My Kscope15 sessions

My Kscope15 sessions are now available on my presentations page.

I linked to the Prezi version as they don't translate well to PDF, as those of you who tried downloading off the Kscope mobile app may have found.

The supporting code from my deep dive demos can be downloaded here:
http://sagecomputing.com.au/workshops/jquery_workshop_code.sql

Thank you to all those who attended, and cheers for all the great feedback, I sincerely appreciate it. I wish I had more time when I was there to talk for longer with more people.

It was so awesome to meet a bunch of bloggers I've only known online, fun at times to match live faces to minute avatars. In addition of course to the plethora of other community participants I met and chatted with.

It was spun out to hear how many people were aware of my blog and were waiting to meet me, how flattering! I do what I can with my geo-isolation ;p

For those looking for other sessions from Kscope15, try Oracle's APEX collateral pages or check through recent uploads on slideshare, or become an ODTUG member for access to all the sessions plus much more.

I'll be back, not sure when, or for which conference, but I'll be back for sure.

Scott

Reasons you should upgrade your APEX environment

For those interested, here is a prezi-style presentation on why I think you should be upgrading your APEX environment to at least 4.x.
Hopefully you understand the messages without listening to my babble.

I presented this to our local Perth user group as part of a double header with Mark Randell discussing (on a similar theme) why you should upgrade your database to 11gR2.



I'm really liking the Prezi tool, and I think I have the hang of designing them instead of powerpoint slides.

I think the best feature is you can concentrate on the layout, which will help you memorise the flow - which I defined very late in the scheme of things.

I always had an idea of the general flow - from inception of the idea, and the first segment (upto the tree rings) I did first; then I filled in the rest once I was happy with the content/placement around the tree; deciding on how to end it later on.

And I had a few ideas for a new one in the shower this morning :-)

Scott

Webinar: A foray into APEX mobile

If you missed it, it's going to be ok!

For those unable to make it to the Perth conference this year, I will be presenting my session as a webinar on  the 18th December 2012 at
4pm - New York
9pm - UTC / London
(19th December)
5am - Perth (yes, I'm getting up early)
8am - Sydney/Melbourne
(timeanddate.com)

Register via ODTUG.

I've modified the abstract slightly considering the accompanying application was designed for the conference - feel free to have a play now - even play the buzzwords game.

A foray into APEX mobile

Mobile development had beginnings even prior to Oracle Application Express 4.x, but with 4.1 itching to be a true mobile development platform - only held back by the jQuery library - APEX 4.2 has arrived with it as standard armoury in the utility belt.

We asked delegates prior to the 2012 Perth AUSOUG Conference to visit the following site either on desktop or mobile device apex.oracle.com/pls/apex/f?p=SW2012 (via tinyurl.com/SW2012AUSOUG)

We encouraged them to register interest in presentations, then provide feedback on each session. It is essentially a prototype built specifically for the purpose of this presentation, but it became a valuable tool for the conference organisers, and will be improved & polished for next year.

Listen to this presentation to see how the sausage was made; what you may expect to see out of APEX mobile development in the future; and what you need to consider learning before putting on the stetson!
It will be interesting to see how the prezi style works as a webinar, because in person I find it's more engaging than powerpoint - as long as you don't make the movements too much.

Scott

Please practically plan your prezi presentation

At the 2011 AUSOUG Conference I gave a presentation on simply called Oracle Apex 4.1 Security.

The exciting thing was (well, I thought it was exciting) I gave powerpoint the flick and used Prezi instead. I've got oraclenerd to thank for putting me onto it.

Planning

• Plan - it's an easy thing to say, particularly with a new presentation technique, however plan the talk as much as you can. I find it best going big picture first, then keep drilling down to details Fits well with the prezi technology.
• Map out your list of topics - When I write a powerpoint presentation I do a similar thing. I list out my major points, decide on their order, then expand on each. 
• Map out your "slide" order - I found this important with the security presentation. I had a map of my infrastructure and I thought this will work really well in this style, but I wasn't sure what order to run with.  In the case of prezi, you need a physical path to follow, and the better planned that is - the better the presentation will look. I'm sure this will come easier over time. Consider it story-boarding.
• Zoom ideas (instead of slide) come - prezi has a different delivery style to powerpoint. Where powerpoint is slide after slide, and interesting interactions and features can be delivered between slides, zooming lends itself to different techniques, different delivery ideas. And unfortunately, you can add animation (not yet anyway) so bear that in mind because I came across that yearn regularly.
• Then list zoom locations, just like slide deck - I think when I noted this I meant to make it easier for you to know what's coming up. I wrote one up to remind myself of the general order - but forgot on the day, it was ok though because I practiced!
• Put in brackets your idea/what you might mention - this will help if it takes you a while to write your presentation. Ideas sound great at the time, you capture the frame, then you forget a month later what the revelation was that you were going to share with the audience. The comments will also be handy for on-line viewers, but maybe not necessary on the day of delivery - although a one-liner around a frame while talking might be valuable to your audience, you'll see it in a few of mine.

Creating

• Place your images/test in each slide - when I first started I found myself shifting things around until near perfection for each frame. I think there is more value in bundling your bits and worry about them later, so
• Lay them out generally as you'd think you'd need them - finer tuning of image location, added words etc can come later again.
• I've also been finding myself worrying about frame locations later - perhaps do the major ones first - particularly since there is a slide sorter now, making it even easier to add content where ever you like 
• When "later" comes - that's when you can do the finer points. A bit like writing a report, get the data right, then think about layout.

The slide sorter is really handy. That came along for my Apex Security presentation, and made a big difference in playing around compared to when I rewrote the Apex Performance from powerpoint to prezi.

Don't worry about the slide sorter when you want to add say, slide 8 out of 120. There are little dots in the lines between frames where you can create a new frame. Check out the prezi tutorials, they answer everything.

You might find this interesting, I kept the notes I made from my first run through. I made a few notes, I found this better than trying to fix things up on the fly. Just do a run through, note down what needs attention and maybe where, then work through your list.

So, some insight into my brain:

/*
-medieval castle - where is word defence in depth
-skips layer 8
-put monitor around browser
-question audience for hands! ff vs ie vs chrome
-skips xss
-zoom out a bit more before apex & db
- zoomed to apex area
-seems to skip something before "protect your items" - just mouse
- changed protect your... to green
-highlight tamper popup name
-is dr evil last before xss
-add pic of trojan horse
-put escape_sc after escaped html
-skips dbms assert
-zoom out to db first, skips out too fast
-my dmz comment after cloud?
-zoom to computation section of apex_dml_lock...
-skips tde heading - nope, was mouse
-zoom out to db after driving_site
-frame vpd redness
-add comment "per page for :APP_USER" - changed mind
add red comment  under added to all queries "user_name = :APP_USER"
remove p_name from p_set_context!!
get trace of policy in use, to prove performance question
-highlight set_context block
-under chart under "fires for every page", add "thanks to the session pool"
-zoom down to equation: pic of lego man with APEX_PUBLIC_USER shirt + pic of
-pool + pic of party
-add "automagically" in green in data encrypted...
-after zoom out to apex + db, zoom to apex
-duplicate zoom on user groups
-add "apis exist" under blue line at "allocate to your apex users"
-remove "authentication scheme definition" from view on custom attributes
-add to custom authentication source "-- this is a documented example" in
-green, then " but it doesn't work" in red somewhere - doesn't it????? - not anymore
-change post auth code to be just "select 'Y'"
-add on same page in green "because it solves a problem" in blue bar
-add 4.1 to evaluation point for authorisation schemes, default changed

save this for blog
count the 4.1s*/

And at the end of the day, it turned out really well - despite the fact I overslept and made it to the venue with 10 minutes to spare before my presentation, and I forgot my dongle for my (vital) clicker.

The delivery style is fresh, probably not for everyone - I can't see someone like Connor adapting this technology. His style is more suited for powerpoint. If you've never seen it, try watch him some time - especially his presentation on optimizer statistics. It's similar to Dick Hardt & Larry Lessig.

Scott