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A Fresh Scene at Collaborate19

This year, OAUG Collaborate ’19 was held April 7th – 11th in a new venue of San Antonio, TX.  If you’re unfamiliar with the event, the last 5 years Collaborate was held in Las Vegas. I think it was a great idea by the OAUG committee to change the location to San Antonio because Vegas, despite being “Vegas”, started to feel a little stale to me for this event. After attending my last ~10 Collaborates, everything was starting to feel the same to me (attendees, event locations, meeting locations). I found San Antonio to be a good walking city, especially the Riverwalk (it’s full of restaurants, bars, and tours) so getting around on foot was very easy and the local hotel accommodations were also very close.  Everything you needed was no more than a 20-minute walk (or 10 minutes via scooter, if you dared).

Collaborate 19

Every event I’ve attended has its good points and bad points. At Collaborate, we had a great booth location (which meant great foot traffic, if you know what I mean). I would say the highlight for me would be the solid line of people waiting to play bag toss with the hopes of winning some BBQ spice rub or a cowboy boot koozie. The ultimate raffle prize was a Yeti Cooler and Weber Tailgate Grill. I’d like to think that was the best, and most creative, give away in the exhibitor hall. (Kudos to our marketing team!) I have to say, the bag toss game was a blast (we were having a little too much fun with that one and got in some trouble)!

Tuesday night, also known as “Event Night” informally, we had a fantastic roof top venue at a craft cocktail bar where people tasted some amazing drinks, great food and ultimately relaxed amongst co-workers, peers, networking opportunities and some warm weather (which many of us being from the Northeast GREATLY appreciated).

OAUG Collaborate 19

Without a doubt, the most common conversations we had were regarding “Can I get to the cloud if I have Oracle apps?” and “Ok, if so, how do I get to the cloud?” and then further “Which cloud is right for me / my company’s Oracle footprint?” We had a standing room only crowd for our session of “Oracle to the Cloud” led by Todd Ledet; with many of those folks coming to the booth after with follow-up questions, looking for information and wanting to learn more about Apps Associates. We like to think that our message for these questions is very straight forward and hopefully fear-relieving: “Yes, with Oracle you have many options to the cloud” and “Yes, Apps Associates can walk you through those options to find the best IT path for your company.” Leave a comment below and I will get in touch with you. You can learn more about our services here.