As I write this, I’m on a plane returning from an awesome ODTUG Kscope18 planning meeting in Orlando. The conference committee makes this pilgrimage once a year and we meet onsite at the Kscope location. We take advantage of this face time to walk the conference and hotel properties, sample and provide feedback on the venue food, shoot embarrassing videos, take formal committee photos, meet on important conference topics, pay a visit to the prospective (or finalized) special event location(s), scout after-party locations, and bond with each other. It’s a grueling day and a half schedule, but full of camaraderie, strategizing, and brainstorming great ideas.
Attendees and vendors of ODTUG’s annual conference, as well as the ODTUG community, put their trust in each year’s conference committee to execute a successful event. Therefore, we take this meeting and our planning very seriously. To increase transparency and communication this year, I have committed to a regular blog post series to keep everyone up to date on ODTUG Kscope18 conference happenings.
In this post, I’d like to relay three exciting updates about ODTUG Kscope18 content. With abstracts due the first week of 2018, we have just a short runway before content madness begins. Here are some exciting improvements on this front.
Content is Queen
For the first time ever in ODTUG’s history, we have a female ODTUG president serving at the same time as a female Kscope conference chair. Natalie and I are proud to lead ODTUG and Kscope this year and represent women in technology. Content is now officially “queen”!
The ODTUG Kscope18 planning year comes at a time when there are big shifts happening at Oracle and advanced, new technologies rolling out. We know that we have attendees who like to stay on the leading edge so we will be including content to ensure that you are up to speed on the latest. But we also know that the fundamentals of our key community technologies are what draw the crowd at Kscope each year. The conference team will be striking an important balance to ensure that everyone is getting the education they need to keep their skills sharp and be successful in their careers. Please take a look at the refreshed abstract submission track list to see what ODTUG Kscope18 has in store for you.
For those hopefuls looking to present, we’ll also be publishing a list of recommended topic ideas next month so you have better guidance on what the content selection teams are looking for. If you have already submitted an abstract, you have until the abstract due date (Friday, January 5, 2018) to make revisions.
Expanding Our Content Volunteer Reach
In addition, I have some news that I know will make some of you super happy: This year we are expanding our content volunteer reach to include your influence and guidance. More of you would love to be part of the content selection process and we would love to have you. You spoke, we listened.
Would you like to be part of the content selection process? If so, volunteer to be part of our public voting track teams! A formal call for volunteers will open the week of November 27, 2018, and you’ll have two weeks to sign up and select your primary and secondary track preferences. Folks who are part of these teams will have one to two weeks to mark their votes using a blind process (meaning based on abstract quality only, no company or presenter info. will be given) on all abstracts within their assigned track. These blind votes will be averaged and then used in the final abstract selection process that the core track teams will complete. Space is limited on each track team and only one person per company per track will be allowed, so please strategize with your company if you’d like to participate. We are looking for volunteers who have attended a past ODTUG Kscope conference. Stay tuned to social media and ODTUG email blasts to find out more; we’ll include a FAQ section on the sign-up page.
ODTUG Runs on Oracle Cloud
Finally, a few months ago ODTUG worked with Oracle to help us align our technologies with our vision. We are the proud new licensees of Oracle Planning & Budgeting Cloud (PBCS) and Oracle Analytics Cloud (OAC). This has been in the works for some time and we are thrilled to be able to utilize these cloud technologies to help us better analyze our conference metrics and budgets.
In addition, our abstract voting process has been enhanced (big time) with applications built on Oracle APEX! We look forward to showing off the new voting applications to our content selection teams.
One of the great ways we are utilizing Essbase Cloud (part of the OAC offering) today is to analyze how abstracts are initially rated compared to how the final session is rated. Tim German, Essbase extraordinaire, is the genius behind this effort and he’s helping both of our content leads, Tiffany and Jorge, analyze this data to design better strategies for selecting strong content for ODTUG Kscope18. Tim will be presenting more details on his analytics journey at ODTUG Kscope18.
Until Next Time
Our team is Kscope strong right now and could not be more enthusiastic about the upcoming year. Please keep watching this space for future ODTUG Kscope18 updates!
Previous ODTUG Kscope18 posts:
Sincerely,
Opal Alapat, ODTUG Kscope18 conference chair
