Information for members of the UKOUG:
A little while ago, the UKOUG re-organised its management to split board of directors into a board and a council. The board is responsible solely for handling the company side of the UKOUG while the council focuses solely on the services that the user group supplies to members.
Elections for seats on the council will be starting next week (27th Feb) and I have put forward a nomination in my own name. This includes a description of my involvement with Oracle and the user group, and a description of what I could offer to the user group. The nomination also include a manifesto, which I have reproduced below.
If you are a member of the user group (and the nominated recipient of your company’s membership) then you will have the opportunity to vote for who should be on the new council. If you think my manifesto makes sense and result in a better user group please vote for me.
Note: if you believe your company is a member of the UKOUG but you have no idea who your nominated contact it, please get in touch with the UKOUG, it’s possible that the nominated contact is someone in the account department, or even someone who has left the company, leaving you with a membership that you can’t take full advantage of.
Manifesto
The role of the user group is two-fold. To magnify the voice of the users so that it can be heard by Oracle Corporation, and to help the users to share their experiences.
I believe the first task is addressed very well by the user group, but the second task is a constantly moving target that we need to keep under review so that the users can get the greatest possible benefit from being members of the group.
In recent years the volume of information about Oracle available on the internet has grown exponentially. This growth has made it appear to employers as if the SIG meetings have less importance, and this perception will eventually weaken the user group. As a frequent participant in the online forums, newsgroups, blogosphere, et. al. my perception is that the internet doesn’t really do much to give people the depth of understanding that they can achieve through face to face human interaction.
Because of this, I would like to work with the user group to see how we can enhance the structure of SIGs to increase the amount of discussion that takes place when users come together. The internet is an easy source of reading material and recorded presentation material, and it’s easy to get answers to specific questions on forums (although I often see that answers are slow in arriving, irrelevant, misleading or downright wrong). What the internet does not offer is a chance for people to discuss (or argue) different points of view in anything like real-time – and this is an area where the SIG can be of greatest benefit.
If you think of the “round-table” sessions that the user group has arranged at the annual conference for the last few years, you will see the general direction that I would like to take SIGs if I am elected to the council.
About me: I have been involved in the IT industry for more than 27 years and have been using the Oracle RDBMS for more than 23 years. I’ve written three books about Oracle, and have contributed to three others. I’ve written 650 blog articles in the last 5 years, and lectured about Oracle in more than 50 different countries in the last 7 years. I’ve been a director of the UKOUG for about 10 years out of the last 15, and was a SIG chairman before becoming a director.
