Goodbye 2007, its been good, but all good things come to an end. I’m working at home and I’m looking out from my desk to where the San Francisco fireworks will be in about seven hours time. That big green tower wasn’t there this time last year, which might spoil the view a bit, but I feel very lucky to live in the heart of a great city.
For me it’s been a big year, my second child was born in early January and then another baby I’ve been helping nurture for some time; Oracle Ebusiness Suite Release 12 was sent out into the world that month too. One thing I really enjoyed was the field training for R12 financials, we did a number of sessions in HQ and then one on the East Coast and one in Nice, France. The Nice session would have been a great opportunity for me to visit Europe maybe take time off and visit my family in the UK too, small problem was our 4 week old baby at home. So I flew in, did my half day presenting and flew out again, I spent 32 hours on the ground and 36 hours traveling. People thought this was tough, but with a 2 year old boy and a 4 week old baby, I saw 16 hours on a plane as a chance for some ‘me time’ and I got the best sleep I have had in 2007. Delivering the sessions was a great learning experience for me, I met consulting, sales and support staff as well as Oracle partners, all of whom impressed me with their detailed knowledge of 11i and gave me insight into the issues they and our customers face and also reminded me that we made huge strides with R12. It also helped me realize that I needed to get out more, get out from the bubble of development that is.
Although R12 was the big release, I have spent 2007 working on Fusion Apps and looking at what the companies Oracle acquired were already doing. I was lucky enough to have a manager from Peoplesoft and get some Peoplesoft and Siebel people working on my development team. If these people didn’t have great ideas and smart people we would not have been buying them, so it’s been a great learning opportunity for me and one I am thankful for and I think Oracle development is much stronger (and cooler?) for the acquisitions.
In the summer Anthony, who I have worked with for many years transferred to AppsLab, I wanted him to stay but he felt doing some work with Ruby and web 2.0 was a great opportunity. It meant I have closely followed AppsLab and fed off their enthusiasm and reminded me again that I need to get out more. Jake talking about blogs ALL the time made me think of giving it another go, my first crack at blogging was in 2004 and lasted 6 months and less than 10 posts, so I was cautious and procrastinated for a while.
It was during Open World when I decided that a blog about financial applications would be worthwhile, many people were asking the same questions and they were good questions. I thought – hey maybe our user guides and other collateral are not enough on their own? Wouldn’t it be nice if I could get out more, put information out there and get feedback comments and alternative points of view? So I started this blog.
I don’t know how I would measure success for the blog, but I am enjoying it and get a kick out of people asking questions. It’s had a few thousand page views in six weeks and I managed over 20 posts, about one every two days, which is honestly better then I expected. The thing I don’t like is the name – I need something snappy and clever, or just something shorter without my name in it! So please let me know if you have any suggestions.
So here’s to 2007, a Happy New Year if this is when you celebrate it.
Enterprise Applications by David Haimes 
I don’t talk about blogs ALL the time, but frequently, yes. I think you have interesting content and an interesting take on things IC and not.
Names are tough. It seems like the good ones are taken. You should ask your readership for ideas. Maybe something will bubble up to the top.
BTW, you also should turn off self-trackback, i.e. trackbacks that show when you’ve linked to yourself. Unless you want to inflate comments.
Happy New Year.
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Jake – Your enthusiasm, support, opinions and advice is very much appreciated. You shouldn’t stop talking about blogging, it’s a good thing.
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First congrats on the 2 kids thing — having the 2nd is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, I totally understand how uninterrupted time on a flight sounds like a great idea.
On the name question I do agree you should drop the “intercompany financials” in the name — it is going to scare a lot of people off and its not the only thing you blog about anyway. I’m guessing names like “Get rich quicker using Oracle Financials” are already spoken for ;-) — What about something with Musings in the title? Don’t know why but I like that word.. Intercompany Musings.. maybe you could throw in some gossip with a title like that and really boost readership.
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Meg – Intercompany Financials scares me. I like the word ‘Musings’ and it is one of the bigger categories of my blog, I’ll roll that one around and see where it goes, thanks for the idea.
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Hello!
I am contacting you because I am working with the authors of a book about blogs, and I’d like to request permission to use the photograph you have posted in this book. Please contact me at matt@wefeelfine.org, and I’d be happy to give you more information about the project. Please paste a link to your blog in the subject field. Your assistance is greatly appreciated.
Sincerely,
Matt
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