ODTUG Kaleidoscope Early Bird Registration ends March 24th…Register now to reduce your costs!
My next blog subject is an ODTUG favorite, Duncan Mills. Duncan has his own blog, and he is the director of product management for Oracle’s Application Development Tools including Oracle JDeveloper, Forms, and the ADF Framework.
Duncan is currently responsible for product direction, evangelism, and courseware development around the development tools products. He has been working with Oracle in a variety of application development and DBA roles since 1988. For the past fourteen years he has been working at Oracle in both support and product development, spending the last eight years in product management. Duncan is the co-author of the Oracle Press book “Oracle JDeveloper 11g Handbook: A Guide to Fusion Web Development”.
MR: Which presentation of yours is a “can’t miss” session that Kaleidoscope attendees should plan on attending, and why?
DM: “I’ll be talking about a new topic this year – mobile development (“Rapid Development for Mobile Devices with Oracle JDeveloper and Oracle ADF”). This is such a cool area, I’ve always seen development for phones and other mobile devices as being a black art that was totally separate from the world of enterprise development that we usually operate in. Now I think we’ve broken down that barrier and this represents an exciting opportunity for everyone developing on the Oracle Fusion Middleware stack.”
MR: Who else should Kaleidoscope attendees plan on seeing a session from, and why?
DM: “Well at Kaleidoscope you couldn’t throw a laptop without hitting an ACE, ACE director or Oracle product manager. These girls and guys are the cream of the crop in the Oracle community. I don’t think you can possibly go wrong with any of them. Personally though I always like to take the opportunity to go outside of my comfort zone and go to sessions on stuff that I just don’t use that much in my day to day work – just to keep my skills up. So I’ll be heading to some database performance sessions to remind myself how much more there is to learn.”
MR: What differentiates Kaleidoscope as a conference from other conferences out there?
DM: “ODTUG Kaleidoscope – well it’s like condensed soup, you could water it down and still get a meal out of it. There’s just so much great content on the stuff that matters to me. Plus of course it’s just a great group of people to get to know , friendly , knowledgeable and most importantly if you’re a first timer – approachable!”
MR: If you’ve been to Washington before, can you recommend one thing that a first time visitor should take advantage of while visiting during Kaleidoscope?
DM: “I seem to remember the food at this hotel was great last time – so take advantage of the lunches! But seriously, this year, I’m bringing the whole family and we’re going to hit the Smithsonian (click here for a video tour with Ben Stiller) in a big way and little Zoë my youngest, intends to have a conversation with the statue of Abraham Lincoln, which she assures me regularly comes to life. I don’t know how I’m going to pull that one off!”
MR: Can you tell us what your best memory is from a Kaleidoscope conference that you’ve attended previously?
DM: “Every Kaleidoscope is fun so it’s pretty hard to pick out just one moment. If I had to though it would actually be the community service days. Sometimes you can feel as though staring at a screen all day does not really help anyone in this world, so it’s just great to do something physically to make a real difference, however small.”
MR: If you are comfortable in doing so, please give us a quote that we can use in the marketing campaign for Kaleidoscope.
DM: “There is no doubt in my mind that if you’re a developer working with Oracle technologies, of any sort, you need to be at Kaleidoscope!”
Thanks for your time Duncan!
We have a video contest open until the end of March with a prize of a complimentary Kaleidoscope registration (or a suite upgrade if you’ve already registered). For more details, see the contest page on the Kaleidoscope website.
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