Time really flies. As every year in November. Right after DOAG, there’s very little time for me to recharge batteries. And once I take a deep breath, I will sit in another airplane and fly to … England. No worries, I won’t do any political jokes. This is not necessary these days. And this is a techie blog. But I’m very happy that I don’t have to do any special preparation to visit UKOUG TechFest 2019 in Brighton – Dec 1-4, 2019.

Photo by Nitin Tulswani on Unsplash
Brighton?
To be honest, I know not much about Brighton. Except that Brighton is by the sea. But actually I like the idea of the UKOUG masterminds a lot of moving the December conference to the south of the country. And before you board your train or plane or charge your eCar, Martin Widlake’s “Survival Guide” is a MUST READ as usual. I heard a lot of good things about Brighton. Really excited to be there from Sunday evening on. Even the weather seems to be surprisingly sunny early next week.
In addition to everything “The President” mentioned already, I found out that Brighton has a vivid vinyl scene as well with some very fine used-records stores π But I learned also that some stores (and from my last years experience in Liverpool, even taxis!) don’t accept credit cards. That’s something I never understood as London is or was THE banking hotspot in Europe. There seems to be so little trust … π … (or just too high fees).
UKOUG TechFest 2019
You’ll find the most important information regarding the conference of course on the UKOUG’s webpage:
- Dec 1-4, 2019 in Brighton, England
https://ukoug.org/general/custom.asp?page=techfest19 - Agenda and more
And I’m amazed and excited since I browsed through the agenda. 10 parallel streams. That’s a lot. Really!
With an awesome lineup with so many good and technical talks you won’t be bored at all. But of course the conference is also a place to meet and network, to talk about techie and non-techie things. Follow Martin’s advice and see at least one talk of an area you have no idea about. I did this in Poland and I was so positively flashed by Gianni Ceresa‘s talk about PGQL (Property Graph Query Language). Learn something new everyday – especially at tech conferences with real tech content.
Our talks at UKOUG 2019
As of now, we have 3 talks at UKOUG TechFest this year.
Monday, Dec 2 – 9:00h — Regent
AutoUpgrade to Oracle 19cΒ – Tips and Tricks and Real World Experience
Monday, Dec 2 – 13:45h — Empress
Roy Swonger: What’s new in Data Pump for 19c
Tuesday, Dec 3 – 16:45h — Regent
Welcome to the Jungle: Database Patching Insights
So I hope to see you all there on Sunday and the following days. And keep your fingers crossed that Lufthansa’s cabin personnel does not go on strike (again). Not on this Sunday, and not on Wednesday next week PLEASE!
–Mike