Register to IOUG COLLABORATE 13 and Get an Hour of My Time

Spring is a very active conference season for me. I might be going to half a dozen conferences in 3-4 months. That’s a lot of travel, but I look forward to all of them. The conference I’m probably looking forward to the most this year is IOUG COLLABORATE. It might be because:

• it’s the largest user group conference,
• I have been missing some of the previous conferences for various reasons (like volcano activity in Denmark or delayed passport at the US consulate),
• I’m more and more connected with IOUG every year (this year I’m the IOUG Director of Communities),
• COLLABORATE is the conference where I’m meeting some very good friends I rarely see otherwise, or
• it’s in Denver this year – the place I’m going to every year for RMOUG, but missed this February due to unfortunate circumstances.

Now that I think about it, I think the reason I’m looking forward to it so much this year is because this year is special for IOUG – it’s our 20th anniversary and COLLABORATE 13 is where the main celebration is going to happen.

I’m hoping to see many of the blog readers there, so if you are at COLLABORATE 13, do find me to say hello. If you are not yet committed to come to Denver in April, I would love to do something to swing the balance of your decision scale towards COLLABORATE. The best gift I could think of is to contribute an hour of my personal time to you as a thank you for coming to Denver for this special for IOUG COLLABORATE conference. Phone or video call would be the best communication media, and you can choose any topic you want to talk about that you think I can contribute to – be it around community involvement, blogging, certifications or a technology topic, such as discuss your approach to database consolidation, your company’s big data strategy, Hadoop adoption plans, or focus on a specific issue you are facing such as a specific performance issue you need help with or disaster recovery strategy. Anything goes: we can even talk about woodworking if you’d like. Though, I have much less knowledge and limited experience in woodworking, compared to database technologies.

So what do you need to do to claim an hour of my time? Register for IOUG COLLABORATE 13 before the end of March and use the code BOD13. I will reach you and arrange some time between us. You can also reach out to me by leaving a comment on this blog post below or just filling the Contact Us form. As long as you register between now and the end of March 2013, you can count on that offer.

Why BOD13 priority code? Well, we have a small friendly competition between the board of directors and conference committee on who can attract the most attendees. It’s more for fun than anything else, and this proposal is my way to get your registrations on my side. ;)

Don’t forget to leverage group discounts if you can and discounts for hotel booking through IOUG — this will save you quite a bit off registration fees. The early bird discount is over but those those are still valid.

See you in Denver!