experience because of the hospitality and because of the surroundings. Being back in university felt nice and because it was so different from where I studied Applied Physics all these years ago, it was even nicer. We had a very nice lunch (coupon of 100 Rs to spend any way I saw fit) in the student canteen and I was introduced to Dosas.
Some pictures from this venue:
Our next stop will be Bangalore where on the 22nd of February we will present another two room conference with 14 technical sessions to choose from. If you do Oracle technology and you happen to be in the Bangalore area on Friday – please come and meet us. See: http://otnyatra.com/using-joomla/extensions/components/content-component/article-category-list/71-bangalore for the details on this event.
Go to http://otnyatra.com/ for an overview of the entire tour, including the agenda for the next two stops at Hyderabad and Chennai.
After the entire tour is done, all slides will be available from the AIOUG web site.
