The New ODTUG BI Community

At Kscope14, ODTUG announced that they would be rebranding the special interest groups (SIGs) into ODTUG Communities to reflect the growing focus on the people-aspect of ODTUG. Networking, connections, and friendship all make ODTUG the powerful force that it is today and there’s no greater satisfaction than connecting with like-minded individuals on all topics person and professional. This renewed focus on creating communities of people around the professional areas of ODTUG can only happen if a strong core group of individuals drives the bus, so to speak.

Hopefully we find a bigger, better bus, eh?

I’m happy to announce that along with fellow board member Mike Riley, I will be driving that bus. ODTUG reached out to a number of people heavily involved in the Oracle BI space to gauge interest to spearhead the charge and I happily volunteered. Dating back to my first Kscope experience, I’ve always seen the value in the connections ODTUG helps foster and would love to see that grow in the BI Community. I believe there are a number of Oracle BI users out there desperately looking for peers to engage with and I hope the ODTUG BI Community can be that vehicle for them.

I can’t do it alone, though, and that’s why I’m happy to also announce that some dear ODTUG friends will be helping me. Wayne Van Sluys, Jeremy Harms, and Stewart Bryson have all volunteered their time and ideas to make this a success. Of course, we also have the backing of the wonderful people at YCC who work behind the scenes to make ODTUG the great user group that it is today. You might think with all that support we couldn’t possibly need more, but you’d be wrong! If you’re interested in being a part of driving the BI Community, please fill out the volunteer form on this page.

What can you look forward to as we establish the new ODTUG BI Community? First, we’ll be looking to increase the ODTUG webinar presence in the BI space. If you aren’t aware, ODTUG offers great webinars on a monthly basis across all of their areas of focus, and we want to increase the regularity of great BI webinars. I may be reaching out to some of you to volunteer to give webinars on your expertise and experience. Since not everyone can attend Kscope, webinars are a great way to continue to consume great content without having to get budget approval, travel, etc.

We’ll meet for more than just coffee, I promise.

Our second focus will be meetups. The best way to build and grow a community is to meet people and the easiest place to start is to introduce you to people in your area facing the same challenges and experiences as you. But this can’t just be about work, as what fascinates me most about ODTUG is how many members meet their dearest and closest friends at ODTUG events. That means the meetups we schedule must include an element of fun and comraderie to help build lasting connections. Unfortunately, we can’t be everywhere in 2015, but we’ll be picking strategic cities to host meetups with the longer term goal of expanding into other cities in 2016 and beyond. The more you attend and engage, the easier it is to justify more cities each year!

Our last focus (for now) will be the BI Community page. We have some ideas of how to make this the primary destination page for you on the web for all things Oracle BI. If you have ideas of what you’d like to see here, don’t hesitate to reach out to me on Twitter (@kevin_mcginley) or email (kevin [at] redpillanalytics.com).

I look forward to leading the ODTUG BI Community and hope you’ll join me on this journey. I promise great friends, great content, and great fun if you do, and those are things we all could use in our day-to-day lives. This is a great time to be in BI and an even greater time to engage in the ODTUG BI Community!

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