SAOUG like most user groups had seen a reduction in members even before covid, and they had struggled to rebuild. I believe that last year their event was poorly attended and so this year they started with a new board and support from Oracle. I know how hard that can be and I want to start by saying congratulations on being brave and how it paid off, the event was excellent, and the content engaging.

Being asked to be a keynote speaker was such a privilege and they asked me to do my road mapping session. When I was talking to people the night before I found out that although South Africa now has an Oracle datacentre, SaaS is not yet available there, so that may present some challenges, but it hasn’t stopped many organisations implementing SaaS and did warrant discussion. I adapted my normal presentation to talk about on premise technology as well as applications and many people asked me questions relating to what they did during the rest of the conference.

I also used that session as an opportunity to explain the ACE program and tell SAOUG that they only have one ACE, Ahmed Jassat and that is not representative of the expertise they have in South Africa, and I did have a few people ask questions afterwards, so hopefully we can recruit a few more.

The Oracle country team also talked about what is happening locally and gave a roundup of OCW using local examples.

I attended other Oracle sessions and must say I was impressed at how they made them relevant to the audience. 

The theme of the event was Driving Innovation and Modernisation in the Business Landscape. There were only 3 breakouts which ensured a great audience for each session. 

My session for the first day was Redwood, What is it, what’s behind it and how we use it in Fusion SaaS. We explored the brand, the concept, the development platform and what that means for SaaS, and then we looked at how Visual Builder is behind that user experience and how it can be leveraged. And yes I mentioned how it is a pre-requisite for the embedded gen Ai.

Ai was obviously an important theme and on the 2nd day, they had a keynote speaker, Arthur Goldstuck a local author who talked about Ai from his book ‘The Hitchhikers guide to Ai’. It was a great presentation and I took many notes, and was so humbled when after my plenary panel session which followed, we were each given a copy of his book.

I was the facilitator of the panel session, which was 3 customers, Ntellane Motsamai from Lesotho Revenue Services, Miguel Graca from safarmex, a medical company, Mahomed Asif Sultan from Tourvest Travel Services, a leading travel agency and Michele De Kreek a change management expert. The format of Q&A is so much more insightful than a carefully choreographed presentation. I only had one call with them beforehand and we kept it simple, they shared their stories in chunks and kept bringing it back to just how important change is in the success and Michele would add advice and though leadership here. As a facilitator your worry is if it doesn’t flow the panel session could just be a collection of random soundbites, but I had nothing to worry about here, they were excellent.

Conferences are not just about the sessions, the real value is the conversations in the corridor and the connections you make. What this panel shared will have resonated with many other delegates.

My last session was my ‘All You Need to Know About Oracle’, It’s light-hearted and I have been doing this tongue in cheek session for newbies in the Oracle world in my organizations for years, and had never though of doing it publicly until someone at KSCOPE 2023 told me that was what they needed. Now it is fast becoming the 2^nd most asked for (after my road mapping ).

I had a very busy room of delegates and I had questions, laughs and ‘ah ha’ moment in the audience. I asked questions and we discussed different areas of Oracle. Each time I do this session I get such a buzz. Sadly I had to leave straight after for my flight but as I left a got a new request:

Two early career professionals, in this case graduates asked if they could have a conversation based on the session to explore the different areas of Oracle to help them decide were to specialize. I had never considered that as a use case before and what a privilege to be a tiny part of someone’s future. So I hope to do a virtual call with them soon.

Well done SAOUG for being bold, kickstarting your user group and believing in their value and to Oracle and the other sponsors. You exceeded everyone’s expectations and pulled off an amazing event. I hope to be back.