UKOUG Partner of The Year Awards 2015

The 2015 UKOUG Partner of the Year Awards (PYA) event took place last Thursday, my first PYA and it proved to be a fun and exciting event. The full list of this year's Gold, Silver and Bronze winners can be viewed here so I won't name them all but suffice to say, all of them are deserved winners. 

The Partner of the Year Awards are unique as they are voted for by Oracle customers. Nominations are assessed by a panel of UKOUG volunteers to produce a shortlist across 19 categories that is presented to members for voting. In 2014 the number of customers voting doubled compared to the previous year. The number of votes cast this year has increased by a further 70% to over 4,600 which goes to show why these awards inspire so much respect and admiration in the partner community.

As I can't name all the winners here, I'll just show you a photo of the winners of one of the fun categories, the best dressed male group of the evening. This award went to Steltix who were all looking very dapper - congratulations to them for winning this fun award (and for their ,rather more serious, bronze award for Middleware Partner of the Year). 

More photos are now up on the UKOUG Facebook page.

Next weekend I'm off to Oracle Open World so will be blogging regularly with updates from the event. 

My first ever blog...

Well it's about time you may say, but with Oracle Open World (OOW) coming up in just 3 weeks it seemed like a good reason to start blogging so I plan to share my experience of the event via this blog with those of you who won't be able to make it to San Francisco this year.

It's been 5 months since I had the honour of being elected President of UKOUG and it's been a busy time. I've met lots of our members but not nearly enough, so with the Summer behind us and conference season back in full swing I'm hoping to meet many more UKOUG members in the coming months. There's certainly plenty of opportunities coming up with the UKOUG Partner of the Year awards, Oracle Open World (OOW) and the climax of the UKOUG year, our annual conferences in December.

The next big event in my UKOUG diary though is the Partner of the Year Awards next week. I've never been to this event before but it's going to be a great evening with, so I'm told, a surprise guest host to keep us all entertained (they haven't even told me who it is). The shortlist of Oracle partners up for awards this year shows the quality of the competition for these coveted awards. Take a look at the shortlisted partners here.

I'll report back after the Partner of the Year Awards with some 'behind the scenes' news and photos from the evening. It's a black tie event so the talk of the UKOUG office is what everyone will be wearing. As someone who's most often to be found in wellies and muddy jeans on my smallholding this is especially challenging for me but I will do my best to dress up for the event, I am presenting the awards after all.

So, back to Oracle Open World, the schedule was released last week so I've started booking in the sessions that look most interesting. The problem is, there's so much choice that I can't go to everything I'd like to. As well as attending sessions and meeting UKOUG members, I'm also hoping to meet up with some key Oracle influencers. I'd be very interested to hear from our members what questions you'd like me to ask Oracle on your behalf, so please get in touch and let me know.

I'll also be following Debra Lilley's blog during Open World as she's a seasoned OOW attendee and seems to know everyone !

I'd love to hear what other UKOUG news you'd be interested in hearing via this blog as well as any views you have on your membership; what works well and what we could do better. If you see me at one of the events over the next few weeks please come over and say hello.