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I've been to DOAG!

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This week I attended my first DOAG (German Oracle User Group) Conference. The conference was hosted in a part of the Nürnberg Conference Centre. The venue was excellent : All sessions where in the same area on three different levels - so everything was in a short walking distance. The conference rooms itself where very good as well: a stage, just slightly higher than the audience, perfect lighting, good sound and screen quality and a wireless mic. Everything a presenter - and an attendee as well - needs!
Something else that DOAG does better (not necessary healthier) than most other conferences: you can have food, snacks and drinks all day long. Not only during "coffee break" or lunch you can have slices of pizza, hot dogs or sweet cakes, but really all day long. And the quality of lunch and dinner was excellent as well: three courses and plenty stuff to choose from.
Then onto the content itself. There were 20 concurrent sessions, all started right at the hour (with a bell sign!), in al lot of different tracks, like: Database, Datawarehouse, BI, Development, Java, MySQL etc. Apart from some sidesteps now and then, I mainly focussed on the APEX Development area (no surprises here). I was very curious what the German speaking community does with APEX, as I wasn't familiar with most speakers. And I guess I am being spoilt by conferences like KScope, as a lot of the content couldn't adhere to those (high) standards. But the audience seemed to like it, so it probably complies with the overall expectations... (And I should more often go to sessions where I know nothing about!)
And what about my own presentation? I think it went pretty well, although I ended somewhat early. I rushed a bit though the first part, because a slot lasts "only" 45 minutes, so I had some time left in the end. But I think it came across quite well. Not that I got that many questions during my presentations (usually Germans don't interrupt the speaker) and just a few at the end - maybe due to the fact they thought they had to ask their question in English, which wasn't necessary of course. But in the next few days I got more questions during or between other sessions ;-).
Another minor thing, while I can understand German pretty well (about 95%), I really do prefer English for these kind of tech conferences... But still I might come back next year!!
So, next on the agenda, in a few weeks...UKOUG in Birmingham!
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Location: Nuremberg, Germany

Comments

Peter Raganitsch said…
The bell rining to start the sessions is a little uncommon (even to me), but it actually worked pretty well.
Was nice meeting you there and thanks for pointing out those two flaws in my presentation. Will work on that and show you at UKOUG ;-)
5:05 pm
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