oak table world - knowledge sharing - why do it and what's in it for me?

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Knowledge SharingWhy Do It?

What's In It For Me?


Execution Plan for the Next Hour

• I'm going to take you on a journey

• Completely non-technical (but with some technical examples)

• The last 20 or so years

• Most (but not all) of the examples are mine


1985 - Pre-Oracle Corporation Days

• A young, naïve fellow with a BSc degree in Geology

– Rocks in my head

– But no rocks to work with

• Started working with BMR • Using the Image database

• Pulling out data for scientists

• Collecting information from oil rigs to publish a report using Ventura

• Forms 2.3, Reports 2.0, good ol' SQL*Plus


1990 - Department of Human Services

• VAX/VMS – the god of operating systems

• Oracle 5.0, 6.0, 7.0

• Central DBA team, coordinating State DBA's that were generalists – mostly SYSADMIN's who did a bit of DBA stuff on the side

• GUI screen design


1994 – The Years with Oracle Corporation Begin

• DBA instructor

– SQL, DBA I/II, Performance Tuning, Symmetric Replication

– Ratings nearly always very high because of "real world experience"

– OCP was almost a requirement

• Education Centre Manager

– "I must know the answer to every question or I have failed"

– Oracle Designer 1.0


1996 – The Move to Consulting

• One of four team leaders

– Not so much personnel management but rather technical leads

• The HA "expert"

– Picked up OPS along the way

– Generally sent on site with a more junior tagalong


1998 – USA, Here We Come!

• Came to attend OPS on NT training

– Product slipped, ended up helping to write the course

– Must have impressed the right people, got 3 job offers and then the hard work –convincing my wife that moving to the US was a good idea :)

• Late 1998, moved to Intergalactic Headquarters– Joined WISE (Worldwide Internal Services Education) – convinced Cary that online

SQL tuning training was the way to go

– Moved to ATS (Advanced Technology Solutions) – using a precursor to Webex to deliver worldwide training over the web

– ATS merged into North American Sales and Consulting, and I became the database lead for North America

– One of the first three 9i OCM's, first 7 10g OCM's


Oak Table

• Early Oracle9i days, Jonathan asked me to spend an hour or so explaining RAC in his Optimizing Oracle seminar

• Drank much whiskey and was inducted into the Oak Table

– Either a group of Oracle scientists with a drinking problem

– Or a group of drunks with an Oracle problem

• The Table does two important things (apart from drinking!)– Investigates areas of Oracle and PROVES what is happening

– Takes the time to present their findings

– “Our passion to share and educate is what drives us.”


The Sad Time

• Moved to RAC Development (early 10g days)

– Responsible for implementing as much of the rest of the Oracle database in a RAC environment as we could, and finding out what broke

– Pretty easy job in those times :)

• Problem was that I was considered part of the development side of the house, not a product manager– End result - I was no longer allowed to talk to customers

– Lasted a couple of years, but in the end found I missed passing on my knowledge to others too much


Curriculum Development

• Moved into Server Technologies Curriculum Development

– Group has responsibility for writing all the customer facing training on any product that falls under Server Technologies (which is everything excepts Apps)

– My team was the DBA / Enterprise Manager team• One person wrote EM material, the rest did DBA stuff

• Shortly after I joined, the EM curriculum developer left and I got left with EM

– Wrote the Enterprise Manager 11g course – a 5 day course

– Wrote the beta Enterprise Manager training material• Found I liked the product so much I moved to Enterprise Manager Product Management group


EM Product Management

• Worked for a couple of years in the central PM team, a coordinating role

• Moved to another part of the team, as the Database architect for DBaaS

– Team lead for presenting at conferences, including OOW, UKOUG, AUSOUG, NZOUG, IOUG Collaborate

– Virtual team lead • Facebook (pete.sharman.9)

• LinkedIn ([email protected])

• Twitter (@SharmanPete)

• Website (petewhodidnottweet.com)

• Blog posts on blogs.oracle.com/oem

mailto:[email protected]


Authoring Books

• Oracle8i Administration Certification Exam Cram

• Expert Enterprise Manager 12c co-author

• Practical Oracle Database Appliance co-author

• Building Oracle Database 12c Clouds co-author - TBP

• Practical Data Refresh with Enterprise Manager 12c – (co)-author - TBP


Authoring Books

• Why NOT to do it – to make money :)

– Writing a book takes a lot more time than you expect

– Unless you're Tom Kyte, Jonathan Lewis or Christian Antognini, the ROI doesn’t cover the labour cost, and it CERTAINLY doesn't cover the opportunity cost

• Why do it then?– A great tool for showing you areas of weakness in your knowledge set

– A great tool for learning how to put your thoughts together in a cohesive manner

– For some people, reading is the way they learn best so you are helping that group


Presenting

• Presentations are often created for me

– Take the marketing BS away

– Utmost respect for people who put their own together

• Q&A (either during or after presentations) is a great way for me to learn– Often customers use the product in way the designers never even considered


Writing Courseware at Oracle Corporation

• Research tool – courses can (particularly courses for beta programs) need to be largely written from scratch

– May or may not have specs (which may or may not be up to date)

– Speaking directly to developers

– Most thorough way to write courses is to use the specs if you have them, then play with the product and see what it REALLY does

– Generally for us an iterative process, as the product continues to evolve

• Like writing books, writing a course can greatly improve your ability to put your thoughts together in a cohesive manner


Plagiarism and Posting“With so much content and articles do you ever run into any problems of plagiarism or copyright violation?”

• Very little of what I have published or will publish is solely mine.

– That doesn’t mean I’ve plagiarised material left, right and centre, but rather that I stand on the shoulders of all the giants who have taken the time over the many years I’ve worked at Oracle to teach me what they already know. So yes, the words generally are mine, but the concepts, knowledge, and understanding has largely come from others.

– In many ways the fact that people take what I write and publish it elsewhere is an indication that people have found what I’ve had to say is valuable, and I appreciate that


Plagiarism and Posting“With so much content and articles do you ever run into any problems of plagiarism or copyright violation?”

• Very little of what I have published or will publish is solely mine.

– I want people to share my material. The reason for that is purely and simply that I hope it expands the overall knowledge level of this technical world we live in, and that can only ever be a Good Thing™.

– Finally, let’s be pragmatic about this. In this day and age, there is no way that I will ever know where my material has been copied to. There’s not enough time in the day to do all I have to do already, both from a work perspective and a personal one, so I’m not going to waste my time trying to chase down every piece of plagiarism of the material I’ve written.


Experts and Gurus“An expert is someone who has made all the mistakes that can be made, but in a very narrow field.”– Neils Bohr

• “It’s funny when 2 experts are arguing about who is better” - Tom Kyte and Jonathan Lewis as examples of experts (not that they were arguing!)

– Most people I know that are generally accepted as “experts” really don’t believe they are

– Most of them REALLY don’t like the term “guru”

– Why? Because most of them believe (and rightly so) they are still on a life-long journey of learning.

– What they ARE really good at is not just having that deep technical knowledge, but also in having the ability to work out what’s going on and pass that sort of knowledge on to us lesser mortals in terms that WE can understand and then apply in future.


Oracle ACE ProgramShould you aim to become an Oracle ACE?

• Tim’s answer

– “IMHO No! You should try to get involved in the Oracle community. If you enjoy that experience, keep on doing it and eventually you may be nominated and accepted as an Oracle ACE. If you don’t enjoy being involved in the community, then there is little chance you will do enough to warrant being nominated and accepted into the program.”

– “Writing, presenting and answering questions on forums takes a lot of time. If you don’t enjoy it, you will not continue to contribute over a long period of time.”

– “You don’t need to be an Oracle ACE to get most of the benefits of being an Oracle ACE. It is the process you go through that provides most of the benefits, not the program itself…”

http://oracle-base.com/blog/2013/04/02/should-you-aim-to-become-an-oracle-ace/


Forums

• Evolved over the years – started out (in my memory) from bulletin boards

• Look around and choose the one that suits you best

– Signal to noise ratio can be quite low on some

– There are some trolls out there that you may find funny at first but who will eventually get on your goat. Redirect their emails to /dev/null

• Examples– oracle-l – the one that gets most attention to me

– comp.databases.oracle.*

– Communities on oracle.com


Social Media

• Lots of options to choose from

• Some are more popular in certain regions than others

• Again, choose a couple that suit you

– I stick to Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter

– If you use LinkedIn, stick to business posts (i.e. avoid the “name a word that starts and ends with T” sorts of posts)

• Separate personal accounts from work accounts?

• Check the other sessions that are dedicated to this topic for more details


Blogs

• Good for when you have more to say than what can be covered in a quick social media post

• Recommend having your own domain name, rather than fred.wordpress.com

• Check the blogs for people you respect – they may already have a blog roll they recommend

• I try to use mine for posts like expanding on things that may not be covered in detail in the documentation

– Mixing screenshots with screenwatches?

– Use a separate FAQ list for short notes – most blog tools like WordPress have plugins that allow you to create these


The Positive Side

• Surround yourselves with people who know more than you do and you will learn so much more than if you didn’t!

• At heart, most knowledge “sharers” are teachers that like to pass their knowledge onto others

• You end up gaining more knowledge yourself by sharing what you know


The Negative Side

• It does take a lot of time, so if you’re not prepared upfront for that, don’t start down this route because you won’t keep going

• There are some very negative people out there

– Don’t take what they say personally

– Look to see if there are things you can improve on based on their feedback

– Don’t feel you have to publicly acknowledge their comments

– If it becomes at all abusive, simply block them


Knowledge Sharing

• What's in it for me?

If you’re still asking this after thinking about all the material we’ve covered, don’t even bother getting started

• If you had a real passion for sharing your knowledge, that question would never come to your mind


"You can love the life you're living, you can live the life you love"

oak table world - knowledge sharing - why do it and what's in it for me?

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