Collaborate 10 Less than Two Weeks! #c10

With Collaborate 10 less than two weeks away, I realized I have not written much lately.  This year's show promises to be better than ever and I am really excited for some of the new changes along with the usual networking and learning opportunities.

About a week ago, Oracle announced that the Enterprise Manager 11g Launch Event will be taking place on Thursday during Collaborate.  Working with the Enterprise Manager team and the fantastic IOUG staff, we have secured a room and will be carrying the Launch Event live as a Collaborate session.  The event is scheduled to be from 10:00 until noon on Thursday morning, April 22 Las Vegas time.  This works out perfectly for the final two sessions on Thursday before the closing general session.  The Launch Event should be listed in the IOUG and Joint schedulers soon so make sure to get it on your calendar for the week.

For the IOUG Regional Users Group leaders we will be having two meetings that should give you a new opportunity for networking.  Tuesday morning for breakfast (I know it's early, but at least it's not after the party) we will be having a joint meeting with the Quest International User Group RUGs.  This will be an opportunity for the RUG leaders from both organizations to meet and discuss what has worked and not worked for the groups.  Also, we are hoping this might promote some co-location of meetings.  The other opportunity is for the RUG leaders to meet with Oracle field marketing and get to know some of the points of contact in their area.  Dan Goldstein, Senior Director for Oracle Field Marketing, will have his team at Collaborate.  We have set up a lunch meeting for th RUG leaders to meet with the point of contact in the area.  If you area  RUG leader, make sure to check these out and make use of the networking opportunities.

The IOUG Special Interest Groups are also taking a large role again this year.  Many of the SIGs are having annual meetings and round table discussions.  Some of the SIG leaders also participated in creating the content for the Boot Camps, but more on those in a bit.  If you are interested in the user group experience and want to get involved, the SIGs are a great place to start.  Find a topic you are interested in, look up that SIG meeting and join in.  You have nothing to lose and so much to gain.  Enterprise Best Practices, Linux, RAC, BI, Content Management and more are all available.  New this year is the zLinux SIG.  This group used to be the z/OS SIG and have joined forces with the IOUG.  The are also having their own boot camp at Collaborate 10.

Several other new options should prove to make the conference experience even better this year.  If you can't make it for the entire week, check out the two day registration option.  This allows you to take advantage of two days of educational content and pay less than half the cost of the entire conference.  Another option this year is the introduction of Boot Camp style sessions.  Several topics were chosen and all the content for that topic was centralized into a one or two day schedule.  Need to learn about RAC?  Check out the sessions in the two day RAC Boot Camp.  Most sessions are in the same room, so you can just camp out there and learn all you need to know.

Business Intelligence has become one of the hottest areas of IT in a long time.  Get Analytical with BIWA Training Days is our conference within a conference for all things BI.  Anything you wanted to know, and some things you didn't want to know, are all in one location.

Add all of this to what Quest and OAUG are offering and this is the most complete conference around for Oracle technology by users.  Check it out and register here.... http://collaborate10.ioug.org

I hope to see you in Vegas!  If you are there, make sure to look me up and say hi!