EATD: Day 3 - Presentations, Goodbye and Feedback

As we went out on Wednesday we started the last day a bit later then planned (as some people requested that). Probably we'll change our agenda in the future, but then keep to the predefined schedule.

I had the honor to start on the last day ;-) (see previous post about the diner and the wine, that's why this smiley). We planned three presentations and a longer Q&A at the end.

The first presentation was about the integration of APEX and BI Publisher. (I'll also give a short version of that presentation at OOW and UKOUG.)
In APEX 3.0 you get PDF printing out of the box (if you integrate it with FOP, Cocoon, BIP, ...).
I wanted to show how powerful and easy it is to create some nice looking pdf's. The slides went fine...
More than 25 successful demos, but then my pc abandoned me! Although the day before everything worked still fine, now my BIP Word plugin didn't popup. For my last presentation (see further) I installed some other (extra) XLIFF editors, which needed some JVM's (v1.6). Maybe the other JVM's broke my system or even more stupid, during the morning Windows updated itself with some patches (automated updates). A lesson I learned! For OOW I'll probably use some VM's (vmware images) so I'm guaranteed that something else will not break my system.

Till today I still find it a pity that my last demo didn't work straightaway like before, as it spoiled half the message I wanted to give.
Some people might now think the integration with BI Publisher is difficult, but it isn't. But it is true, if you really want to get the full potential of the integration of APEX and BI Publisher, you have to know both environments. BI Publisher can do a lot of advanced things, but knowing all these will take some time to learn.

During the break I reinstalled BI Publisher, so I finally could show it working. Nevertheless I got afraid my system would blow up again!

Let's see if I can convince you about the integration of APEX and BI Publisher at OOW or UKOUG ;-)

The second presentation was again for John. He talked about Network Services. I'm sure John will blog more about that...

The last presentation of the European Apex Training Days was about Localization. We thought in Europe this topic would be hugh, but when asking the attendees how much they already did with Globalization/Localization the response was fairly low.
I didn't only talk how to make your APEX application multilingual (follow the six steps in APEX), but I stretched it out to the database requirements, different XLIFF editors and that you need to think about a lot more then just the translations.


After my last presentation we answered the questions of the people.
The first day we installed a whiteboard in the back of the room where everybody could write down a question, from the session or even questions they had about APEX we didn't talk about. The picture shows you some of the questions we got.


At the end of the day we thanked everybody, asked to fill out our evaluation/feedback forms and took a group picture in front of the room. They can all be proud and say: "We followed the first open European APEX Training Days!" ;-)

After going through the feedback and catching up with (urgent) mails of the last days, we closed our laptops for the night and decided to go and celebrate the successful three day training.

We had some nice lobster in the famous Rue des Bouchers in Brussels.

What does a man want more? ;-)


We also made a little video of the training days, which you find on our Apex Evangelists site.

This is the end of my postings about the first European Application Express Training Days. I would like to thank all participants which made it an unbelievable experience. I hope you all enjoyed these trainings as much as I did.

As a final note I would like to give my special thanks to my business partner and friend, John Scott, for the great support and the way we worked together. I found it so much more fun doing it with you! Thanks John...