Hotsos 2016 Recap

I wanted to go to Hotsos Symposium for quite some time, having heard so many great topics from there for years. And every time I was a bit lazy to think about what I can talk about. Apparently I thought that everything I know is well covered elsewhere, so why would I be accepted. Plus all these complexities of budget, getting a visa, travel arrangements, jet lag, and personal matters in between. Last year, when call for papers was still open, I realized that there’s a good chance I can make it to Hotsos in 2016: I had a budget, visa is a doable thing, and most importantly I knew I had a topic to talk about which most likely will not be in competition with other speakers.

Hotsos 2016

I’m going to Hotsos 2016 soon for the first time. I’ll speak about Middleware and the issues I see commonly everywhere. It took me quite some time to prepare for this trip: budget, visa, and, most importantly, presentation – required at least 120 hours of my time (which is a lot). In fact presentation is still work in progress and I hope to finish it just before March 8 when I’m presenting. I feel a bit nervous about my topic since the conference is all about Database Performance, the quality of presentations is always high and they are super technical, while I’m planning to have a light talk focused not on the Database mainly – just my rants on the things done wrong I usually see in the wild everywhere. It’s not something on the cutting edge, and some of my notes are so bloody old. Anyway I have 1h available and will try to spend it with pleasure saying anything I want (like “Hello Mom”). In the worst case I’ll never be accepted again there, which is bad but not the end of the world, right?
Anyhow first I need to survive tight connection at Frankfurt this Saturday, plus jet lag and then enjoy almost a week of fun.
See you in Dallas!

Tom Kyte in Moscow – 2

On December 11th Tom Kyte performed “AskTom in Moscow” for the second time (first time was almost three years ago in February 2010). I was there and enjoyed presentations, tweeted a lot about the content and in the end I’ve won a signed copy of the Expert Oracle Database Architecture (2nd edition, in Russian)!

Tom Kyte in Moscow

February, 24th. Renaissance Moscow Hotel. Over 300 of people in hall and Tom Kyte on stage – that is “AskTom in Moscow” for the first time.