One after another, the emails started arriving from Germany. After a few minutes, my inbox was full of both speaking declines and acceptances. Ultimately, I was staring at four DOAG speaking acceptances plus a full-day training class.
Submitting seven conference abstracts and four training abstracts is not all that unusual for me. I've learned that one never knows what a conference is looking for. But still, I never expected to receive so many acceptances. It's going to be a busy November!
I last presented at DOAG in 2017. In my mind, DOAG is the premier Oracle technical conference on Earth today. In many ways, it has always been and still is a very unique conference.
The multi-level venue is amazing, the conference food is unlike anything I've ever had at an Oracle conference, the breadth of talks is incredibly wide, the depth of the talks ranges from introductory to profound, the conference vibe is super exciting, and people attend from all over the world. It's that good!
If you have never been to DOAG, I highly recommend attending. I can't imagine you would be disappointed. I am truly glad I get the opportunity to attend again after six years!
My training submission strategy was similar to the regular conference. I submitted four training day abstracts: two focused on AI and two on Oracle performance analysis. The DOAG conference committee chose "Accelerated AWR Report Analysis: Quickly Discover Oracle Performance Solutions."
I have my work cut out for me in this workshop. It's more than an "AWR Report Analysis" class. It's immersive, full of secrets, hands-on, and includes a systems-level "rapid fire" analysis section. What I love about my AWR training is that the methods I teach will work with any AWR or Statspack report for any Oracle version, architecture, configuration, both on-premise and in the cloud. So, it's very versatile.
Most conference workshops are limited to around 4 hours, but DOAG allows for a full day of training. It's a much better value for attendees and allows me to go much deeper with students.
What makes my AWR training different is that I focus on the process of determining where pockets of optimization potentially reside. Then, we work on deriving multiple solutions focused very specifically on those high-potential areas. I love the result because it empowers me to very specifically answer questions like, "Craig, why are you spending so much time on X?"
But before the Training Day, there is the main DOAG conference, where I have both Oracle performance and AI/ML presentations.
Out of the seven abstracts I submitted, two on Oracle performance and two on AI/ML presentations were accepted. Even thinking about the "Top 10 Ways To Totally Mess Up An AWR Analysis" presentation makes me laugh. And the "How To Prove The Problem Is Not The Database Using ASH Data" presentation turns proving something by the absence of data upside down, resulting in a surprising "I can prove it... with data!" situation.
My first AI presentation, "Romance Novels to Ancient Texts: How to Create a Contextually-Aware Q&A Web App," starts with six lines of Python code that essentially represent ChatGPT. By the end of the presentation, those six lines of code will be transformed into a web-based app where we will explore text files, ancient texts, news stories, YouTube videos, patents, PDFs, or your own personal documents. The AI responds to the content your give it, which can be something that ChatGPT knows nothing about! It will be a wonderful introduction to both the underlying technology and applying the tech in a useful and personal way.
Next, I'll present on how AI can be used to improve Oracle performance monitoring. The title says it all, "Monitoring Revolution: Predicting Performance Issues with Neural Networks." This presentation is unique because the sole data source is the Oracle AWR Sysmetric summary view. Plus, I decided to use a classic neural network model. I also created this presentation so we can quickly and visually step through the predictions. And it is easy to swap out my Sysmetric CSV data with yours!
As I gear up for my November DOAG journey, the anticipation of sharing knowledge, discussing amazing possibilities, and connecting with fellow Oracle professionals at DOAG gets my heart racing. So, here's to an electrifying November, where we will embrace the future, challenge the boundaries of what's possible, and forge connections that will last a lifetime. See you at DOAG!