Johns Blog

On friday (12th February), the first UK Application Express Special Interest Group meeting was held. I previously blogged about the planned content, theme etc here.

I’m very pleased to say that the event exceeded many peoples expectations in terms of attendance, with around 55 or so people (and I believe around 20 people on the ‘waiting list’, it’s a shame we couldn’t have got a bigger room!). It was also a very nice surprise to see that Jonathan Lewis was sitting in on the event.

There were some interesting presentations on the day, David Peake gave us some sneak insights into APEX 4.0 and the roadmap ahead.

Dimitri then gave us a presentation on Advanced Charting in APEX.

Matt Nolan & Vincent Migue then told us how they were using APEX internally inside their company (with some nice AJAX and Web 2.0 functionality).

Then finally it was my turn to Dispel Myths about APEX (sorry no pictures of myself this time).

Finally we had a panel session where the floor was open for any question (I must apologise to my fellow presenters if I took too much share of answering the questions, but there’s always that split second timing where you try to gauge if anyone else is going to answer and if not you just dive in).

My gut feeling is that the day was a good success, there were lots of interesting questions outside of the presentations (during breaks/lunch etc) and I find that this is usually one of the highlights of events like this since many people are not comfortable asking questions in a big group but in a 1-2-1 situation you get the chance to ask anythign you like

After the event many of us went to nearby bar (my wife even joined us later) and whiled away the hours discussing all things APEX and non-APEX.

I do want to stress one thing though, if you attended the SIG meeting, please *please* make sure you give your feedback to the UKOUG, since without this feedback they will be unable to gauge the response to the event and determine any future plans for it.

I really do hope another event is arranged soon, as I see APEX growing in popularity and usage every day, so there is definitely a need for events like this. Special thanks to Justin Hudd for finally pulling this all together!