Oracle APEX Days 2019 Australia

Oracle APEX Days 2019 Australia

 

Why is it important (to have and) to be at these events?

 

APAC APEX Tour 2019 - My takeaways

Let me first share few great photos from this years events.

  

For more photos please visit ausoug.org.au website. 

While Oracle APEX product team members Shakeeb and Christina just completed their tour in Korea and Japan it is time to write down my impressions from Aussie events. 

Let me start with "Why did it take us so long to get APEX only events back to Australia !!!!!!"

It has been 7 years since this last happened.

Back in 2012 I remember attending a great APEXposed session held in Auckland by David Peake and Martin D'Souza organized by ODTUG. That was my first ever Oracle APEX event and needless to say that not only my impressions were sky high. On the opposite side same event took part in Melbourne. We certainly had a full room, audience was engaged the whole time and after hour drinks were well received by all attendees. 

I came back home full of goodies shared by these two greats that I was already looking forward the next year. But .... next year after the next year there were none APEX only events in APAC region (excluding few regular AUSOUG/NZOUG conference presentations). This is one of the images I found online from that time posted by Martin. 

That is why it is important to keep these things going. 

How do we do this? that is simple - by attending in big numbers as numbers draw sponsors and they make things easy for the organizers. 

Equally important is to be aware about these events happening in your area you would be surprised how many things get unnoticed. You can easily do this by checking out apex.world site from time to time, joining local Oracle User Groups or by taking part in APEX meetups organized in your region. 

But above all we need some great people to come together and plant the seed and things slowly start to evolve. 

In 2017 at Connect conference Dimitri Gielis was a first AUSOUG APEX international speaker, later it was Karen Cannell who join us on the stage for two years in a row. We also had a webinar series since happening every year with global superstars from APEX community.

But nothing beats 2019 with three separate events heavy with APEX content: APEX workshop for beginners in June by David Peake, APEX Connect conference with Karen and David and APAC APEX Tour in November with Shakeeb, Christina and Connor joining us. Wow and impressive!!!!!!! 

It shows that it can be done. :)

Enough about the past let me focus solely on last week's event. 

It was nice to see local APEX masters like Scott and Trent support these events too by joining me on the bench for presentations in Melbourne. Mark Lancaster joined us in Brisbane. It also matters as it shows that we all can learn something by attending.  

On technical side Scott did a nice write up in terms of context covered and what we all learned so I will not go into it again. On bullet point #18 in SQL Workshop there should be Create app button to start a wizard ;P

 Only thing I will add to Scott's take is one simple slide from Connor's presentation

   showing why it is important to keep your APEX instances upgraded to the latest. 

We are all human and we learn from our mistakes. Same applies to Oracle APEX team. 

Even though picture is not 100% clear it shows that APEX 19.2 is the fastest of them all. Yes, you heard me correctly. With each release lessons were learned so performance wise you will benefit the most by being on the latest release of APEX. In case this got you thinking this is where you can download the latest version. Simple and powerful presentation by Connor can be found here (once released).

It has been 6 Oracle APEX releases since we had a last event in Australia it is becoming harder and harder to keep up with all the new features. 

By show ups seems like APEX community in Brisbane is thriving as we had highest # of attendees. Across board most audience is predominantly on APEX 19.1 already which was to a great surprise for Shakeeb and Christina with few odd 4.2/5.0 dinos out there. :)   

There were loads of chats on APEX next/new features but since they are all covered by Safe harbor statements they didn't end up in my notes. They ranged from common ones like printing in APEX, versioning control to native export to excel or to PDF etc... Definitely seems APEX team will continue to provide us with some cool features making your data be the star of your apps.   

If not for the obvious which is learning about new things in APEX and picking up tips and tricks from the best networking is equally important. You get to know what other people in the region are doing, how relevant your stuff is and above all it opens you to the whole new work opportunities. I am a true example of how conference event can change your life, ODTUG Kscope changed my professional life completely from a point where I almost gave up on what I loved doing to thriving in daily bases looking forward every new presentation I do or project I work on. There it is yet another reason why you should join us for the next events.   

Lastly I wanted to touch on Oracle Academy and the work that has been happening behind the screen (I did not know about). I managed to get in touch with Michelle responsible for making long term connections between Oracle and students at universities across APAC region.

I knew about curriculum and that students can now be taught programming based on Oracle APEX program. What interested me is how many universities are actually taking part in it. Also do we as APEX community have ability to engage directly with students on more regular basis? 

It seems like we can get involved and this is great to hear. 

Since this touched on what we all like doing - sharing the knowledge, teaching and mentoring people in general I was delighted to hear that Oracle is trying to organize free public students only events across campuses here in Australia. Will this be an easy ask? For sure it will not but it has to be done.

For years now we have been noticing lack of younger professionals and students particularly not only at the conference level but also on workforce level too. There is high demand for APEX developers for past two/three years that is still challenge for companies to fill positions up. Something needs to be done here. 

In my opinion this is not only something we should do on individual bases but also companies should get involved too if we are to see younger audience leading the way and talking about APEX at the events in the future. We all share responsibility on this one.

By attending event in Brisbane I learned that local APEX community already organized and held few of these events interdependently from Oracle which was great to hear. But why wouldn't we join forces.

So if you happen to be a student/employee/professor on one of Australia's universities or know someone simply working there that could help us connect with your institution please get in touch with me and let's make this thing work. This is something to watch the space on.

To wrap up, it feels like New Zealand/Australian Oracle User Groups and Oracle are on the right track in APAC region and hoping we all can keep this momentum going. Personally I want to thank all who took part in any shape or form in making this happen.   

What is awaiting us in 2020?

There are talks of two AUSOUG Connect events this year, taking part not only in Perth in Melbourne but also Brisbane and Sydney. One should be in the first quarter and one in last quarter. Of course all of this is still in draft. There will be AUSOUG webinar series taking place again with international speakers joining us. Fingers crossed we will add another APEX day to it and it should be greatly promising year ahead.   

Before we even come to 2020 why don't you join us for AUSOUG Xmas parties across AU for more info visit the website.

       

Happy APEXing,
Lino