As I mentioned before leaving that I shall be attending AIOUG’s 2nd user group conference Sangam. I got back today morning from the 2 day schedule. It was a fantastic event and definitely, presence of Jonathan Lewis was the key attraction of it. I am too small to say anything about Jonathan Lewis so would just say that it was my pleasure and honor to attend his two, half day sessions about SQL optimization and see in person that how great and knowledgeable he is! I can’t say enough about him except this that I was completely mesmerized by him, by his knowledge and his willingness to share it all with people like us! I always wanted to attend his session and it was just a dream come true that I got a chance at this user conference. It was Jonathan’s first ever visit to India and I am just so glad that I didn’t miss this golden opportunity. This was my first ever chance to see him presenting( have attended his webinars before) and all I can say is that he is just awesome! Here is a snapshot of him when he was delivering his session,
In addition to Jonathan Lewis, this presentation became so special for me since I got a chance to meet my friend and an Oracle ACE Director , Francisco Munoz Alvarez in person. Though we interact almost every day on various web platforms but this was going to be the first ever chance when I was going to meet him in person and I am just so glad that it happened in this conference where he came to gave two presentations. It was for the first time that I saw him presenting and he was just so good! We also did spend some time after the conference was over munching snacks and discussing tons of things 🙂 . It was just so good to meet him and I hope we do meet again very soon! Here is a pic of him presenting at the same conference,
In addition to Jonathan and Francisco, the conference also had the presentations from Mark Rittman, Iggy Fernandez, Murali Vallath and Vivek Sharma. It was a high doze of hard core technical content for 2 days 🙂 . Overall, it was a very good event and I am glad that I did attend it with my friends Amardeep Sidhu, Neeraj Bhatia and Ankit Goel. We had a great time there and I hope, it would be the same in next year as well.
Great to see AIOUG hosting conferences with such success! Hope to attend / present at a future event – come to think of it, I have never presented in India!