In this episode host Tyra Peirce speaks with Professor Matthew Wheelwright from Brigham Young University and his former students Cade Bleazard and Nolan Stirling on how learning Primavera Cloud has helped prepare them for careers in construction management.   ---------------------------------------------------------   Episode Transcript:   00;00;00;00 - 00;00;34;19 Welcome to the Oracle Academy Tech Chat. This podcast provides educators and students in-depth discussions with thought leaders around computer science, cloud technologies and software design to help students on their journey to becoming industry ready technology leaders. Of the Future. Let's get started. Welcome to Oracle Academy Tech Chat, where we discuss how Oracle Academy helps prepare our next generation's workforce.   00;00;34;22 - 00;01;02;22 I'm your host, Tyra Peirce. In this episode, I speak with Matthew Wheelwright from Brigham Young University and his former students, Nolan Sterling and Cade Bleazard, about their experience with Primavera Cloud in the classroom. Primavera Cloud is available through Oracle Academy for Teaching and learning to select faculty who meet certain criteria and are selected through an extensive application process.   00;01;02;24 - 00;01;28;23 We're going to talk about how Primavera Cloud has helped prepare them for careers in construction management. Thank you, Matt, Cade and Nolan for joining me today. First question, can you give me a bit about your background and the class at BYU? Yeah, I'm Matt Wheelwright. I'm a professor at Brigham Young University in Civil and Construction Engineering, specializing in construction management.   00;01;28;26 - 00;02;07;19 My background is in residential homebuilding, mostly in California and Utah, and I teach CFM for 12, which is our scheduling class, and also a few other classes Construction safety, real estate development and anywhere else that kind of need me. And in the class, we tend to focus on critical path methods, CPM and balancing and leveling resources. We've recently introduced tact planning or flow and pull planning and OBC.   00;02;07;22 - 00;02;25;01 Oracle Primavera Cloud is a great opportunity for our students to get hands on experience with software and it makes a big difference. So that's a little bit about me. I'm Nolan Sterling. I'm from Cave Creek, Arizona.   00;02;25;03 - 00;03;06;05 I am. I just recently graduated from Brigham Young University in 2023 and now currently just working full time for BHP. I graduated from the construction management program and absolutely loved it and I really kind of got into construction. The at least the program construction management just kind of by chance. But I have loved it. I love the opportunity as it gives you to not only work on the office side, but also be out in the field with the guys and work with your hands and truly just solving puzzles all day.   00;03;06;07 - 00;03;28;05 So my name is Cade Bleazard, similar to Noah, and I'm also from Arizona. I'm from kind of a Chandler Gilbert area and kind of from a young age. I always knew I wanted to be in construction. I've always known I wanted to build homes, but how to get there was never really clear in my mind. My dad is a civil engineer.   00;03;28;07 - 00;03;45;03 We grew up with a lot of woodworking tools and saw stuff at our house, and so I kind of grew up around it. And then when I was 18 years old, my dad actually brought it up that BYU had a construction management program and thought it'd be a good idea to take the intro class. And from there I was.   00;03;45;03 - 00;04;07;15 I was sold on it and have loved every second of it. I just graduated in April of this year and I currently work for Hawthorne Homes, a local custom home builder here. It's been a great time and I am super grateful for my time at BYU and especially in this program.   00;04;07;18 - 00;04;46;27 So how has using OPC in the classroom improved the student experience?  Yeah, I think it's great preparation for their future. In fact, one of the and it's not necessarily because they all go out and use OPC from day one because realistically that's not quite possible yet and maybe someday. But I read this quote from our textbook every semester when we get to the point of using the software and it's “ Once a manager has mastered one project management software program, it is easier to learn another”.   00;04;46;29 - 00;05;23;16 So I really emphasize that, hey, once you've really gotten into OPC, which is, you know, maybe the big leader of the bunch, you can really go off and do almost anything. But to be able to put it on your resumé. To get that real hands-on experience. And it's so much better than past approaches in terms of being able to use it on the cloud and use it on their own laptops at home and in the classroom just makes a huge difference in the ease of class and the ease of I mean, it's hard enough to learn a new software.   00;05;23;20 - 00;06;03;11 They don't need all of the kind of technical difficulties that go along with the computer if they can avoid it. So it's really been great to get them into it and give them the chance to kind of go by trial and error a little bit at times and work their way through for their future. Looking at it from both angles of when I took the class as a student and then the couple of semesters that I had the privilege of being a T.A. scheduling as a whole and construction can be a hard topic and skill to master for sure, and especially so many of us in in the Construction management program, this is the first time that we're being exposed to it and really understanding how it operates. I found that OPC really made difficult content more digestible. I found myself as a student. I was able to see these skills of planning ahead of allocating costs and seeing who's on what job, at what times that OPC was able to make that easier to understand.   00;06;26;10 - 00;06;53;18 But it also gave each of the students the opportunity just to kind of tinker to mess around with it, to see how these changes can affect the project further down the line. Yeah, I think it was a great opportunity, really just kind of buttoning up what we'll write and what kids said. OPC allowed you to not only coordinate with other students, but work on your own projects better than any other software that I had used.   00;06;53;20 - 00;07;23;27 I had the opportunity to also use P6 in my college career and in Microsoft Project. Asked a little bit and OPC really made it easiest for me to work with my professors and work with other students and it was kind of hard at the time seeing how applicable it would be out in the real world, but it was very streamlined and it made it easy to work to stay with Nolan and Cade.   00;07;23;27 - 00;07;55;19 What are some of the skills that you learned using OPC? OPC You know, going back to kind of the main reason of scheduling is kind of just putting order in, you know, aspects of your life. And when it comes to a job, you know, putting order to the different parts of a project, the preconstruction, the construction and the closeout phases of projects are all easily done in OPC.   00;07;55;21 - 00;08;35;19 But I also found that getting more familiar with OPC made it easier to kind of coordinate and schedule my life. And that does sound pretty cliche, but, you know, dedicating time and resources to one thing opposed to another really helps teach me how to do it the same thing in my personal life. Funny you should mention that I'm actually using OPC for some projects that I manage at work, and I'm finding that I am seeing that as well, that I'm breaking more tasks down, I'm getting it into a particular place and then being able to collaborate more effectively with my team as well.   00;08;35;21 - 00;09;05;22 So I totally get and I totally understand. And and Cade, what about you? What would you like to add? I think one of the biggest skills and just kind of life lessons that I learned while learning OPC and teaching OPC is that the more time you spend on the front end of a project, whether it be a construction project or any big event in life, really understanding your scope, understanding your project, and then planning it out and plugging those details in the smoother it's going to run.   00;09;05;25 - 00;09;29;08 And that's something that in class we would emphasize is that the more time we spend in the early stages of OPC or in pre-construction understand the details, plugging it in and in in an organized manner, it's going to help everything else be easier to understand. It's going to run smoother. And I think similar to Nolan and what he explained is that it really does carry into life.   00;09;29;11 - 00;09;49;10 You just kind of learn that flying by the seat of your pants doesn't really work. But if you can spend time on the front end, planning things out, ironing it out, everything is just going to run a lot smoother. I really love that and I feel I feel the same way like it is. If you learn how to plan, you learn how to schedule, you get more done, you accomplish more things.   00;09;49;12 - 00;10;16;10 And that's kind of segueing into my next question and math. This one is going to be to start off with you. So why is knowing OPC important for students preparing for a career in construction management? I think it's very clear that modern construction practice, facilities management, real estate, you know, you go down the list of the components of our industry and scheduling is the big emphasis.   00;10;16;10 - 00;11;00;08 It's a part of the contract, it's part of the legal documents. If we're not spending the time I just mentioned in the pre-construction getting the schedule right, well, we're never going to earn bids. We're never going to complete projects on time under budget with the quality that we want. And scheduling is just a key part of that. And I would add further that one of the aspects that I really harp on with my students is I think about financing and the time value of money that is directly linked to being as successful schedule manager, that if you're capable of creating the schedule and managing the schedule well, then the finances will follow.   00;11;00;08 - 00;11;25;05 And the value of the money and the flow of the costs and the revenues will keep up with what you need it to is as you planned it to. But if you're failing at scheduling, if you're falling down as a whether because of subcontractor trades or whatever, the reason that you're getting stuck, you don't have a plan, well then, the finances will come back and bite you pretty hard.   00;11;25;08 - 00;11;54;07 Yeah, I mean, just as it were. Wright said. His time really is money and the skill that you'll learn in OPC is how to better manage your time. This has become a lesson that's very it's been very important for me to learn in my career as I've as I'm in the early stages of it, but that when you're building for a client and you're being entrusted with managing their money and managing their project, that the time aspect becomes very, very important.   00;11;54;12 - 00;12;18;13 Nolan Yeah, I'll, I'll touch on more of the personal side of, of how this is applied to me and just how OPC has, has kind of prepared me. I recently started my, my full-time job and I believe it was, it was no later than the first or second day. And my supervisor came to me and said, You, wouldn't happen to know any rescheduling, would you?   00;12;18;13 - 00;12;47;29 And I said, Actually, I do. And at this time the company I started with was transitioning from Microsoft Project over to OPC. And so, my supervisor then asked me, do you happen to know  any OPC? And I'm like, Actually, it's your lucky day. I know that. I know that even better. And so since then, I've kind of been the main instrument within this, you know, smaller company.   00;12;47;29 - 00;13;25;24 But in helping guys in the field and in the superintendents and then the project team, the operations team, and getting to know kind of the ins and outs of OPC and how to use and how to really save money. I honestly love that. I love how what you learned in your classroom as the course over whenever I've I'm forgetting when you took it when you took the class and then added to is actually helping you in your job now I love that direct outcome is they asked you can you schedule and then they asked you if you knew OPC and you do know OPC and you have that ability to learn that.   00;13;25;24 - 00;13;58;22 I think that is so amazing. So I guess that's going to kind of segue into that next question. How has knowing OPC helped you and then, Matt, for your students in your internship or job search and  No. One, you have anything else to add or do you anything else you want to elaborate on with that? Scheduling is kind of been a big part of my college career especially, and I kind of got into it really by just finding the need of a position.   00;13;58;24 - 00;14;25;11 There was a competition team at our university and I wanted to be on the team, but I was still kind of on the outside and I just decided had to find a way to just to be that guy on the team. And there was, there was a need for a scheduler on the team. And so I, I started looking into, you know, what I can do and how I can be better at scheduling and especially in OPC.   00;14;25;11 - 00;14;55;20 And since then I was able to get on the team and really be an effective instrument and in great success with the team. And then, Cade, what about you? Yeah, as I got closer to graduating from college and needed to start figuring out what the plan was post-graduation, I spent time interviewing around and really looking for what was going to be the best fit and looking back on it.   00;14;55;20 - 00;15;23;28 And each and every one of my interviews, my experience with scheduling, especially with OPC, with the different certificates and experience being a teaching assistant, came up and it was a great opportunity to first of all explain kind of what I know how comfortable I am with it, but also explain why I chose it to to for it, why I enjoyed it and and I do believe that it was it played a very large role in getting me the position that I currently hold.   00;15;23;28 - 00;15;49;20 And it's one that I really enjoy and it's one that I was excited to have been extended and it's been a really fun transition. And looking back on it, it really does kind of stem from learning. OPC Diving into it, really getting those skills of project management and the scheduling side that anything to add? Well, scheduling got me my job to.   00;15;49;22 - 00;16;18;04 I mean, I spent a lot of years scheduling homes and sometimes I was Excel, sometimes I was Microsoft Project. But now to be able to use OPC with the students just as the smooth, easy way of getting them comfortable with software, applying the principles, we spend a lot of time talking about activity. I know diagrams and we call it scheduling Sudoku, where we're actually doing the math that OPC does seamlessly.   00;16;18;06 - 00;16;43;29 But the more they understand the principles, the better it is for them to actually be able to use the software effectively. And then someday, you know, be able to apply it in the field and hold people responsible and accountable for what's trying to get done on the project. I think that's really important to be able to go in and know that this can help you get a job or to be able to  have that accountability that that OPC provides.   00;16;43;29 - 00;17;05;10 And then also the fact that it is in the cloud, I think it makes it so much easier for access purposes and equity and making it available to all students. So one final question that I ask all my podcast guests. So if you could give one piece of advice to faculty or students, what would it be? And Matt, I'm going to start with you.   00;17;05;13 - 00;17;36;06 Well, clearly, the first is to have TA’ss like Nolan and Cate. That's pretty awesome. They've been great for many semesters. So it was said, you know, bittersweet as a professor to see them graduate. But I'd also add that, you know, scheduling is such a fundamental skill and ability in kind of modern practice and it underpins so many of the other principles that we talk about across the board and construction management and all of our classes.   00;17;36;06 - 00;17;58;24 And the students feel this. They appreciate it. I've had many students come up to me at the end of the class or even semesters after to say, Brother, we'll write a professor. We'll write that such that scheduling class was so great, it mattered. It made everything else clear. It helped me understand not only my own time management, but all the other things that I was talking about.   00;17;58;24 - 00;18;18;09 It just kind of connects and overlaps and all of these things. So I would guess, I guess my advice would be lean into it. Like I tend to ask my students many times leading up to when we actually go into the software say, Hey, are you nervous? What are you feeling or are you excited? Where's your head at?   00;18;18;11 - 00;18;41;17 And I'm trying to get them just lean in. It's going to be great. You need it. They know the principles. And now let's use the software and see it at work. And so that really helps. They've they've before they even touch the computer, they've learned a lot of the scheduling kind of administration. And then when they get in the software, you can just see these light bulbs kind of launching.   00;18;41;19 - 00;19;11;27 I go, that's what you I just constantly and that's really rewarding and it's super fun. And the students do appreciate it. So lean in hard, make it great and it'll pay off. I think that's really, really good advice. Kate, what about you? Yeah. As a recent graduate, I would say I have the unique perspective of being able to give maybe some advice to both students and faculty.   00;19;11;29 - 00;19;38;15 I think first on  the student side, I'd say just dive in. I really do think that the best way to learn is, is to fully immerse yourself and being a student. You have a lot of privileges. And one of those is that on different assignments and different in class activities, you have the opportunity to make mistakes and it's not going to cost you a cent.   00;19;38;18 - 00;20;16;29 The penalty is a lot, a lot smaller. And so I would say dive in this, immerse yourself in the learning process in the program, make the mistakes and you'll find that you learn the program a lot quicker that way. And on that on the second half, just kind of the faculty is looking back on my college career, the scheduling class really was my favorite class that I took in my in my entire college career because I felt that it it finally tied everything in construction together where I was taking a framing class and concrete classes and different management classes.   00;20;17;01 - 00;20;38;25 And those were great. I was learning a lot, but scheduling was the first time where it finally clicked in my head of, this is how this is all related. This is this is how a whole project is run. And so I would just say, let your students get into the program quick. As Brother Wheelwright explained, obviously teach them what they need to know.   00;20;38;25 - 00;20;58;18 Teach them the basics of scheduling and set them up for success. But as soon as you can get students kind of tinkering with the program, using OPC again, as we're as I said, those lightbulbs will start to go off. And so I would just say, let them get into it. Let them start seeing how everything is all tied together.   00;20;58;21 - 00;21;29;08 I think that's really I think that's really sage advice to Tinker. I'm a tinkerer myself. Like I, I learned by playing with the PS software. And so the more you tinker, the more you explore it, the better it is. And then, Nolan, what about you? Too close this out? Yeah, I completely agree with Cade. OPEC has  really helped me see beyond my college experience how I'm going to apply what I learned in my career.   00;21;29;11 - 00;22;00;11 I would say the one big piece of advice that I would give is, you know, it's frustrating learning new things and not only learning them, but mastering them. But, you know, sometimes you just got to put your head down and work. And I would also say that just find the need, you know, ask around, ask your professors, look for the need and where you could be used and you will you will find it.   00;22;00;13 - 00;22;29;13 I love that. I love I love that. Going ask where you can help, where you can serve, how you can be a problem solver. I think that's so important. Just finding that niche and finding out where you can break in assists because I think it benefits the people that you're helping and it benefits you as well. So a big thanks to Professor Will Wright and Caden Nolan for for giving me some information about the Oracle Academy usage of pro-Mubarak cloud at Brigham Young University.   00;22;29;16 - 00;22;51;01 To learn more about Oracle Academy and the resources we provide, please visit Academy dot, Oracle dot com and subscribe to our podcast. Thanks for listening. That wraps up this episode. Thanks for listening and stay tuned for the next Oracle Academy Tech Chat podcast.

How students can develop career-ready, hands-on skills within the construction management field In this episode, Tyra Peirce chats with Dr. Aziz, Associate Professor, University of Washington, a construction management industry expert, who discusses teaching and learning of construction management, including project methods and the benefits a robust software like Oracle Primavera P6 can offer.

In this episode Tyra Peirce speaks with Oracle Principal Architect and adjunct professor Victor Statchura about teaching cloud computing in the classroom, and some of the specific things that faculty should think about when they embark on teaching students in the cloud.

In this episode, Tyra Peirce speaks with Dr. Gisella Bassani, Associate Professor of Information Systems at University of Colorado Denver about her use of the Oracle Academy Cloud Program for teaching and learning, and how she gets her students started using Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.   ----------------------------------------------------------   Episode Transcript:   00;00;00;00 - 00;00;34;20 Welcome to the Oracle Academy Tech Chat. This podcast provides educators and students in-depth discussions with thought leaders around computer science, cloud technologies and software design to help students on their journey to becoming industry ready technology leaders of the future. Let's get started. Welcome to Oracle Academy Tech Chat, where we discuss how Oracle Academy helps prepare our next generation's workforce.   00;00;34;22 - 00;00;59;27 I'm your host here appears in this episode. I'm joined by Dr. Gisella Bassani, assistant teaching professor of information systems at University of Colorado, Denver, about her use of the Oracle Academy Cloud program in her classroom and some of the things she does to get her students started using Oracle Cloud infrastructure. Welcome, Dr. Barzani Thank you so much for having me, Tyra.   00;01;00;02 - 00;01;31;09 To start off, can you please give me a bit about your background and the class you teach? I am a information systems professional. I have been working in information systems for over 30 years. And much of the time I was implementing business intelligence systems, working on databases and reporting. About 13 years ago, I decided to switch to academia so that I could pass on my knowledge to the younger generation.   00;01;31;11 - 00;01;59;22 And I've been teaching at universities ever since. Both at BYU and now at Sea Denver. I teach multiple classes, both for graduate and undergraduate. My main focus is databases. Although I do teach everything from business classes and intro to business classes all the way to Excel and Tableau. But my happiness and the thing that I enjoy doing the most is teaching database classes.   00;01;59;24 - 00;02;22;28 How does the cloud environment make it easier for your database students? Did the cloud makes it easier for my database students for multiple reasons. The main one is that many of my students do not have a lot of space on their laptops to run the programs. Many of their laptops barely have enough space for the things that they need to have for other classes.   00;02;23;00 - 00;03;05;00 So this allows them to have a big database and use the software and without any problems. The second reason is because they can use both PC and MAC and different operating systems. So Linux, iOS and Windows all work with the database being in the cloud, and that makes life much, much easier. They also each have their own databases to work with, and I don't have to create an environment in my job at my school to host all of these databases.   00;03;05;07 - 00;03;27;05 So it makes it a lot easier for me, also for maintenance, not just for the students. On the flip side, are there things that make it a bit trickier for your students? Yeah. So there are a couple of things that do create some trickiness. First of all, the cloud database starts every seven days that you are not using it.   00;03;27;06 - 00;03;50;14 So if they go on a break or for some reason they're not focused on your class for about a week and then come back, they have to go in to the Oracle Cloud and actually physically restart the database rather than from the sequel developer on their computer. So that is a bit tricky. They get very flustered with that.   00;03;50;14 - 00;04;19;14 You have to have instructions for them to get through that. Additionally, every semester there seems to be one or two students that once they restart their database, the database does not fully restart correctly. So what happens is that it starts and then every 10 minutes it goes back to the services being stopped and they cannot restart it and keep it on for a long time.   00;04;19;17 - 00;04;45;03 So this seems to be an issue that has not yet found a resolution and it could be linked to creating a database is always free. So you may want to have them delete the database and recreate it, and that might help the student if they do it. Just slightly different with the not always free version checked and the third thing is really understanding the architecture.   00;04;45;05 - 00;05;10;18 They are not very intuitive about client server or cloud software architecture. Sometimes they think it's just all on their computer. And so sometimes you have to just explain that to them a little bit better about what be having something in the cloud means and how their actual computer software is different than the cloud software. I actually like that.   00;05;10;18 - 00;05;37;17 And honestly, I think it's really interesting because we don't they don't understand. A lot of times students are particular that it is different for client server and cloud. Like they don't understand that the software is not living on their machine. The software, the software will probably have the same feature functions, but it will be a little bit different in terms of access points, storage and when they're saving things and things along those lines.   00;05;37;17 - 00;05;57;25 So I think that's another thing that's interesting for them to learn. Also, they can access it from any computer, so they could be on a lab computer one minute or their computer at home the next, and they're still going to be able to have access to their to their database or their OCI in the cloud. Exactly. And this doesn't just happen with Oracle Software.   00;05;57;25 - 00;06;27;06 It's any cloud. Like when they're using the OneDrive, it takes them a very long time when they're freshmen to then understand how the OneDrive sort of works a little bit, you know, compared to having it on their computer. And yeah, it's just a little different. So what are some tips you have for faculty teaching database using OCI that will help their classroom run more smoothly?   00;06;27;08 - 00;06;54;00 Well, that's a great question. So there's quite a few things that you can do to make the classroom run more smoothly. The first thing is make sure that the students know to go in once a week, at least to keep the database operational. So that's number one. The next thing that you should really do is make sure that all of this information is also on your learning management system.   00;06;54;03 - 00;07;25;28 So you should create some videos for the installation and how they install, for example, and how to make sure that they can put the database and start the database again and the services for the database again. You can they can watch those multiple times, so that be helpful for them. With that, you should probably also create a step by step written manual, like in a word doc or something to go along with a video.   00;07;26;00 - 00;08;12;15 This will help them greatly. Some students are very video oriented and want to go through step by step on a video. Others really want something in writing and some students want both. So providing all of that will make sure that there's accessibility for all of your students. The other thing is to create student teams in the classroom. So that's what I have done during my classes, is I create basically study groups or debugging groups where by the students help each other out with technical questions and software issues because some of the low level debugging can easily be done by some of the students that might have higher skill sets within your class.   00;08;12;16 - 00;08;38;26 As you all know, probably the you know that the students don't come in with all the same capabilities. Some of them will have looked at databases before. Some of them may have even program databases before. Whereas others may have never been working much with a computer at all. And there's everything in the middle. So having students help each other will help the classroom more smoothly.   00;08;38;28 - 00;09;02;14 And one more thing. While you're in the classroom and you are lecturing. One of the things that I do is that I pause often and say, Are there any questions? And you can stop me now if you're not where we are so that they catch up better as opposed to waiting till the end where some people got lost somewhere in the middle.   00;09;02;17 - 00;09;19;20 You want them to keep following you? I think those are really useful suggestions and I think it's always important for students to make sure that they work together, that they're collaborative. And I think as students learn how to debug, it helps other students learn how to debug. And so I think that's a that's some really, really helpful advice.   00;09;19;22 - 00;09;59;12 What are some key skills that students studying database should learn? Another great question. So the very first thing to me is database architecture. I think that database architecture is fundamental. You need to understand these. You need to understand what a good database design is. Most interviewers will ask you about normalization and normal forms and relationship types. During the interview, if you don't teach them that and you just teach them how to code, they may not do so well on the professional interviews on the other side.   00;09;59;14 - 00;10;29;25 When I was the manager of a big team, those are the types of questions that we would ask just as a base to know that they understood sequel. So that's one. In terms of coding sequel, of course, from creating tables to querying tables, it's important not to just teach them how to query tables, but also how to do the creation of tables and modification and things like that.   00;10;29;28 - 00;11;08;16 It's really important to have both aspects because if you don't do that, they may not really truly understand what they're querying and what other options they may have for querying. And their querying skill level won't be up to par with other people that are graduating with this type of class. You also want to make sure that they really understand how to find help on various topics once they leave the class where the online help resources are, where how to ask the right questions of those resources and how to assign.   00;11;08;22 - 00;11;34;07 You don't always use all of the coding all the time, so sometimes you use that one set of elements and if you do that, then you need to know how to go and retrieve information. One final question. If you could give one piece of advice to faculty or students, what would it be? Well, it's hard to just give one piece of advice.   00;11;34;07 - 00;12;06;18 So my piece of advice is a multi-pronged piece. The fact is that learning, coding and learning classical database architecture, it's really very much like learning a new language. So many students that I have do know a different language. They just not one language students, Right. So they remember what it's like to learn a new language. If you tried to learn Spanish in high school that you need daily practice to have these language skills.   00;12;06;18 - 00;12;28;23 And if you just read about the topic without practicing it out loud or in this case coding it on to a database, you're not going to remember that skill very well. And so it's very important that you learn it in order for language. Right. You start with the Hello, how are you? Right. And you move on from that.   00;12;28;23 - 00;13;11;26 So you learn to select from and then you move on from that. And then you've got intermediate skills and then finally the advanced. So you can't just start in the middle, like with other topics that you're that they're learning. So because of this, I think that they should remember to give themselves grace because it takes a lot of time to learn a new language and especially the older people get, the more that they think that learning something takes just a few minutes or a day or just a little bit of time because we don't remember how long it actually took us to learn even our primary language that we spoke.   00;13;11;26 - 00;13;36;05 Right? It took us years to learn it well. So remember that this is the same thing with learning this language. I think that's really good advice. I like what you said about giving yourself grace because when we learn a new topic, we're not just going to be experts overnight and that we need to take time, learn to digest and recognize that failure is going to come and that we're just not going to be able to get proficient overnight.   00;13;36;05 - 00;14;04;00 And just to give yourself  some grace and some thought to actually going at your own pace and everybody's going to learn at their own pace, which I also think is is really important. So as well. So I really believe that you said that everybody learns at their own pace because sometimes you see other people and it all has to do with what you've learned before, how fast your learning goes.   00;14;04;03 - 00;14;24;25 Like if you have coded before, you're going to learn these languages faster than if you've never, ever coded before. And you can't just look at somebody else in the classroom and think, my gosh, I'm just not good at this. No, no. They just happened to have some knowledge that you didn't have. That's long before they even came to class.   00;14;25;02 - 00;14;49;01 So that's part of the giving yourself grace. I agree with that. And then some people, they have natural inclinations to be to pick one kind of thing up and then somebody else has a natural inclination to pick something else up. So maybe for one ear design is easy and then for another one, the actual coding is easier. And so just where our natural skill sets have a tendency to lie, I think that's also important as well.   00;14;49;01 - 00;15;21;06 We're giving ourselves grace is learning new skills. Absolutely. A special thank you to Dr. Bassani for speaking with me about how she utilizes the Oracle Academy Cloud program in her classroom. To learn more about Oracle Academy and our resources, visit Academy about Oracle dot com and subscribe to our podcast. Thanks for listening. That wraps up this episode. Thanks for listening and stay tuned for the next Oracle Academy Tech Chat podcast.

In this episode host Orlaith Lawton speaks with Oracle Ace Director Finland Heli Helskyaho about the importance of data and continuous learning.   ---------------------------------------------------------   Episode Transcript:   00;00;09;03 - 00;00;37;15 Welcome to the Oracle Academy Tech Chat. This podcast provides educators and students in-depth discussions with thought leaders around computer science, cloud technologies and software design to help students on their journey to becoming industry ready technology leaders. Of the future. Let's get started. Hello, everybody. Today, in February 2024, my name is Orlaith Lawton that I'm the Oracle Academy and Media Marketing Manager.   00;00;37;17 - 00;01;08;27 And I'm delighted to say I'm here with my colleague Rania Herberg, who represents Oracle Academy in Helsinki. And Heli Helskyaho. She is the CEO for Miracle Finland OY. She also holds a master's degree in computer science from the University of Helsinki, and she's specialized in databases.   00;01;08;29 - 00;01;44;15 At the moment, she's working on her doctoral studies at the University of Helsinki. And Henry has actually been working on it since 1990. She's also an Oracle ace director and a frequent speaker at my company since she's also an author of Oracle as well. Developer Data Monitor for Database Design Mastery and a coauthor of Real World School and Feel and School Advice from the Experts, Machine Learning for Oracle Database Professionals and several other books.   00;01;44;18 - 00;02;13;01 So we are absolutely delighted to have you here, Heli. Thank you so much for joining us. And let me start off by maybe talking a little bit about to as I mentioned, you're an author and you're very interested in data and it's fantastic to have a female voice in technology. Perhaps you can give us a little bit of background about your role and how you got into technology and became an oracle ACE   00;02;13;02 - 00;02;35;01 So I always love to answer this that I always wanted to be in tech and I always loved computers and that kind of stuff, but I didn't. I actually hated computers, so I was studying mathematics and I didn't know what I want to do when I grow up. And I my father told me to take some computer science classes and I was thinking, okay, why not?   00;02;35;04 - 00;02;55;20 Because actually learning was always very easy for me. So I was thinking, it's going to be a piece of cake, you know, just some computers and that's it. But it was not. So when I took the first course, I barely passed and I didn't understand anything. So that was so frustrating because I was the A-plus student. And I just, you know, didn't understand anything.   00;02;55;28 - 00;03;16;07 So I was blaming the teacher. The teacher must be bad. And I will take another course that is taught by another teacher. But the same happened again. And then I was thinking, it cannot be the teacher, it must be me. So there's something I don't understand about computers and the computer science. And because I always loved challenges, I decided I will take more courses.   00;03;16;07 - 00;03;36;19 I never give up. So I always like to fight. So I was saying, I need to know what. What's the problem? Why don't I understand anything? And I took more and more courses. Finally, I took all their courses you can take as a minus student. And I was thinking, I still don't know anything. So I had to change my major and start with computer science.   00;03;36;20 - 00;03;58;03 So I went to see the faculty principal and I said, I want to change the computer science. And he was like, Are you kidding you? You're very good in math, but you are no good in computer science. So why do you want to change? I said, Well, you just described it. That's why. Because I really don't understand computer science, and I want to understand.   00;03;58;10 - 00;04;18;01 That's why I want to change. And he was okay, I'll sign the paper. But if you if you just decide you made a mistake, come back. But then suddenly I started to understand when I came to data and databases and all this kind of thing, I realized this is my field, so this is what I wanted to do.   00;04;18;03 - 00;04;48;18 Then I was also hired by a computer factory. So I was. I was able to see how the computer is built and it's not rocket science. So I realized this is very understandable for even somebody who is not very technical. If you could say that I'm a super tester, so I break everything I touch. So they didn't let me build any computers, but it was very, very intuitive to see the pieces that you used to build a computer and it somehow made it understandable to me.   00;04;48;19 - 00;05;13;28 So it's it's, it's not that difficult. So kind of after all that struggle, I realized that computer science is definitely for me. And I have never regret my decision. So finding data, finding databases, and now lately machine learning as well. I am so happy where I am at the moment. So this is definitely my career. So what I could tell everybody else is never give up.   00;05;13;28 - 00;05;36;26 So if you feel like you don't know something, it's just a little bit something that should be explained in another way or something that you should try yourself to understand what it actually means. So it doesn't mean that you are stupid or you are not technical or you are not whatever. It's just that you are missing a piece of information and that's why you don't understand.   00;05;36;28 - 00;06;05;09 So yeah, that's my story. In short, and I'm working on my Ph.D. So yeah, computer science is definitely for somebody who doesn't like computers in the beginning. That's really good to hear. That's really interesting to hear how you almost accidentally got into it, because I think it sounds like it was a challenge to more than anything else. But perhaps then you could give or this is more information as to the main subject areas of expertise such as data and how that has helped you in your career.   00;06;05;12 - 00;06;33;08 Well, yeah. So data, I think is everything. So there is nothing in any business if you don't have data. So that's kind of whatever the customer is working on. It's always related to data. So I think that's the reason why I find data very interesting because it has the answer to all the questions that you might have, and that leads to data quality, which is one of my favorite topics.   00;06;33;13 - 00;06;54;29 So saving any kind of data makes no sense. It has to be a good quality data, and that's why database designing is important. That's why machine learning comes important when you have good quality data. So if you have bad data, you can't do any machine learning, You can't build data warehouses, you can't do anything with bad quality data.   00;06;55;01 - 00;07;20;11 So that kind of is my favorite thing. And highlighting that good quality data is the key to everything I may need to touch back on what you were saying earlier on about computer programing, computer science and subject for those who are maybe not naturally inclined to think about it or go into it. And as you know, we have a lot of men in the technology world.   00;07;20;11 - 00;07;45;22 We don't have as many women, unfortunately. And how would you encourage girls who may be interested in trying something new and going into technology or haven't thought about even how? What would you say to girls thinking about technology? So first of all, I've been doing quite a lot of mentoring, and I usually start with the fact that people are saying that I'm not a good developer, so I cannot be on it.   00;07;45;25 - 00;08;09;07 You couldn't be more wrong because it is not about developers. It's about all kind of skill sets that you need. Developer is just one of these personas, but there's so many other skill sets that are needed in the area. So it doesn't mean if you don't like to be a developer and if you don't like programing, it doesn't mean that it's not for you because there's so many other things.   00;08;09;09 - 00;08;33;23 And I think the biggest challenge is that if if you are able to see a big picture, it's not just, you know, small, tiny details, but big pictures, you would be very welcome to it because we need people with that skill, you know, understanding. What is the big picture here? What are we trying to do? And then we have a lot of people who know the details and they are very much needed.   00;08;33;25 - 00;08;56;28 But we don't have enough people who can see big pictures. And I have so far experience that women are actually quite good in that, you know, they are raising families with a lot of children and husband and everything. And so many things are happening. And you still have to hold that project going on. So the family still has to be doing well and everything should be fine.   00;08;57;04 - 00;09;22;01 So a lot of these women are very good with big pictures and coordinating things. And I think that is the skill set that is definitely needed on it. So if you think you are not a developer, it does not mean that you are not welcome to it. There are other positions as well. A lot of that. I suppose that leads me on to the female voice in a I.   00;09;22;03 - 00;09;50;04 Obviously we think it's important to encourage girls to move into technology and learn more about us. And how important do you think it is to have a female voice, so to speak, in AI in the future? So, you know, everybody is the same and everybody thinks the same. We will have no improvements in anywhere, so we should have different kind of people who are thinking differently and seeing different things so that we can improve whatever the area is.   00;09;50;04 - 00;10;18;00 And the same goes with AI and data and all this kind of things. So we should have different people who see things differently and that's why we should have a lot of different voices to to make the field better. But also, if I think about ladies in general, I think the problem is that we are we have to be 120% sure we know something before we are ready to do it.   00;10;18;03 - 00;10;38;14 While as men, if they know about 50% of the stuff, they said, yeah, I'm very good in that. I can do that and they can, but we could also do the same. But we are just too demanding to ourselves, so we we expect too much from ourselves and that is a problem. We should get rid of that and be brave and trust ourselves.   00;10;38;17 - 00;11;02;16 That would help a lot. So we do have skills, but we are just too shy to show them. And this other question then, in relation to data, why is it important for faculty to teach their students about data? And how does having data these skills prepare students for future jobs? First of all, data, as I said, is the key to everything.   00;11;02;19 - 00;11;33;20 But secondly, if you think about database designing, that kind of teaches you how to think logically. So you have defined entities, how the entities are related to each other, all this kind of thing. So kind of teaches theological thinking and the same skill you need in many other areas as well. So if you learn logical thinking with data, whatever the business is that you will be working on later, this skill is definitely a good bonus for whatever.   00;11;33;22 - 00;12;03;20 So yeah, knowing databases, knowing how to design databases, understand ending what data is about is the key to many, many positions. Well, absolutely. Of course, for that good quality data as well. So if you understand data, you will have good quality data. But yes, the logical thinking is number one. Perhaps. One final question then. If you could give one piece of advice to faculty or students, what would that be?   00;12;03;22 - 00;12;27;25 What I learned when I was at the university as a very young student, I was often told that you probably don't understand this. How would they know what I understand it, what I don't understand? So my advice is that you know yourself and trust yourself and don't let the others tell you what you can or what you cannot do because it's your life.   00;12;27;28 - 00;12;54;07 So you should be the one who is in charge of your life. And don't let anybody else to diminish your your you as a person or you as a student or a teacher as well. So definitely, you know what you can you also know what you can't. But that's something that you could be improving so that you would you would know more and you would be able to do more.   00;12;54;09 - 00;13;15;19 So instead of just seeing the bad things like I am not very good in math or I'm not very good in English or I'm not very good, you'll say that, say what you are good at, and then those that you are not so good at improve those skills and you will be much more good in everything eventually. Excellent.   00;13;15;19 - 00;13;40;21 That's fantastic advice for students and faculty. I may just ask Rania if she would like to ask a final question to or against Halley. My final question that's actually coming from my personal background and from my personal point of view, as well as from a leading I.T, as well as all of us here. But my background is in business, international management and psychology.   00;13;40;23 - 00;14;06;13 I mean this topic that you actually touched upon previously as well, but do you have any advice for the ladies that are studying this kind of non STEM related topics and still have the aspiration to maybe peeking into the field or of technology? What would be the first step? Well, I think now is a lot easier than it was before because we have lot of all kind of certification courses and MOOC and all this kind of thing.   00;14;06;13 - 00;14;35;28 So you are able to study, even though you are not joining university or taking any particular courses. So you can you can either spend your own time or your company's time learning about new things like at the moment, narrative. AI is quite an interesting topic for many of us. A AI in general is quite interesting, so you can just take some courses and get the understanding of what what are people talking about may be fundamental.   00;14;35;28 - 00;14;54;19 Also something like that. It doesn't have to be deep technical, but it can be something that gives you the understanding what are they talking about? So that kind of gives you the feeling that you understand what people are saying and you don't feel like you're left out because you are just like, this is a strange word. I have never heard about it.   00;14;54;19 - 00;15;20;02 So I will not listen. I'm just whatever. So it kind of includes you in the community. If you if you take those courses and and you understand what what or what are these people talking about? And as I said, this is not very difficult. So this is quite easy. It's just that I think we tend to make it look difficult because we use difficult words.   00;15;20;05 - 00;15;40;09 And my favorite we use several words for the same thing just to confuse you. So especially in AI, that is the thing. So the same thing is called with different names and then you feel like, I'm too confused. I don't understand anything, and you stop listening, so don't let that happen and don't let us do that either.   00;15;40;09 - 00;16;04;06 So if we are talking nonsense and if we are trying to make it look complicated, just say that. Can you say that in simple words and don't make it too complicated? Well, thank you so much, Shelly. That's very encouraging. I think you've made us all think it's within our reach to enjoy and understand technology, the importance of diversity and the importance of being yourself.   00;16;04;13 - 00;16;29;06 Well, thank you so much, Heli, and thank you on you as well for joining us. And your contribution is a very broad question. And thank you for sharing your knowledge about data. It what's coming in relation to AI and the slack that we should all be open to it and experiment and explore. Thank you. Also listening and I hope you join us for an exit search that wraps up this episode.   00;16;29;13 - 00;16;34;11 Thanks for listening and stay tuned for the next Oracle Academy Tech chat podcast.  

In this episode host Orlaith Lawton speaks with Oracle Cloud Engineering expert Alex Negu about AI and Prompt Engineering.   ---------------------------------------------------------   Episode Transcript:   00;00;00;00 - 00;00;35;19 Welcome to the Oracle Academy Tech Chat. This podcast provides educators and students in-depth discussions with thought leaders around computer science, cloud technologies and software design to help students on their journey to becoming industry ready technology leaders. Of the Future. Let's get started. Hello and welcome to the Oracle Academy Tech Chat, where we discuss how Oracle Academy prepares the next generation's workforce.   00;00;35;21 - 00;01;13;29 I'm your host, Orlaith Lawton. And today we'll be talking about AI, a prompt engineering in the cloud. In this episode, I'm joined by my guest, Alex Nagel, an Oracle expert in cloud engineering. Alex is a senior cloud engineering manager at Oracle. He's responsible for overseeing projects in Central and Eastern Europe. Since joining Oracle, Alex and his team have tackled some of the most challenging cloud projects helping customers leverage the innovative services that Oracle offers from start-ups to large enterprises and even the public sector.   00;01;14;01 - 00;01;43;04 Alex has led over 100 cloud projects. Recently, he has focused on ground breaking achievements in artificial intelligence with expertise in areas ranging from data management to large language models. Alex is dedicated to facilitating A.I. adoption across diverse industries. To start off, can you give me a little bit about your background, Alex, and what you do at Oracle? Absolutely.   00;01;43;11 - 00;02;03;24 My main job as a cloud engineer is to help our customers get the most out of their cloud services.  Basically, we work very closely with them, advising on everything from the design of the systems to making sure everything runs smoothly. I lead an awesome team, by the way, which means I get to learn from each of them and from different projects being involved in across central and eastern Europe.   00;02;03;27 - 00;02;21;25 What's really cool about this role is that no two days are the same. We work with companies from all sorts of industries and each one comes with its own unique challenges. This means we spend a lot of time researching and finding the best solutions. It's a great way to keep learning and growing. Probably that's my favorite part of the job.   00;02;22;01 - 00;02;42;19 Being involved in these projects, just to give you some examples, has given me insight into how financial system works, how airlines operate, how farmers take care of their crops, and how people in end use are tackling the most important challenges the one that seems to be unthinkable like plastic pollution in the Mediterranean Sea. You know, that's something really inspiring.   00;02;42;21 - 00;03;00;26 Something I always like to highlight is the bigger picture when you're thinking about cloud and technology in general. Remember that those are just tools to solve the problems. You start with a challenge and then figure out what pieces you need to solve it. It literally is like we are playing with puzzles; we're trying to solve riddles every day.   00;03;00;28 - 00;03;22;00 I think I have one of the coolest jobs in the world. You know, our role getting back to the initial question is to make sure we are solving our customer issues in the best and most optimal way, whatever that means. Yeah. We get to work with all kinds of exciting stuff, things like local development, blockchain automation across the stack, and of course artificial intelligence.   00;03;22;00 - 00;03;46;27 But at the end of the day, it's all about solving real world problems. Wow, that's a huge amount of information. It sounds extremely interesting and exciting, but great that you're sharing that with us. You mentioned A.I. Alex, and it's hard not to notice all the buzz about it in recent years. Can you share maybe your thoughts on where A.I. fits into the bigger picture?   00;03;47;00 - 00;04;08;20 AI has indeed been a huge topic lately, especially with the rise of consumer-friendly tools like J.G. Beattie. But really, it's important to separate the hype from reality. Right. I mean, it’s everywhere, but I think we need to get back to the basics. First off, we need to understand what AI is. At its core is about making predictions.   00;04;08;21 - 00;04;32;00 Yes, it's incredibly complex, but ultimately, it's still about making predictions. There's a lot of buzz around AA right now, and some people think we'll soon have artificial general intelligence, the kind that can perform cognitive tasks better than humans. However, I'm talking from my own experience. The closer you look, the more you realize that's not quite the case. We are not there yet.   00;04;32;02 - 00;04;56;07 He's been around for decades. It's not something new. What's new is the breakthrough ingenuity VR, which is just one part of a much larger and broader field. We've been using it for things like computer vision, gesture recognition and predictive maintenance for a while now. This use case has been across various industries, right? So it's not specific to computer science or something very linked with the tech only.   00;04;56;10 - 00;05;19;13 The big shift recently is how accessible it has become for everyday consumers, just like myself or yourself, when we are not working here at Oracle, Tools like Jeep DS Make it easy for anyone to use AI, and because these tools mimic human like intelligence, they've seen a huge surge in adoption. As for where AI fits in the bigger picture, I believe it will blend seamlessly into our daily lives and activities.   00;05;19;18 - 00;05;44;18 So without significant new breakthrough breakthroughs, I don't see AI replacing humans. Instead, it will augment what we do. Making books easier and enhancing productivity over time will become a commodity, something we take for granted, just like many technologies before trade. Don't get me wrong, AA holds immense potential for addressing social issues such as poverty, inequality and access to education.   00;05;44;20 - 00;06;09;19 Areas where humanity hasn't done enough so far. But for individuals, it can boost productivity and simplify our lives. That's why I think it's crucial for everyone, especially students, considering the toxic context in which we are meeting to keep an eye on their development, Stay updated with the latest advancements. Wow. That's really interesting. And tell me, Alex, you know, as a student, listen to this.   00;06;09;21 - 00;06;33;15 You're probably thinking, do you need a computer science or a master's degree perhaps, to get started with a I? No, no, I don't think You don't. I don't think you need it. But look, it might depend. Yeah. It's important to distinguish how each of us interact with there. How do we position ourselves into the context? For instance, you use the internet without needing to be a network engineer.   00;06;33;20 - 00;06;53;17 Right. Similarly, you can take advantage of artificial intelligence without having to be a data scientist or researcher or an engineer. Eight comes in many forms. It could be a featured in your favorite phone app. We all see that every day, right? With the new updates being rolled out. Or it can be a chat tool that you can use for various tasks.   00;06;53;19 - 00;07;18;05 Let's talk about the latter, since it's probably one of the most popular examples that everyone is looking into. More recently, tragedy, for instance, I'm sure everyone has heard about by now. It really has been a game changer over the past few years. It offers a chat interface powered by a highly capable large language model. You can use it for searching information, creative writing, proofreading, brainstorming, problem solving, and so much more.   00;07;18;08 - 00;07;46;06 The beauty of it is that you interact with it through natural language, making it the bot intuitive and accessible. And with the addition of new multimodal capabilities, like how the new models are being released, you can now interact using not only language but voice or images as well. Expanding the range of possible use cases exponentially. Looking ahead, there will be people driving innovation and those will be those who will utilize it.   00;07;46;09 - 00;08;13;15 I'm going back to your question. No, you don't need to be a specialist to achieve great things. Be there. You just need to learn how to use it effectively. Excellent. Okay. And you mentioned the large language models. So let's imagine it's my day one when it comes to using large language models or EVs. What should be the starting point in learning how to use these elms before you dive into using a lens or a model?   00;08;13;17 - 00;08;34;18 Right. It's important to understand how they work, what they're good at, and especially their limitations. You don't start by the car without knowing where the steering wheel is and how to press the brake right. So knowing the basics will help clear up many questions you might have later. Keep in mind, these models might not have access to specific info you're looking for.   00;08;34;24 - 00;08;52;08 They can also get the things wrong or make stuff up. You know what is called hallucination? So easy to spot. They create answers from the ones which are flawed. You don't have to be a pro, but you should know the basics. I mean, you should have a basic understanding after you get the hang of how this model works.   00;08;52;10 - 00;09;19;07 You can focus on prompt engineering. So what is a prompt? It's basically the instruction you give to the AA, the message you're sending. The output is based on what you're told, right? To get the best results, you need to know what was and how to ask it. Prompt engineering is all about writing clear and precise instructions to look closer to a good prompt usually has three parts the context action and the guidelines.   00;09;19;14 - 00;09;41;23 So context. This is if you want the big don't know the background info that the model needs to answer your question. For example, if you're asking questions about yourself or your family, the model needs that info to respond accurately. Without it, the model might give a wrong answer because it was not trained on personal data, so it doesn't know things about the question you are asking.   00;09;41;26 - 00;10;00;03 Then moving from context, you have the action. This is what you want the model to do. Are you asking me to write the poem? Give suggestions? I don’t know. Brainstorm some ideas. You need to be very clear and create about what you are asking for. This is what the action and the instruction you are passing is all about and the guidelines.   00;10;00;06 - 00;10;22;27 These are all the extra details like how you want to answer to how the answers should be formatted, the tone and the role they should play. Right. These are small details, but it makes a huge difference when it comes to the total response you are going to get. So that's the basic idea. Some tasks, for example, might be so complex that you need to break them down into smaller steps.   00;10;22;29 - 00;10;41;20 Also, you might need to give examples or explain exactly to the logic which model what you want. There are plenty of things you can take and this is a field, you know, it's under severe research. You need to keep an eye on what they are. In this one, it's more on what kind of improvement you get in that area.   00;10;41;23 - 00;11;03;08 Trust me, this is a really exciting field and once you start to want, we will not get bored. It sounds really exciting. It's really interesting, actually, the terms that you're using, the hallucination, for example, that's an interesting concept that I hadn't heard of before, but maybe we might chat about that a little bit later. But getting back to the models, which is the best model that I should be using.   00;11;03;10 - 00;11;27;14 Yeah, that's another great question, but it's not as straightforward, straightforward as it might seem. Let me ask the question in response. Right. What is the best sports team in the world? Right. I hope you get my point. There isn't a one size fits all answer here. The best model depends on the specific task we have in mind. Models may share underlying principles, but they differ in terms of the dataset.   00;11;27;14 - 00;11;45;10 They were trained on the size, the intended purpose cause speeds and many other things. The largest model, again, to take a look at an example, the largest model and the most capable one in the absence of the internet is useless, isn't it, since it cannot run on your phone. You have a large model, but you cannot access it.   00;11;45;15 - 00;12;04;14 But the smaller model might work even when disconnected. So it can run on your phone. It's going to do a much better job since it's accessible and you have it there, right? There are plenty of benchmarks and methodologies and discussions around this topic how to assess the model performance. But it's important to approach them with some skepticism and rely on your own experience and judgment.   00;12;04;15 - 00;12;28;12 That's the only advice I can I can I can give here. For instance, some models excel at general knowledge, while others might be better at reasoning, content retrieval or specific niche tasks. My advice to everyone is to dive in and experiment is the most intensive research the thing right now, but nobody holds all the answers since it's relatively easy to access various models.   00;12;28;19 - 00;12;49;12 You can go and try out a few of them. Each model has its own quirks and strengths, so hands on experience will be your best. Gotcha. Okay, so experiment and stay curious. Curious with it. Can I throw in an extra little question? I just had to see it. And would you mind maybe just describing that a little bit more detail?   00;12;49;14 - 00;13;14;09 Maybe Give us an example what an observation is, because that sounds quite interesting. I haven't heard about that large language model thread. Those are programs in the end, right. And running on a computer like actually it's a very large cluster of computers that are working together to do intensive mathematical calculations. But those computers have a task and the task is to provide an answer, and they will provide that answer even if the answer is not accurate or not.   00;13;14;09 - 00;13;37;25 Right. So let's imagine you're asking a question that the large English model doesn't have. How I mean, it was never trained on, right? So you're asking a question about something that's something that has happened after the date at which the model was trained. Yeah. So the model was trained last week. And you're asking a question that about something that happened this week.   00;13;37;28 - 00;14;00;06 Okay. So you will notice that most likely, despite the fact that doesn't have the fact and it was never trained on such a piece of information, the model will try to give you an answer. Yeah, or this is just a very basic example. Of course, there are these kind of guardrails. I mean, the producers of the English models are putting some guardrails and they're trying  to limit this kind of behavior.   00;14;00;08 - 00;14;21;04 But this is an example of hallucination, right? So, yes, you can you can rely on the results and the feedback provided by the large language model, but always take it with a grain of salt. And I think it's you know, it's good to understand where the answer is coming from. So go back at the sources, then double check that fact, check what the model is providing.   00;14;21;07 - 00;14;42;19 Otherwise, there might be cases where hallucinations are going to be so convincing that you take it for granted. And it's not the path you want to take. That's really, really interesting. Okay. Well, then one final question. If you could give one piece of advice to faculty or to students, what would that be? that's that's easy. Keep learning.   00;14;42;22 - 00;15;03;29 Whether it's with or without the. So choose your own path, because there are many ways to be part of this revolution. You cannot you know, you cannot avoid it. You will not be left out. So not everyone needs to be an engineer, right? Find a professional field that you genuinely enjoy and don't make decisions solely based on market trends or hype.   00;15;03;29 - 00;15;23;06 This year is in five years. Might be something else will likely touch every corner of every industry, but it won't take away, you know, the real things, the joy and the satisfaction of doing what you love the most. So the last thing I would like to say on the topic, and that's also because it's my mantra as well, my mantra as well.   00;15;23;08 - 00;15;47;03 Stay curious. And that's the best way to stay ahead in any field. That's wonderful. And thank you so much. Just to summarize maybe a few points of what you're saying, stay curious, which is so important. I will definitely become part of everyday life and take over money corners of every industry, but find something that you enjoy. I think that's great advice to all of our students.   00;15;47;06 - 00;16;06;08 And in a way, that's how you can stay curious if you keep going with what you enjoy as well. So once again, Alex, I'd just like to say thank you so much for helping us in our academy. Spreads this information to our faculty and students. I know you've done so many times for us in the local office in Romania.   00;16;06;09 - 00;16;25;08 We much appreciate that. So it's great that we now have a global audience to share your expertise with. So thank you so much, Alex. Thank you. That wraps up this episode. Thanks for listening. And stay tuned for the next Oracle Academy Tech Chat podcast.

In this episode host Oracle Academy manager Tyra Peirce speaks with Mary Olson Industry Executive Director, Education at Oracle. Tyra and Mary speak about the ethics of AI in education and give practical advice on how to best use the technology while avoiding common pitfalls.   --------------------------------------------------------   Episode Transcript:   00;00;00;00 - 00;00;35;01 Welcome to the Oracle Academy Tech Chat. This podcast provides educators and students in-depth discussions with thought leaders around computer science, cloud technologies and software design to help students on their journey to becoming industry ready technology leaders. Of the Future. Let's get started. Welcome to Oracle Academy TED Chat, where we discuss how Oracle Academy helps prepare our next generation's workforce.   00;00;35;03 - 00;01;02;08 I'm your host, Tyra Pierce. In this episode, I'm joined by Mary Olson, executive Director, education at Oracle. Mary and I speak about the ethics of AI in education across multiple fronts administrative, academic and research. A little bit about my guest. For over 30 years, Mary has been using the latest technology to drive innovation and the education system. Welcome, Mary.   00;01;02;11 - 00;01;26;07 thanks, Tyra. I'm really happy to be here. So to start off, can you give me a little bit about your background at Oracle? Sure. I can tell you a little bit about that. I actually have a fairly short tenure at Oracle. I was recruited about a little over three years ago to lead the voice of the customer strategy for Oracle from A higher education perspective.   00;01;26;09 - 00;01;49;01 And I, I feel like I'm returning to my roots because I spent about 30 years at IBM before coming to Oracle. And my favorite job there was leading our education for North America. So I feel like I'm back home. I know today you're talking about A.I., and so let's kind of get a little bit more into AI. AI's constantly changing.   00;01;49;02 - 00;02;12;24 What are some of the ways you've seen AI used in education? well, you know, it is constantly changing and  it's kind of funny because people think about it. You hear about it now a lot and they think it's new. Well, it's not new. It's been around for a really, really long time that the use cases are expanding and they're coming out in exciting new ways.   00;02;12;27 - 00;02;40;12 So when I think about how higher education and education in general is using AI, they tend to fall into some buckets. One of the buckets is streamlining the administrative processes and basically the running of the institution because face it, a university era or a school district is a business. They have to hire people, pay people, report their finances, do all kinds of reporting.   00;02;40;12 - 00;03;18;05 So there are a number of use cases around changing the way the institution is run. And that's that's probably the most significant use cases right now. They're also moving into research. So we see a lot of cases where researchers are really accelerating their discoveries wildfire research, cancer research, drug discovery, everything by using the generative and the analytical tools, machine learning tools that come with AI.   00;03;18;08 - 00;03;42;02 And so that's a really growing area. Another area that's kind of unique and that I'm finding more attention to these days is in providing students with services. So whether it's trying to help them with career guidance, what do they want to do after they graduate? Maybe help them write their resumes and polish those up? We're seeing a lot of applications there.   00;03;42;04 - 00;04;14;03 Another area that I think is kind of fun is helping to make it easier to actually teach. So we're developing use cases where they're a teaching assistant or a tutor that can help the professor actually answer questions for students. And there's a lot of applicability there. And probably I think one of the most surprising is it was two weeks ago I was reading in the San Francisco Chronicle and there was an article on how A.I. is disrupting the college admissions process.   00;04;14;06 - 00;04;37;11 And there's you know, it's actually kind of a big business to for parents often paying to help their students get into the right colleges with the college application process. And there are a number of startups out there that are saying, hey, don't pay this company a couple thousand dollars to get your students application filled out. Use our generative AI tools for free.   00;04;37;13 - 00;05;10;03 And when I looked at that article, I thought, you know, some people are saying you really shouldn't be doing that. But the California University of California has a statement of application integrity when you apply. And they're now actually saying that it is okay to use generative AI in your application process, provided it's used responsibly and ethically. Use it for content editing, for readability to make it, use it as a tool like it was designed to.   00;05;10;05 - 00;05;38;16 But they draw the line at actually plagiarism and just using it to write the product. So they say if they come back and they find out that you just used it to write the product, the application, then they will take action on that. That is so interesting for me. It's like when and I wonder, as I'm sure as we're getting out there and further, there are going to be ways to actually measure the tools in terms of like, are you creating a product or are you editing and, and things along those lines?   00;05;38;16 - 00;06;01;16 I think that that is just as you were telling me this, I was like, that is really fascinating that they're okay with it and they are disrupting that industry because what's the line of written by the code or written by you? And I'm glad that they're able to kind of to kind of take a look at that, which leads me into my next question.   00;06;01;18 - 00;06;26;11 What are your thoughts on faculty using AI in the classroom for teaching and learning? Well, I have some pretty strong opinions on that. So what I really think is that I go back to when calculators first came out and the faculty, a lot of people, a lot of teachers did not want their students using calculators because they thought they wouldn't learn the concepts of math behind that.   00;06;26;14 - 00;06;46;03 And so they were banned in a number of classrooms. But then, you know, the more they started to use it, the more they started to innovate with it. They learned how they could use the tool effectively. They could still teach the math concepts, but they could use the calculator to really accelerate the students learning and take some of the drudgery out of it.   00;06;46;05 - 00;07;09;11 I think we're going to see I used the same way. And to do that, though, I think if you're a teacher, what you need to do is you really need to understand how A.I. affects the subject you're teaching. So, for example, if you are teaching Python programing, you know you're in computer science, you're teaching Python. How can I help with that?   00;07;09;12 - 00;07;37;05 Well, I could just plain flat write the code, which happens in a lot of cases, or it can help maybe with debugging the code. And so if I were teaching Python, what I would do is I would have my students write their code, debug it, experienced the pain and agony of debugging it, and then run it through the generative tool to bring the original set of code through it to see how it debugs it and how much more effective that is.   00;07;37;08 - 00;07;58;11 And I would do that and make sure that I also included some failures. So I think it's important for them to know that just because generative AI may be writes the Python code, it doesn't mean it's perfect. You are still responsible, you still have to check it. And so I would be sure that there are some failures and ways that they can spot that.   00;07;58;13 - 00;08;28;24 And to do that, you know, just my advice to to instructors is experiment. Experiment with your own use cases. Have a couple of thoughts. I think of like I think of like my background is in is in writing and I think of, you know, a lot of times today especially I had a friend a few years ago that was an English professor at a community college, and she would talk about getting papers in where people are writing with emojis or writing with like text slang.   00;08;28;24 - 00;08;50;16 And so I think that this will help immensely. So, I mean, if you're not going in and plagiarizing, you're actually giving input there to see how writing should be done appropriately as opposed to not giving out what the saying L.O.L or TGIF or what have you. I think that that will help so they can kind of see what a structure supposed to look like.   00;08;50;19 - 00;09;14;24 The other thing that I think about with what you just mentioned is when I'm writing a Python code or a Java code or a database code, you're going to be if the AI is programed correctly, the app is learning correctly, you're going to avoid some of the pitfalls of security. Like I always think of sql injectors. I remember many years ago talking to some Oracle database expert about SQL injectors and learning how to code more securely.   00;09;14;26 - 00;09;36;14 And I think that this will kind of alleviate some of those and address those concerns as you're writing that code that it's automatically going to be coding more securely. Yes, it can definitely do that. And when you were talking about that, that also reminds me it can either of a professor who was telling me that he did have his student run the Python code through.   00;09;36;16 - 00;10;01;01 And what happened is he saw there's this moment where she wrote the code. She you know, she did that, but she didn't really understand it. And when it came out through the AI engine optimization and stuff, she said, now I get what we're trying to do. So it's a different way to tell. And just like your example of writing, you see good examples.   00;10;01;01 - 00;10;18;17 And so it's going to be your, your, it's going to elevate your own work. And it'll be interesting to see in terms of a database like if they're using inroads for data design before they're actually writing the sequel, that goes with it. So you have to understand the structure of it or you're not going to go you're not going to know what an idea is.   00;10;18;17 - 00;10;39;04 Like, you're not going to know how to name your columns more, to name your fields or what have you, without actually understanding the structure of beneath it. I think that that is where it is going to help. So it's not going to get rid of people like in our professions, but it's more going to enhance it so we can actually think about that thought leadership and strategy pieces as well.   00;10;39;06 - 00;11;01;27 That's exactly correct. Yeah. And getting back to the math example, yeah, I remember when I was learning math and they made me show my work. Yeah. It was always so frustrating to me because frequently I could actually get the correct answer but not really understand the steps involved. And so it's the equivalent of showing your work. So this goes long into my next question.   00;11;01;29 - 00;11;23;22 If faculty are allowing students to use AI to write computer programs or papers, what are some of the pitfalls you foresee? So some of the pitfalls and you touched a little bit on it with potentially, you know, plagiarism there. It's  easy for a student to potentially fall into the trap of, hey, this looks pretty good. I'm going to going to use it.   00;11;23;25 - 00;11;45;18 And you want to make sure that that doesn't happen. There are a number of tools at Turnitin. One is one that's quite popular where you can run students papers through it to see if they've been, you know, created by generative AI or simply plagiarized, lifted off the Internet. You know, you can find that those tools aren't perfect, but they're getting better.   00;11;45;20 - 00;12;06;10 And I in fact, I was talking to a CIO at a university in Nebraska, and she mentioned that her daughter, when she was writing her college admissions essay, she ran it through the turn it in to see if it would look like it was plagiarized or something. And it came back and said it was even though it wasn't.   00;12;06;15 - 00;12;30;06 She wrote it herself, but it just looked too good. And so those tools aren't perfect. They have flaws in them, but those are ones that they can consider using to make sure that it's authentic. So on to my next question. What are some ways to ensure that students are still learning important skills instead of relying heavily on air to generate homework?   00;12;30;08 - 00;13;00;10 You know, so  if faculty are actually encouraging students to use AI to help them write a paper program or something like that, there are some things that they probably should avoid. And one of them is not understanding clearly how to use it. So I recommend that they put clear guardrails in place and guidelines and explanations as to what is an acceptable use of AI in their class and in the project and what isn't.   00;13;00;13 - 00;13;22;05 And I know that that kind of shifts over time, and it really is very, very dependent upon the subject. So, for example, if you're going to be teaching, you're in grade school and you're teaching spelling, yeah, the students actually have to learn to spell and they can't just use an AI tool to write the words and spell them all correctly.   00;13;22;05 - 00;13;41;08 That wouldn't work. But if you're teaching creative writing, it may be acceptable to go ahead and use the AI to get some ideas about how to write and what you want to write about, but just make sure that they understand they can what they can and can't use it for. I think that's probably the biggest pitfall to avoid.   00;13;41;11 - 00;14;08;02 What's super interesting is, is I received an email that I could tell was written by generative AI, and it was because it was really clean. It didn't use the colloquialisms a normal writer would use, but it was surface level and did not have a deep enough understanding of the topic at hand. And so I went, well, this is written by the generative AI.   00;14;08;04 - 00;14;32;25 And I know that like, sometimes like I'm a formal writer, but I know when I'm writing about a topic, I'm writing about a topic in a certain way that doesn't feel like lots of words are strung together that make some amount of sense, but not a ton of sense. So I think that that's really important, like you said, of being the expert in a field, you're going to understand the topic a little bit better and, you know, generative.   00;14;32;28 - 00;15;02;22 I can be used to fix your grammar and make your sentences be a little bit more clean as opposed to someone who's using it to generate a full document that it's and they don't know what kind of prompts or endpoints to give to the A, I do actually help it write something that's going to be effective. To your point on that one, the depth of the work that they turn in will  help clarify whether or not they actually understand the topic and that they can apply it.   00;15;02;26 - 00;15;25;25 So that's  another good tip that I'd like to leave is make sure that they're applying that, applying what they're learning in new ways, not just to the same examples over and over. So then you can really tell they've understood the concept behind it. So one final question. If you could give advice to faculty or students, what would it be?   00;15;25;27 - 00;15;59;26 So my advice actually is to be welcoming, embrace what I can do as a tool in your in your classroom, but make sure you do so by keeping a critical eye on the potential exposures. There's bias in a lot of AI models, and you need to make sure that you recognize that bias and deal with it. Also, don't be like starstruck by, you know, this is the latest and greatest thing out there to try to avoid that.   00;15;59;26 - 00;16;30;27 The glamor of a new cool tool, but also remember that it is a tool and it's going to take practice to master it. So make sure that you start with yourself. Start by using the technologies, become comfortable with them, apply them in your discipline, and really embrace the opportunities that are out there. I think that's really good advice to practice with the tools and to make sure that you're using them correctly.   00;16;31;01 - 00;16;52;10 I think that's a really, really good piece of advice, especially for going to this new A.I. led and generated world in a lot of ways. So a big thanks to Mary for joining me and talking about A.I. and how to use it in education. If you're interested in learning more about Oracle Academy, visit Academy dot, Oracle dot com and subscribe to our podcast.   00;16;52;11 - 00;17;05;19 Thanks for listening. That wraps up this episode. Thanks for listening and stay tuned for the next Oracle Academy Tech Chat podcast.

In this episode, Oracle Academy Senior Director EMEA, Jane Richardson speaks with Valerie Hayotte Director EMEA Skills Development, CSS OU Cloud Services on industry certifications, and how students who get industry certifications will have an advantage in the job market.   -------------------------------------------------------   Episode Transcript:   00;00;09;03 - 00;00;46;04 Welcome to the Oracle Academy Tech Chat. This podcast provides educators and students in-depth discussions with thought leaders around computer science, cloud technologies and software design to help students on their journey to becoming industry ready technology leaders. Of the Future. Let's get started. Hello and welcome to Oracle Academy Tech Chat, where today we will discuss how Oracle University supports students to prepare to be part of the next Generations workforce by providing access to Oracle professional certification skills that are in high demand.   00;00;46;18 - 00;01;24;08 I'm your host, Jane Richardson, senior director for Oracle Academy in EMEA. I'm delighted to be speaking to Valerie Hayat, the director of Global Skills Program of Oracle University in India, to talk about the importance of professional certification. Many governments are looking to develop their digital skills for their citizens and for their own employees, and the most recent reports have highlight that the fastest growing roles relative to their size today are driven by technology, digitalization and sustainability.   00;01;24;29 - 00;01;50;16 The majority of the fastest growing rules are technology related rules, with AI and machine learning specialists topping the list of fast growing jobs. So I think we could see that this implies, as people need to acquire skills, reskill or upskill on these technologies to develop their careers for now and in the future. So, Valerie, how do you think this can be achieved and achieved very quickly?   00;01;50;25 - 00;02;16;02 Jane, I would say that there is a digital boom. Digital technologies are undoubtedly a sector with a bright future. There is no shortage of data to confirm that digital technology and I.T. professions all sectors and jobs of the future. To me, there is no shortcut to acquire new skills. Obviously, everything is about learning and learning the right way.   00;02;16;27 - 00;02;53;28 I see two different angles. So Oracle Academy and Oracle University all together offer a lifelong learning journey. So to me, the first anchor, they are the students, people in education. This is where Oracle Academy is key. You work with institution and educator and partners across the globe to help millions of students become technology innovators and leaders. You provide educational institutions with the resources they need to help educators develop computing knowledge and skills aligned to industry standards.   00;02;54;16 - 00;03;27;15 You help them keep up with ever changing technologies to help prepare students for the future. And you do provide access to a wide range of teaching and educational resources. That includes curriculum, classroom learning, resources, cloud technology, practice, environment and much more. The second angle, they are the working professionals and also the students entering the workforce. This is where Oracle University focuses on Oracle University as a powerful digital learning platform.   00;03;27;24 - 00;04;03;02 And as you know, it is called My learn. My Learn and is available 24 by 765 days a year so people can learn at their own pace. Milo covers all the products and technologies of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, Cloud Applications Database, Java Industry Solutions, business process and so on. My Learn provides thousands of hours of videos, very well organized and structured courses with Enzo, lab practice environment demonstrations and more.   00;04;04;04 - 00;04;38;22 My LEARN is a customizable, personalized training portal that then season speeds the learning on Oracle Cloud. Learners can find their training fast, get a course recommendation that best matched the learning goals and they can easily track their progress. Whether you're a beginner or another one and you will find what you are looking for on My learn, starting with the Learning Expo program as an example, which provides basic knowledge of some 60 Oracle solutions that include Java.   00;04;38;22 - 00;05;40;07 My sequel database Cloud Infrastructure, or Apex, as well as HCM supply chain, among others. Through the defense training courses that will enable learners to acquire a professional certification that is recognized on the market, Oracle Fusion also notification exams are included loaded in the digital learning bus, and we have also introduced a grade delta certification exams that are reducing the preparation time and making it easier to maintain a cloud application or SAS certification in addition to the opportunity to gain a professional recertification, learners will also be able to earn badges that indicate their job readiness for specialized job roles, helping potential employers more easily identify candidates and supporting job placements opportunities.   00;05;41;06 - 00;06;13;02 Mylan and the learning base are continuously updated with new content. Typically, we recently introduced a new course on OCI, a foundations in less than two months. Over 10,000 people pass their certification on OCI. That is a great achievement. The fact that people talk to others is also a key element in the learning cycle. It is important to connect with peers, experts, instructors.   00;06;13;16 - 00;06;49;29 That's why now my includes also a community where you can connect with a network of certified peers and Oracle experts or instructors. You can share your knowledge, ask questions, post a new conversations, and so on. Community members can collaborate and learn the ways experts be as practitioners. They can grow their skills, inspire innovation and celebrate their success. The community, believe me, is now made of more than 600,000 members and is growing every day.   00;06;50;12 - 00;07;37;25 That's absolutely fantastic and extremely impressive. And I think the collaboration between Oracle Academy and Oracle University really is showing that lifelong learning journey that you were talking about and giving all learners the opportunity to move to professional certification and give them the opportunity to look to these new jobs of the future. So looking at jobs of the future, do you see some risks for some job rules related to the new technologies, specifically AI and developers, for example, artificial intelligence can be presented or perceived as a threat, for example, for developers.   00;07;38;08 - 00;08;13;04 But on the contrary, AI seems to represent an excellent complement that enables developers to focus on the high value added tasks and work faster and more efficiently, even gaining in skills. A study from the official French Observatory for Digital Engineering Consulting related presentation said We called up also shows more than 24 thousands of developers recruited in France in one year by companies in the branch of digital sector.   00;08;13;10 - 00;08;50;04 And that number does not take into account all those sectors. Still, according to the study, the National trend in job offers for developers occupation is up by almost 19%, with over 54,000 job offers in one year. Recruitment opportunities are constantly increasing. Another study published by Dell and the Institute for the Future concludes that 85% of the job of 2040 don't yet exist.   00;08;50;24 - 00;09;25;01 It is certain to me that A.I. will transform existing professions, but will also create new ones. This is clear. Companies are looking for staff in age related professions. The sector is booming. To give just a few examples of jobs that the analysts that the scientist or integrator will integrate into existing products and services. So there are opportune cities for individuals to benefit from the boom in AI.   00;09;25;01 - 00;09;47;03 And that's good to know for students that are looking to develop their career path or those individuals outside of education who are maybe looking to decide on developing a different career to the one that they are in right now. So, you know, certification is something that we that is often raised not just by students but by all professionals.   00;09;48;05 - 00;10;16;07 So Valorie would you recommend learners to continue their learning journey by going towards achieving professional certification? Oh, yes. And it is something I would highly recommend I would recommend to students in education and soon to enter the workforce to move forward as soon as they can with a professional certification. In fact, I would recommend anyone to go for it.   00;10;16;08 - 00;10;57;15 For many reasons, as you perfectly pointed out earlier, employers are wanting to hire students with demonstrable industry, relevant career ready skills and industry certified. Asians are ready to become the next technology workforce. Let's have a look at Persons You 2023 report on the value of I.T. certification. This report shares the perspectives and experiences of more than 21,000 professionals in 176 countries well prepared for and earned I.T. certification amidst changing and challenging working conditions.   00;10;58;14 - 00;11;30;11 The results indicate that in a world where greater demand for tech skills meets a global talent shortage, I.T. certifications are the ideal means to address both. When this report is paired with our most recent Employer Focus report. It is clearer than ever that the value of I.T. certifications is understood and appreciated by both those pursuing them and the organizations that they work for.   00;11;31;06 - 00;12;10;23 We learned when it comes to certifications that candidate, professional and personal he was for investing. Inserts vacation Credentialed employees are more empowered and contribute greater value. So certification seekers are getting younger. Pandemic driven technology demands have become the norm. The benefits are for both candidates and employers. Some of the benefits emphasized also in the report for the candidates, are showing that 92% of the candidates feel more confident in their abilities.   00;12;11;10 - 00;12;56;09 84% are more determined to succeed professionally, and 37% received a salary increase. On the employer side, employers said that 81% of candidates produce higher quality work. 77% are more innovative and 72% are more efficient. Also, look at the Oracle universe based on certified Asian. You can see many, many other professional benefits of being Oracle certified. And you can hear from many Oracle certified professionals earning an Oracle certification enabled professionals to demonstrate in-demand skills.   00;12;56;21 - 00;13;36;02 Shorten project turnaround time, improve overall job performance and increase their earnings potential, all while boosting on the job confidence. And that's a very interesting point you made, Valorie, about younger and younger individuals pursuing certification. And it's certainly something that we see within the Oracle Academy where many students previously would not have considered certification while studying for their mean degree, but that is changing and it is becoming one of the key questions that we are asked when speaking to students and faculty.   00;13;36;08 - 00;14;04;20 So that all begins to make sense. So Valerie, this has been very, very interesting in terms of, you know, how Oracle University works, how the digital skills program is bringing much more learning to individuals all around the world. But I have one final question for you. If you could give one piece of advice to faculty or students, what would it be?   00;14;04;21 - 00;14;45;02 Never give up. Never be curious and be kind. You are your personal best asset and everything is in your hands. Never stop learning and investing in yourself. It will pay off. Seeing this will bring you continuous power, control and inspiration. Lastly, be kind as this may become contagious and inspiring. Thank you very early and yes, be kind and be the change maker for yourself, for encouraging words or for everyone listening to this today.   00;14;45;17 - 00;15;32;00 So thank you, Valorie, for your amazing insight. Since the world of learning through Oracle University, I think what I've taken from this is that we can see that learning is indeed a lifelong journey that does not stop when you leave formal education, but will continue across our careers. Indeed, the pace of change you alluded to in the technology sector must mean that as the sector needs to attract more people into its workforce, our citizens need to be able to access these learning opportunities, such as the great project with the government of Morocco, which you were talking about, and obviously what you're seeing about professional certification being key to demonstrate your skills to a potential employer.   00;15;32;25 - 00;16;02;23 So to learn more about Oracle Academy and our resources, please visit Oracle Academy dot com and subscribe to our podcast. Also, if you're interested in how you can follow a path to professional certification, please go to Oracle University dot com for more information. Thank you for listening. That wraps up this episode. Thanks for listening and stay tuned for the next Oracle Academy Tech Chat podcast.

Join NetSuite experts Chris Hering, Director of Global Channels, Suite Life, and Aaron Rosenberg, CEO, NetSuite Partner Oasis Solutions, for a fireside chat moderated by Oracle Academy North America Senior Director Denise Hobbs. In this chat, Denise talks with Chris and Aaron about some of the technology trends that are impacting ERP systems today and what students should learn of those key aspects as they prepare for professional career roles. In addition, they discuss best practice tactics on how Oracle NetSuite Partners can leverage their expertise and knowledge and get involved in helping the next generation learn the latest technology. -------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript: 00;00;09;03 - 00;00;34;08 Welcome to the Oracle Academy Tech Chat. This podcast provides educators and students in-depth discussions with thought leaders around computer science, cloud technologies and software design to help students on their journey to becoming industry ready technology leaders. Of the Future. Let's get started. Welcome to Oracle Academy Tech Chat, where we discuss how Oracle Academy helps prepare our next generation's workforce.   00;00;34;18 - 00;01;04;25 I'm your host, Tyra Crockett Peirce. In the second part of our special two part episode, Oracle Academy, North America senior director Denise Hobbs continues her conversation with Chris Herring, director of Global Channel SuiteLife, and Aaron Rosenberg, CEO of NetSuite partner Oasis Solutions. Denise continues the conversation about some of the technology trends that are impacting ERP systems today and what students should learn of these key aspects as they prepare for their professional careers.   00;01;05;17 - 00;01;35;16 I want to zero in on a little bit on the human interaction piece. Aaron, earlier you talked about Oasis and how Oasis Solutions is considered a corporate partner. Can you help me understand and help the audience understand the role that a net suite partner can potentially play with academic faculty as they then prepare students to step, you know, for careers as ERP implementers or users?   00;01;36;08 - 00;02;10;17 Absolutely. Yeah. So I'm very lucky to have met you about a year and a half ago, I think. Right. And we had this initial conversation around what Oracle Academy had and could provide help to the academic ecosystem, and the partners want to be a piece of that. We're hiring talented people, ambitious people that want to work in and around these systems because this is the way that you can interact with a ton of different types of businesses and get exposure to how these operational functions work and that really assist and get creative and innovatively solve problems with customers.   00;02;10;29 - 00;02;32;23 When Oasis looks at our clients, most of them again are in this small and mid-sized market. Our sweet spots probably around 100, 150 employees, 20 to $30 million in revenue, of which there are tens of thousands of businesses out there in the United States around that size. And a lot of them don't have dedicated net suite or system admin staff.   00;02;33;03 - 00;03;01;00 We're not working with one person whose sole responsibility it is to make this application run that business. Usually it's a controller or CFO, an accounting team or two and a half to three people that we're supporting on the initial implementation that they can go out to sales and operations and other functions to sell. As far as us trying to supplement our role with client, that is what we're intending to do and it is soup to nuts.   00;03;01;00 - 00;03;31;02 You want to get in there, help solve the business problem, show how the application provides value, so the licensing alongside our Oracle sales team and then help with everything from client management to additional integrated solutions that will enhance our experience. We facilitate user groups. So all of that is a part of the experience that Oasis provides. So do you have an example of how you might be able to share those experiences with the academic classroom?   00;03;31;10 - 00;04;09;13 Yeah, absolutely. The University of Louisville here in my hometown is where I also graduated from. I do not like to say I got to be a and NBS Communications major did not know about these systems, maybe could have taken a different career track. And I'm glad the one that I did take work out. But the Oracle curriculum and that's connected to the faculty that I was introduced to, was bring together the syllabus for their semester, and I was able to sit down with that professor and her team and our team and discussed what would we expect and how would we train a new hire?   00;04;09;23 - 00;04;35;05 What type of system exposure would help them get a leg up on an internship or a career? Paths with Oasis, which would translate to other partners like myself for next week? Direct's team as well. And we talked about how you could leverage test scenarios as well. So perhaps building this kind of seek and find for students to figure out a way of how one transaction on the ledger can tie back correctly.   00;04;35;13 - 00;05;01;24 And this goes back to kind of that trust but verify like so what what happened was in that transactional flow, where was the mistake made? Talked about this workflow engine and the power there that is actually called suite flow and net sweep. And that's a tool that is a no code tool, but it's a way to alter different types of workflows within the application by adding those different kinds of purchasing limits to the example that I already mentioned.   00;05;01;27 - 00;05;31;23 So how would you alter those business processes and help them kind of come out of there understanding not only how the application works, but trying to translate that to a real world scenario that happens a lot of times. Yeah. Yeah. I love  the opportunity to kind of bring in literally the,  real-world use case scenarios into the classroom for, you know, faculty to position within the right point of the curriculum and let students really dig in and roll up their sleeves and dig in to that.   00;05;32;04 - 00;05;55;04 Chris, do you have anything to add? . I think Aaron covered it so well. I mean, one of the things that I see coming from Oracle is just how exciting it is to see a company that's mid-sized come into the classroom where someone like Aaron, who's the CEO of the company, has to deal with a large vendor like that suite has to deal with customers as employees.   00;05;55;04 - 00;06;19;18 And it's a a mid-sized company culture where, I mean, I think back to my beginnings in my own career, where I jumped in and I was taking up the helpdesk phone and also helping on client deployments and also doing a little selling and that sort of multifaceted approach. I think it helped me sort of figure out what I enjoyed within the business and also where my comparative advantage was.   00;06;20;00 - 00;06;37;27 I think one of the things I've heard is that, you know, you can go charging passion, but you can also go towards what you're just naturally good at or naturally kind of cling to. And some folks find, you know, consulting more comfortable and more powerful. Some people like sales presales and people like management. Sometimes that evolves during your career.   00;06;38;12 - 00;07;14;03 So I think one of the things that I think is so exciting about the partner community is that there are many different flavors of partners. Some that are focused on particular industries like manufacturing and others that are focused on sectors like nonprofit, others that are focused on specific geographies. So across all of them, you have entrepreneurs, others that have either started the firm or joined the firm and have a lot of bags of tricks that they have to pull out to to deal with multiple vendors, you know, customers along their full lifecycle and have that personal relationship.   00;07;14;28 - 00;07;52;24 So having that brought into the classroom is extremely valuable. And one thing I've found is that while Aaron and you got coordinated to meet with University of Louisville, you know, that's not the only time that we've had this happen. We've had a number of partners that I know reached out to their either local university or university that they happened to have attended and had a relationship with that finance professional and were able to do a half hour guest lecturer as to what it is to be a finance professional in the world and how to solve problems in the in the field.   00;07;53;07 - 00;08;35;16 I tend to think that the fact that our partners are out there and ecosystem have that multifaceted aspect of their business and then are able to kind of have a close relationship with someone local is extremely powerful. I think just from a from a recruiting perspective, often universities have recruiting days and we've had a number of partners go ahead and on the request, or the suggestion of the finance professor, go ahead and attend the career day to maybe get a summer internship with a local partner where they can shadow the business and learn a lot more or get a full-time job for it for next week.   00;08;35;17 - 00;08;58;02 I mean, we look very fondly on individuals that have taken that internship and worked with or right out of the gate. I agree. I think the opportunity for students to meet face to face and, you know, kind of start the conversation about here's where I think my interest is. Here's what I think I'm good at. Have that collaborative conversation.   00;08;58;03 - 00;09;25;21 Maybe even have the opportunity to show, not just tell. I think those experiences are hugely you know, it's a great opportunity for students to have that. Again, if I pull on that thread a little bit more and Erin, I'm going to go to you on this question first. What do you think are the important skills that a recent graduate or a rising senior should think about to highlight to a future employer and why?   00;09;26;04 - 00;09;47;17 Yeah, So there's a lot of skills that are important and I think that go across horizontally all the different types of types of roles that Chris mentioned. Right. So we're focusing a lot of our conversation in a lot of the curriculum discussions around our professional services folks, the people that you saw, the customers, once they purchase the application.   00;09;47;17 - 00;10;10;08 But you know, we hire salespeople, we've got people working on client success. There's a technical aspect and whole different domain and track that somebody could get involved with, which be the outside of maybe the business school and work with computer science side. So there's so many different types of functional roles that you can play almost cross disciplinary.   00;10;10;18 - 00;10;45;23 Yeah, absolutely. But important skills are going to be across all of those is communication being problem solvers, humility, having high emotional intelligence is something that we look for across all of those different disciplines. So that can bring a stronger work ethic that will keep on plugging away right until they come to the right solution for their client. They're also like humble enough for us to ask for help drive down a rabbit hole that takes them the whole day to figure out something that they could have just knocked on their more experienced neighbor store to find out in the consulting professional services role.   00;10;45;26 - 00;11;18;15 Accounting knowledge is key though, so just having that basic understanding of accounting is something that is almost a nonstarter for somebody to come in to do a consulting role because that's really where these ERP systems begin and they can work out in so many different functions. Chris mentioned a really cool acquisition that we've made for a field service app, but that's still those transactions, those invoices that are happening in the field of fixing, in fact system in your or my house that has to tie back into a ledger somehow.   00;11;18;15 - 00;11;39;26 And understanding how that ties back into accounting is really important. Chris, I have anything to add on that. Well, I love I have love what Aaron described. I had some of the same notes for my own description of folks. I mean, I love the humility. I love the ability to continue to listen and have that empathy, that it is huge.   00;11;40;16 - 00;12;06;19 I tend to think like one of the things that I have noticed about successful folks is this notion of continuing to be a student of your job and not being too overconfident. One thing that sometimes I've seen is that because students today work so hard and they've learned so much, they can sometimes of sometimes get a little ahead of their skis and sort of be overconfident or come across overconfident.   00;12;07;21 - 00;12;28;15 And that can that can hurt them, honestly. You need to balance that a little. And as I like to say to some of the people that I mentor, it's better to be interested and then to be interesting. You should be interested in others and interested in how their business works and be a good listener and the foundational accounting.   00;12;28;15 - 00;12;57;02 I was talking to a colleague the other day. We're talking through one candidate and they didn't understand revenue recognition either, the billings versus revenue recognition as the obligations performed. And you can really lose a lot of credibility with a customer if you don't understand some of those foundational concepts. Yeah, I agree. I have to tell both of you my favorite part, I think, of what you both have described is really good listening.   00;12;57;18 - 00;13;22;10 I mean, I think that is so key and asking really good questions. I think that is also really, really significant. I think both of you touched on that. Absolutely. Good listening. Right. That's important at the accounting piece, too. It's important that most of our successful consultants, they didn't want to be accountants. There's a there's a role for an accountant that's critical to a company.   00;13;22;10 - 00;13;49;14 But a lot of those like month closed, month, close quarter closed, month closed. Much of those write those repetitive kind of situational things that they like about that job would be potentially mind numbing. Right. And then person ask for somebody that want to do consulting because they want to get involved in all these different types of customers and different problems, job support to get into a training, right?   00;13;49;15 - 00;14;11;06 So that's really an important distinction that we use some personnel to assessments to help to define how much of a stretch that's going to be for someone to kind of guide those students that either are self aware or faculty or trying to advise them on if that's the right kind of path or if a more traditional accounting tax audit type of path is good for them.   00;14;11;07 - 00;14;34;04 Yeah, that's great guidance. Thank you for that. One of the things that we always like to ask everybody who comes on to our fireside chat is if you had one piece of advice that you want to give to faculty and students, what would it be? And Erin, I'd like to go to you on this one first. So for students, I am a huge proponent of internships before graduation and getting a mix of experience.   00;14;34;15 - 00;14;52;13 Right. So small company, large company, different roles. If you can stretch yourself to try a sales role, make sure like a Christmas and Early are some of the best things you do in your career. Early, hopefully, is to learn what you don't want to do, which propels you to what you do want to do and where you can focus your energies later in life.   00;14;52;21 - 00;15;20;05 And then for faculty, I would reach out to whoever locally provides partnership and services like Oasis in your community. I guarantee you there's somebody that's probably not more than an hour away that does something similar to what we do right and try to build a relationship there that will help you enhance, hopefully, the information and ability for your students to then propel them into future endeavors.   00;15;20;14 - 00;15;42;06 Chris, what are your thoughts on the I'm a student side. I think presentation and ability to explain a problem in different ways is something that I think a lot of students struggle with. And what I mean by that is there's so many different ways that people learn today, whether it be visual listening, people come to different problems or different perspectives.   00;15;43;03 - 00;16;10;23 So if students can practice the notion of how to convey a business idea, how to convey a risk and how to have a confidence, but also a an openness to being criticized for openness to being questioned, that isn't isn't off putting. So you can go ahead and present an idea, show that you're confident in the idea, but also be open to discussion and open to constructive criticism.   00;16;10;23 - 00;16;31;21 I tend to think that that's such a huge skill to be able to articulate a problem. I completely agree with Erin on the internship as well, but I've just noticed on the communication side that it really separates a student in my view, as to how they can contribute to the business, that they're able to articulate their ideas clearly succinctly.   00;16;32;14 - 00;17;00;17 Now I'm on the faculty side. I mean, I tend to think and again, it's been a while since I've been in the students shoes, but I just always loved having practitioners in the classroom telling me how an academic concept can be applied to the real world and sometimes have those ideas, you know, succeed or fail in terms of a small entrepreneur, you know, blowing the doors off the businesses and growing, I just find that very exciting.   00;17;00;24 - 00;17;30;20 And as a as a student, I would think that the students would be really interested in seeing how those businesses react and perform. And that's what is really trying to, you know, grease the skids to allow those introductions and facilitate those introductions so that faculty can be supported from a technology perspective. Obviously we have a lot of training and learning, but also from a relationship perspective, just bringing that content alive in use cases.   00;17;30;20 - 00;17;49;29 Case studies is super interesting. We've got great customers, you know, working with Spotify with super, super fun. That's one that I'm sure all of you're familiar with. So those are some thoughts. All right, guys, are you ready for our Q&A section of this? So this is going to go to but I'm going to give this one to both of you.   00;17;51;05 - 00;18;24;09 In what ways do you see users ability to write high quality command prompts influencing the efficacy of ERP? So I think this is going to go back to our initial technology is changing at a rapid pace. Aaron, you want to start us off? Yeah, I think it's going to be very important and critical if you think that again, the inputs are going to be as valuable as the outputs, they're correlated to be able to communicate effectively and quickly will give that person an edge.   00;18;24;21 - 00;18;49;07 But I do think that a lot of the business analyst type of roles that we're seeing will move in to some kind of technology translation opportunity. Do either of you have any concerns about user over reliance on assistive technology to operate within an ERP? And if so, what are they? I think, you know, I can jump in here.   00;18;49;13 - 00;19;16;25 I think this is a mix of policy mixed with technology. I mean, expense reporting is a great example in my view. When I was a consultant, we would have business roles that could auto expense, approve certain amounts below a certain levels. But then you had behavior adjusting issues. So, for example, if all of the consultants knew that everything below $50 was going to be automatically approved, we had a influx of 49.5 cent expenses.   00;19;16;25 - 00;19;40;22 So I think, you know, you have these assistive technologies that could potentially create overreliance if the current construction of the business roles is overly simplistic. So a lot of what goes into AI so far as I understand it, and I'm no expert on this, is is the content that feeds the AI engine to make those intelligent recommendations has a lot of different signals.   00;19;40;22 - 00;19;58;26 And if the signals aren't as complete as they need to be, there could be blind spots to it. So I do think that you can't overly reliant on that, especially as you adopt it. I think it's got to get training wheels for a little while and then as it becomes smarter and learns from it, that's that's where it's going to be more reliable.   00;19;58;27 - 00;20;19;21 I agree. I mean, there's a reason why you learn how to do long division on paper before you use a calculator so you can get those concepts in place. And I have this picture of Chris and his colleagues making waitresses this frustrated, asking, don't they put $49 on my tab and split it up six different ways so they can get the margaritas paid for?   00;20;20;02 - 00;20;58;10 Yes. Okay. So this next questionnaire and this kind of goes back to a moment ago. You talked about data and data out. Right. So in terms of reporting, how important is it to clean your data to make sure that you're have accurate reporting? And what are some of the pitfalls that you see and absolutely critical to have the data be accurate if you want the reports to be accurate, Probably the most pervasive, inaccurate or semi accurate for different types of data is what we see in going into a CRM system.   00;20;58;10 - 00;21;28;27 So it's a client relationship management system by salespeople, right? So that is the one of the easiest concepts to kind of comprehend, but one of the hardest to organize and then lead effectively a consistent data input for the sales organization so that you can see and evaluate as forecast accurately is very important for organizations that we work with to have those inputs be accurate in order to see what's coming down the pipeline.   00;21;28;27 - 00;21;47;06 So I know how to make business decisions, projects. I'm going to have so much more raw materials I need to buy, right? All of those how many engineers I need to staff regardless of what industry vertical it is. Chris Anything to add on that? No, no, I think that that covers it. One last question and then I promise we can wrap this up.   00;21;47;09 - 00;22;12;27 And this is really for both of you. I'm very interested to know what are some of the job roles or PACs, you know, so if a student studies or gets exposure to builds that foundational knowledge of net suite during their academic tenure and they are they step into talent pipeline, but they've got that foundational level knowledge. So what do you think some of the job roles or paths are for them?   00;22;13;09 - 00;22;51;10 I tend to think from a selling perspective, people often talk about solutions selling, which is a concept to sort of selling an outcome to a given business leader and in order to have credibility as to pointing out a future state for a circumstance like you're buying a convertible, you want to experience what the wind feels like in your hair, and the sun feels like as you drive down the road, you need to effectively have driven a convertible and understand what that feels like to be able to have that communication and be authentic about it.   00;22;52;17 - 00;23;21;00 You need to have that that track record. And so where I'm going with this is that I tend to find consulting where you're sitting across a boardroom table talking about sort of the dirty laundry of how a business does things well and does things poorly, and how a given individual may run a series of papers over to this person or to that person to have them manually sign it off.   00;23;21;08 - 00;23;55;26 Or you just see sort of that process where people get comfortable with what happens in a given company, because that's the way it's been. And then you, you as a consultant are able to see, oh, I can see how these two different lines can be short circuited by a different process or I can see how this creates inefficiencies, having that ability to go down to that level of detail and then also sit back and listen to some of the senior consultants and the sales people talk about these things not in the minutia, but talk about them in broader concepts, I think is very helpful.   00;23;55;26 - 00;24;16;19 So quickly from this is that if you start with a consulting role where you're able to do some of the groundwork, foundational elements and then move into a pre sales role, are you able to demonstrate how things could happen and then move into a sales role if you want or move into other roles? Maybe you're more comfortable in the technology side of programing, maybe give it that way.   00;24;16;20 - 00;24;49;26 But I tend to think some of those journeys, so to speak, are very typical within the technology world. I think there's also I'll just add on, there's opportunities just out there in business that are investing in these applications, right. That have invested in that suite that if someone has on their resume next suite exposure and that suite experience, even do a reverse search for organizations will post out on indeed and job boards like or someone that has experience with this type of application.   00;24;50;00 - 00;25;22;25 This would be very attractive. As NetSuite continues to really increase market presence, it's going to be more ubiquitous for those types of just if you are someone that's going to be a great accountant and wants to rise from a staff accountant to a senior accountant to a controller to potentially like a CFO type of role, having that exposure is going to give you a leg up over the other folks that are applying for that job, even people that might be more experienced accountants but don't have that exposure to the system that the company uses your ability to plug and play, there is going to be so much faster.   00;25;23;16 - 00;25;49;19 All right. Well, this is going to bring us to a close of our fireside chat. I'd really like to thank both of you for speaking with me today about how changing technology is affecting ERP systems and that the impact that faculty and students can expose themselves and to really engage with a couple of calls to action.   00;25;50;05 - 00;26;13;23 If you are interested in learning more about that suite and this is for our audience, please, if you're interested in learning more about NetSuite Cloud Solution, please visit Newsweek.com. If you are a post-secondary faculty and you are interested in adding NetSuite cloud solution to your daily teaching via Oracle Academy, don't hesitate to visit us at Academy.oracle.com to learn more.   00;26;14;06 - 00;26;39;13 And then if you are interested in partnering with Oracle Academy or providing your expertise to classrooms, contact us at Oracle Academy. North America. Underscore us at Oracle dot com. Thanks, Cassandra, and I truly appreciate your time and your energy today. That wraps up this episode. Thanks for listening and stay tuned for the next Oracle Academy Tech Chat podcast.

Join NetSuite experts Chris Hering, Director of Global Channels, Suite Life, and Aaron Rosenberg, CEO, NetSuite Partner Oasis Solutions, for a fireside chat moderated by Oracle Academy North America Senior Director Denise Hobbs. In this chat, Denise talks with Chris and Aaron about some of the technology trends that are impacting ERP systems today and what students should learn of those key aspects as they prepare for professional career roles. In addition, they discuss best practice tactics on how Oracle NetSuite Partners can leverage their expertise and knowledge and get involved in helping the next generation learn the latest technology. -------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript: 00;00;09;03 - 00;00;34;20 Welcome to the Oracle Academy Tech Chat. This podcast provides educators and students in-depth discussions with thought leaders around computer science, cloud technologies and software design to help students on their journey to becoming industry ready technology leaders. Of the Future. Let's get started. Welcome to Oracle Academy Tech Chat, where we discuss how Oracle Academy helps prepare our next generation's workforce.   00;00;35;01 - 00;01;04;06 I'm your host, Tyra Crockett Peirce  In the first part of our special two part episode, Oracle Academy, North America senior director Denise Hobbs speaks with Chris Herring, director of Global Channel's SuiteLife, and Aaron Rosenberg, CEO of NetSuite partner Oasis Solutions. Denise talks with Chris and Aaron about some of the technology trends that are impacting ERP systems today and what students should learn of those key aspects as they prepare for their professional careers.   00;01;04;15 - 00;01;29;12 I am with Oracle next week, director of Channel Suite Life Chris Herring and NetSuite partner Oasis Solutions CEO Aaron Rosenberg. I'm Denise Hobbs, your host, Oracle Academy senior director for North America. Chris, Aaron and I are going to focus our discussion on three major themes. First, we're going to discuss the technology trends that are impacting ERP systems today.   00;01;29;29 - 00;01;56;22 Second, we're going to discuss what should students learn of those key impacts as they prepare for professional career roles. And then third, what are the best strategies on how NetSuite partners like Oasis Solutions can leverage their expertise and knowledge to help the next generation prepare to step into talent pipeline? And with that, I'd like to offer a very warm welcome to Chris and Aaron.   00;01;56;25 - 00;02;17;25 Thanks for joining me, guys. Thanks Chris, Thanks Aaron. To start off, I want each of you to give me a brief synopsis of your background and your current business position. Now, Chris, I want I'd like for you to start on this one of questions. So, first of all, really happy to be here today. I looked after our global partner SuiteLife ecosystem.   00;02;18;07 - 00;02;47;17 So what that means is I am responsible for NetSuite, education and engagement with our partners. So everything from how we onboard partners, how we train them and how they experience that suite as a partner previous to working in this role. I was also in that NetSuite, but in a go to market and a sales management role. So that was looking after new, larger companies that were joining that NetSuite on the enterprise side.   00;02;48;07 - 00;03;21;18 And I really started my career on the professional services consulting side. So working in coffee rooms and in boardrooms, deploying software in the early knots. So really happy to join us today and share my experiences with the audience. Great. Thanks, Chris. Now, Aaron, before you start, I'm going to add a little bit more on to you. So in addition to your background and your current business position, I'd like for you to also provide a very high-level explanation of a NetSuite corporate partner.   00;03;21;29 - 00;03;54;29 Sure. I'll be happy to. Let me start with a little bit about Oasis. Oasis has been in business since 1991. So very early on in that kind of software application space, we became a NetSuite partner in 2012, so we've been working with that suite as a solution provider partner for a little over a dozen years. So our relationship as a solution provider partner is to help clients typically in the small to mid-market, select, implement and then support their core business management system.   00;03;55;03 - 00;04;17;01 In this case, that suite, which really runs in and business operations for hundreds of our clients and tens of thousands of net suites clients globally. So my role as CEO is to really lead the charge and oversee strategy and direction of our company. We are a small business as well, so I have about 40 team members spread out across the United States.   00;04;17;22 - 00;04;47;26 I'm headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky, which is where I'm from. And where Oasis was founded, but we do have customers that we support across the country, and we have disparate team members across the country as well. So when we're thinking about ERP, I think we all know that technology changes at a very rapid pace. I'd like for each of you to share your thoughts on the latest technology trends that affect enterprise resource planning ERP systems today.   00;04;48;07 - 00;05;18;20 So we're seeing a ton of improvements in artificial intelligence. Everybody's seeing that across how they work and how they operate, right? I'm sure our faculty are seeing it in the way that their students and they themselves operate within their day to day. And so a lot of the biggest enhancements that I see for end users, people that are in the systems that we deployed, are areas that they're using kind of as a copilot of sorts for the needs for requests of the business.   00;05;18;22 - 00;05;47;15 Alongside of that interest are so these large language models are being incorporated into ERP systems pretty rapidly. And we're seeing that as net suite upgrades and releases new versions and updates their software every six months. I don't think we're going to see a lot more of that coming out in each version. UPDATE But that helps to change business process flows for automation in areas like purchasing, receiving and shipping.   00;05;48;03 - 00;06;15;15 And then I think it'll extend into providing more reports and information on demand and supply trends forecast based on historical data. An example, maybe a little deeper would be in that purchasing workflow. We see this a lot, so customers will ask us now that they have a system like NetSuite one where customers are coming from small business accounting systems to click QuickBooks and spreadsheets got a lot of controls in their automation of workflows.   00;06;15;27 - 00;06;43;20 So they want to now put a control. So if somebody in my organization is going to buy something over $5,000, I want a notification as the CEO to approve that or eliminate fraud actions there. There's more control in place. Maybe it helps people spend a little bit more judiciously. So if that's something that we can have in the system, I'm seeing a lot of those workflows and automation points being enhanced by companies like myself.   00;06;44;02 - 00;07;05;14 But I think A.I. is going to really assist us in the end users and making those changes on the fly even like through spoken language to the computer. So kind of a starship Enterprise type of functionality where like, Hey computer, please update my purchase workflow to increase the limit of spend from 5000 to $7000, and then it'll just happen.   00;07;05;14 - 00;07;32;19 They'll test it and they'll roll it out. Amazing. Almost like a customization, if you will, be a voice. Yeah, I think a lot of that is going to be I was actually had a thought the other the other day like will my grandchildren even need to type or are we moving into a situation where right they can just speak to the machine and it will update and provide information back to us?   00;07;32;20 - 00;07;49;20 And you can kind of do that now with Cortana. And, you know, actually, as I was preparing the script, I use a lot of like voice attacks, but you got to go in and it's not perfect. And we all know Siri for call, you know, somebody. They end up calling your plumber on accident stuff. So we're still working on that, right?   00;07;49;21 - 00;08;14;14 But yeah, it's it's just the improvements and the generational updates just are happening so rapidly now. Now, Chris, I want you to kind of layer on top of what Aaron saying, but I want you to answer the same questions, but I want you to shift the lens a little bit. So I want you to focus  on answering this question better with an education partner ecosystem perspective, if you will.   00;08;15;09 - 00;08;41;24 Sure. Happy to. And I think  Aaron took  the gorilla AI into the mix. I mean, that's just changed everything in the last 12 months and I can certainly see that changing the way we look at things in the next 12 months. It's  kind of incredible how things are moving so quickly. So I had three points to raise on this area in terms of how we're seeing technology change and how that's impacting our partner landscape.   00;08;42;16 - 00;09;20;02 The first one building on Aaron's point of sort of unified applications is this idea of a best of breed versus unified suite. So we often talk for those students in the audience, you might be familiar with how you bundle your TV, Internet and telephone at home and they're sort of bundles and we do the same thing within applications where instead of buying a separate expense management tool or ERP or CRM, customer relationship management, you have a single provider that provides all of that at the same time, reducing contracts, reducing integrations, which can be quite complex and cumbersome.   00;09;20;03 - 00;09;50;17 And so CPQ is one example deal services management, which is one that we just acquired, where if you have a HVAC company out in the field where you have trucks and they need to be moved to different customer sites and have different equipment on them and have different maintenance schedules or different fire trucks that have different maintenance schedules on them all can be integrated into this wide network of assets that then can be deployed on a just in time basis.   00;09;50;17 - 00;10;23;27 It's traditionally those specialized systems and set separately and required a lot of, let's call it local expertise and integration expertise. So what that means for our ecosystem is that instead of having to spend a lot of time on integration, they're able to spend a lot more time on business consulting and advise the customer as to how to best leverage the tools and the tool sets, which allows them to be a higher level management consulting function, which of course can drive higher revenues.   00;10;24;18 - 00;10;54;21 So that's a really exciting point from a technology perspective. So having that consultative voice from a technology perspective is really key is what you're saying here, that it really provides that opportunity for that? I think it does. And you know, Oasis is such a fantastic example of a partner for next week in that they focus so much on a specific sector in a specific region, and that means they can be across the table from these individuals and these customers and have those difficult and sometimes positives.   00;10;54;21 - 00;11;19;23 And then celebratory conversations about how the business can change and evolve with technology instead of having to send a person off to work on integration, mitigation. And they're finding they can spend more time with a unified solution focused on like what's the next given company? The second point I'll make is I think across the applications, the focus on the UI has continued to accelerate.   00;11;19;29 - 00;11;44;01 People are not going to tolerate a commercial application that isn't intuitive. So a lot of the applications today are becoming much more consumer eyes, that they're looking like Amazon, they're looking like eBay, and they're just it doesn't take you three clicks to get to something you rarely lost. So that consumerist aspect of the piece of the technology is huge.   00;11;44;01 - 00;12;07;24 And one thing that we brought into play there is this idea of Oracle Guided Learning, which is effectively in-app support. So if I'm on a screen too long and I'm sure you guys have seen this, if you're shopping for something, it might say up, up, like, can you find the color jeans that you'd like? We're doing the same sort of thing right in the application to say, Oh, you're having a hard time submitting this sales order.   00;12;08;03 - 00;12;25;27 We'd recommend you checking out this article. And so that sort of consumer focus is something that's really exciting in the technology. And I think it just means that instead of having to hunt and tack for different elements, you're actually able to focus on what the most important thing is. Can I stop you there and ask a quick question?   00;12;25;28 - 00;12;54;23 So are you saying that, okay, first off, it's less cumbersome,  less clicks, things like that. I love those. I love that. But even if I'm using it and I'm in a place where I'm stuck, you're saying that there's opportunity for learning for myself right there on the fly? There is. I mean, I think what we try and this is one of the most exciting things about my role is, you know, one of the things I like to think about is I just I hate wasted time and just wasted effort.   00;12;54;23 - 00;13;15;25 And I think all of us can relate to that. Know, you spend a lot of time and you realize there a shortcut there by having that sort of just in time support. What we're looking to do is, is prevent people from getting down those rabbit holes that are frustrating. And I mean that. But the third point that I'll raise, getting insights out of the businesses is huge.   00;13;15;25 - 00;13;40;21 So if the application can go ahead and say the last three times you entered this order, it was the same amount at the same date. Maybe you want to set up a recurring transaction. And so that intelligence and that insight and that recommendation is something that can save a tremendous amount of time. So it's not so much knowing where things are, but interpreting how those things are repeating and patterns.   00;13;41;03 - 00;14;13;19 And then suggesting changes that can save time. That's truly amazing to me that that level of intelligence, to see those trends, to then make those suggestions. And I'm like you, Chris, you know, the efficiency, I think and perhaps it is better said as less expended effort is really insightful and progressive. When we talked a second ago, when I asked you this general question and I said the rapid pace, that technology is changing today.   00;14;13;19 - 00;14;45;07 So I think rapid, based on what the two of you have just said, I think rapid is spot on. And I think it's just absolutely so moving so quick. So if I'm going to follow this train of thought, what are some of the key aspects about these trends, about these rapidly changing trends that faculty should be aware of and should consider thinking about or integrating into the classroom, into their daily teaching when they are teaching ERP concepts.   00;14;45;26 - 00;15;07;23 Chris, I'm going to go back to you on this one first. So I think back to I got my graduate degree in New York in MBA. I got an MBA at Stern in New York, and one of the most interesting classes that I took was entrepreneurial development, and it was taught by one of these professors that was both a practitioner as well as a board member.   00;15;08;01 - 00;15;38;15 And what he often focused on was kind of the collision of data and how those collisions of data can either present opportunities or or prevent signals or flags for issues looking ahead. And so when I think about Europe, the real risk of our historical ERP system is that you have a lot of silos of data that never intersect, and you can have trends in one silo of data that could impact another one.   00;15;38;15 - 00;16;07;22 And you have that you have that, you know, crystal ball thing where, you know, things are getting produced too fast but not getting consumed and you have waste. Whereas if you're able to take those silos of data and bring them together and provide an insight, you're able to make a corrective preemptive change in the way the business is operating, to avoid waste, to take advantage of a new trend and really change the way that business is operating.   00;16;07;22 - 00;16;40;27 So what that means for the classroom of the future, in my view, is that the focus should be talking about how the different data streams intersect and how those surface insights so and then how to communicate those insights effectively. I happen to be a very visual learner. One of my favorite sites is this site called Visual Capitalist, which demonstrates lots of visuals on trends in the ecosystem and trends in the world that just traditionally aren't visualized.   00;16;41;02 - 00;17;14;05 So when I think about the opportunity in the future, it's not so much looking at how the database schema is constructed. It's  looking at opportunities for seeing how those different segments of data, whether it be order management, inventory payments, all of those things are intersecting such that you have a working capital requirement that may. Case in point, what I mean by working capital is for the students in the room, if you have to pay your vendors, if you have to pay your employees, you have to have money in the bank to do it.   00;17;14;19 - 00;17;45;13 But you may or may not be collecting invoices from your customers to get the cash in the bank to pay your employees and so the visualizations on how your cash will add and flow depending on your payments and receipts will help you determine whether you need to borrow more money from the bank or even if it's possible. So when I think about teaching concepts, so much of those difficult situations can happen because people aren't aware of what the data shows you.   00;17;45;26 - 00;18;13;27 And so the students can focus on, okay, how can I create opportunities to surface that data and reports and visuals so I can clearly explain to my management what risks we have in the business and what opportunities we have in the business. I think that's the real opportunity because when I see it in business today, it's  hard to find folks that can take data and then translate it into messages and insights.   00;18;14;06 - 00;18;43;20 That's helpful. Aaron So when I think about our audience and a lot of faculty and students here, you know, when integrating ERP curriculum, there's still for us this mantra of people and process like this or that too, is as or more important than the technology. But the technology is just a tool that's a first that is informing, give to make people and processes more productive.   00;18;43;29 - 00;19;12;12 And so the end users and what really happens a lot in the situations where we're implementing are still between the chair and the keyboard, right? So that's where the inputs happen, that's where the mistakes can happen and that's where the information needs to flow too. So when I'm thinking about talking about the enhancements that I mentioned and really focusing on like the block blocking and tackling, I call it a business which is a series of transactions.   00;19;12;20 - 00;19;32;25 Technology just helps to automate those processes, put controls in those processes, in those transactions, and then provide data and insights on how to be more efficient with your cash. For example, as Chris mentioned, do you need to borrow more or do you need to delay maybe paying some people or duty to get cash as some of the folks that are out there that owe you money?   00;19;33;13 - 00;19;56;08 And how do you automate letters to out to them or emails to remind them other areas that I've seen that are really important? A few years ago, like business intelligence forecasting, reporting, I do think we're seeing more trends in automation there that largely with this are visual intelligence in their future. They will there will be a need for human interaction verification.   00;19;56;08 - 00;20;17;05 So a trust but verify type of element in place. So you're going to have to check the math, so to speak, be a skill that's going to be very important and also communication as well. Right? So think about how you communicate with that to get the right output, you have to put it in the right input because it's just using whatever information you put in to get the information out.   00;20;17;05 - 00;20;34;09 So there's still this if you put garbage in, you get garbage out, right? So all of that, I think, hopefully coalesces with what this messaging was to, too. That wraps up this episode. Thanks for listening and stay tuned for the next Oracle Academy Tech Chat podcast.

In this episode host Tyra Crockett Peirce speaks with Richard Oram from the Oracle Hospitality team on the wide and varying career options available hospitality. --------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript: 00;00;09;03 - 00;00;27;26 Welcome to the Oracle Academy Tech Chat. This podcast provides educators and students in-depth discussions with thought leaders around computer science, cloud technologies and software design to help students on their journey to becoming industry ready technology leaders of the future. Let's get started.   00;00;27;28 - 00;00;55;09 Welcome to Oracle Academy Tech Chat, where we discuss how Oracle Academy helps prepare our next generation's workforce. I'm your host, Tara Crockett Pierce. Today I am joined by Richard Oram from the Oracle Hospitality Team. Richard studied tourism management at Birmingham University and worked in hotel operations and management for IAG and Forte before starting with MICROS in 1999, which was acquired by Oracle in 2014.   00;00;55;11 - 00;01;06;18 He worked his way up from a trainer to a product manager to a regional director and now in strategy. Welcome, Richard. So to start off, can you give me a bit about your background in your role at Oracle?   00;01;06;22 - 00;01;26;06 Yeah, So I really started in hospitality by mistake. I was at university and just wanted some extra cash to pay for going out and other bits and pieces. So I took a job at a Holiday Inn in Birmingham City Center, setting up conference rooms in the evenings to easy money. But I ended up then starting work on the bar, and then I started.   00;01;26;06 - 00;01;46;00 Then I thought, this is quite fun. I'm still at university studying for a degree. And then I started working on in the night staff, doing light auditing on research, on reception, finished my degree. So I just found a job then near my parents house until I got a proper job and end up working this hotel for four years.   00;01;46;03 - 00;02;02;10 And during that four years I would be in a new computer system and the guys from Microsoft were really great and I showed some interest and they said, Why don't you come and work for us? And that happened in 1999. What we are trained to for I'm still here.   00;02;02;13 - 00;02;18;15 I get it. I actually started Oracle in 2002, and I'm still here as well. And it's been a really wonderful, a great place to work for. So what different roles exist within hospitality and is there a clear career path?   00;02;18;17 - 00;02;39;14 Yes, definitely. There's so many different roles in hospitality, and some of them people would never even think of. So you've got your traditional roles of a receptionist, reception manager, reservation staff who work in the back office. You've got the groups, teams, sales teams, and so on, the housekeeping, food and beverage at work in the restaurant and bars and all the conference and banqueting staff.   00;02;39;17 - 00;03;03;16 But there's also all these people that work in the background that you never see. Like there's engineers that deal with all the maintenance. There's decorators that deal with all the paint work. There's people that buy all the leisure, at least so spas, spa and leisure centers at the properties. So there's a whole variety of different areas right through to sort of head office functions like financing and h.r.   00;03;03;19 - 00;03;26;15 So it's not all about the person sitting at the reception desk checking people in. There's a whole group of people doing different roles which exist in many different industries. But they all sort of focus on hospitality here. So dealing with the guest is the main criteria for hospitality and for career planning. Well, yeah, you can start as like I did working as a conference and banqueting porter.   00;03;26;17 - 00;03;51;16 You can work your way up to a manager and so on. And most traditional route is people who start, say, working as a receptionist then become a reception supervisor, then then they become the front office team manager, then they become the rooms division manager and eventually they come to general manager. And from a general manager you can then go up to sort of a regional manager and then up to head office as the director or the overall CEO of the hotel group.   00;03;51;18 - 00;03;59;09 There's many different ways to stay in this industry in growing your career, and it's not always when you've got hospitality in your mindset from the start.   00;03;59;11 - 00;04;03;06 Do you have to know hospitality to work in hospitality?   00;04;03;08 - 00;04;25;21 Not at all. And a lot like my own and many of my colleagues, we didn't know hospitality. We stepped into it because it was. There's always jobs in hospitality. That's the one good thing about hospitality. There's always recruitment and the training and on the job, a lot of it is common sense. So what can reception you want to deliver?   00;04;25;21 - 00;04;50;18 Good customer service and as a customer, you expect good customer service for the people you're dealing with. So it's very easy to learn on the job of how to deliver that customer service. And also with technology nowadays, how to pick up the systems you're using really quickly. And like I was saying before, to things like people who work in the finance for a hotel, they could have worked in a finance or an open asset management company.   00;04;50;18 - 00;04;59;13 They could have a banking industry. You don't have to know hospitality to work in the hospitality industry. Suddenly cross-overs with those different functions.   00;04;59;15 - 00;05;08;04 So given that we actually work for one of the world's largest technology companies, where does technology fit into hospitality?   00;05;08;06 - 00;05;29;15 It's a surprise in many places nowadays. So in the old days, hands. Let's talk it out, I say 20 years ago, which makes you feel very old. Really, the only people that used a computer system was technology. Whether people making reservations and the people checking people in. Everything else was done on paper or spreadsheets. Whereas nowadays everybody has an app for something.   00;05;29;17 - 00;05;54;02 So if you've got housekeeping, they're now walking around the app. They know that room. What I once just checked out, they know they're going to do service that room. So they're doing all that through an app. And it's the same with people like engineering. And when know there's a maintenance issue, it gets flagged in the system or their smart sensors in the bedroom telling them there's an issue with the heating, the air conditioning all fills back to those people sitting in the back office flagging up on their system.   00;05;54;09 - 00;06;19;24 But something needs to be done. And again, years back, this is all manual pieces of paper all over the place. So technology has really revolutionized what's happening in hotels. And it's so moving forward with things like AI, which I don't want to go into because I don't really understand AI in great depth. But I also think of automating so many of those tasks which are quite mundane, but allowing the staff to focus on delivering sort of better service to their customers.   00;06;19;26 - 00;06;44;12 And just one thing that I was always intrigued by, when I was a trainer, I was at one hotel, top five star hotel in London, and we had a training session and the training session was called Painters. I was going to line up with these trained painters on a computer system, and the reason why is because the painters would need to know that this really special access to touch up the gold leaf paint that existed on wood work and picture frames in the bedroom.   00;06;44;14 - 00;06;57;22 And then these are artists, the painters by trade, no knowledge of hospitality. But to do that, to deliver their job, they had to be able to use a computer system and know that Mr. Smith has left room one or one. They can go in and touch up that paint.   00;06;57;24 - 00;07;09;06 That's so fascinating. So given that Oracle is a technology company, we have micros, which is for hospitality, how does MICROS kind of fit in to hospitality?   00;07;09;09 - 00;07;44;14 Okay. So Microsoft, as we know, is now Oracle hospitality. But Marcus was the original company that Oracle purchased. It started back in the late 1970s, early eighties, when technology was still evolving. And we provide pretty much everything that you need to run a hotel. So if it's taking that reservation, checking customers in, managing all the housekeeping, the financing, paying travel agents, commissions for their bookings or the other bookings on websites, all of that's done by a microsoft or Oracle hospitality system and right through to what you see in the bar.   00;07;44;14 - 00;07;59;25 So we go into a coffee shop, it might say Marcus Oracle on the tell all of that is our equipment. And so taking orders, managing stock and operating that whole business as if it does one property right through to an entire rate or entire brand using our systems.   00;08;00;04 - 00;08;19;17 I've actually been to many hotels and seen the Oracle Microsoft branding on the hotels that I've stayed in. So it's really great to see that Oracle is involved in this space as well and how this kind of fits in. So my next question is why does hospitality become so addictive as a career?   00;08;19;19 - 00;08;45;00 It really gets into your blood. It's I think the thing is everybody is working long shifts and it's hard work, but you get to work with so many different people. And some people stay with these businesses for years, others come in for a few months. There's always a change of people. You get to know different people, but it's because it's such a great bond of people all collaborating together to deliver a good guest experience.   00;08;45;02 - 00;09;04;00 But it really gets entwined in your whole ethos and your way of working. And as people now I work with 25, 30 years ago in hotels, we still in contact on Facebook, still meet up occasionally. And it's it really is, as I said before, it gets right into your blood work in hospitality. That's part of the reason what I'm doing now.   00;09;04;03 - 00;09;12;08 I'm not directly in a hotel, but we're still working with all these hospitality organizations, making sure that they're delivering excellent customer service to their guests.   00;09;12;11 - 00;09;24;03 So my final question is, if you could give one piece of advice to faculty, your students, that are interested in pursuing a career in hospitality, what would it be?   00;09;24;05 - 00;09;45;18 Definitely don't rule it out. It's a great place to start to gain exposure into so many different skills you could then use in other industries. If it's just dealing with customer service operations, finance, engineering. There's so many different things that happen in a hotel that you can then take to other industries. And there's people I've known it started in a hotel.   00;09;45;18 - 00;10;12;22 They went off to work for a completely into hospitals, so almost the same, but different lectures at the end work in hospitals because it was the same sort of thing. It's dealing with deaths or patients. This scenario, but it's still things are operations, managing something to deliver an end result. And it's a really is a great place just to get grounding on how to deliver and make sure things are done in a certain timeframe to a certain service level.   00;10;12;24 - 00;10;39;15 You know, I think that that's a really great piece of ice. I remember I was flying back from a business trip from Toronto through Atlanta back to where I live, and I remember we got stuck up in a hurricane and just the great customer service skills at the reservation desks gave us to make sure that we were taking care of the we're on time and we just had another one not that long ago, same kind of thing where our flight was canceled.   00;10;39;21 - 00;11;10;14 Speaker 2 We were rerouted immediately. And just the wonderful people skills and customer service skills that you build in working in a hospitality industry or in a travel industry that are so important as you're, you know, they can be transferred over to any industry, which I think is really one of the most important things to have, is is learning these really great frontline personal and customer service skills that I think hospitality probably teaches better than almost any other industry.   00;11;10;16 - 00;11;25;01 But definitely a big thanks to Richard for giving me some more information about hospitality. To learn more about Oracle Academy and our resources, visit Academy dot Oracle dot com and subscribe to our podcast. Thanks for listening.   00;11;25;03 - 00;11;31;21 That wraps up this episode. Thanks for listening and stay tuned for the next Oracle Academy Tech Chat podcast.

In this episode, I’m joined by Cathye Pendley an Oracle Ace and Business Intelligence expert. Cathye and I talk about all things Business Intelligence or BI. We talk about what BI is, and the skills students need to pursue a career in BI. -------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript: 00;00;00;00 - 00;00;34;22  Welcome to the Oracle Academy Tech Chat. This podcast provides educators and students in-depth discussions with thought leaders around computer science, cloud technologies and software design to help students on their journey to becoming industry ready technology leaders. Of the Future. Let's get started. Welcome to Oracle Academy Tech Chat, where we discuss how Oracle Academy helps prepare our next generation's workforce.     00;00;34;23 - 00;01;02;10  I'm your host here appears in this episode. I'm joined by Kathy Pendley, an Oracle AI's director and business intelligence expert. Kathy and I talk about all things business, intelligence or buy. We talk about what the AI is and the skills students need to prove and see. You'll see where I get messed up and I start over. So in this episode, I'm joined by Kathy Penley, an oracle AI's director and business intelligence expert.     00;01;02;13 - 00;01;29;01  Kathy and I talk about all things business, intelligence, RBI. We talk about what be AI is and the skills students need to pursue a career in by. A little bit about my guest. Kathy is a business intelligence program director at Roseann and has 30 years of experience working with Business Intelligence analytics technologies. She brings strong project management skills and a clear methodology focus to each project.     00;01;29;04 - 00;02;02;05  Kathy has rounded experience in all areas of business, intelligence and analytics, including product project management. Sara backed up their project management of analytics projects to valuations and selection for business intelligence tools, analysis, design, development and implementation of analytics solutions. And she has developed both large and small analytic application patterns and systems. Welcome, Kathy. So to start off, can you please tell me a bit about your background and your job role?     00;02;02;07 - 00;02;41;05  I am a 1992 graduate of the University of North Texas. I have a B.A. in business computer systems, and it's very similar to what most colleges would call a BBA and management information systems. I currently am a business intelligence program manager at ROSENSCHEIN, and I've been there for about a year and a half. I focused at and is to understand the nature of our business and the latest technology and then determine how the technology can best assist our businesses and make informed decisions.     00;02;41;07 - 00;03;09;12  My professional career has been focused on business intelligence. Some call it decision support back 30 years ago are you might call it also analytics today. So it has many different names, but it has been in the business intelligence area. I work for Rosatom, which is an electrical contracting company. The majority of my career it's been in consulting, focused on analytics and beer across many industries.     00;03;09;12 - 00;03;40;11  So I have experience in many industries. I would say all but about four years of my professional career has been in consulting. That is quite background. You are an expert in business intelligence. So to start off, can you give me a high level overview of business intelligence or buy business intelligence and B, I can be thought of as a superpower of turning data into actionable insights that drive better business decisions.     00;03;40;13 - 00;04;06;23  It's not just about collecting and storing information, but analyzing it in a meaningful way to understand your business performance, identify trends and make informed choices. The steps to do that. The first step in be AI is to understand your business needs. You need to know what is important to the business, and then you can start gathering the data.     00;04;06;25 - 00;04;32;09  So what kind of data do you get and buy? You can have what we call internal or external data. Internal data is something that is within your company. Like sales could be payroll, could be h.r. An external data is something that you're getting external from your company. That's like social media, maybe even weather data. And then there are also different types of data.     00;04;32;11 - 00;04;57;07  You have a structured data that sits within a database, and that's something that you'll hear where you put them in tables and you join your tables together. But then there's also unstructured data, and that's like text documents, emails. Those are kind of some unstructured data where it can be in any type of format. Now you can do your analysis in an Excel spreadsheet.     00;04;57;09 - 00;05;23;21  And and that's okay for small individual type analytics, but for more complex enterprise wide analytics, something that you're going to push out to your entire company, it's best to create a model. And a common model that is used is a star schema. And all star schema is is just some tables joined together and you have what you call a fact table.     00;05;23;23 - 00;05;45;20  A fact table is nothing more than something that has a fat sales productive. What what is the key metric that you're looking at? Then you have your dimension tables and that's basically how you want to break out your data. So you're going to break it out by time or by location. You have a dimension table for each one of those with the attributes by those dimensions.     00;05;45;23 - 00;06;10;17  A good way to think about a dimension tables. If you're looking at something and you all look at sales and you want to see it by somebody says, I want to see it by product, by time, by location. Anything after the buy is going to be a dimension, a location dimension, a time dimension, a product dimension. So that's how you kind of build a model amongst the model is designed and built.     00;06;10;19 - 00;06;34;02  You need to then load it with data and put data into the model, and that is called data preparation. Some people call it ETL, some people call it BLT, but basically that's where you go in and you clean the data, get it organized, and you loaded into the model. This can be a long process. Once it's in the model, now you can start doing your data analysis.     00;06;34;04 - 00;07;02;05  There's various tools and techniques for years to analyze the data once it's in the model. This kind of generating report, creating dashboards, performing calculations are using data visualization techniques like charts and graphs. You get that built. Then you can start looking at the actionable insights. This this is where you have the analysis. It reveals pattern trends, hidden information that helps business understand what's working and what's not.     00;07;02;07 - 00;07;29;00  This knowledge is being translated into actionable recommendations that can be implemented and improve performance. As you look at this, we talk about building this and building the chart data visualization, don't underestimate it. There are classes. There are books. If you are going to be working with the users and working in building analysis, understand and learn a little bit about data visualization.     00;07;29;08 - 00;07;56;27  A quick note is people read left, right, top to bottom. So whenever somebody looks at a dashboard, the first place they look is in the upper left hand corner, their eyes drawn up there. So you would want to put your key metric in the upper left hand corner of the dashboard that makes it stands out that allows your executives to quickly get the information without having to spend too much time digging through tables to get it.     00;07;56;29 - 00;08;23;26  I had actually never looked at it that way. That's really insightful. I just had an moment thinking about the tables and graphs and charts that I built that I was really a wonderful nugget that you just gave. So now on to my next question. What are some of the different industries that are used by different industries for actually every industry and every department within industry uses by for example, you have your construction things.     00;08;23;26 - 00;08;54;02  COLONISTS All right, look out. I'll go a little, maybe a little bit more about install rates. Retail has sales and inventory, higher education. They're looking at enrollments and salting my look at staffing. But then even departments in these industries like your h.r. Might be looking at the retention of employees, and that would be across all industries. So there is pretty much within every organization, within every department, in every industry.     00;08;54;05 - 00;09;24;08  I'd like to go over a couple of examples of how it's used differently at a couple of organizations. I want to start with the construction installer right? This is a metric that many construction companies use to determine how long it's going to take to install a particular product. Say, for example, a conduit in our electrical contracting company, we have conduits and we have an estimated rate of say, 5.2, five feet per hour.     00;09;24;10 - 00;09;43;09  And that is saying that an individual, a worker should be able to install 5.5 feet of conduit in the hour. So what happens when a given project goes down to five feet per hour? And that's just a reduction of about 10%. Not horrible, right.     00;09;43;11 - 00;10;11;22  Talking about multiple projects that we have with hundreds of people working on these projects and this rate starts going down. If you had to put in 2.1 straight, the conduit at a rate of about $50 per hour, the cost alone at 5.2, five feet per hour is $20 million. If you go down to five feet, that could cost you $1,000,000.     00;10;11;25 - 00;10;35;01  Just in revenue. And then if you ever to take into consideration if you're if you're not installing as fast, you're going to have to put people on overtime to meet deadlines or you may have to pay a fee on your contracting. This million can easily double to $2 million. So it's important for our executives to look at the install rates and making sure that across our projects we're running it correctly.     00;10;35;07 - 00;10;56;24  But also it also filters all the way down to a foreman who might be managing a couple of employees or a couple of workers, because if they want to make sure they're doing their 5.5 feet per hour, if everyone does it at the lower level and at a higher level, we won't be making our money and we will be making our numbers.     00;10;56;26 - 00;11;16;18  And it's also important to look at this weekly so you can quickly address it and we will look at this in trends over time as well. So you can see how are we trending up or down on our list? All right. This is good analysis and this is some ways that our company uses analytics to help run our projects.     00;11;16;21 - 00;11;39;11  Now, another one that I think is more fun, and I did it. We had a customer, mine as several years ago did a prototype on this. And this is really very interesting and kind of fun. Look at the billboard. There are two main parts. You have a large sign that has the advertisement and the pole that actually holds that sign up.     00;11;39;13 - 00;11;58;06  So for thinking about hurricanes, if a hurricane hits the sign and it's attached to the pole, it's going to put pressure on the pole and possibly bring it down. If it's not a sign that it's not going to be as much pressure on the pole and it has a higher likelihood of staying up. So why do we care?     00;11;58;08 - 00;12;18;20  Unknown  First off, there are ordinances that change over time. So a lot of times cities, counties are going to say, okay, you can't have a billboard up in this area anymore. It's become too crowded, can't have a map. But if you already have one, they'll let you keep it up. But if it goes down for any reason, you're not going to be able to put it back into the ground.     00;12;18;23 - 00;12;56;18  So that would be crucial. We would want that to go up. Also, what is the impact if we had that, if we have one that's completely down? What's the revenue impact? Is it one that's enough in that area that's visible, that brings in a lot of revenue, or is it one that doesn't bring in much revenue? So while it's expensive to take science down prior to our time, it might make sense to bring some kid some key signs down based on the fact that, hey, is there a new ordinance and are we going to be able to put it back up if the pole comes down?     00;12;56;20 - 00;13;18;07  The loss of revenue, what is the impact of the loss of revenue? Is it is it is it a sign that gives us a lot of revenue because it's on a major highway, or is it one it doesn't bring in as much revenue. What's the likelihood that it's going to get destroyed by a hurricane? So is it in the path of a hard time?     00;13;18;09 - 00;13;51;01  So internally, the company had data on the billboard, its location, and they were able to put it on an analytic map and an analytical tool on a map. They then downloaded the National Weather Service data for an upcoming storm. It's coming up National Weather Service data and it plotted out where the storm was going to be and the strength of the wind coming through that overlaid that where their signs were, where they had signs.     00;13;51;03 - 00;14;16;05  So then they could take it and say, okay, we're going to have extremely high winds going across ten of their sites. Two of them have an ordinance restrictions and they're not going to put the sign back up if it comes down. One of them is in a very highly revenue area, so they get quite a bit of revenue off that side.     00;14;16;05 - 00;14;50;06  So you want to make sure that sign comes down because the last thing you want to have happen is the pallet is going to the ground and not be able to put it back up and they are lost revenue forever. So these are some ways that people use it and are able to take the data from the billboards that they have, the attributes of the revenue, the ordinance that on all of that, on the billboard, and then take the external data of what's going to be the what's the likelihood that that that billboard is going to be taken down with the path that the storm is going to be going.     00;14;50;08 - 00;15;13;01  So those are two ways that you can two different ways that you can use analytics at different industries. I think that that is so interesting. Like, I never thought that you could actually use, you know, weather and RBI to predict weather patterns and billboards. I just think that is so interesting and a really unique way to use it and and very valuable, quite frankly.     00;15;13;03 - 00;15;35;05  Now, I'm going to move on to my next question. Now we kind of understand what buyers and we've seen a couple of examples. What are some job rules that are actually used by. I might go down two different paths and I'll use the I'm going to use the parking data, the Hurricane project example to kind of help submit talking about.     00;15;35;07 - 00;16;04;01  So you have first area is your business analyst or you're more of a business requirement gathering type. Some people might call it soft skills and those are the people that will go in and they will need to understand the technologies like like in this example, the graphing technologies, the mapping capabilities of of analytic tool can emerge different data.     00;16;04;01 - 00;16;28;06  And how easy is that going to be? So kind of get an understanding of the technology that you have. And then you also need to understand the business needs that the business wants to protect their key billboard drive. They want a high revenue Billboard said that if they go down, they're not going to be able to replace you want to make sure you focus on that and then you need to try.     00;16;28;09 - 00;16;59;06  So translate these requirements onto the technical resource team. So in this example, so what we had and I wasn't as involved in it, but you have a key analyst here that says, Hey, we have all this new technology. It's really cool. I knew that their business really was concerned about the billboard, so they took the knowledge they had worked with the business community and actually came up to design something and come up with these ideas.     00;16;59;08 - 00;17;24;08  They're usually the ones that manage the projects, keep timelines, make sure that they're not over promising or over delivering. And because people will come in with requests and they've got to be one that's and can politely say, we need, you know, this can't be done or this is going to delay the project and manage projects. And then you have to report and dashboard developers.     00;17;24;10 - 00;17;57;12  Unknown  Many times it's the same person as analyst. They'll come in and they'll get the requirements and then a lot of times of build the analytics behind it. If I call it as a front end type scale, soft skills kind of analyst skills, and the project manager skills that are better is one way you can go the next crowd is more of a technical route and this person needs to understand how to build a data model to support the analysis so they'll be the one that will come in and say, Hey, we've got we got the data.     00;17;57;12 - 00;18;19;24  We want to know the wind speeds, expectations of this hurricane. So that's going to be kind of your fact. And you want to know where the wind's going to be the happiest. You're going to want to know about what time is going to hit. Right. So so is it going to hit around noon on Thursday or is it going to hit at midnight on Friday, about the time the location?     00;18;19;24 - 00;18;39;26  Of course, that's very important because, you know, when you had to deliver, where is it going to exactly going to be? And then, of course, you also have to have your billboard information in there as well, because that is telling you what is the contract type that you have. Why is a rental revenue? Are there any ordinances on this billboard?     00;18;39;26 - 00;19;05;26  So that's all your billboard information. So they're gathering all that information and they will build a model around that. And then there are also the ones who locate and claim the data, the ETL process, that they actually take the data, clean it, load it in there, will get they will go down and see where they can get the external data, like the data Weather Service, the National Weather Service, get the data and bringing them to the tables.     00;19;05;28 - 00;19;29;25  So that's more of a technical skills depending on the skill set of the analyst building the data model is where the two might meet, so the analyst could help build the data model. And also the technical person says we might see kind of an overlay of the two roles, but one of them is definitely more technical. And to be honest, you're usually the people that are more technical.     00;19;30;01 - 00;19;49;22  They will struggle with timelines. They really want to overdeliver because they see something super cool, Let's just do this so they're not as good with time management and not maybe not as good, but with people skills on it. It's important to have it there more. When you think of the back end and coding piece of it. So let's go actually go on to skill set.     00;19;49;22 - 00;20;11;00  So what are some of the skill sets that someone pursuing a career in the eyes should have? As you look at this, as you go down the different route, you may want to focus stronger in one area than the other. But I will tell you in every instance, you're going to need some type of analytic skills, some types of gathering information.     00;20;11;00 - 00;20;34;25  So if you have an opportunity to to work on team projects where you're gathering information and you're building some kind of right, you get requirements and you're building something that would be very helpful no matter which route you want to go. Of course, if you're going more into the analyst type role and getting the information, then you may want to take more classes in that focus more on that.     00;20;34;27 - 00;20;53;05  Definitely. If you're building the analytics, some visualization in there, that will be very helpful. In all cases, you want to kind of get a feeling for the industry. If you're going to be interviewing and meeting with companies, just get an understanding of the industry in which you're going to be applying for jobs or working in. That kind of helps you understand a little bit things.     00;20;53;05 - 00;21;12;28  You also need to have the technical skills to learn a couple of programing languages, and that's always helpful to couple. When I was in college, I will tell you I used neither one of them in my professional career ever, Although he might never use that programing language at your company, it does help you get into the mindset of what programing is about.     00;21;13;01 - 00;21;31;28  I know a lot. I would say I would take a skill class if you if you have the opportunity and I know a lot of a lot of big boardroom python now as well, but just get into a couple of good programing classes. If you're wanting to go down the more technical route, maybe take a few more programing languages and some more technical classes as well.     00;21;32;01 - 00;21;53;19  That is really, really helpful to kind of spread it out like there's two different pathways, but we need to know programing languages. I know through Oracle Academy we do offer sequel and and and database courses as well. So I do think that I'm glad that you mentioned sequel because that's, you know, one of the primary database languages. So now onto my final question.     00;21;53;21 - 00;22;14;00  If you could give a one piece of advice to faculty or students, what would it be? I can probably some this up in one word, and that is respect and this is respect of others and how you can do this various ways. But the key is one is time management. Be sure you make your meetings, your interviews on time.     00;22;14;06 - 00;22;36;07  Don't be late. I think in the world of texting and instant messaging, people go, I am running 5 minutes late and I might think that's okay. It really is. It because somebody has set their time aside to meet with you and now you're delaying them 5 minutes. So and which it makes meetings go over. So be sure you're on time.     00;22;36;12 - 00;23;06;11  I will tell you as an interviewer, if you are late to one of my interviews, I will probably have you come back two or three more times to make sure that was a one off case. So those are key lesson to others in the meeting. When you're in an interview, listen to others what they have to say. Repeat what they have to say, Make sure you understand it, get clarification, but make sure that you listen to them and then understand the needs of others.     00;23;06;18 - 00;23;25;18  So you may have you might be in an interview. I may be talking to someone, maybe a little bit frustrated. Maybe they have something going on, either personally and professionally in their life. But I understand their needs, understand what they've got going on, work with them and say, okay, I understand how I can help you. So focus on that.     00;23;25;21 - 00;23;46;17  To do this, you can start practicing this now in your personal life and it will just become a habit in your professional life. So if you worry, if you make sure if you got a meeting with a friend, make sure your you meet with that friend on time and it will become a habit. Secondly, be a motivator at is think of ways to bring your team up instead of down.     00;23;46;17 - 00;24;15;09  So it's really easy when somebody starts talking active thoughts. It's really easy to to spiral whole team down. But if you can find some positives out of it, that's really helpful. I know that there's something that I had a job and they were getting rid of the technology I had and I was experienced in. They wanted to keep me because I said I had the most motivated team in the company who cared about each other.     00;24;15;09 - 00;24;41;08  And we were always positive. So I can't underestimate how much motivation to have a positive attitude is important at companies. A big things to Cathy for talking to me about business intelligence or BI It's been really helpful and insightful to learn more about Oracle Academy and our resources. Visit Academy dot Oracle dot com and subscribe to our podcast.     00;24;41;08 - 00;24;54;23  Thanks for listening. That wraps up this episode. Thanks for listening and stay tuned for the next Oracle Academy Tech Chat podcast. 

Oracle Academy is Oracle’s philanthropic education program. In this episode we chat with Alice Goodchild, Head of Oracle Women’s Leadership for Europe, Middle East and Africa.  She shares her views on how to inspire girls and women to follow STEM studies and careers, why we need more women in tech, how diverse talent is important to the economy and IT and how Oracle is investing in developing, engaging and empowering current and future generations of women leaders at Oracle. -------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript: 00;00;09;03 - 00;00;28;02 Welcome to the Oracle Academy Tech Chat. This podcast provides educators and students in-depth discussions with thought leaders around computer science, cloud technologies and software design to help students on their journey to becoming industry ready technology leaders. Of the Future. Let's get started.   00;00;28;05 - 00;00;54;27 Welcome to Oracle Academy, pictured where we discuss how Oracle Academy helps prepare a next generation workforce. I'm your host to Oracle Academy Program manager for Greece, Cyprus, Malta, Albania. Crushed by North Macedonia cluster in just a few days. We are celebrating International Women's Day, but numbers don't lie. And that is definitely true when it comes to the number of women in tech.   00;00;54;29 - 00;01;25;05 Globally, we see a low percentage of women selecting STEM studies and the percentage drops when it comes to the actual number of women graduating, women entering the market, climbing the hierarchy ladder and becoming tech leaders. How can a company like our approach help women develop their leadership and skills? My guest today is Alice Goodchild, head of Oracle Women's Program for Europe, Middle East and Africa.   00;01;25;08 - 00;01;47;00 Alice joined Oracle seven years ago with more than 15 years work and experience as a senior aides or business partner in companies of the IP and investment banking sectors and is currently based in UK but has a long living and working experience in countries like Japan, France, Spain and Australia. Alice, welcome.   00;01;47;02 - 00;01;50;15 Hi. Thank you so much for inviting me to join you today.   00;01;50;17 - 00;01;55;21 Thank you. Please give our audience a bit of out of your background, then your role at Oracle.   00;01;55;24 - 00;02;27;09 Absolutely. Thank you. So I am the head of Oracle Women's Leadership for the Europe, Middle East and Africa Region, a hugely diverse region with over 50 countries represented at Oracle and Oracle women's leadership. Well, it started as a grassroots initiative in 2006 and has now grown organically into a global strategic program dedicated to the leadership and professional development of Oracle women across the world.   00;02;27;12 - 00;02;59;23 And we started off with a few communities in certain countries, and now we have over 120 Oracle women's leadership communities across the globe, which is quite incredible. And in AMEA, the region I represent and we have 40 communities across 35 countries. And in terms of our team structure, we are a global team of eight. And we also have an executive steering committee for Oracle Women's Leadership.   00;02;59;23 - 00;03;26;11 So we have very strong support from our senior leaders. And I remember when I saw this role advertised, I was working as a business partner in a telco organization and I saw the role and I was like, I can't believe they've got a program dedicated to Oracle or to women's leadership. And I honestly think that I've got the best job at Oracle.   00;03;26;11 - 00;03;29;29 So that's a bit of my background for you.   00;03;30;01 - 00;04;00;03 I have to say that Oracle is one of the leading IP companies that they invest a lot in, in diversity and inclusion and of course in the women's development program. But if we want to go a bit back, how would we attract more women and girls to to study STEM subjects and to pursue careers in the technology industry?   00;04;00;06 - 00;04;20;13 Great question. I think there are a number of different ways in which we could do that, but I think I'm going to focus just on a couple of them, if that's okay. And I think for me, the first the first way that we could could attract more women and girls to study STEM subjects is through more. Having more role models.   00;04;20;13 - 00;04;47;25 And I guess if I take girls first and we can talk about role models, but they could be in terms of, you know, the school children, in terms of toys or books or literature, you know, making sure that there are resources for young children to show that there you know, there are roles and opportunities and leaders for you know, for women.   00;04;47;27 - 00;05;24;28 I think that's really important. And we we need to think about all curriculums across the globe as well. So to have a broader digital curriculum, which is relevant to everybody and I think also for girls in in particular, it's very important to show that there's such a, you know, there is such a huge variety in tech jobs. So and it could yes, it could be coding, but it also there are, you know, user experience or, you know, lots of different roles within tech that mean a different different skill sets could be used.   00;05;24;28 - 00;05;59;19 So actually an ad or at Oracle, we have a program, a Spanish Oracle women's leadership team have created Oracle for Girls. So that's really about getting girls aged 4 to 16 really excited about the cool technology that there is and building kind of a sense of community amongst those girls that, you know, and seeing these role models that they can consider that tech might be somewhere where they would want to explore further with their studies as they get older.   00;05;59;22 - 00;06;36;14 And then I think role models, you know, from a from an organizational point of view, I wonder many of the people listening might have heard of the term the only. But there are so many examples where women are still the only woman in their team, in their company, potentially in their organizations, or part of a project team. So it's it's it's really, you know, for those women in particular that serve all women, it's really important to have role models in the organizations to be able to see someone who looks like you.   00;06;36;14 - 00;07;04;03 That's been successful, that's faced different challenges. But you know that, you know, you can progress and will be supported and have the right environment to progress within that particular organization and have the right culture to enable you to do that. And that comes down also to organizations having the right policies and practices really to ensure that their, you know, their environments are inclusive.   00;07;04;05 - 00;07;37;29 And I think you know, tying in to this as well is this sense of fostering a community and belonging and community is extremely important in terms of attracting anyone to to work for organizations or to study particular subjects and enabling a culture, an environment of belonging is really important to attracting more women and girls to study and to pursue careers in the I.T. industry.   00;07;38;02 - 00;07;52;15 So talking about the community and ecosystems, corporate ecosystems, why do we need more women than we think need this approach?   00;07;52;17 - 00;08;20;10 Well, you know, Eleanor, I think, you know, overall, we need more people in tech, as you outlined at the beginning, this massive skills shortages and the tech industry is shaping our world and shaping the future. So, you know, we really need to think about that. But the as we know, the proportion of women working in technologies is going, moving, increasing, but at a very glacial pace.   00;08;20;10 - 00;08;50;09 So we do we do really need to consider how to get more women into tech. I had I read the other day a recent report published in the UK by the Professional body for computing, and it said it was going to take 283 years before women make up an equal share of the workforce in the UK. And we need the gender gap in I.T. to close much more quickly.   00;08;50;12 - 00;09;20;09 The pace of technology, the pace of change. We we just can't be moving that slowly. So I think, you know, for organizations, we need our emerging tech like artificial intelligence to reflect the society that we that we live in. And we you know, the tech helps our industry innovate and rise to the needs of society in a meaningful and responsible way.   00;09;20;11 - 00;09;59;20 So and I think for for women, it's really important. The tech tech, there are brilliant career opportunities in the tech industry and we need women in the and much more kind of diverse employee bases to bring different perspectives to help teams work differently, to empower them to solve problems differently. And, you know, we need it's all about kind of ensuring that our workforce and our people with expertise are reflective of the societies that we live in today.   00;09;59;20 - 00;10;12;07 And there are 51% of women across the globe so that, you know, we should we should be reflecting their needs in the tech industry because that is what's shaping our future.   00;10;12;09 - 00;10;37;29 So being already almost seven years with our women's leadership and talking about the need for the community and for the things and for the companies, what would you say are the benefits of having a strategic program like Oracle Women's Leadership.   00;10;38;02 - 00;11;17;11 That many benefits actually. And I think if I start from the level of business support. So as you mentioned, this is a strategic program and we have buy in from all CEOs, suffocates and active support of our senior executives and the impact of that on the organization is is critical because it demonstrates that our leadership teams are invested in increasing the diversity and inclusion of our organization and creating an environment where everybody can belong.   00;11;17;14 - 00;11;53;03 And when you create that environment for an organization, the benefits are huge. You do become a place where people want to work. You want to attract more diverse employees, you retain more diverse employees. And through that, you know, we we can deliver to our customers, which is really important. You know, we can be more innovative because we have more diverse thinking in our organization, more diverse perspectives, and we're better placed to meet our customers needs and expect exceed their expectations.   00;11;53;06 - 00;12;28;19 I also think a huge benefit of having a program like Oracle women's leadership is that it increases collaboration. Oracle's a massive organization around 170,000 employees globally, and a program like Oracle Women's Leadership crosses all employees, all lines of business, and that gives huge opportunity for collaboration and for knowledge sharing, you know, for individuals developing their own knowledge bases and and increasing their skills.   00;12;28;21 - 00;12;56;15 I also think there's a huge benefit because having a strategic program like this is it's a data driven program. We we know we we can link in with external research such as the McKinsey Women in the Workplace study. And we can understand from that study of corporate America that there is still a huge challenge with this. What they class is the broken rung that first step up to manager level.   00;12;56;20 - 00;13;40;26 And we can then take those insights and look at the data Oracle and, you know, really develop programs that meet the needs and supports our employees and we I would say kind of the one of the biggest overall benefits is around our alignment with our diversity and inclusion strategy more broadly. And this offers so many opportunities to drive that sense of belonging that I'm, you know, I feel passionately about to to work together with other internal groups and organizations to truly create that inclusive culture, to help everybody to thrive.   00;13;40;26 - 00;14;10;24 And and I guess in a program like ARC, women's leadership, finally, you know, that helps create a pride in amongst so many people in the organization that you work for. You know, we recently received an award as one of the Forbes 2023 best Employers for Women, and that's helps create that sense of pride and commitment to diversity inclusion more broadly.   00;14;10;27 - 00;14;42;20 As you mentioned, the role is is part of Oracle's diversity and inclusion strategy. And next Friday we celebrate International Women's Day, and this year's theme is inspired inclusion. So what actions do you think we can all take to inspire inclusion to create a more gender equal world so that we avoid spending the next almost 300 years trying to catch up.   00;14;42;22 - 00;14;44;12 In the UK? It needs to go well.   00;14;44;15 - 00;14;47;19 It's pretty much the same in Europe as well.   00;14;47;21 - 00;15;23;01 International Women's Day is a massive day of celebration, sharing and reflection at Oracle, and each year we embrace the International Women's Day theme and create and deliver events across all communities wherever they are in the world. So I mean, this theme, the theme this year, Inspire inclusion, is is really saying that when we inspire others to understand and to values value women's inclusion, we forge a better world.   00;15;23;01 - 00;15;47;04 So I think there's a number of ways in which any individual could take action within their sphere of influence. And I'm one of those. And, you know, tying so well into Oracle Academies around education and really individuals to take that initiative to educate themselves about gender equality issues and experiences of women in the workplace, that's that's really important.   00;15;47;04 - 00;16;17;29 Every every individual is unique and everybody's experiences will be different. So ensuring that you talk to and educate yourself and understand different unique experiences, I would say it would be a really good action to take. We all have the power to be allies, so to be actively support colleagues who are women, to speak up against any bias or micro-aggressions that might manifest themselves, whether that is in our friendship group.   00;16;17;29 - 00;17;02;13 So, you know, our learning environments or in organizations as well, and to offer that support and understanding. And I think, you know, finally, it's really important. I think, to amplify the voices so actively listen to women's perspectives, to their experiences, and to make sure their voices are heard. And I, I talked about the concept of the only. So, you know, pay attention is that somebody who is the only in in one of the environments that you're presenting and how can you ensure that their voice is heard?   00;17;02;16 - 00;17;23;28 Paul I couldn't agree more. And definitely Oracle Academy is also focusing on making education accessible to all inspiring girls. So as a final question, if you could give one piece of advice to the faculty or students, what would it be?   00;17;24;01 - 00;18;19;28 You're making it difficult with one piece of advice, but I'll try and I think my advice would be to to take a look around you and in your faculty or your course in your team, your organization. Is it reflective of the society that you live in? And if not, what can you do within your sphere of influence to impact that, whether it is, you know, amplifying the voice of an underrepresented group or the only that's in the room, or whether that's taking the time to educate yourself or adding elements to a curriculum to ensure that you're showing more examples of women who have been successful within that particular field.   00;18;20;00 - 00;18;30;27 I Yes, that would be my advice. Take a look around you and we need our organizations, faculties to represent the society that we live in.   00;18;30;29 - 00;19;10;29 Right? So in a sector that faces a massive skills shortage, we definitely need more I.T. professionals and therefore we definitely need to increase the number of women in the sector, their presence, their leadership. It's crucial for the sectors, but also for the economy's growth. And we all can benefit from from the different perspectives and the huge pool of talent that women can bring into the sector.   00;19;11;01 - 00;19;55;12 It's certain that we need to go back into schools, into university colleges, adopt the curriculum, change the culture, make it more open, more inclusive, trying to inspire more girls and women through role models, through women that have already succeeded in STEM. So that we can see a more tangible and quick change in society and then, of course, companies need also to invest in developing women's leadership and skills.   00;19;55;15 - 00;20;05;22 So that's also the corporate ecosystems can benefit from from them. Thank you all for speaking on women's leadership.   00;20;05;22 - 00;20;09;07 Thank you, Linda. It's been my pleasure. And thank you so much for inviting me.   00;20;09;12 - 00;20;27;06 To learn more about Oracle Academy and Resources. Visit the Academy dot Oracle dot com and subscribe to our podcast. Thanks for listening. And don't forget to encourage girls to get involved and study computer science and support women who aspire to become.   00;20;27;09 - 00;20;33;28 That wraps up this episode. Thanks for listening and stay tuned for the next Oracle Academy Tech Chat podcast.

In this episode of the Oracle Academy Tech Chat Podcast, Host Tyra Crockett Peirce speaks with Bill Mc Michael, Senior Director of Software Development from the Oracle Infrastructure group. Bill and Tyra discuss the construction engineering industry, what it is, and the tools students pursuing a construction engineering career need to know when they step into the workforce. -------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript: 00;00;09;03 - 00;00;27;21 Welcome to the Oracle Academy Tech Chat. This podcast provides educators and students in-depth discussions with thought leaders around computer science, cloud technologies and software design to help students on their journey to becoming industry ready technology leaders of the future. Let's get started.   00;00;27;29 - 00;00;55;12 Welcome to Oracle Academy Tech Chat, where we discuss how Oracle Academy helps prepare our next generation's workforce. I'm your host, Tyra. Today, I'm joined by Bill McMichael, senior director of software development in the Construction and Engineering Industries Group at Oracle. Bill directs product teams responsible for application development and product documentation for portfolio management software applications, including Premiere Therapeutics.   00;00;56;05 - 00;01;18;27 Bill has held various development and management positions at Converse Systems prior to its acquisition by Oracle in 2009. He's a B.S. MBA from Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Bill is a certified project management professional. Welcome, Bill. So a little bit to start off, and you give me a bit about your background and your role at Oracle.   00;01;19;20 - 00;01;45;11 Yeah. Thank you, Tyra. I have a diverse background that encompasses project management and technical ability. My journey with Oracle began through the acquisition of Primavera Systems, a company that specialized in project and portfolio project management software. And currently, I serve as the senior director of software development for Primavera P6, a well-known project management solution in the construction industry.   00;01;45;23 - 00;02;11;03 So I've been helping construction companies solve their project and resource planning needs for 35 years. As you mentioned, I hold a PMP certification reflecting my commitment to project management. So my role at Oracle is a unique combination of my construction management and technology expertise. It's a role that's both rewarding and dynamic given the ever changing nature of technology and project management.   00;02;11;17 - 00;02;15;17 So my next question what exactly is construction engineering?   00;02;15;28 - 00;02;51;11 Well, construction engineering is a specialized field within civil engineering that focuses on the planning, design and execution of construction projects. So a distinction from the broader civil engineering discipline is that construction engineering is a subdiscipline primarily dealing with the on site execution and management of the project. It involves the application of engineering principles to ensure the successful completion of construction projects such as buildings, infrastructure, bridges and much more.   00;02;51;26 - 00;03;23;19 Construction engineers play a pivotal role in coordinating various aspects of a project, including cost estimation, project scheduling, quality control and the management of resources and labor. One of the key distinctions of construction engineering is its emphasis on the practical aspects of construction. Construction engineers translate architectural designs and engineering plants in reality. They're responsible that the project is executed safely and within budget.   00;03;24;07 - 00;03;52;21 So they're managing issues that arise throughout the project. They're managing the risks. And at the same time, ensuring the quality and integrity of the structures that are being built. In essence, construction engineering is all about applying technical expertise to transform a vision on paper into a working structure, all the while adhering to best practices, regulations and engineering standards.   00;03;53;02 - 00;04;01;29 So the field requires a thorough understanding of both engineering principles and construction management, making it a crucial part of the construction industry.   00;04;02;09 - 00;04;17;17 That is actually interesting to me. I always thought that civil engineering and construction management are separate, so I. I learn something new, so I'm very grateful for that. So my next question, what are some of the software tools used in construction and sharing?   00;04;18;00 - 00;04;47;29 So of course at Oracle we make software tools and my division specifically makes tools for the construction industry. So in the area of construction engineering, Oracle provides a comprehensive suite of software tools designed to optimize construction project management and enhance collaboration. These tools are widely trusted by professionals in the industry, but we offer integrated solutions for various aspects of construction engineering.   00;04;48;14 - 00;05;26;18 So let's start with the first class tools I'm going to discuss and that project portfolio management and we have Oracle proof of our P6 and Oracle Primavera Cloud. So the value these tools bring to construction engineering is effective project management, project portfolio software like or Oracle's of P6, allow construction engineers to efficiently manage multiple projects concurrently. It's a centralized platform for project planning, scheduling resource allocations.   00;05;28;01 - 00;06;12;17 It helps teams stay organized to meet project deadlines. Another benefit of Primavera is resource optimization. Construction projects often involve a complex web of resources from labor to materials and equipment. So project portfolio software helps optimize that resource allocation, ensuring the resources are used efficiently across all projects. Another benefit includes budget control, risk management and collaboration communication. So in summary, project portfolio software is instrumental in streamlining construction project management.   00;06;13;14 - 00;06;46;01 The next tool, it's really an important tool in construction engineering is construction collaboration platform. Construction Collaboration platform such as Oracle connects Oracle EC and AX offers a wide range of capabilities that cater to the specific needs of construction engineering projects. One of them includes document management, so it connects is going to provide a centralized platform for document storage, tracking and version control.   00;06;46;13 - 00;07;26;07 There's a lot of documents and in construction, these documents include engineering drawings, specification actions, contracts and reports and other important capability. And it connects is workflow management. It connects, streamlines the approval processes and workflows, ensuring that documents and changes progress through the necessary reviews and approvals efficiently. And another critical capability is transmittal management. It connects simplifies the process of sending and receiving documents and drawings, tracking their status and ensuring they're reaching the intended recipients.   00;07;26;17 - 00;07;58;02 Those are just some of the key capabilities of EC can access in a cloud based collaboration platform. Another tool is building information modeling that's referred to as BIM. It's a digital representation of the physical and functional characteristics of a building or infrastructure. So it's going to provide a detailed, accurate 3D model of a project. It has not only the visual aspects, but other information about the project's materials, spatial relationships and more.   00;07;58;24 - 00;08;38;26 It connects, integrates with them tools, facilitating the sharing of 3D models and aiding with design coordination. Another tool probably you would want in your tool chest as a construction engineer is a tool to aid with payment processing. A software like Oracle Tech Store. It simplifies payment processes by automating pay application, Lean waivers and compliance management. In a nutshell, NEXTDOOR helps minimize payment disputes and delays so these Oracle tools cater to the unique needs of construction engineers offering integrated solutions for project management.   00;08;39;10 - 00;09;03;25 Document Management Cost control and leveraging BIM technology. Moreover, Oracle Academy partners with top universities to provide students and faculty with the opportunity to learn and apply these construction engineering tools in an educational setting. This partnership ensures the next generation of construction engineers are well prepared with the skills and software tools they need to excel in the industry.   00;09;04;06 - 00;09;11;05 That leads to my next question. What are some of the career options for students studying construction engineering?   00;09;11;18 - 00;09;40;06 Well, there's a wide range of career options available to someone who studies construction engineering. I'll describe some of the most common and promising career paths. Number one Construction Management. Construction Manager. Construction managers oversee all aspects of construction projects. From planning and budgeting to onsite supervision. They ensure the projects are completed on time within budget and in compliance with quality and safety standards.   00;09;41;18 - 00;10;17;25 Second, Common Career Path is a project engineer. Project engineers work closely with construction managers and they assist in the planning and execution of projects. Now they're all often going to focus on a specific aspect of a project such as scheduling, cost control or quality assurance. Another career path is an estimate. Estimates calculate the cost of materials, labor and equipment needed for construction projects, so they play a crucial role in determining the project's budgets.   00;10;18;09 - 00;10;55;08 And they help companies with contracts and your various engineering positions. I'll describe a couple of them. One is a site engineer. A site engineer is responsible for the onsite management, including coordinating with subcontractors and ensuring safety protocols are followed and monitoring the project progress. And you have a design engineer. A design engineer works on the technical and structural aspects of construction projects, creating detailed plans and specifications for buildings, bridges and other infrastructure.   00;10;57;01 - 00;11;20;28 And then you even have, you know, you have some other, you know, career, such as you could be a construction software specialist with expertise in construction technology, like the tools that we we just discussed a minute ago. Some professionals work a specialist in implementing and using these construction software solutions. So that's just a few of the career options available.   00;11;21;09 - 00;11;28;06 It's a diverse range of opportunities and that often depends on the individual's interests, their skills and their career goals.   00;11;28;24 - 00;11;37;03 So that leads into my next question. What are some skills that a student pursuing a career in construction, engineering or construction management should have?   00;11;37;14 - 00;12;10;20 Well, students pursuing a career in construction engineering should develop a combination of technical, soft and project management skills to be able to excel in the field. So here's just some key skills they should focus on. I would say the top three are technical knowledge project management and communication. So let me talk about technical knowledge. You would want proficiency in construction techniques, methods and materials.   00;12;11;12 - 00;12;50;03 You want to understand structural engineering principles. You want to be familiar with construction, soft wear and building information modeling tools. So a lot of the book knowledge you're getting at the universities, you need that strong base of technical knowledge. Second skill set is project management skills. So this includes planning skills, schedule management, resource management and allocation budgeting, cost estimation, risk management, problem solving, exposure to improve and and training to improve.   00;12;50;03 - 00;13;18;10 Your project management skills are are very valuable skill to have. And I talked about soft skills. Communication skills. Clear and concise. Written and verbal communication. Being able to effectively collaborate with poly disciplinary teams. Being able to effectively communicate with clients and stakeholders. So there are the top three, but there's some others that I'd like to point out.   00;13;20;13 - 00;13;57;24 I think one of the emerging skills you're seeing is environmental and sustainability awareness. So any that you should develop knowledge of green building practices and sustainability principles and just, you know, an overall great skill to have is client customer service. Understand understanding and meeting client expectations, excellent customer service, relationship building skills. So developing these skills will help students become well-rounded construction engineers capable of successfully managing and executing construction projects.   00;13;58;03 - 00;14;06;22 Additional continuous learning and staying updated with industry advancements is essential for long term success in this dynamic field.   00;14;07;03 - 00;14;12;28 So my last question would be if you could give one piece of advice to faculty, your students, what would it be?   00;14;13;12 - 00;14;46;12 Well, Tara, if I could offer one piece of advice to both faculty and students pursuing careers in construction engineering, it would be to embrace lifelong learning and adaptability. The construction industry is constantly evolving with new technologies, sustainable practices, changing regulations. So to excel in this field, it's crucial to stay curious, keep a curious, an open mindset. Continuously seek to expand your knowledge, explore emerging trends in the construction and construction engineering.   00;14;47;00 - 00;15;17;16 You need to embrace technology in there. Be comfortable with technology. It's going to continue to play an increasingly significant role in construction. Familiarize yourself with the construction software that we discussed earlier building information, modeling and other technological advancements. You want to network. You want to build and maintain a strong professional network, collaborate with your peers, industry professionals and other experts to gain insights and stay updated.   00;15;17;17 - 00;15;49;19 Like listening to podcasts like this. You want to be environmentally conscious, be mindful of sustainable and environmentally friendly construction practices. Sustainability is becoming a key focus in the industry, and the last thing I'll say is just remember that learning is a lifelong journey big by continuously seeking knowledge, adapting to change and remaining committed to professional growth. Both faculty and students can thrive in this dynamic or rewarding field of construction engineering.   00;15;50;06 - 00;16;01;09 A big thanks to Bill for giving me an overview of construction engineering. To learn more about Oracle Academy and our resources, visit Academy dot Oracle dot com and subscribe to our podcast. Thanks for listening.   00;16;01;17 - 00;16;10;02 That wraps up this episode. Thanks for listening and stay tuned for the next Oracle Academy Tech Chat podcast.

Artificial intelligence or AI is everywhere from movies to healthcare. In this episode, Tyra Crockett Peirce speaks with Oracle database expert Ace Director, Jim Czuprynski, about how AI is changing the jobs of database administrators and the skills that students need to learn if they want to pursue a career as a DBA.  -------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript: 00;00;09;03 - 00;00;27;21 Welcome to the Oracle Academy Tech Chat. This podcast provides educators and students in-depth discussions with thought leaders around computer science, cloud technologies and software design to help students on their journey to becoming industry ready technology leaders of the future. Let's get started.   00;00;27;29 - 00;00;57;02 Welcome to Oracle Academy Tech Chat, where we discuss how Oracle Academy helps prepare our next generation's workforce. I'm your host, Tyra Crockett. Artificial Intelligence, or A.I., is everywhere, from the movies to health care. In this episode, I speak with Oracle database expert and ace director Jim Czuprynski about how it is changing the jobs of database administrators and the skills that students need to learn if they want to pursue a career as a DBA.   00;00;57;14 - 00;01;24;03 Jim Czuprynski has been an Oracle DBA for 20 plus years. During that time, he's taught 2000 plus students in the finer points of Oracle database administration. As an Oracle University instructor coauthored four books on Oracle technology and has spoken dozens of times at user group conferences around the world. During that time, he's seen plenty of dramatic changes to the DBA role, especially after autonomous database was introduced.   00;01;24;14 - 00;01;25;09 Welcome, Jim.   00;01;25;19 - 00;01;27;05 Thank you, Tyra. It's great to be here.   00;01;27;11 - 00;01;32;15 To go ahead and get started off, can you give me a little bit about your background and your current job role?   00;01;32;26 - 00;01;56;08 Absolutely. These days, I'm more of a technology advocate, but to be honest, I'm still at heart an Oracle DBA, as I have been for over 20 years. I go back all the weight. Oracle 81723. So as you might imagine, I've seen quite a few changes in the Oracle database and the hardware that it runs on over that time.   00;01;56;18 - 00;02;20;18 These days I'm actually kind of back into some of the really neat features that are built into just about every Oracle database. Especially Oracle 23. See our latest release that's almost ready for general availability. And most platforms. And I really enjoy delving into things like graph and spatial and machine learning and analytics.   00;02;21;18 - 00;02;31;27 So my next question is kind of a little bit along those lines. The Oracle Autonomous Database was launched a few years ago. How does it differ from previous versions?   00;02;32;15 - 00;02;59;12 Wow. The autonomous database, or most of us call it ADB for short. It has features that are already present in the most stable release of the Oracle database. That's typically on premises right inside an organization's local data center or maybe even an on premises data center. But the big difference about autonomous database, first off, is that it runs inside ORCL cloud infrastructure.   00;02;59;19 - 00;03;27;25 And best of all, it runs on, in my opinion, the best hardware ever built for Oracle database workloads. Oracle Exadata, which is an extremely robust environment. It eliminates a lot of performance bottlenecks that are inherent in traditional on premises database hardware and I speak from experience. I built servers back in the day to run Oracle 8 and 9 even 10.   00;03;28;19 - 00;03;35;22 It's not trivial to build a robust database working environment.   00;03;36;09 - 00;03;44;00 So let's kind of go on to AI a little bit. So how is a I used in an autonomous database or ADB?   00;03;44;27 - 00;04;20;19 That's a great question. EDB uses A.I. in many different forms underneath the covers, and it really automates a lot of tasks that a typical DBA doesn't necessarily have the bandwidth to perform everything from something called automatic indexing. We'll talk about that a little bit later, I hope. Things like automatic scaling of CPU's based on demand that it observes automated database patching, and even the ability to automatically identify.   00;04;20;19 - 00;04;47;01 And this is really cool, a poorly executing SQL statement and essentially quarantined them so that somebody from the DevOps slash DB 18 can scrutinize them and go, Why are these things taking up so much bandwidth as the next release? Oracle 23 C rolls out for ADP. There are several new AI controlled features, including and these are really cool.   00;04;47;10 - 00;05;17;29 Automatic transaction rollback, for example, a transaction might be holding a roll lock and blocking a higher priority transaction. You can actually configure that so that that will happen within boundaries automatically. Another thing that's really neat is automatic generation of materialized view, and I worked with projects even in the last 12 to 18 months where materialized views are a tricky thing to build out.   00;05;17;29 - 00;05;50;01 You really have to kind of know what's going on when you build them. Now, in latest release, that's going to happen automatically. By the way, these features I'm talking about, you do have a choice as a DBA to go in there and if necessary, turn them off. I get that question a lot. So, you know, you can definitely deactivate them or essentially turn them down and make them advisors temporarily and then decide whether or not to turn them on in full for your environment.   00;05;51;04 - 00;06;29;04 Perhaps the most intriguing new ADB feature is retrieval augmented generation or RG or RAG for short. RAG employs several large language models or limbs that translate a request for information. For example, find the top five customers within a mere based on their average percent increase in sales for the last six months and simply by prefacing that with the words select a I, I hope you're sitting down as you're listening to this, it literally will build the skill statement for you.   00;06;29;18 - 00;06;49;03 You can even say, just show me what the SQL statement looks like, that you just built your ADP and it'll show it to you. So again, one of the ways people are using A.I. these days, right, is more of a helper. You know, don't don't write it for me, but show me what it would look like if you wrote something like this.   00;06;49;12 - 00;06;55;14 And now you can do that with Rack. That's to me, mind. And amazing.   00;06;56;07 - 00;07;11;16 Then kind of one of the things that always comes up is if we're using AI for all these other things, like, you know, writing SQL statements or like helping all in patch or data, how does it impact our security for our database?   00;07;12;13 - 00;07;35;27 Well, another great question. Like I said, I've been doing it for 20 years as a DBA for two years in all different angles. Right. And one of the first things that if I'm on a DevOps team and someone proposes something, the first thing I'd like to ask is, yeah, great idea. Sounds really radical. Sounds cool. How secure is that?   00;07;35;27 - 00;08;01;02 Right. I want to think about not just what's going to happen at that database level, but all the way up through that seven layer salad, if you will, all the way out to eventually our firewall. Right. Is this going to be solid and secure for application access layers? What if I have a special purpose database inside of my my firewall?   00;08;01;03 - 00;08;32;20 Right. Maybe something specific to spacial or graph or mapping or whatever it is I like to think about How easy is it for a bad actor to do something as simple as SQL injection to gain access to either the data insider databases or even the infrastructure. I mean, a day doesn't go by that we don't hear about some sort of hack or some sort of ransomware attack that has happened because of someone ignoring a business risk.   00;08;33;01 - 00;09;00;27 So one of the things I like about ADB and Rack is that I'm eliminating several possible attack vectors. Right. One of the things that I'm doing with using select a I, and then a question is I'm letting before called database write the query. It's a lot less likely that hopefully at least I haven't seen it do it yet.   00;09;00;27 - 00;09;40;03 I've been playing with it where Rand might go ahead and write some kind of weird thing that would do SQL injection inside my database. I haven't seen that happen and I don't anticipate that would happen. So I really like that aspect of API being implemented and if you will, really within the environs of the database itself. Also, one of the things that is evident to me, having talked to people about all the other kinds of databases, even open source databases, Oracle is well known within the industry as the most secure enterprise database.   00;09;40;20 - 00;10;08;13 That means that even if someone were to gain some sort of access, I have excellent tools at my disposal that will identify that access immediately. And this is a big advantage, especially for the concept of what we call converged database, which I've been talking with several other ace directors and other DBAs and developers for almost three or four years now.   00;10;09;01 - 00;10;44;02 The whole idea is more likely than not if you're building a graph. DB solution heck, even a vector database solution with some of the new things that are coming with the next release of Oracle and maybe even a spatial solution, all these things are already built in to my database environment. If I'm doing a spatial solution, a graph data property graph solution, a machine learning solution, there are dozens of machine learning algorithms built into an Oracle database.   00;10;44;10 - 00;11;05;28 Why would I want to take a risk of having something outside my environs that compose my database and even my computing infrastructure? So from my perspective, a I, especially an oracle, is going to be something that presents a lot fewer security challenges.   00;11;06;22 - 00;11;25;19 That is very comforting to know that. But then one of the things that I hear about AI is moving to ADP, and we've been working with it at least on our team for the past three plus years now has an autonomous database. And then I change the work of a database administrator.   00;11;26;04 - 00;12;00;13 Hmm. Great question. Again, let me go to one example that I kind of alluded to earlier for ADB. There's really two subsets, if you will, main subsets, one called Autonomous Data Warehouse, which, as you might guess, is aimed at data warehousing and data lakes and more very driven type activity. There's also an autonomous transaction processing ADB flavor. I have one up and running right now in the Oracle Cloud infrastructure environment for three years.   00;12;01;08 - 00;12;45;05 I've never had to mess around with all of the things that I would have if I was not running autonomous. So one thing I alluded to earlier, this feature called automatic indexing, it's really specific to autonomous transaction processing or ATP ADB instances. I actually did a test study with the transaction processing counsel's TPC e workload and built out quite a large database with that and then ran the query workload against my database with no indexes, no secondary indexes.   00;12;45;05 - 00;13;11;29 Right. To be more specific, primary key indexes and other things for referential integrity were there, but no indexes that would normally help a query perform better. And it was so neat that automatic indexing, once I turn it on within a very brief period of time, within about I believe 45 minutes had identified critical indices that needed to be added to my database.   00;13;11;29 - 00;13;38;09 And in one case, I remember I had one query that actually performed its improved performance, improved this performance by 1 million times by adding a single index. Now, if you're indeed one of the reasons that's important is we spend a lot of time hearing complaints from our DevOps team or even our end users going, Wow, it's running slow.   00;13;38;09 - 00;14;05;23 Why is it running slow? And one of the typical ways of solving that is slapping index on this particular table, right, to make it run faster. That could have amazingly deleterious effects on transaction processing. So one of the cool things where AI is actually being used underneath the commerce is this automatic indexing tool. It adds only the indexes that need to be index added to the database tables, which is mind blowing.   00;14;05;23 - 00;14;32;01 To me. It was really cool to see another one and this is relatively recent. We've had tools like this since early TNG, which is like 1518 years ago. There was a concept of automatic sequel tuning and this has been around for a quite a bit of time, but in more recent releases, yeah, like ten years ago, this has been around actually, and it's gotten better and better.   00;14;32;10 - 00;14;59;19 Automatic SQL tuning will look at a particular query or DML statement, even and go, No, there's a better execution plan that you should be using and it can either just give you the advice as a DBA and you can go evaluate it, decide to implement it or not or actually and this is really cool what you build confidence in it, right?   00;14;59;19 - 00;15;24;13 I said many of these things are actionable. You can turn it on when you have a certain level of confidence. So the stuff that I used to worry about as a DBA back 20 years ago, heck, even ten years ago, because of the learning algorithms and the AI that are underneath the covers of ADP, I don't need to worry about that stuff I haven't looked at.   00;15;24;13 - 00;15;46;19 And for my DBA colleagues, you'll know what I mean. I haven't looked at it a lot for my ETP database in literally three years because it just was fine. And if you were what I would like to call a helicopter DTA and always hovering over your database, you don't have to do that anymore. So what can you do instead?   00;15;46;21 - 00;16;16;18 Go help your team, build better systems, get in front of your DevOps, pick up efforts to build better systems, worry about things like better data modeling, worry about more efficiently written code from the start instead of, Oh my gosh, that's running terribly and then patching it later making that SQL statement or even application one better. So it's been quite revolutionary, to be honest from my perspective.   00;16;17;10 - 00;16;29;13 So then I'm going to transition to my next question, which is, if I'm a student, what are some of the skills that a student should learn if they're planning on working in a department database?   00;16;29;13 - 00;16;53;22 The one that I would advise for all students who are going to work anywhere near any kind of database these days, structured query language as well, Right? It's funny, I talk with younger people and their eyes kind of roll when I say that the same way my eyes would roll when someone said you should really learn assembler never worked in assembler, never worked in C courses like that was COBOL, right?   00;16;54;05 - 00;17;20;18 But the thing is, that school sequel is going to be around for a long time. Even for the Notorious not only or no SQL databases, you really do need to understand and if not, learn how to write SQL statements because you really need to understand what's going on underneath the covers. And that's just for manipulating and retrieving data from or inside your database.   00;17;20;28 - 00;17;51;14 And then the next thing I think that's really important is to think about how data relates to itself. As we talk about these days, especially things like graph databases where we're really mapping out not so much the fact that this invoice has a bunch of line items, right, but that this customer, because they purchased this item, influenced another customer who influenced another customer, who influenced another customer to purchase that same item.   00;17;51;23 - 00;18;16;17 So things like property graphs and vector databases, these things are really coming to the fore. So learn a skill for sure, understand it so that when you see it, you can interpret it and understand what's going on because it's simply not going to go away. There have been movements to try to kill it, but I don't know how much longer it's going to be around.   00;18;16;17 - 00;18;22;21 But from what I'm seeing, it's going to be around for a long time. Why not learn it? Why not master it?   00;18;23;07 - 00;18;42;29 I do want to add one follow up question to that is what about with Chat GTP and how it can write cycle statements? Should I still learn how to do SQL if I've got like my modern language processing skills or some of these language tools coming up, is it still really important to learn like the basics of sequel?   00;18;44;02 - 00;19;11;00 Absolutely. You know, sequels really simple that it's elements. It's about 20 verbs, and that's really it's super simple. And once you understand it and more importantly, that you understand it's set based, right, which is different. It's the Venn diagram stuff that all of us probably struggle from or through in grade school and even maybe even high school. Right?   00;19;11;04 - 00;19;38;20 But set theory is at the heart of effective processing of data, right? So it really comes in handy, number one, because that's one of the most effective ways to handle relationships between data. And secondly, I really hate to tell you this, sooner or later somebody's going to say, C'mere here, here's some SQL from 20 years ago, I'll fix it.   00;19;38;23 - 00;20;06;05 I'll figure out what's wrong with it and enhance it. You're going to end up having to look at it anyway minus will learn it now. Right. And as long as we're talking about Chartbeat and these other things, like I mentioned, us select a AI statement that you can use inside Adbe right now. You can use that if you want to learn how to build really good sequel statements, right?   00;20;06;05 - 00;20;30;18 So you can use it, if you will, as sort of a modeling tool so that you can see how a really good optimizer, a really good tool, builds well-written sequel statements. So I'm not saying throw it away, I'm just saying make sure you're using the right flavor of cheap, which by the way, the air to a rack is sort of built on.   00;20;30;18 - 00;20;42;28 Right? A good elements of it, many elements of it are built on, I believe Chachi beat 3.5. So you're not throwing away anything you were learning there. It's more synergistic learning, if anything.   00;20;43;10 - 00;20;53;25 That that was actually really helpful. And so now to my very last question, If you could give one piece of advice to faculty, your students, what would it be?   00;20;54;03 - 00;21;15;27 The advice that I didn't listen to when I was younger is the advice I'd like to give you. I spent my time believing that if I can master the code, that's all I'll need to be successful. And boy, was I an idiot because I had people, my mentor would go, You know, Jim, you're a really good coder. You're really good at what you do.   00;21;15;27 - 00;21;38;12 But to be frank, you're really upset. People don't interface with them very well. You're a little you come off as arrogant, you come off as mean. You don't seem to really care about people as much. You should really concentrate on making those things out, making those things better. What do you know? Oh, my gosh. I wish I had spent time doing that.   00;21;38;26 - 00;22;13;26 I really believe that. Secondly, what I found and this is an interesting piece, I mentor quite a few younger folks, even folks that are leaving the U.S. military in the Navy right now. My biggest piece of advice is network, network, network. You've got to build a network of humans because to be honest, almost every single opportunity that I've had, whether it's been within a company or maybe even a new job or a new opportunity, has come from 90% of the time.   00;22;14;04 - 00;22;44;04 Someone I knew it in my network. I wish I had built that network out much sooner. Again, you have a lot better tools these days. You've got social media and LinkedIn and all other kinds of tools. We didn't really have some of those 40 years ago, but there's no excuse not to build that network out. Seriously, that's twice as important, soft skills wise, than even learning how to write sequel.   00;22;44;12 - 00;23;00;10 I would actually say I agree with that. My very first job out of college was actually a neighbor that I knew that I, in fact said I was sitting next to him at a wedding reception and we were talking about how I just graduated college. I was looking for a job and he's like, Oh, I've got a job.   00;23;00;22 - 00;23;27;20 I might come apply for it. And that's that's exactly how I got my very first job out of college was through networking. So I wholeheartedly espouse that as well. So a big thank you to Jim for speaking with me on an autonomous database and the changing roles of a DBA. To learn more about Oracle Academy and our resources, visit Academy dot Oracle dot com and subscribe to our podcast.   00;23;27;20 - 00;23;28;16 Thanks for listening.   00;23;29;04 - 00;23;37;19 That wraps up this episode. Thanks for listening and stay tuned for the next Oracle Academy Tech Chat podcast.  

In this episode, Oracle Academy Vice President, Willie McCabe, continues his conversation with Evan Goldberg, NetSuite founder and Oracle Executive Vice President, on what it’s like to be a leader today, and the skills students need to succeed.   As NetSuite celebrates its 25th anniversary as the first cloud company, Evan will also talk about the challenges of being the disruptor and what he thinks is next for the technology industry.   -------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript:   00;00;09;03 - 00;00;27;21 Welcome to the Oracle Academy Tech Chat. This podcast provides educators and students in-depth discussions with thought leaders around computer science, cloud technologies and software design to help students on their journey to becoming industry ready technology leaders of the future. Let's get started.   00;00;28;02 - 00;01;02;14 Welcome to Oracle Academy Tech Chat, where we discuss how Oracle Academy helps prepare our next generation's workforce. I'm your host, Tyra Crockett Peirce And the second part of this special two part episode of the Oracle Academy Tech Chat podcast. Oracle Academy Vice President Willie McCabe continues his conversation with Oracle executive vice president and naturally founder Evan Goldberg on what it's like to be a creator and leader and the skills students need to succeed as they become the technology innovators of the future.   00;01;03;04 - 00;01;04;15 Please listen.   00;01;04;15 - 00;01;17;26 I'm reflecting back on your career to know other any key skills that that you've developed over time or any experiences that have been instrumental to your success.   00;01;18;17 - 00;01;46;14 Yeah, well, I mean, a skill that I think I've developed and still I'm a work in process on is stepping back. Yeah, stepping back is hard to do a lot of times. And when you're building a company, you're in the weeds a lot. I mean, you're doing a lot of work yourself, I mean, and that's as it should be.   00;01;46;14 - 00;02;13;00 And you can get caught up in a lot of day to day things that are urgent that keep you from doing the things that are important. And always that's something that I try to think about and balance in my daily work is, is what there are urgent things and there are important things, and sometimes there things are both, but in a lot of cases they fall pretty clearly into one category another.   00;02;13;00 - 00;02;39;21 I mean, people say tactical or strategic. Stepping back and seeing, you know, where you spending a lot of your time and where be where you should be spending more of your time thinking about what are we going to wish we did five years from now. That's a that's a really good that's a really good to me technique of stepping back and figuring out what is urgent and what is important.   00;02;41;18 - 00;03;19;19 And so, you know, I've always tried to do that. And it's it's and it comes obviously, it comes with the experience that you can differentiate the two that just comes from your experience in your career. If you're building companies or experience earlier in the company, with failure comes a lot of learning. Yeah. And so yeah, so that's one of the skills that I think finding the right time to do that sometimes, you know, sometimes you just need your nose to the grindstone and you can just focus and turn out, churn out great work.   00;03;19;19 - 00;03;42;04 And that's, that's, that's awesome. And like if you're a programmer or designer or salesperson and stuff, that's what you do. You're trying to when, where is the time that you step back and, and, and to and, and, and look and see is am I, am I working on the right am I working on the right things?   00;03;42;22 - 00;03;54;18 Yeah. That's a lesson for everyone. I think even, you know, managers and individual contributors, you know decide when to step back from and activities and projects.   00;03;54;25 - 00;04;24;29 Right. And a key part of management is helping your employees do that, helping your employees see what is my path, how is what I'm doing, getting me on that path, or what are some other things that I'm not doing that down that path. Or if I veer off, I wish I had done. And I think, you know, obviously one of those key things is stepping back and saying, hmm, am I getting the skills that I want to succeed in my career?   00;04;25;08 - 00;04;50;14 You know, I'm working really, really hard doing the same thing over and over again. And maybe that's okay right now because that's helping build. Yeah, but what am I going to need in five years and how am I getting it? And I'm getting it through what I'm doing right now. And, you know, I think most organizations have very rich opportunities to get those skills that people don't always take advantage of.   00;04;50;14 - 00;05;18;08 So then that's that stepping back and saying, you know what, I'm going to give 2 hours a week or 5 hours a week or whatever towards gaining this new skill that I know I don't need right now, but I think I may need down the road. I mean, for management itself, if that's where you see yourself going and you have that, you know, you feel like you enjoy the people part of the process and you enjoy mentoring and then that's great.   00;05;18;08 - 00;05;48;08 Not everybody should or or or can become a great manager. And that's okay. The world needs people doing lots of things, you know, great strategic thinkers. Maybe that's what they do. They, they do strategic thought, they architect, whatever. They don't necessarily need to manage big teams, but if that's where you want to go, then you should be. While of course, while you're an individual contributor, of course you should be delegating all those skills to be become better at that.   00;05;48;20 - 00;06;13;15 What about taking some time to do a management course? The world would be so much of a better place if managers were trained in, you know, I mean, like parents, you can't generally get trained in in being a parent. You can't generally get trained in advanced other than maybe babysitting and or having a pet. But management, you're inundated with management.   00;06;13;15 - 00;06;37;14 You have a manager, you see people managing. There's lots of opportunity to learn those skills, kind of like having a nephew or a niece, I guess. Yeah, lots of opportunity to gain those skills up front. And the thing is that the is speaking specifically about management, the resources are amazing because people have done it like a billion times.   00;06;38;04 - 00;07;04;09 There's really no excuse for you to make the mistakes that have already been made by the previous billion. So yeah, so I think that's again, I mean stepping back and, and, and seeing that path where you want to go, you got to know, you know, it's a great speech from basketball coach Jimmy Valvano where he says, you know, to get where you want to go, you know you have to know where you've been and where you are now.   00;07;04;09 - 00;07;21;03 And and and then, of course, you need that vision of where you want to be. And if you can keep that sort of in the back of your mind and step back and say, am I on the right path to where I want to be is where I am getting me where I want to be, and I'm full.   00;07;21;03 - 00;07;32;11 Usually it is, sometimes it's not. But there's, you know, you can get yourself accelerate down that path. I taking some time out of testing regular grind.   00;07;32;28 - 00;07;53;02 Yeah and I thank you for your candor on that as well I say refreshing to hear you you know be so open about these discussions as well because, you know, being a leader is is something that people aspire to be. And your openness on on you know, stepping back and when to step back, I think is a lesson for everybody.   00;07;53;03 - 00;08;23;29 As I already said. And our final series of questions before we go to the open, CUNY and lots of questions are coming through from our audience. I'd like to ask your insights and advice for the next generation of talent. Those students that are, you know, tuning in today with some questions relating to them and their faculty members on which skills they should be thinking about delivering to their students as well.   00;08;23;29 - 00;08;32;10 If you were a recent graduate, which skills would you be highlighting to your future employers and and why?   00;08;32;29 - 00;09;01;05 Well, the number one would be openness and willingness and ability to learn because things are changing so fast right now. They always have been. But with AI, it's faster than ever and no one can predict what's going to be. That is, our large language is going to be the center of of all AI for the foreseeable future or is something else going to come along?   00;09;01;05 - 00;09;29;09 I don't think anyone can predict. No one could have predicted really that large language models would move so quickly into the general purpose realm, even the people that built them. So number one is you have to be shown yourself to be adaptable, flexible ability to learn and and and adjust to changing conditions because it's only going to I think this breakneck pace is only going to continue for the foreseeable future.   00;09;29;26 - 00;10;04;13 And so obviously, you know, I think showing that, you know, you have to go, you know, you've got a diverse learning background is really important. And so those are the two, you know, from a technical standpoint, I guess that's that's where I, I focus from a people standpoint. I think more than ever, people see the value of teams and teams that are work really effectively together in our culture.   00;10;04;13 - 00;10;33;07 And that suite that's so critical and so continuing to build those skills and you know how you work in teams and then that you, you know, in some cases that you have the potential to become a leader is important in some roles. I think that that's a juggernaut for companies. If you have employees coming in with the skills, Yes.   00;10;33;10 - 00;10;56;26 That you also can see in them that they're people skills and they're the ability to think outside the box long term are going to be really great assets to a company. So I think, yeah, adaptable ability to think out of the box, ability to work really well with teams are sort of that's the name of the game.   00;10;57;06 - 00;11;25;07 Fabulous. And you know, it's interesting, those are outside of the technical skills that you may learn within your university course, but the really important that you're developing those as you develop as a young person in your in your education career, that you are developing those skills because those are what employers are looking for, is technology skills will see you, you know, do a really good job.   00;11;25;23 - 00;11;32;10 But these are the skills that that then embed you into that organization and allow you to thrive. So yeah.   00;11;32;16 - 00;12;00;06 Yeah. One other thing I doubt about that is that what is amazing to me and I see in our our new Nets leaders coming straight out of college or maybe or to experience, they come in with enormous understanding of what we do. I mean, when I started at Oracle, I was like databases, one of those for I mean, okay, it wasn't that bad.   00;12;00;06 - 00;12;21;18 But seriously, we had a three week training boot camp where we were immersed in what Oracle did, and that's how we learned it. And that's great. We did learn it, but it was that one sort of narrow piece. What I find now is that there's a lot more. But of course students are doing internships over the over the summer, which that there was some of that.   00;12;21;25 - 00;12;52;15 But now it's sort of taken for granted that you'll have done a couple internships and and so so students are coming into the working world with already a ton of knowledge and experience. It's really impressive. Yeah. And yeah and so just having that jumpstart and being able to go into a company already sort of knowing the landscape a little bit and knowing what businesses do and what businesses are all about and is really is, is really important.   00;12;53;04 - 00;13;22;09 The other thing about students coming into Net Suite is that I see is that there's a strong desire to do good in the world. And of course, I think, you know, people that come to NetSuite understand that we're helping businesses and that's great. What really, I think sometimes attracts in the net suite is we also do a lot for not for profits because not for profits or they have they want ROIC.   00;13;23;13 - 00;13;43;25 It's just that there are as measured in a different currencies impact, but they want to do that as efficiently as possible. And that's why so many end up adopting suite. And then one of the things we do is we do a pro-bono program where employees can help get that suite up and running or help them make the most out of that suite within these organizations that are doing great things in the world.   00;13;43;25 - 00;14;09;12 So that's more like our responsibility back to students that we hear people coming into the workforce. That's what they want. And so we build a program not just because of that. I mean, we believe in it at the highest levels of Net Suite and Oracle that it's, you know, that we have a lot to offer in terms of, you know, caring not just caring for each other, caring for the world.   00;14;09;22 - 00;14;30;17 Yes. And so, yeah, I mean, that's sort of tangentially related, but I did want to mention that that's an important attribute as you look at new companies that you may want to evaluate. So it's not necessarily a skill, but if that's something that's important to you. Yeah, something you certainly should be looking for. As you add, you're are evaluating companies.   00;14;31;06 - 00;14;59;21 Fantastic and something very close to the hearts of Oracle Academy because, you know, we are doing very similar research around their academics giving away you that amazing platform and, and, and others as well. So it's so fascinating. And final question before we tackle our audience, CUNY, we have some questions coming in. If there was one piece of advice that you could give yourself, if you are starting out all over again, what would it be?   00;15;00;08 - 00;15;21;09 That's a good question. And I'm not going to say that the road was easy, but I was fortunate in that sort of in some of it, as I said, it was serendipity that I got steered or I maybe I did a little bit of the steering, but also the current might have been steering me a bit in the right direction.   00;15;21;09 - 00;15;56;27 And some of that is luck. But I guess it really comes down to again, learning. I mean, use every opportunity, every success and every failure to learn and however you want to do that. I'm not a big note taker. I'm a big mental note taker. But how every however you memorialize this stuff, what did I learn from that experience and how can I not repeat the bad things and repeat the good from that experience?   00;15;57;21 - 00;16;14;21 And I think I would say and I, like everybody else, have done the wrong thing a few times over an hour. And I would again, I would advise my earlier self to step back and say, is there a pattern here that.   00;16;16;02 - 00;16;53;15 Creates this yourself? Thank you so much for answering our questions. We're going to to to move on to some of the questions that are coming in from our audience. And we are triaging. So if you have any more in the audience, then please, please send them through one. One just came through is that our net suite is the first truly code based business system and is incredibly successful is a something else that sets net suite apart from other business applications that that is making it so successful.   00;16;53;15 - 00;17;12;15 Yeah it's it's that it's everything you need to grow all in one place. Okay so I mean honestly that is our has been our long term competitive advantage because everybody's in the cloud now. We've sort of lost not everybody. It turns out that some of the people that say that they run their cloud in the cloud, they really aren't in the cloud.   00;17;12;15 - 00;17;29;04 I mean, to really be in the cloud, it means everybody's running the same version of software. Everybody gets the new features, everybody gets the upgrades. It doesn't just mean that you're running it in your browser. I feel like I shouldn't have to say that, but it turns out that there's still companies out there that claim that they run the cloud and they really aren't.   00;17;29;04 - 00;17;47;17 They have people's versions. You're not getting the new features necessarily. If you do want to get them, you have to deal with this painful, painful upgrade. And as opposed to what NetSuite does as we just do the upgrade for you, you wake up the next morning, you have tons of good new things, looks like Christmas morning every six months.   00;17;48;01 - 00;18;18;18 And so but beside, you know, but there are certainly many companies out there that do embody that approach. Yeah. So but they are typically focused on one area of your business. They help you with financials, they help you with sales, they help you with your e-commerce site. They help you with h.r. Your people management. And then if you buy all these systems, you end up like your old embed software.   00;18;18;19 - 00;18;49;05 My first company? Yeah. Like, you know, almost as many systems as people as people buy. Good. So that is our and we call that the hairball and because you're then you have to manage all these different connections between all these different systems and the connections are breaking. And this stuff data remains siloed in these systems where people that would like to get access to it get, you know, why a lot of startup companies love nest weed is because they're doing so many.   00;18;49;05 - 00;19;12;09 Everybody's doing so many things. It's kind of this blurring of of responsibilities. And there's also kind of a blurring of business models. We have product companies that also deliver a service. Everybody, I'm sure knows some of these you may be subscribers to services that you also buy some piece of hardware with, you know, so you can exercise, for example, or something like that.   00;19;12;09 - 00;19;40;15 I mean, those are the modern companies of the future. And so they have a blurring of different business models and a blurry blur of functions within their organization. And that's where the hairball just completely falls down. And that's yeah, so that that's what sets us apart. And in always and this is an important, I think principle is that you always need to keep what is your secret sauce, What makes you different?   00;19;40;15 - 00;19;59;27 Because there's a lot of things you're going to do when you have a product or a service that are sort of meta features, just because the customers are asking, do you do a do you do it? You do see and you have to check some of those off, there's no doubt. But you got to be careful that you're not spending all your time doing those checkbox features and neglecting what is your core competitive advantage.   00;19;59;27 - 00;20;20;04 And this is advice actually, that Larry Ellison gave me many years ago, that in that secret sauce, you must stay ahead at the essentially at the expense of everything else. It's sort of like the motley we call it the musts. You might do a few less checkbox features to make sure you maintain your lead in what is truly a competitive advantage.   00;20;20;13 - 00;20;39;15 And that's what we've done. We call it Sweetness Ma, which is always seeing whenever we're doing anything on how can we take advantage of the fact that all the data is the one place that all are used or that everybody in the company is using the system to make this feature or capability better than anybody else and deliver.   00;20;39;25 - 00;20;52;16 And so keeping that core sort of North Star of what you're all about in mind at all times and everything you do and making sure you don't get away from it and that you're nourishing it at all times, as I think is a key actually, to success.   00;20;52;28 - 00;21;16;18 Fabulous. I love that sweetness. Like some questions coming in. This one's really like something you said earlier around the introduction of AI and Openai. Do you think someone with who doesn't have great skills in programing and computing can be a successful leader in AI technology based industry?   00;21;16;18 - 00;21;41;17 The good news is that A.I. is going to be writing all the codes. You know what really need. I mean, fundamentally, I mean, I think programmers, highly skilled architects and programmers are going to be required for a very long time. But AI is going to give the ability for people without those necessarily those skills to actually do programing and actually build things.   00;21;41;28 - 00;22;07;24 So I think the ability to build is going to be democratized by A.I., So that's great. And then if you think about being a leader of a technology company, it runs the gamut what the skill sets that people have. I someone else gave me some advice that I think is really sound. As a leader, you kind of want to be you want to you want to be a T, That's what you want to be.   00;22;08;06 - 00;22;36;13 You want to be able to go deep in a particular area that's important to your organization so you know, and that you can add a lot of value with the skills that you've developed over many years, whatever they are, whether those are sales skills, marketing skills, technology skills. And then you need to surround yourself with people that can go deep in the other areas and know much more than you about it.   00;22;36;13 - 00;23;03;25 And you need to be humble enough to know that those people do know a lot more about it than you. But you you want to be able to learn from them. You want to be able to, as you and that's that that top of the T and not an organization that you sort of build around you. So at the end of the day, I don't think it matters whether your skills are you have super strong people skills and maybe you've done great sales in the past.   00;23;03;25 - 00;23;33;27 You have super technology skills. You can be a very effective leader of an organization and that suite has had a variety of different leaders of different backgrounds, some with one of our leaders over the years had more of a marketing background. That was Zac Nelson, who was our CEO for many years. One of our leaders, Jim Mcgeever, who was our leader when we first came back into Oracle, He came from the accounting background but had very great, developed great business skills.   00;23;34;07 - 00;23;54;10 And by the way, he's the one who told me about this together. And then I, as the leader of that suite, you know, early on as the CEO, chairman of the board and now leader of the next, we give you I come from a technical programing background, but I surrounded myself with people that have skills that I don't.   00;23;54;17 - 00;24;09;01 And I learned from them. And I can add value in a lot of different parts of this. I believe I can add value in a lot of different parts of the business now, but still understanding that when push comes to shove in some of these areas, my colleagues that I work with know more about it than I do.   00;24;09;21 - 00;24;12;25 So the key is to build that strong team around your skill set.   00;24;14;14 - 00;24;33;07 Nothing was built by one person. I mean, maybe the light bulb Thomas Edison had, you know, for assistance. But that's not how things work these days. It's just too everything is too complex for one person to be able to do it all.   00;24;33;18 - 00;24;50;20 We have two more questions for you, Evan, and then we will close for today. And one of them, I think is fabulous. How can students and young professionals actively engage with leaders of the cloud community in order to build a network of mentors and peers?   00;24;50;24 - 00;25;15;11 That's a great question. You know, again, I was very lucky to land in Oracle when it was still a relatively small company and develop a relationship with Larry Ellison. If you can do that, I highly recommend it. But it's not it doesn't come along every day. And so otherwise, you know, you need to be proactive. You need to come into the office.   00;25;15;19 - 00;25;47;18 I mean, you need to put yourself in a position where you're going to encounter people that may have more experience than you in the area that you want to go and can become mentors and you can learn from them. So just get out there and, you know, that's what happens next week. People that go to the come into the office and that go to the various we do lots of options for employers that those are the ones that get exposure to to the leaders of our organization.   00;25;47;29 - 00;25;55;10 So so put yourself out there, get yourself to conferences and and and any meetups and that you can get to.   00;25;55;25 - 00;26;25;27 Absolutely. And if you have a friend of a friend that you know is doing something that is sort of out of the shape of what you'd like to do someday, or you, you know, take advantage of that connection to learn and I mean, I doubt it is. Yes, I had, Larry, but there's been many other mentors that I've learned from over the years by making a connection with them and and and observing them and asking them questions.   00;26;26;11 - 00;26;43;15 Final question, and this is a great question as well from all the Crawshaw it's net sweet has gone through. Was there one defining moment that contributed to the success the most, and could this be applied to other businesses today?   00;26;44;04 - 00;27;16;05 Well, I have a couple answers for that. That one of them maybe would not was not necessarily a pivotal moment in our history, but it was a really important one. And maybe, you know, it'd be interesting to try to analogize this. That's a word for other industries besides technology. But I think there is I think this is a crossroads that a lot of companies come to where you have some big customers and they are driving your revenue and you're looking for more big customers.   00;27;16;23 - 00;27;39;28 And but you can't big customers like I need feature X and you look at feature X are like, that's not really what we're all about. I mean you could imagine and, and we got a lot of those and you look at our listed our roadmap and it's be like, well this big customer wants this feature and this big customer C wants this feature.   00;27;39;28 - 00;28;06;14 D And I looked at it and that was a moment to step back and say, This ain't working. I mean, these features are not what we should be building, leading to really satisfy the bulk of our customers, to be able to present something that will garner the attention of lots and lots of companies. They're sort of niche features that this company happens a lot, and yet we want that customer to be happy.   00;28;06;22 - 00;28;30;25 They can become a great reference. We can sell them more. They're important to our revenue. So what we did is we developed a platform whereby we could much more easily have them or partners build these capabilities that they wanted and keep our eyes focused on the things that really were going to have the most value for all of our customers.   00;28;30;25 - 00;29;11;19 And when we did that, when we developed the net suite, what's called the Suite cloud platform, that was transformational because then we were really able to move much more quickly towards our long term goal of, of of building a system for all companies that makes it really easy for them to manage their business as they grow. So I think that's there's a lot of moments like that in every industry, not just technology, where you have to balance the needs of some of your big stakeholders with what you really think you need to do to get to your North Star.   00;29;12;00 - 00;29;35;27 And those are those moments where if you step back, maybe you'll make a better decision. That's why they have that expression missing the forest for the trees. Maybe you'll make a better decision and you'll look back in five years or ten years and say that was a hard choice. But it was critical in getting me to where I am today.   00;29;36;07 - 00;30;04;28 Thank you. And your scores are. Thank you even for your openness. I'm sure you've inspired a lot of the future leaders of tomorrow. Today, and for sharing your thoughts on leadership. Net Sweet Cloud Skills. Students need to be successful as they enter our talent pipeline. Thank you to our audience for your questions and attendance today, and I sincerely hope you enjoyed the chat and learn as much as I have.   00;30;05;08 - 00;30;24;11 It's been a fabulous experience. To learn more about next week, please visit next week dot com. To learn more about Oracle Academy and our resources, visit Academy. Oracle and thank you. Have a great rest of day. I hope to see you all again soon. Thanksgiving.   00;30;24;25 - 00;30;25;11 Thank you.   00;30;25;25 - 00;30;34;09 That wraps up this episode. Thanks for listening and stay tuned for the next Oracle Academy Tech Chat podcast.

Hearing from changemakers and innovative leaders can inspire students to become the leaders of tomorrow. In this episode, Evan Goldberg, NetSuite founder and Oracle Executive Vice President, speaks with Oracle Academy Vice President, William McCabe, about what it’s like to be a leader today, and the skills students need to succeed. As NetSuite celebrates its 25th anniversary as the first cloud company, Evan will also talk about the challenges of being the disrupter and what he thinks is next for the technology industry. -------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript: 00;00;09;03 - 00;00;35;03  Welcome to the Oracle Academy Tech Chat. This podcast provides educators and students in-depth discussions with thought leaders around computer science, cloud technologies and software design to help students on their journey to becoming industry ready technology leaders of the future. Let's get started. Welcome to Oracle Academy Tech Chat, where we discuss how Oracle Academy helps prepare our next generation's workforce.     00;00;35;17 - 00;01;00;04  I'm your host, Tyra Crockett Peirce and this special two part episode of the Oracle Academy Tech Chat podcast. Oracle Academy Vice President Willie McCabe speaks with Oracle Executive Vice President and NetSuite founder Evan Goldberg on what it's like to be a creator and leader and the skills students need to succeed as they become the technology innovators of the future.     00;01;00;12 - 00;01;33;01  Hello, everybody. Welcome to our Oracle Academy Fireside chat with Oracle EVP. NetSuite Founder, Evan Goldberg. I'm Oracle Academy Vice President Willie McCabe, and I'll be your host for today. Evan and I will focus our discussion on net suite key qualities of leadership and skills. Students need to succeed in today's workforce. As Net Suite celebrates its 25 year anniversary as a first cloud company.     00;01;33;13 - 00;02;14;13  Evan and I will also talk about the challenge of being a disruptor and what he thinks is next for the technology industry. A little bit about our guest, Evan Goldberg, Executive Vice President, Oracle NetSuite, Global Business Unit. Evan leads the Oracle next week, Global Business Unit. He and his team are responsible for the product strategy, development and delivery of next week's Unified Business Management Suite, encompassing ERP, financials, CRM, e-commerce and many more.     00;02;15;03 - 00;02;50;15  In 1998, Evan co-founded NetSuite, and as mentioned, it was the first cloud computing company ushering in a new era of cloud computing. Prior to Oracle's acquisition of NetSuite, Evan was CTO and chairman of the next Suite board, and before founding that suite, he spent eight years at Oracle Corporation as a vice president. Credit He was involved in a variety of projects, all focused on making powerful database technology more accessible to users.     00;02;51;26 - 00;03;04;11  Evan holds a B.A. and Summa Technology and Applied Mathematics from Harvard College. Welcome, Evan. Thank you for joining us today.     00;03;04;24 - 00;03;05;19  Thanks for having me.     00;03;06;04 - 00;03;30;04  We're all very privileged to have you join us and also to share your experiences. Today, we have an audience of faculty, students and colleagues from around the world joining us. And while I'm sure they all know you as a creator of NetSuite and for leading the Oracle Net Suite Global Business Unit today, we'd like to delve a little bit more into your thoughts around skills that students might need.     00;03;31;07 - 00;03;43;09  I'd like to start with some specific questions. First off, and I'm sure this is an easy one for you. Can you tell me a little bit more about your career path?     00;03;43;10 - 00;04;26;03  Yeah, well, I've always been interested in technology programing applications would have been a dream from an early age that someday I'd be able to use my programing skills and product design skills to build something that would make life easier for people. And I sort of fortunately, was very I've been very fortunate to be able to achieve that dream in that, you know, we now have nets, we helping, you know, tens of thousands of organizations and hundreds of thousands of people within those organizations achieve their whatever their dream is.     00;04;26;18 - 00;04;57;24  So the path hasn't been straight and narrow and narrow, but eventually got there through, you know, probably some luck and a lot of hard work. Yeah. You know, I came out of college. That's college on the East Coast, as you as you mentioned, and immediately moved out here to California, seeing that there sort of was a tectonic shift in our you know, just to use another metaphor, the center of gravity for the technology industry was rapidly moving west.     00;04;58;14 - 00;05;25;26  And I got connected with Oracle, actually from my sister, who was working in the financial industry at Fidelity and was investing in Oracle and was really high on their on their prospects, you know, really bullish about their prospects and said, if you're going to go out there, that's a company you should work for. This guy, Larry Ellison, he's going to change the industry.     00;05;25;26 - 00;05;49;22  So again, I was fortunate that she had that insight and that led me out here. I started in the database team at Oracle where I was working on sort of the core database software, and Larry kind of handpicked me to go in there over the objections of the management and were like, he doesn't even know see, which was the programing language that Oracle was built in.     00;05;50;04 - 00;06;11;22  And Larry said, Oh, he'll get a book. It's kind of like when I started that suite and I was getting an accounting book on the first day. But anyway, but actually I and this is a it was an important point in my career, I think, you know, I was always attracted, as I said to building applications that people will use to make their daily life easier.     00;06;11;29 - 00;06;42;09  And of course, at its core, Oracle does that. But I was so deep within the innards that I felt disconnected from users. And again, serendipity to some degree. Marc Benioff We ended up starting Salesforce.com and building got into a great company three months after we started. Next week, the second Cloud Company was starting a group to make Oracle available on the Mac and make it much easier to use and and build next generation kind of applications on top of Oracle.     00;06;42;18 - 00;07;04;11  And I was really attracted to that and I was torn which direction should I go? Because I felt like I was in this great position that was every was very desirable for programmers to be working in the group. It was called the kernel group at the time. Was I going to let that all go to test these new waters?     00;07;04;11 - 00;07;23;16  Who knows whether it would work out? I had no idea who this Marc Benioff character was, and Larry passed me in the hall one day and he said, I hear you're thinking about going to work in the Mac group. And I you know, he said, if I were if I were getting out of call, you know, just out of college, that's where I would go work right now.     00;07;24;04 - 00;07;44;06  So, of course, you know, when he was anointed with Hall and did that kind of comment. And so, you know, that steered me in a direction I think was a really good one. And and you can kind of follow the line from there, because I got very interested in making applications that people could use every day build on these powerful databases.     00;07;45;00 - 00;08;07;00  I did another start up soon after that that was sort of related to that, making websites easier to use. And so that that's kind of the you know, I can't say that I had the vision that eventually I'd be building next week, but, you know, I did at that moment when I made that choice, I was kind of steering my ship towards what I think was really my northstar all along.     00;08;07;01 - 00;08;13;26  So those moments are important moments when you got to think long term, you know, where where do you want to do.     00;08;14;20 - 00;08;24;08  The amazing and that decision to move from coast to coast was that that's a difficult decision at the time.     00;08;24;08 - 00;08;58;17  AH yeah. I mean, I didn't know anybody in California. Fortunately, the year before I came out to Oracle. One student from Harvard had gone to Oracle. Oracle had typically hired from MIT, Caltech, Stanford, Harvard wasn't. I mean, you know, people now think of Harvard, you know, Mark Zuckerberg, obviously, you know, great computer science department, etc.. But back then, it was very much a fledgling department and people didn't really people were like this Harvard even do computer science.     00;09;00;09 - 00;09;28;18  But fortunately, one one student came the year before and it worked out so that the next year Larry decided to basically hire half the graduating computer science class and a few other stragglers like me from applied math. So I had lots of my classmates coming out to California, and that helped. And it was a great culture at Oracle in those early years were only 900 people there, lots of them young recent college grads like myself.     00;09;28;18 - 00;09;52;23  So that sort of became the the family, because as I said, I didn't really know anybody anywhere else. So I you know, and that's sweet. I think we've some in some cases created that sort of environment. People moved to Austin, for example, which is where a place where we have tons of people working on that suite and they, you know, just starting their careers there along with lots of other people.     00;09;52;23 - 00;10;02;13  And it reminds me of that culture that Oracle had way back in the day. So that was very helpful, offering to make that make that transition.     00;10;02;29 - 00;10;20;15  Fabulous and a true story of classroom career, which really ties in with with Oracle Academy as well. So thank you for that. Just moving on a little, when you were founding net three, was it a particular problem that you were working to solve?     00;10;20;24 - 00;10;48;26  Yeah, Yeah, that's a great softball question there. Thank you. There was because as I mentioned, I did do a startup around in 1995. The Internet was really just sort of turning lights on, you know, getting getting up and running. And there was tons of excitement. And Oracle was doing some work in the Internet, but I had always dreamed of having my own software company, and that seemed the right time to make the leap, so much opportunity.     00;10;49;13 - 00;11;11;23  And so where I started initially was something that was my idea, which was building on some of the things that I worked on at Oracle, but really leveraging the web to build more interactive, more engaging experiences than just the static websites that you saw. Because I've worked on some of that kind of technology. In fact, my last thing that I worked on at Oracle is Oracle's interactive TV initiative.     00;11;11;23 - 00;11;28;22  People probably don't remember much about that, but Larry had a vision that one day soon, not quite as soon as he thought you'd be able to watch movies on demand or TV shows on demand, on your television, crazy ideas, just that idea.     00;11;29;06 - 00;11;29;22  Wonder from that.     00;11;30;14 - 00;11;52;23  It just goes to show you that you can have great ideas, but you have to have the timing right up. So I had that was my last project. So I took some of the things that we've done to make engaging experiences on television, set top boxes as they were called back that again, I'm really aging myself here and said, Let's do that kind of thing on the web.     00;11;52;23 - 00;12;14;11  So that was my first company giving tools to Web site designers to make their sites more interactive. And we had a great product. People loved us, but we never really could get traction because we had competition that had a lot more muscle in us. It turned out to be what is now Adobe, part of Adobe. They had something called Flash and that sort of took over and we couldn't get a lot of traction.     00;12;15;03 - 00;12;39;11  But I learned a ton about running it, running a company. It was my first company, my first time as CEO. We had at our peak, we had 15 employees and it was 15 boys. There's a lot of complexity. People don't necessarily appreciate how businesses can get complex fast, and we had lots of different systems. I mean, literally, we probably had six different systems that we were using to manage our operations.     00;12;39;11 - 00;13;06;14  That's like one system or two and a half people, too many systems. And so like they were all disconnected. We had like five different customer lists, and the key information about the business was sitting in QuickBooks, which was on somebody's desktop. And if they were like, you know, using the computer to whatever shop to surf the web, as it was called back then, I couldn't get in for any information about my business.     00;13;06;14 - 00;13;31;01  So that was the problem that I set out to solve that like it's hard enough to build a company. You don't need all this technology standing in your way. What you want the technology to do is, is be easy fast to get information, to get insights and help you and stay out of your way in a lot of cases so that you can do the work and really building your business.     00;13;31;14 - 00;13;52;16  So that was my vision, is to build software for start ups. And Larry called one day and he said, How's your graphic stuff doing? That's what he called it. Now, Larry, you know, I was very fortunate. Larry helped me out with that first company and I put all my savings in into it. And he put a very tiny amount of savings of his savings into it.     00;13;52;24 - 00;14;13;07  Those are, by the way, equal amounts of money and so and yeah, so he was you know, he called me in to see how it was going. He wasn't super interested in it. But when I said, you know what I want to do next, Larry, I said, it's not working out great. We're getting crushed by the competition. Even though we have a great product, we just don't have the marketing muscle to keep up with them.     00;14;14;24 - 00;14;35;01  And I said, what I want to do next is build software for businesses like mine that's out there. And he said, Oh my God, that's perfect. Because what I've been thinking about is that someone should build something like QuickBooks for Accounting and delivered over the Web, that that's how all software should be delivered. And I was like, Huh, Accounting.     00;14;35;01 - 00;15;12;01  Okay, well, I was thinking of starting with sales because that's the most important thing to me as a CEO is where's my next deal coming from? How much am I going to do this for all of my sales? You know what? How can I help and help build the company faster or help the company grow faster? And he said, Oh, yeah, well, we'll have to do sales eventually, but we'll start with accounting because that's where all your core information about your business is your products, your sales, your people, all that information ultimately is in your financials and then we'll go the other things.     00;15;12;01 - 00;15;38;09  And so we agreed that we'd start with financials or accounting and build an entire suite. And he was adamant that it should be delivered over the web. Mind you, this is in the course of a five minute, literally a five minute phone conversation. Maybe it was 6 minutes, it was not long. And he said, you know, these companies don't want to have to manage software and run their own computers and try to deal with upgrades and and run databases.     00;15;38;09 - 00;16;01;03  I thought it was definitely was especially for, you know, self-aware of him to know that people did not want to run databases. That was not what most people considered fun, even though he might have it. And so yeah, and so the whole vision of the company came together in that one phone call, and it really was meant to solve the problem that I saw as an entrepreneur.     00;16;01;03 - 00;16;05;01  And Larry and I used to joke, it's a company built by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs.     00;16;05;29 - 00;16;28;13  Phenomenal on timing. Then next week was and is the first fully cloud based business management system. So timing wise code is a revolution, though. This was 25 years ago. So what we did next, we disrupt the entire software industry.     00;16;28;29 - 00;16;56;25  Well, as I said, timing is everything, Larry got the timing wrong on interactive television. So he got the principle, the concept right. Well, in this case, we nailed the timing and we were the first mover. And that gave us the opportunity to over the years, you know, become a leader. That's not always the case. There's a first mover advantage, but that doesn't always play out that way.     00;16;56;25 - 00;17;24;23  But the timing was right because ultimately we ended up sort of riding the wave of the growth of cloud technology at the beginning, using a lot of metaphors. Here at the beginning, it was like pushing a big rock up a hill. Yeah, but unlike in the Greek myth, where it rolls back down and you have to push it again, we pushed it for a while and then it started rolling down in the right direction, not backwards.     00;17;25;15 - 00;17;43;13  We got it over the hump, as it were. And in those early years, you know, we had to convince customers that the right thing to do is put their data in the cloud. It was called the cloud back then, put it on the Internet, put it on the Web. There was a lot of skepticism there, especially when, you know, we always led with accounting.     00;17;43;13 - 00;18;04;20  Like, that's the first thing you do is switch from QuickBooks to Net Suite and then you can expand into having your salespeople use it, having your, you know, h.r. People using what have you. I mean, that suite ultimately, for those in the audience that I'm familiar with, it is a system to help you manage your business as you grow.     00;18;04;20 - 00;18;33;24  It's sort of everything you need as you grow. And it's all in one place. It one system. Everybody logs in and uses the same system. There's one source of information. Information sort of flows seamlessly across your organization because it's all there in one place. And so, you know, so we would be leading with financials and we'd talk to these controllers, for example, about switching their system and they'd say, Oh, I'm really nervous about putting my data in on the Internet.     00;18;33;24 - 00;18;55;26  And I had two answers to that. Usually it would be like, Well, I've seen where you put your data because it's in this computer that's sitting right next to you that has a copy machine on it. And like anybody could just rip it out the plug out of the wall and take it home. We actually put your data in a professionally managed data center where you need to get a you need a hand for it to get in.     00;18;56;05 - 00;19;15;23  I think you're going to get an improvement in security, not it's not going to be a negative. And then I'd also say and by the way, your salespeople are using Salesforce dot com, so all you need is already in the Internet. I mean, what do you think your competitors want? They want your customer list. They don't want your income statement.     00;19;16;10 - 00;19;43;29  So anyway, we you know, we definitely wrote the sort of Marc Benioff hype machine for sure, which helped. I mean, he really made the world in some ways safe for Cloud solutions is his tagline No Software. While we would tease it at the time, did really, while not being completely accurate, did get at the fact that it was no longer we were no longer as software developers just making software and throwing it over the wall and daring you to use it.     00;19;44;13 - 00;20;04;13  We were providing a service day in, day out. We as Larry said in that first phone call, we manage the computers, we manage the operating systems, we manage the upgrades so you don't have to and we have to do that day in, day out, 24, seven three, six, five, so that you can use that suite where we do things.     00;20;04;13 - 00;20;18;15  We used to say at the time, any time, anywhere, that was a big part of our day. We had to and it really is the net and the suite. It really I mean, the company was the marriage of those two ideas. I gave Larry a lot of credit for the net, give myself a lot credit for the suite.     00;20;18;15 - 00;20;42;01  And and so our two big things were we'd say one system, No Limits was one of our taglines, and that that was all about the suite. And the other thing we'd say is any time, anywhere. And that was all about the net. And so with that and with Marc Benioff Snow Software, it started the whole tide started changing.     00;20;42;16 - 00;21;07;21  And when we'd go to controllers, they'd be, you know, we what we suddenly realized is that our competitors who were delivering software the old way, they were the ones that had to do the explanation. They would be getting the hard questions like, why would I want to manage my software, my interest in that? So when the terms of the debate changed, that's when that suite saw this sort of hyper growth that led us to go public.     00;21;07;21 - 00;21;28;14  And in all the success we've had, we've had since that now, and for many of you in the audience, I think it's probably completely taken for granted. You would look at someone very strangely if they said you should. You know, we have a new social network, but you host it yourself on a computer and you have to manage in your in your house.     00;21;28;26 - 00;21;46;05  I mean, there probably are such things, but they're not use above board. So yeah, that would be very strange for someone to tell you that. And so there's maybe and so I can just tell you that back then it was a not it was really a novel and sometimes strange concept to put it.     00;21;46;17 - 00;22;01;29  And date but normality. No. And I a team as a disruption as as a leader within your organization and you're obviously tracking disruptors. What do you see as the next big disruption?     00;22;03;10 - 00;22;12;18  Yeah, well, that's the key about disruptions. You usually don't see them coming until there's like this exponential growth. You know, it doesn't look like it's growing very fast and all of a sudden it's everywhere.     00;22;14;18 - 00;22;39;02  And, you know, I hesitate to say all because I don't necessarily consider that a disruption for a couple of different reasons. Everybody is doing it. I mean, like literally everybody. So it's not the same kind of thing as the cloud where there were a few sort of obscure players that subtle, you know, So I mean, you could say to some degree of maybe open AI's is is that.     00;22;39;19 - 00;23;06;04  But I just think the speed with which it's been adopted and become sort of just table stakes means more it's it's it maybe it's overall it's a disruption to the overall industry but it is an opportunity for everybody, not just the disruptors. And, you know, I think what's interesting about and I think it's as tech, it is as tectonic, a shift as the Internet was.     00;23;06;04 - 00;23;26;27  And so but but everybody's sort of on board and it's a very, very exciting time is obviously going to be some amazing new companies. There's going to be lots of failures as as there always are in these situations. I was you know, I was an Internet failure. My mandatory sort of Silicon Valley startup failure. And, you know, that's okay.     00;23;26;27 - 00;23;32;08  I mean, that's a thousand flowers bloom and not all of them turn into, you know, redwoods.     00;23;32;15 - 00;23;41;17  So the disruption, maybe the creation of companies rather than rather than shaping the whole industry, maybe, though there are some key players that that.     00;23;42;10 - 00;24;28;20  So I think it is reshaping the industry for sure. It's an enormous opportunity to deliver on the vision that I've had and that we've had for years, which is to give great advice and assistance to organizations to help them achieve their vision and transform their organizations. So that's how we're focusing on it at Net Suite as a great tool, but it just sort of embedded within our user experience to give great insights to help explain patterns in the data, help predict what might happen in the future, suggest courses of action that you might want to take, and then actually assist you on taking those courses of action.     00;24;28;20 - 00;25;08;19  And across that and you know, it's it's sort of can become your dream shooting chief of staff. That person that knows everything about your business can see patterns, bring them to you, have you met them and if you decide to do something about them can go help you execute. Yeah. Amazing. And it's like sort of like every effort and what's and it can be very democratizing in that way because again, my whole vision and our whole vision early on was to give very powerful tools to organizations that otherwise wouldn't have access to them by using the cloud and by making them really easy to use.     00;25;08;19 - 00;25;43;01  That was always a big focus for me in my career, is let's make stuff easy to use so that everybody can take advantage of it, not just the technologists. And we had our first, you know, back in the day when you were a budding Internet startup in 1998 or 1999, and where everybody was getting funded and had lots of money, the thing that sort of your coming out party was your billboard on the one on highway one on one in in the Bay Area.     00;25;43;12 - 00;26;20;20  This route that went from San Francisco down to San Jose populated on all sides by Internet startups. And so we had one. We got our mandatory one on one billboard and it had a baby in a fighter jet. And that got some hate mail. Yeah. So, you know, maybe I wouldn't do that again. But the the ultimate point of it was this powerful technology in the hands of people that don't necessarily how technical skills to do it, but it's available.     00;26;20;20 - 00;26;43;20  It's available to them. And so thereby very democratizing. And that's exactly what where I think AI is headed to giving people this power that normally you'd have to hire, you know, an army of consultants or, you know, find, you know, just these all these assistants all over your company. Well, now and again, people are still incredibly important to your company.     00;26;43;20 - 00;27;04;28  You're going to still be hiring lots of people. Yeah, but they're going to be more productive. They're going to be more effective and and you're going to get better information. And so you're actually going to be able to grow faster, which means you're going to hire more people. People worried that AI's going to replace people. Yeah, I think the success it's going to drive in companies and the growth that it can help drive in companies is going to pop.     00;27;05;08 - 00;27;06;23  It's going to employ more people.     00;27;06;23 - 00;27;38;07  Fascinating. Well, thank you for that and a fabulous insight as well into your thinking of how it's going to to drive organizations. Moving on a little, I've been following you on socials for for many years and you continually to impress me as being an inspirational leader, someone who really focuses on inspiring and influencing people. And I like to tap into that a little, as I'm sure our attendees would like to know more too.     00;27;39;04 - 00;27;48;04  So diving in, what individual qualities do you think helps make a great leader?     00;27;50;18 - 00;28;21;14  Well, I would say the vision and the ability to communicate it and inspire people with it. And then empathy. Empathy is they're not orthogonal. They're very related. You have to have you know, it's a basic you know, there's a there's a process called design thinking. It's pioneered at the Stanford School. And empathy is a big part of it.     00;28;21;14 - 00;28;42;21  I mean, that's the first thing you have to understand is, you know, who am I doing this for? And what what what problems are they having? And I need to deeply understand those problems and then I can move on to a solution to those problems. Don't put the solution before the problem, which I think technology has a checkered history of doing.     00;28;43;28 - 00;29;06;02  Here's this great technology. Let's find some problems for it. And so that, you know, I think that's one of the ways you develop a great vision is by having that empathy. But furthermore, empathy is incredibly important in achieving your vision because just because you have it, you have to execute on this and build something to actually achieve this vision.     00;29;06;12 - 00;29;35;03  And that involves people. Yes, it involves the people in your company. It involves the people that you're trying to sell your product to or it involves or if you are a nonprofit organization, it involves the people to whom you're delivering your mission. And so having empathy, the willingness and ability to really listen and understand which all of us fall short of that many times, and that's okay.     00;29;35;16 - 00;29;46;25  But it's always something everyone can work on that's going to make it help you execute and deliver on your vision much more effectively. So I would put those those two together.     00;29;47;10 - 00;29;48;25  Fabulous. Thank you.     00;29;49;06 - 00;29;57;22  That wraps up this episode. Thanks for listening. And stay tuned for the next Oracle Academy Tech Chat podcast. 

What is cloud computing? This is one of the questions Oracle Executive Vice President Applications EMEA answers in this episode of the Oracle Academy Tech Chat Podcast. Cormac also gives valuable insights on data sovereignty as well as defines the differences between public, private, and hybrid cloud. --------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript: 00;00;09;03 - 00;00;36;25  Welcome to the Oracle Academy Tech Chat. This podcast provides educators and students in-depth discussions with thought leaders around computer science, cloud technologies and software design to help students on their journey to becoming industry ready technology leaders of the future. Let's get started. Okay, So welcome to Oracle Academy, Texas, where we discuss how Oracle Academy helps prepare our next generations workforce.     00;00;36;27 - 00;01;13;22  My name is Orelon and I'm your host today. And in this episode, I'm joined by Oracle executive vice president of Applications for Europe, Middle East and Africa, Cormac Waters. And we discuss cloud and why understanding cloud is beneficial to both faculty and students. But first, a little bit about my guest. So coworkers based in Dublin, Ireland. He's a dedicated sports and especially rugby fan from what I know, and his sporting background enables him to value the power of collaboration and teamwork to grow and innovate high performance teams.     00;01;13;24 - 00;01;31;00  So welcome, Cormac, and thank you so much for agreeing to our podcast today. It's lovely to have you here. Hey, thanks, Ira. It's great to be here. We have to be careful with our accents. We don't let them slide back to proper Irish accents and nobody understand a word we're saying. I think you're right there. Yes, There could be two Irish people.     00;01;31;03 - 00;01;59;06  Exactly. So maybe we could just start off with learning a little bit about your background and your role as Oracle. Okay, so you get my title. It's actually it's off of the ground with all those words. Basically. I live in Dublin, Ireland. I work at Oracle, and my job is to lead the team that sounds and implements AR applications, which are business applications across Europe, Middle East and Africa.     00;01;59;08 - 00;02;24;23  My background is I've been working in technology my whole career, so and I grew up in Dublin actually, and I actually went to my left secondary school. I went straight to IBM as a student for a year and did all their training courses and then they got a job in the software company and went to university, Dublin City University, at night to study computer applications and computer applications rather than computer science.     00;02;24;23 - 00;02;48;01  Computer applications was actually a bit of both. It was the scientific which I kind of like and naturally gravitate towards, but I was always worried that there's no point in deciding to do it if I couldn't play it to business or how to. How do people actually use it? And I joined Oracle in the middle of the pandemic back in 2020, and there's about four and a half thousand people in the team.     00;02;48;03 - 00;03;10;13  And we have people working actually to about 75 countries across the region. So it's a it's a wonderful job and I'm very lucky. It's a difficult time to start during the pandemic, but things have changed, thankfully, since then. We were going to talk about cloud computing and its benefits, but what exactly is cloud computing for those who don't know what it means?     00;03;10;16 - 00;03;26;23  It's one of those things, actually, and we often talk to people about like you talk to most people and say, Oh, we're moving to the cloud. And everyone goes, Oh, that's great. There's no real standard definition. It can be a multiple of things, actually. So how I describe it, I mean, you have to go backwards a little bit.     00;03;26;23 - 00;03;48;12  So computing and I guess the original ones were mainframes, big computers, they like fill a room type of computer and they would do very specific tasks. And then in the early eighties and personal computing, our PCs came in and with IBM and then Microsoft and and they took over and it was big. Everyone had a computer on their desk.     00;03;48;15 - 00;04;13;09  I'm not sure people knew what they'd use it for, but they had 100 ask and then it became clean server to talk about. And then, and then it moved into computing cloud. So what is cloud computing? I think the best way of describing it is that it's how do you use the power of a computer that's not physically on your premises, which you can get access through an Internet connection.     00;04;13;11 - 00;04;35;13  So it could be a massive computer that you can use one day a month, one day a year or every day, and all you're doing is connected to the Internet. And then how do you utilize that massive computing power? Because it's a different technology and how you develop or how I would secure it. So all of that is needed in the cloud, actually.     00;04;35;18 - 00;05;04;02  So the cloud is effectively Internet connected to develop and run applications. That's where the computer is, not on your premises. And can you maybe describe a little bit as to how the cloud computing works, the functionality behind us? I think there's there's multiple layers to it and there's effectively three layers to it as we talk about it from a tech perspective.     00;05;04;02 - 00;05;25;00  And people have talked about SAS, and I asked them so, so what would it be? And I asked, is infrastructure as a service? So that is, I want to connect to a computer that's not on my premises and use that storage and computing power. So it like into infrastructure, but I'm getting it as a service pass or platform.     00;05;25;00 - 00;06;04;01  As a service is the middleware. That's typically how to play the balance. How do I integrate stuff? How do I have clouds talk to each other and, and very relevant if you're looking at security and then all of that stuff and then SAS or software as a service, that's the stuff that that my, my particular part of the business worries about since the applications and so but it's also from a consumer point of view it might be I think SAS covers things like Tok or Snapchat, Facebook, these are applications that you're accessing through an Internet where it's actually accessing the software as a service to the cloud.     00;06;04;04 - 00;06;39;29  To me, the exciting part is the applications, right? And that's because I'm biased. And and for us and we do consumer stuff as well, but mainly we're aimed at businesses. So we do things like your your system or your finance system or you procurements system or your online shopping system. So I often talk about it's when you're at home on the way to work in the morning unkown to Oracle quite often so it might be that you're buying the ticket for your train or plane and or you buying your cup of coffee in Starbucks and you're using an oracle point of sale.     00;06;40;00 - 00;07;10;23  We you look at the actual cash register it's typically Oracle and or you're paying your electricity bill or water bill and or you're buying something online from credit, if you're very lucky. And all of those things are actually using applications that are connected back to the cloud into what we do. Oracle applications or you're doing online banking. So we're we're actually kind of used a lot in the world, but we tend to be the invisible part of what people are using.     00;07;10;25 - 00;07;32;25  Yeah, I think that's really interesting. The business to business part, I think they're for the everyday person. They don't realize just how much technology is using Oracle technology. And you know, you mentioned social media platforms, Facebook, etc.. So it's it's just huge the amount of customers that we touch, etc. out there. So and on itself, yeah, it gives huge opportunities to students.     00;07;33;01 - 00;07;56;18  Absolutely. It's it's I mean it's it's everywhere. It's all around us. Right. So I think you encounter an Oracle piece of technology. I think everyone encounters it every day, actually. You just don't realize it. But it's very interesting. And you mentioned there a security thing that brings me on to a term that we are familiar with data sovereignty, and that's something that's becoming more widespread and being used.     00;07;56;18 - 00;08;14;26  So maybe you could talk a little bit about that and explain what that is and why it's so important to to do that. You're going to have to imagine that. So you have an Internet connection and you go into the cloud, right? So where is the cloud? Actually, where are all where are those compute? So you actually have different kinds of you've got private accounts and public clouds.     00;08;14;28 - 00;08;33;21  And so a public cloud will be something that's you don't really know as a customer, As a user, you're not you don't care. You're using the same cloud as everyone else. So you don't mind the fact that the resources are being shared. Now, you want your data protected, but you don't want the resources feature. However, it is also a private cloud.     00;08;33;21 - 00;08;54;26  So it's like if you're a government and you typically want your sense of the citizen data to be held discreetly in a place that's actually using cloud technology. But the actual this cloud is not connected to anything else. So it's private and therefore there's no data leakage or whatever. Not what actually data sovereignty gets into is more and more.     00;08;54;26 - 00;09;17;10  And particularly in the US, actually we have a requirement to keep data within national boundaries. And you probably heard of things like GDPR and slightly less and this is about, yeah, how do I know that my data and you've often hear some high profile cases with some of the big social media platforms that their data has been shared somewhere else.     00;09;17;13 - 00;09;50;18  So how do I make sure my data is kept in the geographic location that I want and for national security or for health, for example? And these things are very private. And, you know, individuals want their permission to be shared beyond a known boundary. So what we're seeing is more and more countries or regions saying that the cloud data has to be within my country or region, and and I need to make sure that it's even if it's public and that there's multiple customers using the same infrastructure.     00;09;50;21 - 00;10;07;24  The data is separated by each customer, but the data itself doesn't go beyond that region. So you've got public clouds, private clouds and then data sovereignty. So it's it's not as complicated as it sounds when you think about it practically. Yeah, that's really interesting. Especially, I suppose, from a European perspective and the GDPR and all the rules around that.     00;10;07;24 - 00;10;31;12  And I think more and more countries are looking at that as well and developing legislation around it. So it's probably something that's going to become more universal, so to speak. I think it is. I think it's going to be a common conversation and this is where it enters. And so you develop applications and you develop your you say so so-called platforms, services like how you integrate Twitter, all of that stuff needs to be developed for a cloud.     00;10;31;19 - 00;10;59;22  But then can I set up a cloud in in the box? Can I utilize that same applications and security standards? But how would this that this cloud is only for my use? So it's very, very private. I'm very, very small. So and can I put that into every government on the planet? But they all have the role. They're all using the same software, but they're all working within a separate entity that there's never any way of data leakage across them.     00;10;59;22 - 00;11;23;28     So it's it's going to become a big topic, actually. Excellent. Okay. So and that leads me on then to the next question, which is like, why do you think it's important for faculty to teach their students around about cloud computing? And how does having cloud computing skills prepare students for future jobs? Good question. I think it's it's it's absolutely the future.     00;11;23;28 - 00;11;50;05  Everything we do an ATM, we're all living in a very connected world. So so all that we do and all that we use is actually in the cloud, right? So if I'm an engineering perspective, you need to understand how that works. So it is a different to the old days. Yeah. And you you're now looking at making sure you know how to minimize traffic, maximize traffic and make sure that you can access multiple clouds are actually the same cloud.     00;11;50;05 - 00;12;35;04  All of that conversation is vitally important and understanding why clouds are commercially important. And I mean and as well as that wider important for society because actually cloud computing can be a way where we do minimize greenhouse gases because if we use fewer but bigger computing power, we can actually take away a lot of the redundant capacity that these servers have all around the world and focus them at the smaller and smaller footprint, which can then we can manage the both the power and the what the what they see you miss at the same time.     00;12;35;04 - 00;13;11;15  So I think it can be very good for society perspective as well. So it's important that people understand how they work and then how they connect and then how they are secured and protected. And then the last piece is pretty sure everyone in the in the academic space right now would refer to generative air. So these eight technologies, they're actually they only work when you've got access to huge datasets or very large datasets, and that means access into a cloud dataset.     00;13;11;17 - 00;13;42;09  So you can add anomalies to data and then give access to it. You can then start to pick out trends and learnings and have generative a produce and relative and meaningful output. And so not just write a poem, but actually how to make it meaningful from a business perspective. And I'm actually what they say is if we can actually get to grips with the potential of generative AI and then there's actually a much, much greater potential here than any other technology that's been come to this space in the last 20 years.     00;13;42;11 - 00;14;02;23  20 years might sound like a short time. It's actually a huge amount of time in waiting. So I think it's a real thing and everybody should just instinctively gravitate towards it at this point. Yeah, and I think I know I've heard recently that database is going to become database skills and understanding is going to become more and more important as AI takes off.     00;14;02;26 - 00;14;24;14     It's all about data and understanding the structure and the content of data, structured and structured, all of that stuff. So and I got I've got three kids and all their friends. So for the last five, ten years, I've be telling them all, if you don't know what to do, do data science. That sounds like very good advice. Okay.     00;14;24;17 - 00;14;43;08  Well, I was going to see if you could give a final piece of advice to faculty or students. You know, what would it be? The data science is one, right? And yeah, the other piece that I find and I trained hard in this conversation, that's why I paused a few times, not to use all the jargon, because it's my world is full of jargon.     00;14;43;08 - 00;15;09;25  I mean, I can probably give you a full sentence and three letter acronyms like, you know, I am I need to use the post that updates the ERP value to HCM to get to the C, external drive to CRM and all that mean. And actually we all make a bit of sense in the bizarre kind of way. So I think it's people use jargon to protect themselves and to almost make it make it a little bit of a barrier to entry.     00;15;09;25 - 00;15;39;07  So don't be put off by the jargon. It's just words. And be curious. Ask the obvious question I ask them every day when someone puts up a three letter academic, What is the album? So that's the first thing. Don't be put out by the jargon. And then I would say, try to discover the good side of it. And I mean, we have several customers and I don't want to make this sound like we're trying to be making myself sound grander than we are on this basis.     00;15;39;07 - 00;16;10;02  But and there's some fantastic organizations that do humanitarian work that need access to high level computing in very unusual places on the planet where it's either war or natural disaster, where comms and so on are stretched. And and they need to be able to get there quickly and deploy humanitarian aid. This is good stuff. And there's lots of I.T. that can help in all of that, which I think people could be interested to go go explore.     00;16;10;05 - 00;16;44;22  And then the last thing is, I do think the sustainability, the Green planet, I think we need to be ultra aware of this. And then like, for example, all of Oracle's data centers in Europe right now run on 100% renewable energy, which is fantastic. How do we get to carbon net zero? So I can cloud computing has a greater opportunity for us to achieve that than having every single consumer and business have their own servers in their own premises and they're all doing their own power consumption and emitting whatever they emit as a result of that.     00;16;44;24 - 00;17;06;08  So I think it's and those few things, the last one, which is topical in Oracle, Oracle's perspective is actually global health. I mean, they joined in the middle of a pandemic. I think what we discovered was actually all of our health systems were not that connected in reality. So I think there's a lot of work going on now to see how can we overcome that.     00;17;06;08 - 00;17;29;05  I mean, and not that I would hope that it would be another pandemic, but how do we get better and use it better to provide excellent health care to every citizen on the planet no matter where they are? That sounds like a bit of a far fetched idea, but that's something that's real and something that I think everybody could get involved in and try to drive it.     00;17;29;11 - 00;17;55;07  It's about knowing who you are in an anonymous, secure way, knowing what your own personal medical history is, so that if you take me as an Irish person, I go on vacation to California where they had offices and I break my arm. How do I how do I make sure that my medical records are available to the emergency center in California, even though they're actually stored in Dublin?     00;17;55;09 - 00;18;24;21  And how do we get in the activity that security of moving across the planet as aware in a seamless way? And then how do I make sure that the right vaccine that's the start in or how do we develop vaccines in the first place by looking at global data sets. Now, once we have them, how to make sure that they're deployed globally so I think the use of cloud i.t for global betterment in a health perspective as well as sustainability are very real.     00;18;24;24 - 00;18;49;24  Well, thank you so much, Cormac, for that insightful, very interesting discussion on cloud computing that brought its true touch on the environment. How can we be better citizens in relation to the environment and health, which of course is a hot topic as well with Oracle and making us realize just how much we have technology in our lives and how important the skills will be for the future generation.     00;18;49;26 - 00;19;10;06  So thank you so much again, Cormac. Much appreciate it. Thank you for asking me to learn more about Oracle Academy and our resources, visit Academy dot Oracle dot com and subscribe to our podcast. Thank you very much for listening. Bye bye. That wraps up this episode. Thanks for listening and stay tuned for the next Oracle Academy Tech Chat podcast.   

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