ApEx Presenting = FUN!

Wow...that's all I can say.

At lunch today, I put together my power point presentation. I meant to do it sooner of course, but it's been another busy week. In fact, I hadn't done a thing to prepare other than walking through it in my head.

I did not want this to be a presentation so much as a demo. Six slides is all they got.

I suddenly got very nervous around 4 today. I just want to get over there and start. I ended up leaving work just before 5.

The meeting was at the PriceWaterhouseCoopers building in Tampa, just across the street from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers headquarters. Very nice building.

The Presentation

I was introduced by the SOUG president promptly at 6:30. Roughly 40 people showed up (filled the room).

I had an hour and a half to complete my presentation...ummm...WHAT? I've got like 10 minutes worth of material! How the hell am I going to manage this??

Anyway, I walked through some of the features of APEX: Load/Unload data, SQL Commands, that kind of stuff, just trying to get to the application builder.

A couple of nights ago I began walking through and building a basic little reporting application tailored to the DBAs. Reports on roles and privileges basically. I never even got to that.

I created a 2 line csv (yes, I should have done it before hand), uploaded it to demonstrate how easy it was and then off the creating a report on that table.

"Can you create a form to update that record?"

Sure, here's how you do it. One minute later the form was done and I had updated the record. True to form...it's just so damn easy.

I answered a few other questions and then I got stuck. A member of the audience started answering the questions that I couldn't. We (the member in the audience) had spoken before the meeting and I believe he's just as passionate about APEX as I am). It worked rather well, so well in fact, that we're going to try and work out a dual presentation at the upcoming Technology Day SOUG puts on.

Someone would ask a question, I would answer them by showing them how to do it. Have I mentioned how much I like APEX? Rocks.

Next thing I know, it's a little past 8 and I can see the President trying to end the meeting. No way dude, too many questions to answer!

I got out of there around 9:30. I answered questions to the best of my ability...if I didn't know, pointed them to resources that could.

Exhilarating!

Can't wait to do it again...but next time I'll practice!

update
BTW, great crowd tonight. I couldn't have asked for a better group. Thanks to everyone for their support, and thanks to Tom and LewisC for asking me to do it.

Did I mention how cool it was? ;)