Re: Canadian Conferences and other meetings

Kristen,

Thanks for your note about resolving the "purist DBA police" thing several days ago. "Ed" doesn't bother me. :)

It won't help much in terms of understanding the specific "big picture" with Oracle, but I do have an old friend (not from computer circles, from studying anthropology and field biology years ago) that is specializing in GIS at BIA. Let me know if you want contact info. He has been in BIA for about 20 years (Yakima-WA, Globe/Phoenix-AZ, Sacramento-CA), has a background in Range Management, etc., and may know of some clearing houses, or other specialized information sources dealing with the intersection of computer technology, tribal business affairs, natural resource management and so forth.

I'm not aware that Oracle puts much effort into producing useful material that *realistically* explains the "big picture". I would suspect that whatever they have is going to be full of euphemistic, buzz-word marketing-droid-speak that tends to be maddeningly meaningless. Also, there are so many Oracle products, and they change so rapidly, that by the time they put together something meaningful sounding that explains the entire product line, it would probably be obsolete. :)

My experience is that you can, at least over time, get some fairly good exposure to strategic product/technology development info at the better Oracle User Groups (they usually have speakers from Oracle explain new stuff). Of course most of them are located in large urban centers. If you can get contact info for some of them, you might be able to write to their leadership requesting presentation notes, papers, and so forth. Several years ago, I actually heard a senior technical pre-sales guy from Oracle talk to a User Group about what was "bs", and what wasn't. Apparently his method was to disarm confused and/or sceptical users by actually being honest, down-to- earth and funny.

Anyway, if your agency is part of a larger govt. purchasing contract /support consortium that manages business relations with Oracle, you might be able to get Oracle to send out technical sales consultants to do regional on-site demos. They have people that came to a number of University sites down here a year or two ago, and some of the "live" product demos and Q&A sessions were useful. If he is still there, Tuan Anh Nguyen (Oracle Govt., ph# 310.370.0960, El Segundo, California ttnguyen_at_us.oracle.com ) might be able to direct you to someone in Canada.

An then there are always consultants.

good luck!
ep

Date sent:      	Tue, 25 Jul 2000 11:09:56 -0800
To:             	Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L <ORACLE-L_at_fatcity.com>
Send reply to:  	ORACLE-L_at_fatcity.com
From:           	"Kristen Cameron" <cameronkgd_at_inac.gc.ca>
Subject:        	Canadian Conferences and other meetings
Organization:   	Fat City Network Services, San Diego, California

> I need a way to get the 'bigger picture' on Oracle. We will be
> moving to web apps, and likely e-commerce, Oracle Spatial and all
> sorts of other stuff over the next few years. Being alone in an
> isolated location, I'm finding it difficult to get a feel for how
> all this stuff fits together. I'm hoping the right conference
> will enlighten me! I'm reading the Oracle magazine, this list,
> and assorted web sites, but I'm missing too many pieces to get a
Received on Tue Jul 25 2000 - 15:56:01 CDT