Oracle Magazine Interview

Today was kind of an exciting day for me. I was interviewed via webcam and Skype for Oracle Magazine. They do a Linux issue every year and they have started doing a feature on the user community. I am the current president of the Linux Special Interest Group (SIG) for the Independent Oracle User Group and they asked if they could interview me about the SIG and our relationship with Oracle. I was contacted by Jeff Erickson at Oracle Magazine through Rich Schwerin, who I mentioned in an earlier blog post. Rich is the Senior Product Marketing Manager in the Linux and VM group at Oracle. We talked for about a half hour about what the SIG has done in the past, our future plans, and how Oracle is doing in the Linux and support areas. I won’t ruin it for you and you’ll have to check back to find the link to the video, but I really appreciate the opportunity to talk about the IOUG and the Linux SIG.

For part of the interview we discussed personal and professional opportunities that come from involvement, not just membership, but involvement, in the user group community. Personally, I have made some great friendships and have people that I talk to, either on the phone or electronically, regularly. Professionally I have made some networking relationships that have saved me several times. This is where involvement really comes in. I started with IOUG as a member attending the conferences. That was great, and I learned a lot, but it was always lacking a little something for me. Once I started actually getting involved and taking a leadership role in the SIGs, the experience changed. The interview also covered my experience with Linux and the relationship with Oracle. At my previous company, we implemented Oracle Clusterware on Red Hat Linux. Those networking relationships really came in handy there! Now, my coworkers and I are embarking on a Clusterware project using Oracle Enterprise Linux. I'm looking forward to getting back into it as well as having something to share with the Linux SIG.

So, I will post the link to the video in a couple months. Hopefully I didn’t look too geeky. In the meantime, make sure you are getting the most out of your career by getting involved. And don't forget that Collaborate 09 is coming up in May. There will be several sessions on Linux and over 350 sessions total just from the IOUG Forum. IOUG is always looking for good volunteers that are willing to step up and take a leadership role. The SIGs are a very good way to do that. Who knows… maybe next time you could be the one being interviewed for the magazine! Speaking of that, make sure you check out IOUG President Ian Abramson’s blog today. He is also talking about being interviewed by the media. He also has a good post about some of the inner workings of the IOUG Board from yesterday.