When I moved to Canada I was already an Oracle ACE and had been involved with Oracle User Groups (I was on the board of ilOUG and had spoken at conferences), but the North America region was new to me.
The local OUG was not too hard to find because I knew what I was looking for, but looking for other OUGs in NA in order to get to know them and maybe speak at their events was a bit of a challenge. As I didn’t know people from the region (I did know quite a few in Europe, so it was easier there), I started looking for conferences and smaller events to speak at. It took me a while to find some of them and get accepted as a speaker, as usually when I found out about a conference it was too late to submit sessions. Also, they didn’t know me just as much as I didn’t know them…
But after a couple of years I started to know the regional OUGs, spoke at a few smaller events in Portland and Calgary and got accepted to proper conferences like RMOUG Training Days, UTOUG Training Days and Kscope (17 and 19).
I also know how hard it is to find speakers for conferences, mainly the smaller meetups/events. The larger conferences (like our full day BCOUG Tech Day) get more exposure and are more well known, but for smaller events it’s really hard to find speakers, especially out-of-towners.
In the last few months I’ve connected a few OUG board members with speakers (Oracle and non-Oracle ones) and I’ve been thinking about how to help with this process.
For now, I came up with the idea of a simple form. This form is for both OUG board members (and other event organizers), and speakers. If you are looking for a speaker, or you are a speaker and would like to find OUG meetings/events to speak at, please fill out the form and I’ll do my best to help with introductions or connections.
The form is on this web page: https://gotodba.com/speaking.
If you have any comments or suggestions, please let me know, as I am trying to make this helpful for all of us. I hope it will help.