2016 has been a whirlwind so far, and February kept up the pace. Here’s a quick rundown of what we’ve been doing.
As we did last year, OAUX made a trip to APAC again this year to meet partners, customers and Oracle people, show our Expo of goodies and talk simplicity-mobility-extensibility, Glance, Scan, Commit and our overall goal of increasing user participation.
This year, Noel (@noelportugal) and I made the trip to Australia and spent an awesome, warm week in beautiful Sydney. Noel showed the portable Smart Office demo, including the Smart Badge, that we debuted at OpenWorld in October, and I showed a couple visualizations and Glance on a handful of devices.
Don’t let the picture fool you. It was taken between the end of Jeremy’s (@jrwashley) talk, before the official start of the Expo, during lunch. Once people finished eating, the room filled up quickly with 80 or so partner attendees.
Want more? Read Ultan’s (@ultan) account of the partner extensibility day.
On the second day in the Sydney office, we got the chance to chat with local Oracle sales reps, consultants and architects, and I was lucky enough to meet Stuart Coggins (@ozcoggs) and Scott Newman (@lamdadsn) who read this blog.
It’s always invigorating to meet readers IRL. I’ve poured nine years into this blog, writing more than 2,000 posts, and sometimes the silence is deafening. I wonder who’s out there reading, so it’s always a treat.
Oh, and Stuart had a board with blicky lights, an IoT demo he’d shown a customer that day. So, I was immediately intrigued.
Turns out Stuart and Scott create demos similar to our own and share the same nerdy passions we do. To wit, check out the Anki car hack Stuart and some colleagues did for Pausefest 2016 in Melbourne earlier this month.
You’ll recall the Anki cars are one of latest favorite shiny toys to hack.
Overall, it was a great week. Special thanks to John P for hosting us and making the trip all the more fun.
While we were away, Thao (@thaobnguyen) and the HQ team hosted a group of analysts in the Cloud and Gadget Labs, including Vinnie Mirchandani (@dealarchitect), who posted a nice writeup, including the money quote:
A walkthrough of their UX lab was like that of Q’s workshop in Bond movies. An Amazon Echo, smart watches, several gestural devices point to further changes in interfaces. Our expectations are being shaped by rapidly evolving UX in our cars and homes.
Somewhere Noel feels warm and fuzzy because the Q-meets-Tony Stark aesthetic is exactly what he was hoping to capture in his initial designs for our Gadget Lab.
Fun fact, back in 2007 when Justin (@kestelyn) and I collaborated on the original blogger program for OpenWorld, Vinnie was active in the discussion. Small world.
Anyway, given all the excitement lately, I’m only now getting a chance to encourage you to read a post by Sarah Smart over on VoX about stuff, “Wearables, IoT push Oracle’s emerging tech development.”
So yeah, a lot going on, and conference season is just beginning. Stay tuned for more.
Thanks Jake for the mention highlighting our “nerdy passions” 🙂
We’ve had a lot of fun with the Raspberry Pi Sensors and Anki IoT Demos with our colleagues in the Apps & FMW team… using Oracle tech to do cool stuff is not always first priority.
Great to meet you, and keep writing… the blog is a constant source of inspiration for us!
@Stuart: Great to meet you, thanks for the kind words. I look forward to more on the Anki car hack and your future projects.
Thanks for the shoutout Jake.
But… where’s the #pink tie.
Looking forward to seeing those Anki cars in HQ later, end of next month.
@Ultan: No one got a picture of my pink tie? Shame, next time.
@Jake Curses. Never a Narrative Clip around when you need one.