Oracle Academy Tech Chat
Oracle Academy, Oracle's global philanthropic education program brings you Oracle Academy Tech Chat where we discuss how Oracle Academy helps prepare the next generation’s work force. In this podcast Tyra Crockett, Senior Manager Oracle Academy North America, interviews experts across the Oracle ecosystem about their experience and advice for educators and their students.
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Multi-tenancy in Cloud Computing
04/29/2025
Multi-tenancy in Cloud Computing
In this episode host Tyra Peirce chats with Rolando Carrasco, an Oracle ACE Director based in Latin America. Rolando and Tyra speak about Multi-tenant cloud. What it is, what it isn't, and when it should be used. --------------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript: 00:00:00:00 - 00:00:34:01 Unknown Welcome to the Oracle Academy Tech Chat. This podcast provides educators and students with 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 prepares the next generation's workforce. 00:00:34:03 - 00:01:02:16 Unknown I'm your host, Tyra Peirce. Today I'm joined by our Rolando Carrasco. Rolando is an Oracle Ace director based in Latin America. He has been in the IT industry for the past 25 years, working for companies such as Hewlett-Packard and Oracle. Then in 2010, he started his own consulting firm where he is currently the CTO. His work has been focused on distributed systems, working with several integration platforms, API management tools and the cloud. 00:01:02:18 - 00:01:29:06 Unknown He is a constant speaker at both local and global development conferences. Welcome, Rolando. Oh thank you Tyra. So to start off, can you give me a bit about your background and your current job role? Yes. Thank you Tyra. Now I'm currently the CTO for a Mexican consulting firm here in Mexico. The name is CES, and I've had this role for the past 15 to 16 years now. 00:01:29:08 - 00:02:07:13 Unknown And as you already mentioned, my experience is focused on distributed systems. And probably, I will say, the evolution of those type of needs in terms of integration in the cloud now. And I will say that I have a mixed profile in terms of, development, if you will, and also experience on sales and pre-sales and architecture, or so I will say that I have that type of hybrid more a rosary and my experience is being focused mostly and in the Latin American region, from Mexico to Brazil. 00:02:07:15 - 00:02:32:21 Unknown Today our focus is on, multi-tenancy and cloud computing. Can you tell me what a multi-tenancy is and cloud computing and how does it differ from single tenancy? I can say that multi-tenancy is the ability to have different organizations working separately, and that's the key. But we'll be using the same infrastructure okay. Even though they share this infrastructure. 00:02:32:23 - 00:02:57:07 Unknown The main thing, as I said, we already mentioned is that those different organizations are isolated. They can see each other, they can see their data. And I can say that normally service providers work in this fashion. They offer their services to several gateway stations or customers. And from the infrastructure standpoint, they share the infrastructure now along all those organizations. 00:02:57:09 - 00:03:25:08 Unknown And the difference, the difference between multi-tenancy and the single tenancy is that which single tenant, every organization use its own infrastructure. I mean, there is nothing to share between them or among them, but you need to deliver on a specific infrastructure for every single organization. So which follows on to my next question. Can you share a real world example of multi-tenant cloud implementations? 00:03:25:10 - 00:04:03:19 Unknown Yes, absolutely. I will say that the software as a service market and the software as a service, providers and application owns most of them. And I can say that both big companies such as Oracle and small companies or even startups, they use these type of model offering these, those type of services. For example, an email application and the one that we normally use, Outlook or Gmail or any of that type of email application is a clear example of then we all have an account. 00:04:03:21 - 00:04:26:22 Unknown The infrastructure is the same. We don't care as a user, we just use the service as its own, as it's been, offered to, to us. So, the users are not aware of that. And I will say that probably the users are not even interested in if it is a multi-tenancy or not, but all I what I was trying to I was trying sorry to explain. 00:04:27:00 - 00:04:51:19 Unknown Is that mostly those type of SaaS applications use this model. For example, maybe you or the audience are aware of applications such as Monday.com or Bitly. The shortener, URL application, or any other type of application that you normally use that you just use and you just subscribe to it. It is so very clear example of behind the scenes is working in a multi-tenancy fashion. 00:04:51:21 - 00:05:15:22 Unknown That actually makes sense. The Bitly one makes sense to me because I've used it before. And same with like my email. My email. Programs. I understand how that would work. Like, you access it one way, but you might be touching multiple clouds. So that's that's actually really, really fascinating for me. So on to my next question. Why do organizations choose a multi-tenant architecture over a single tenant one? 00:05:16:00 - 00:05:45:22 Unknown I will answer that in two ways. And the first one is for service providers. These multi-tenancy model may imply the reduction of several cost and operations because instead of provisioning dedicated infrastructure and all the consequences that it that it has, they use just one single, infrastructure and that single infrastructure is the one that they operate. They your grade and then they maintain. 00:05:46:00 - 00:06:13:17 Unknown But at the same time they isolate the organizations as as we mentioned in, in the past questions or in the previous questions. And the second thing is for organizations who create their own software, I mean, that they are looking to create a solution. They are building, an application they will like to or free to many customers, and they need to deliver it in, in such a way that they need to reduce their own cost. 00:06:13:19 - 00:06:43:18 Unknown Then probably they are going to choose these type of models because it is going to be not that expensive. And for example, in terms of Oracle technology, a Oracle's database is a very clear example of the unorganized organization, sorry, an organization that is looking to create an application which uses a database. But it happens that these database needs to be separated, be separated because the departments needs to be isolated. 00:06:43:18 - 00:07:10:23 Unknown Just to give an example, this type of organization can leverage from the Oracle database technology. And in the specific the database multi-tenant option one single database engine, but multiple databases running on that very same engine. So I would say that those two things are the ones that are going to make an organization to use this multi-tenancy model that is that also makes a lot of sense to me. 00:07:10:23 - 00:07:45:09 Unknown Like if you need to separate your databases, you want to separate your data, you want to make sure that it's controlled and then only accessible by a certain group of people. That also makes sense to me as well. Which leads to the next question how does multi-tenancy impact database management in cloud applications? I will say that it reduces the complexity of managing different databases with a whole set of infrastructure, because if you think about it and you have separate databases, then you need probably different persons to manage those different layers. 00:07:45:11 - 00:08:10:14 Unknown So in the Oracle database multi-tenancy model or in a database dependency model, it is just one single infrastructure. So you reduce the number of persons or the team that is managing the infrastructure. The second thing is the streamline is streamlining the database provisioning and the provisioning, because you just need to take care about let me say it in this way just as database. 00:08:10:14 - 00:08:38:22 Unknown So for it that's that's the there's the thing that you need to manage and you need to deploy or, or provision or the provision instead of the whole infrastructure. The third thing is to consolidate the database management. You are consolidating in a single group of persons and sometimes it is just one single DBA. You leave me managing different databases with, you know, very same infrastructure or the very same infrastructure. 00:08:39:00 - 00:09:07:01 Unknown You can also consolidate database monitoring. So you have a single glass of pane if you will, where you can check the different databases that you are running in this multi tenancy model, instead of having separated monitoring tools or monitoring applications, working on top of these different databases, you have one single glass of paint on modeling of new organization. 00:09:07:01 - 00:09:29:05 Unknown You will be easier because you already have the infrastructure. You just need to provision the database for this new department or organization and probably already mentioned it, but I think is is okay to repeat it to reduce the number of DBA is managing all that infrastructure. I like that, I like that it's all about streamlining and making sure that they you don't need as many resources. 00:09:29:06 - 00:09:48:01 Unknown Managing certain types of things like the DBA is can go out and expand into doing different types of work. And it's that's a little bit more interesting. Or you have like a, a person that is just an expert in one area, which I think is kind of helpless. You can spread your resources out and make them a little bit more nimble and flexible. 00:09:48:01 - 00:10:21:21 Unknown So which leads to my next question. What are the key performance challenges and a multi-tenant system, and how are they addressed in. This is one of the most relevant questions, and I will say that this is something that every time we think about the multi-tenancy model, we need to take care of these because it is good, obviously, and we've been highlighting all these benefits of having not one single infrastructure is sharing it among different organizations, but it happens that it is the same infrastructure. 00:10:21:21 - 00:11:07:15 Unknown So those multiple, organizations running on these very same infrastructure, are, if you will, fighting for those or competing for those available resources. And those organizations have or may have different dynamics. For example, an organization may be running batch processes while the other organizations are, having or are processing numerous transactions stream simultaneously. So you have different dynamics and that as a consequence, means that the CPU or the memory are using different ways in sometimes those different ways may block a process or may block the CPU. 00:11:07:15 - 00:11:44:05 Unknown So then you are probably going to hit a problem with that, because one organization problem may cause the other organization, which has nothing to do with the with the one who is having the problem. And then you are creating a little bit of chaos along or among those, those different organizations. So, so you need you need to be very clever on that regard and trying to take care about those different dynamics or identify those different dynamics, and then try to mix the best as you can, the infrastructure that is supporting those different customers. 00:11:44:07 - 00:12:08:23 Unknown So I will summarize that point, that very relevant point on different organizations, different dynamics. One single blocking process may create a chaos, along your different customers working on your multi-tenancy mode. I think that makes sense. And I think it talks about why communication and collaboration are key as you're going through in and setting up your your cloud. 00:12:08:23 - 00:12:44:17 Unknown And if you choose to go multi-tenancy, to choose your multi-tenancy cloud is to make sure that we communicate regularly and effectively. So my last question for you, and thank you so much for joining me today is if you could give one piece of advice to faculty or students, what would it be? I always suggest to try to have a fixed time to study technology on a daily basis, to try to have a moment in the day where you just dedicate that time, or on studying something, try to learn something new daily. 00:12:44:19 - 00:13:05:03 Unknown So try to make an assessment of yourself on a daily basis about what was the thing that you learned that day and if you didn't, and if you continue doing, in the next day, then probably do not going to feel okay. And then if the third day you are not learning something new, then probably you are going to identify a problem. 00:13:05:05 - 00:13:27:18 Unknown So always try to learn something new on a daily basis. Go to sleep and as yourself if you learn something new, as I already mentioned, try new technology or try technology, maybe this maybe is not new technology, but just try technology. Experiment with it. It's not going to happen anything if you fail with that, just try it and just try to understand it and try to learn. 00:13:27:18 - 00:14:01:20 Unknown As I mentioned, try to be active in events. No, not doesn't a speaker, but just try to attend different events and try to learn from others. I will say that. Thank you Alondra. I think that's a really wonderful answer. I think that being curious and being willing to try new things is is always really important, cause I think it helps us to learn more about the technology and not to be afraid as we're going through and trying to become, learn the latest and greatest, things, which is is very much one of those newer technologies is coming out. 00:14:01:20 - 00:14:28:15 Unknown So thank you to Rolando for being the guest today on the Oracle Academy Tech Chat podcast. For more information, visit our website academy.oracle.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.
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What is a Data Center?
04/18/2025
What is a Data Center?
In this episode host Tyra Peirce speaks with Oracle development data center manager Ryan Lucas. Ryan tells Tyra about the key components of a data center, and what it takes to run a data center. --------------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript: 00:00:00:00 - 00:00:34:09 Unknown 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 our next generation's workforce. 00:00:34:11 - 00:00:58:17 Unknown I'm your host, Tara Crockett Pierce. In this episode, I speak with Oracle Data Center manager Ryan Lucas. Ryan breaks down the basics of data centers what they are, how they work, and why they're essential for empowering your favorite streaming services to securing business critical data. So far to securing business critical data. Data centers are the unseen force behind modern technology. 00:00:58:17 - 00:01:27:03 Unknown Welcome, Ryan. Thank you. Thanks for having me. So go ahead and start off. Ryan, can you give me a little bit about your background and your role at Oracle? Yeah. So I first started working as a system administrator, for the Java group at Sun Microsystems back in 2002. My responsibilities included deploying and maintainingsystems, like Solaris, Linux, and even windows servers. 00:01:27:05 - 00:02:03:20 Unknown And I would also troubleshoot network, software and hardware issues. Eventually my responsibilities included backing up important files like source code for the Java Development Kit or otherwise known as JDK. I've been at Oracle for 16 years. Yeah. So in my current role, I help manage labs that, are essentially on-premise data centers. They may not be as large as something you would see like an on OCI site. 00:02:03:22 - 00:02:33:11 Unknown But the labs that I support, they when you're inside them, they look like data centers. And we, they basically are used to to test Oracle engineered systems. So my group we help provide local support for the engineers of Oracle Engineered Systems. We have systems that have been released to the public. And we have systems that have not been released to the public. 00:02:33:13 - 00:03:01:03 Unknown And so what we are responsible for, you know, deploying, maintaining, keeping these servers running and helping create testing environments so that engineers can make sure that the engineered, that their hardware works as advertised. And then, sometimes even after hardware has been released, if a customer has some kind of concern, we may have to recreate their environment in our lab. 00:03:01:09 - 00:03:21:06 Unknown Well, I call it lab, but it's a data center. And that way, we can try to discover if the customer's having a lot of times the customers having an issue because it's a customer error. So, you know, maybe the customer is trying to use our hardware in ways that we hadn't, you know, thought about or wasn't really designed for. 00:03:21:08 - 00:03:47:03 Unknown But, yeah, eventually there will be some issues that we have to work through. And, and so it's it's very dynamic. So a typically like a, like an OCI production data center, you know, that is very structured. You know, all the cables are pristine a specific length. You know they push they push a new rack of servers into a gridlock station. 00:03:47:05 - 00:04:11:16 Unknown It's there for the life of the of the rack. You may they have a field engineer come in and service some hardware, but then after it's decommissioned, they roll it out and they put in a new server. But in my in my group, we are constantly moving things around to recreate environments. It's very dynamic, very different. But it also makes it the challenge makes it very fun as well. 00:04:11:18 - 00:04:45:09 Unknown So Ryan, kind of with that really cool introduction and background, what is a data center and what are its core components? Gotcha. Okay. So I'm going to read a formalized explanation. Just so I don't ramble off or get too technical. And then I'm going to talk about some things in my own words. So a data center is a physical facility to house a group of networked computers, servers for the remote storage, processing and distribution of data. 00:04:45:11 - 00:05:07:23 Unknown A data center provides security, physical space, power, and cooling for racks of servers and network equipment. Those are the core components. But let me let me just I think I was trying to imagine what it would be like for someone who's never been in a data center to try to grasp the magnitude of scale that is a data center. 00:05:08:01 - 00:05:35:09 Unknown You know, like you're if you're at home and you have your home computer, maybe it has a gigabit Ethernet port, and maybe you connect to the internet with with one internet service provider and your speed, you know, depending on what you're paying, is your bandwidth isn't huge, right? It's so hard, I think. Had I not had the experience I have, it's can be very difficult to try to imagine what a data center is capable of. 00:05:35:11 - 00:05:56:18 Unknown It's kind of like if I were, you know, I'm driving a car and trying to imagine what it's like to drive a Formula One car, but that's not even a good analogy because it's not even a formula One car. It's a fleet of Formula One cars in each of them. Each of my racks, we have switches that can process 100 gigabits per second, 100 gigabits per second. 00:05:56:20 - 00:06:32:23 Unknown And between each of our data centers, each of our labs, we have switches that are can process 400 gigabits per second. There's switches out there that will do 800 gigabits per second. Then there's probably even switches beyond that that I'm, you know, not familiar with yet, but so it's really hard for someone who, when you talk about the scale of what is involved and what these data centers can do and how much planning and organization goes into building them and running them, it's it can be a little hard to comprehend, you know, but it makes it fun, right? 00:06:32:23 - 00:06:56:22 Unknown I mean, that's one of the reasons why I love my job is because I get to to work with, work with, and touch hardware that is just sometimes blows my mind. I also think about Oracle probably has some of the most advanced data centers in the world, just based on what we do as well. So like this is like the Rolls Royce of like and the Maserati of data centers and what we do every day. 00:06:57:00 - 00:07:22:08 Unknown Which leads me to my next question. What are the different types of data centers? Right. So I was thinking back to some of my early days when I was at CERN, and I can remember someone telling me that one of the early developers of MySQL or MySQL had a server under his kitchen table. I can't even imagine what I mean. 00:07:22:10 - 00:07:40:02 Unknown It probably was I'd like a desktop PC or a workstation. It wouldn't have even been a server because that would have been too loud. But if you think about what what happens if your power goes out or if your internet service provider goes out, there goes, you know, so I, I don't know if that's true or not. I just remember somebody telling me about being blown away. 00:07:40:04 - 00:08:11:00 Unknown But, so you there's some companies that have, on premise, you have an on premise data center. So that's like, if I want to do all the heavy lifting myself, you know, so I'm going to build the data center. I'm going to have a facilities group that is responsible for providing power and cooling. And then I'm also going to have my own teams, you know, like system administrators, network administrators to support all the hardware in that lab. 00:08:11:02 - 00:08:39:09 Unknown And then, you know, you're also responsible for making sure you have, you know, connections to the theinternet backbone. There's there's a lot involved. So, so on premises, if some, you know, you're a company and you want to control, have that data center managed by you, then there's something called co-location or colo. And what a colo is. 00:08:39:09 - 00:09:08:16 Unknown And then you have like a third party and they specialize in the planning and the building of the data center. They provide the cooling and, the power and you, the different companies, different corporations or different entities, they can rent space, like maybe you'll rent a floor or you'll rent a cage. And they're also responsible for the security. 00:09:08:18 - 00:09:36:06 Unknown So I know at colo facilities, you know, they'll have retinal scanners, they'll have man traps. I've been to data centers where they have armed guards, where they have conference rooms that generate, like, white noise. So if you're in a conference room and you're trying to have a private conversation and somebody walks by, they can't overhear you, you know, now, not that anybody would be trying to listen in on your conversation. 00:09:36:06 - 00:10:06:04 Unknown But if you know, if you're with the NSA or something, you want to make sure that nobody can overhear sensitive information. So it can be very cloak and dagger. So yeah, that's that would be one concern. If you'reat a Colo facility and you're not managing the data center, you know, but having an on premise data center, then you have like a cloud data center, which is, third party that provides compute, storage and networking, resources as a service. 00:10:06:06 - 00:10:52:23 Unknown And here's where it gets kind of interesting. Now, I'm sure Oracle, we have our own data centers that we build out, but we can also I think OCI also has cloud services at a Colo facility. Right. So Oracle can rent a floor or floors a different, buildings of a Colo facility and they can host their environment for the cloud to others, but they don't have to worry about, you know, maintaining the facility maintenance, providing the power or providing, you know, they just pay, a third party to do that for them. 00:10:53:01 - 00:11:17:04 Unknown So, Ryan, which leads to my next question. How do data centers manage non software concerns such as power cooling and security. So as you can imagine there's a lot of monitoring. There's a lot of planning and monitoring to ensure everything is stable and secure. A data center typically receives power from the electrical grid of a power company. 00:11:17:04 - 00:11:41:21 Unknown But what if the grid goes down? So many data centers have diesel generators that will provide power if there'san outage or if there's a disruption. And they'll also have contracts with fuel trucks, to deliver more diesel if there's a sustained outage. Some data centers have other sources, like natural gas. I was always kind of jealous of that. 00:11:41:22 - 00:12:14:11 Unknown Know that. Wouldn't even have to worry about. Like, if if the electrical grid went down from the local power company. If I could use thermal gas, or natural gas. Excuse me. To to generate power where I didn't have to go to diesel generators, though, you know, so you can have multiple lines of redundancy and then, you know, now with some of the newer data centers with AI and the demands of AI, now they're talking about, nuclear power. 00:12:14:13 - 00:12:40:03 Unknown And, so I can't even imagine what's involved with that. That's something I still have to learn about and look into. But, Yeah, I know that Oracle is planning to build a there's a new this is public information. Oracle is building a gigawatt scale data center in, that uses three small nuclear reactors or smart. Yeah. 00:12:40:05 - 00:13:08:02 Unknown So, I'd like to learn more about that, but it's interesting. Right? You know, and then there's thermal. There's the I don't know if you talk in the news when they talk about this interest in Greenland and I've heard, well, they're people are interested in Greenland because of their precious metals, but also it's the amount of space that is there to build out data centers and how you can use the ice sheets for thermal power generator generation. 00:13:08:04 - 00:13:43:13 Unknown So it's it's yeah, it's really there's a lot there. Then it's a lot more than just precious metals and the strategic strategic location of Greenland. So anyway, but so so yeah there's that. We talked about power cooling obviously. Yeah. If you're in Greenland too cooling you could literally pull in cooler air into the data center. I mean, one of the problems we have locally sometimes in California is if they're if it's a really warm summer and there's a lot of demand on the grid, the grid goes, goes down and you know them. 00:13:43:13 - 00:14:00:18 Unknown Yeah. Again, we have to work, rely on generators or sometimes I've had a situation where we had to, at least for my data centers, we just had they just had to shut down temporarily. And then we had to bring it back up, which you can never do in a production environment. Keep that in mind. So my environment is more development. 00:14:00:20 - 00:14:26:23 Unknown I'll also point out so security, physical security. Luckily in my labs, my data centers, we don't have customer data. Right. So that that's nice. We do we do a lot of testing of hardware, but we don't have customer data. The second you have customer data, then you're talking. That's when you're talking again, you know, physical security man traps. 00:14:27:01 - 00:14:57:18 Unknown Armed guards in some cases, retinal scanners, there's multiple lines, you know. Yeah, I don't know. They'rebuilding a huge new data center near my off of 101 in Montague, near my near where I work in Santa Clara, California. And I don't know if some people, I'm sure people in the know can can immediately spot that it's a data center, but they're they're always like these nondescript buildings. 00:14:57:20 - 00:15:18:19 Unknown And if you know what a diesel generator looks like and if you see diesel generators can you can pick them out really fast. But, you know, a lot of the times when you have like a data center that has, customer information, there's going to be a fat, you know, there's going to be a perimeter, there's a guard station just to get into the parking lot. 00:15:18:21 - 00:15:38:00 Unknown And then from the parking lot to get in the data center, there's going to be, you know, kind of like a security checkpoint that you would find the like at the airport. Where are they going? They're going to scan your bags. You can scan your person, and then you get in there and then there's further man traps and checkpoints depending on where you need to go in the data center. 00:15:38:05 - 00:16:08:22 Unknown You know, because again, like if it's a colo facility, you could have multiple customers in different areas. You want to make sure that nobody who shouldn't be in your area can can get access to it. So where my labs, we do have, you know, badge access and key codes and there's local security personnel, but it's nothing like you would see in some of the data centers that are out there where it's they have very sensitive information and they need they need to make sure that there's no nobody's getting in there. 00:16:09:00 - 00:16:36:01 Unknown It's like a modern fortress. Really. Ryan, my next question for you, what is the role of data centers in the era of cloud computing in the internet? Yeah. So again, I'm going to read something here. Cloud computing is a term used to describe the delivery of on demand computing resources, hardware storage, database networking and software to businesses and individuals via a network, usually the internet. 00:16:36:03 - 00:16:53:07 Unknown Cloud computing enables organizations to access and store information without managing their own physical devices or I.T infrastructure. So yeah, I mean, think about if you're let's say you're a smaller organization and you want to. 00:16:53:09 - 00:17:31:11 Unknown You don't want to have to have pay for the, you know, experienced employees that could handle all this internally, you know, or, or or pay for having a small data center, you know, you want to be able to start in the cloud and then be able to scale in the cloud as you grow, rather than trying to, you know, have a server in your basement or in a in a closet somewhere that's not going to be secure, that doesn't have the power of redundancy, you know, that doesn't have the security. 00:17:31:13 - 00:17:52:02 Unknown So I really you know, obviously, and it cloud computing is good for any size of corporations. But I really see that for something especially small that wants to this, I think it's really important to to start in the cloud and then to grow, grow as necessary. And that way you don't have to specialize in all of these things. 00:17:52:02 - 00:18:14:04 Unknown You know, you want to outsource to people that know what they're doing, that have the experience and the expertise to so you can sleep at night, basically. I don't know if that makes sense. Yeah, that makes sense. One final question, Ryan. And I think it's really important for students and faculty to hear this, as maybe some of them won't work in a data center. 00:18:14:04 - 00:18:46:21 Unknown Are they do want to work in a data center. What is one piece of advice or maybe multiple pieces of advice that you would give to faculty and students that are interested in either working in a data center or understanding a little bit more about them? You know, it's thinking about this. And the biggest piece of advice I could give to anyone that I would want to give to anyone is to stay curious, question the status quo, dig into the minutia of why things are done a certain way, and look for ways to innovate. 00:18:46:23 - 00:19:17:22 Unknown For example, improving efficiency. Recognize the value in finding ways to do something better. Innocence is bliss, but ignorance can be fatal. If you're going to build a future, you have to envision the future. You have toimagine it and take the time to think about it and and where your place will be in the future. A big thanks to Ryan for give me a primer on data centers. 00:19:17:22 - 00:19:40:03 Unknown What's so interesting? I learned so much today, and I think it's really important that we learn and understand where our our data is going and some of the protections that are in place, which I'm really...
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How to Become an AI Data Engineer
04/01/2025
How to Become an AI Data Engineer
Do you want to be a data engineer? In this episode, host Alba Joven speaks with Oracle Autonomous Database specialist Javier de la Torre Medina about what it takes to become an AI data engineer. Episode Transcript: 00:00:00:00 - 00:00:34:15 Unknown 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 prepares the next generation workforce. 00:00:34:17 - 00:00:57:14 Unknown I’m your host, Alba Joven. And in this episode, I'm joined by Javier de la Torre Medina, an Autonomous database specialist at Oracle. Today, Javier and I will be talking about how to become an AI data engineer. Welcome Javier. Thank you very much Alba a pleasure to have you today here on this nice chat. Javier before we dive in 00:00:57:15 - 00:01:20:15 Unknown Can you tell us a little bit about what's your background and what's your role at Oracle? Sure. So I have it already at Oracle 13 years ago so when I when I joined and having working a lot of positions and all of the data related. So I'm working as a big data specialist, a NoSQL specialist, Oracle database specialist. 00:01:20:17 - 00:01:44:11 Unknown So always having, working to, to help customers to build data architectures and solution which has the best approach. So to help them to, get the best value of the data. So normally my day, I do workshops to show the technology and demos to show it live, architecture diagram. I also I do a lot of proof of concepts. 00:01:44:13 - 00:02:07:17 Unknown That's to, to help them to, to build the solution that their looking for. So at the end, I always been, data related, but now I have a special focus with, autonomous database, which is our, product right now in the, in the markets. I understand that you are an expert in, you know, autonomous database for those who may not be familiar what exactly it is and why is such a game changer? 00:02:07:19 - 00:02:35:15 Unknown They are markets perception that Oracle is difficult. And you need a lot of gears and expertise. In order to start using this technology. And this is our game changer because we provide the Oracle database as so some access, an ERP or a CRM. But for the technology point of view it’s access, because the idea of the goal of Oracle is you can start working directly with the data and forget about everything. 00:02:35:17 - 00:02:58:05 Unknown So Oracle automatically is in charge of putting the data is in charge and doing backups is in charge of doing all this kind of, of activities. And that's why I suddenly changer. Because so also one of the good thing is that there is a lot of configuration already done. So the idea is that you don't need to be an expert in Oracle in Uni in order to start using it. 00:02:58:07 - 00:03:18:07 Unknown Even if you left the university tomorrow, you can start using, create great applications, AI application that we'll talk later about it in a matter of minutes. And this is where the business see value because even in the, in the AI space. So we see that every day this a new something is changing or something is happening. 00:03:18:09 - 00:03:40:11 Unknown So to be up to date or to be able to adapt these new changes into your application or the business is very important. So that's why is the key difference from from there or a game changer for the autonomous database. Also, one of the key things is that, we're going to talk about this concept of data engineer. 00:03:40:13 - 00:04:00:16 Unknown So I think normally when we talk about the Oracle database, we are talking about database administrators. But this concept I think is one to disappear too. And data engineers. But the good things or if someone is a DBA and is listening to us is that the knowledge to do have is still is great because you need to work with the data you need to create. 00:04:00:18 - 00:04:23:09 Unknown Move the data you know the form of the data. So on this value you can use it is still as a data engineer there. But you can forget about all these tedious talks about patching, backups, upgrades or all these things that doesn’t provide value. And normally it's a stopper to to innovate on the DBAs or not, the data engineers can, benefit about all these new capabilities. 00:04:23:09 - 00:04:42:22 Unknown The autonomous database is going to provide. You have mentioned the role of AI data engineer quite a bit. Can you explain how Oracle has achieved this role? So before going into the AI engineer, let me explain. What is a data engineer? If someone is coming from a DBA or have seen Oracle has only a database point of view. 00:04:43:00 - 00:05:03:03 Unknown So I was mentioning. So one of the goal of the Oracle with the autonomous database is to focus only on the data, which is really important. But also there is a concept that we call in the autonomous database is the convert data model. So that means that we can work with any datatype. We can work with Json, we can work with data spatial. 00:05:03:09 - 00:05:26:23 Unknown We can work with a relational. We can work with graph data. It doesn't matter. This is very important because many companies want to be a data driven company but become they become data movement company. So they move data from one product to another product. And then when the business came, I need a report by one yesterday I need to buy yesterday. 00:05:26:23 - 00:05:52:01 Unknown No, there was too late. No. And this is one of the benefits that Oracle has to to be able to avoid to move data. Unless you don't need it. But also we have, great graphical interface which is called Data Studio. So I was mentioning you before that even if you left the university, today, tomorrow you can start using the autonomous database and you can become a data engineer. 00:05:52:03 - 00:06:13:18 Unknown And this is because this suite of tools which are included for free, it is something very, very important with the autonomous database, allow us to go through the life cycle of the data engineer. So the lifecycle of a data engineer has three main stages, which is load data from a source of data transform the data will be data quality and reach it and so on. 00:06:14:00 - 00:06:36:16 Unknown And then to serve it as maybe we need to serve it to a BI person who has to, prepare a report for their business. Maybe you want to serve it with an internal application because we need it for HR, marketing or so on, or even including application for third parties. So this is really very important. And all these three stages are very important from a data engineer. 00:06:36:16 - 00:07:06:04 Unknown And you can achieve it very easily with a graphical interface which is called the the, the data studio. And what we say the I know with artificial intelligence. AI is transforming every industry. But what exactly is an AI data engineer. So have been talking about data engineer. So the AI engineer go a bit farther now, something that, I see, and I hear a lot is like a AI is not going to take your job, but someone who will use it. 00:07:06:04 - 00:07:28:18 Unknown Wait. So this is very, very, very important because this is going to boost productivity. But even if it boost productivity is very important to check what the AI is suggesting because it's not going to do all the job for for us. So this is very, very important. And also in the data studio, we have included, a lot of AI features that anybody can can use. 00:07:28:20 - 00:07:49:00 Unknown But something that I would like to highlight is that all the AI features that are included are open. So it means that I can work with any level in the market. You know that tomorrow, today, open AI is really cool, but tomorrow we have a three and then we have the IPsec and they're everywhere. Is, is is changing now. 00:07:49:02 - 00:08:10:01 Unknown So something which is very important is to say, okay, from a business point of view, I want to take this technology and use it as soon as possible. But I don't want to change all the processes that I have underneath. If you have to adapt or develop something every day, you will never get anything to production or anything useful no 00:08:10:03 - 00:08:26:17 Unknown And that's why in the database we are able to connect to any, and we are able to suggest or to work in order to improve this kind of pipelines or data load and all this kind of features that we like to highlight, you know, so this is very important. 00:08:26:19 - 00:08:50:17 Unknown I mean when we boost their productivity. But then the AI engineer go a bit farther because also on top of that we have the load transform on serve that I was mentioning before. The AI can do more things. One thing is to create synthetic data or fake data. Imagine that they have to create an application for an internal marketing department. 00:08:50:19 - 00:09:14:23 Unknown So I can use AI to generate the data model to generate the fake data. And the developer going to start working tomorrow directly. So this boost the productivity I don't have to worry too about, all these things are going to be a quickie. And also something that we can use in the autonomous database, which is very popular easily. We can work with that vector, database because the vector is a datatype is inside the autonomous database. 00:09:15:01 - 00:09:40:22 Unknown So, anybody is not familiar with the vector is that we provide is the information we provide to the NLM in order to provide, more, business related, answers. For example, we have PDFs, I have Excel. I have a lot of information, pictures that I want my NLM to help me in my business so I can do it directly inside of the autonomous database in a very easy, very easy way. 00:09:41:00 - 00:10:02:02 Unknown So that's why from I didn't AI different area point of view is generating fake fake data or synthetic data. I can go with vector, which is very important. I don't need to move the data inside or outside to different system, which is the converge capabilities that I mentioned before. And also I can create production ready applications in a matter of, of of minutes. 00:10:02:04 - 00:10:24:19 Unknown So we have also a great capability which is select AI in which we can use natural language to resolve business queries. And this is, compared with a competition. And we have something which is really nice or very cool. And this is because the select AI feature is inside of the Oracle database is in the heart of the Oracle database. 00:10:24:21 - 00:10:44:11 Unknown So for example, if you go and talk with ChatGPT is outside. We didn't know anything about your data. You know, tell me. Give me a recommendation about what you are what I'm looking for. But once you are inside of the Oracle database, the select AI the SLM is able to know everything about your business. 00:10:44:13 - 00:11:06:15 Unknown But on top of that. So there are two key things, that are very important. One is the integration with all the Oracle ecosystem. It's very easy to create an application. For example, I created very simple application. Yes, to show the potential, although it is a bit useless, but I use my Apple Watch and Siri to talk with my autonomous database. 00:11:06:21 - 00:11:27:23 Unknown So even though I'm, it seems like I'm talking with Siri at the end, the Apple Watch is sending a Rest API to select the AI SQL statement. So, create these kinds of things. It's our, one hour effort or less. Okay. So, this is very, very powerful. And I think it's more complicated to configure this. The Apple watch. 00:11:27:23 - 00:11:47:03 Unknown Than doing the rest API. So this is give the feeling to our customers or anybody who is using it that I can have do it, do it very quickly. And if tomorrow instead of open AI I want to use work, I can do it very easily. That's another. My application is going to work the same. 00:11:47:06 - 00:12:07:07 Unknown My rest API is going to be the same. And the second thing, which is very important is the security. Because even though you ask, tell me all the data, at the end you're going to generate a SQL statement. And if your user doesn't have the data privileges to read all the data, the L&M is not that an issue. 00:12:07:08 - 00:12:37:19 Unknown All the information is secure by by default, because I have seen customers that for example, they build their own, the let's say their own, they put everything in a black box ChatGPT and then it's working. But they have a concern. What happens if I try to get information, imagine my medical or healthcare information about another user. You are never 100% sure that you can do some hacking to get this information. 00:12:37:21 - 00:13:00:10 Unknown So at the end, what they do is they build another L&M to supervise the response. Anything after an L&M to supervise the second L&M. So everything became very, very, very complicated. But if you have the security by default it you can forget about all these things and make it applications, really to do all this kind of things, which is really powerful. 00:13:00:12 - 00:13:22:15 Unknown So that's why I think that the AI data engineer with Autonomous database has all these benefits to create value in matter of, of minutes for the, for the business. So this is super interesting for those, listening who want to get this started in this file, where can anyone for our audience go to learn about how to become an AI data engineer? 00:13:22:17 - 00:13:42:06 Unknown I think one of the key resources, because we are talking about many features about the Oracle Autonomous Database to be able to work with any kind of data type or to create the rest of the services and so on, so that we have a web page which is called Live Loves this. Live loves our Oracle, a free training. 00:13:42:06 - 00:14:08:16 Unknown So we have more than 1000 trainings there for free, in which even you can have a your own sandbox to play, to play around. Also very important that even if you want to play on your local laptop. So we have a Docker image. So the stuff working in the laptop, even if you are interested to do this kind of things no and from there there are many live loves that will be interesting, like, the basics of the autonomous database, how it works, how to create one. 00:14:08:18 - 00:14:30:08 Unknown We have live loves about Data studio. How to start with the graphical interface, how the looks splice and so on. Maybe then I will do something about, select AI, I can connect to another limb or I can create my application. How can create the fresh data services on top of that. So these are then key components that I will do it. 00:14:30:10 - 00:14:58:19 Unknown And then to become the real AI engineer task we talk the vector how to work directly inside of the Oracle database. And then something that I highly recommend is to use Apex or Application Express, which is local application development. So I can create applications without the need of code. And even we have already built applications that you can use as for example, Lap chat to the first use cases that anybody wants to use. 00:14:58:21 - 00:15:24:21 Unknown I want to chat with my data. I didn't want to use a black box or to write a strange commands and a create an application, have an easy way. So with this free live lab, you can have it in your laptop very, very easily and start working with, select AI under business. And then also we have another select the AI or support, which is a bit more advanced because the first business application is I want to chat with my data. 00:15:24:23 - 00:15:46:23 Unknown And the second customer requirement is I want to create an application for my business user. For example, I know that nobody's reading the documentation. I will improve myself there. So let me let me create an application in which anybody can ask questions about the documentation to resolve any issues to to reduce the number of tickets on and so on. 00:15:47:01 - 00:16:09:01 Unknown So this is also, done in a, in a free live love using vector. So we have the PDFs, the vector and then the L&M. And in a few clicks you can have all this, this work. So I recommend to go to this live love of application. You can look it in Google do it. You will see it because it's very, very nice, very simple, very intuitive with a lot of videos. 00:16:09:04 - 00:16:34:14 Unknown So anybody can can follow it. And we have some angle. Something which is very important is we don't assume that you have some knowledge previous and knowledge, which is very, very, very important. Well, this has been such, inspo conversation before we will run up, my final question will be if you could give one piece of advice to faculty or students, what would it be? 00:16:34:16 - 00:16:54:21 Unknown Something that I see. Well, now that everything is changing very fast. So we see a lot of products, a lot of AI, a lot of things there in the in the market are going on, which is very basic, but something that didn't change are the fundamentals a good data strategy is very important to consume any kind of AI data. 00:16:54:23 - 00:17:17:22 Unknown And this maybe the name has changed, but if you go, look for a different name is the same concept of the same architecture, the same best practices. So my recommendation will be learn about all these principles, because I don't think it's going to change is true that, for example, the cloud has more flexibility, will be more cost efficient, but the architecture is not going to it's not going to change. 00:17:17:22 - 00:17:40:12 Unknown No. So this is the the first thing. And the second thing SQL is really powerful. We see as a standard everywhere. So SQL for Json, sequel for relational SQL, for graph everywhere. So with two key things could be the main components I would recommend to anybody looking for to start to build on this kind of things and then going for this kind of live love 00:17:40:12 - 00:18:01:05 Unknown So you want to became an AI data engineer. Ofcourse I think those were a great piece of advice. So a big thank you to have here for joining me on the podcast today. Thank you very much. If you want to learn more about Oracle Academy, please check out our website and subscribe to the podcast. Thank you for listening. 00:18:01:07 - 00:18:13:10 Unknown That wraps up this episode. Thanks for listening and stay tuned for the next Oracle Academy Tech Chat podcast.
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Bridging the Digital Divide: How Oracle Academy is Transforming Technology Education in Africa
03/18/2025
Bridging the Digital Divide: How Oracle Academy is Transforming Technology Education in Africa
In this episode host Bekere Amassoma speaks with Annick Sakho, Director, Government Affairs Africa about today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape and how access to technology education is a crucial factor in driving economic growth, innovation, and job creation. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript: 00:00:00:00 - 00:00:35:11 Unknown 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 Start, where we discuss how Oracle Academy prepares the next generation's workforce. 00:00:35:13 - 00:00:59:17 Unknown I'm your host, Bekere Amassoma. In this episode, I am joined by Annick Sakho who is Director of Government Affairs Africa in Oracle. So Annick to start off. Thank you for joining us. And can you share a bit about your journey into technology, how you got into Oracle and your current role as Director of Government Affairs for Africa? 00:00:59:22 - 00:01:24:01 Unknown A big hello to you, Bekere, and thank you for inviting me today. It's a real pleasure to be here with you to discuss Oracle Academy in this, podcast. Thank you for the opportunity. So I am currently the Oracle Government affairs in charge of Africa, and I am based out of Abidjan in Cote d'Ivoire, in the Oracle Cote d'Ivoire office. 00:01:24:03 - 00:02:05:17 Unknown So, you asking me about how I got into Oracle? Well, I started my career as a research and development engineer in a telecommunication company in Switzerland because I hold a telecommunication engineering degree. And later on, I joined Cote d’lvoire and joined IBM at the time when companies were starting to implement remote access to their mainframes and other computers. So, IT companies were actually in need of people who understood telecommunication to configure all these controllers and protocol, etcetera, to establish, stable, secure, remote connection. 00:02:05:19 - 00:02:42:20 Unknown And this is how I got into technology, because remember at those time, originally remote access was, about dialing up on the phone and having a modem to allow employees to connect to an office, network of telephone networks. And, since I joined technology using my telco skills, I stayed there, and my journey started a very fulfilling one, I would say, where I held, initially a pre-sales role before transitioning into a sales role. 00:02:42:22 - 00:03:11:21 Unknown I've been with Oracle almost 20 years now, and, New Year has been the same as the previous one because I was privileged to work with customers in different industries located in various regions across Africa, selling innovative solutions to support their business. And the most enriching part was the opportunity to work in a multicultural environment. To progress to a managerial role and then to lead virtual tips. 00:03:11:22 - 00:03:37:04 Unknown So when I was leading the technology cloud sales team across sub-Saharan Africa a few years ago, I realized that a lot of governments were not familiar with cloud technologies, not even with Oracle solution portfolio. However, we knew that governments have a crucial role in supporting the regulatory environment and the adoption of these technologies in the local digital economy. 00:03:37:06 - 00:04:17:00 Unknown And this is one this is, the reason why when the director, Government Affairs Africa position opened, I applied. This is what led me to, being today the government office director for Africa. In this capacity, I lead and coordinate Oracle's engagement with the African government officials and the various stakeholders like the NGO, the trade union, the industry associations, etc. and working closely, on the other hand, with Oracle Senior Management in Africa and Oracle Global Business Units. 00:04:17:02 - 00:04:51:13 Unknown And part of my responsibilities include educating government officials about our company, about our industry and more generally, about technology. Wow Annick that's quite interesting and thank you for sharing. Now how would you describe the current state of the digital divide in Africa's education sector? Interesting question. Africa's digital transformation journey is marked by significant challenges that require, strategic intervention to overcome. 00:04:51:15 - 00:05:29:03 Unknown And one of the critical areas that needs attention to ensure that the continent can fully leverage digital opportunity. Revolves around digital skills. With 70% of Africa's population under 30. There is a pressing need to reform education systems and to align with our industry needs. And, traditional education, from what I see it often does not equip young people with a skills demanding by the tech industry because we have not been able to, revovle in terms of curriculum. 00:05:29:05 - 00:06:02:19 Unknown And this leads to a mismatch between education and employment opportunities. So the digital divide in Africa's education sector remains a significant challenge, particularly at the university and high school levels, because this is a last stage before going into the workforce and before applying for jobs. While, digital transformation is accelerating globally. Many African students still face barriers to accessing quality tech education for various reason. 00:06:02:21 - 00:06:35:23 Unknown Inadequate infrastructure, limited internet connectivity, lack of appropriate training, and the lack of access to quality tech education and relevant training program impede the development of digital competency among the students. And additionally, we can also see that we have disparities between urban and rural areas where limited access to technology into the spread of digital and computing skills and, remote reach. 00:06:35:23 - 00:07:08:01 Unknown This gap limits the ability of African student to compete in an increasingly technology driven job market. The World Economic Forum had just released their report on jobs, The Future of Jobs 2025, and it really showed that the jobs will transform, and we need to be equipped to have a chance to thrive in this new environment. Companies today, they are not hiring young people based on the traditional degrees alone. 00:07:08:03 - 00:07:48:04 Unknown They hire them based on skills. This means that, you know, so should certification programs. The, certificate that they can earn will demonstrate how skilled they are. And they have now more values than having a bachelor's or a master's degrees in many cases. And knowing that, Africa has a young population, we need to have a reform of our education system to adequately equip young people with the skills needed for the digital age. 00:07:48:04 - 00:08:26:11 Unknown And this is, concern more and more, countries, being conscious about and are working towards changing things. Well, I will say that we need to democratize education and the access to digital education. And for that, we need to focus now on upskilling or reskilling our youth to bridge the digital skills gap, ensuring that our young population is prepared to participate in and to drive the digital economy. 00:08:26:13 - 00:08:56:00 Unknown Addressing this skill gap is essential for the continent's digital future. So as a conclusion, I would say that, we need to foster digital literacy and practical tech skills. Otherwise, the next generation of African professional will not be in a position to compete in a global environment, and they need to be empowered to drive economic growth and innovation across our continent. 00:08:56:06 - 00:09:38:18 Unknown This is very important. Thank you very much Annick. Well said. Now to the next question. How do you see Oracle Academy's overarching mission in Africa, and how does it align with global efforts in tech education? I had the opportunity to engage with Oracle Academy in, different African countries, and I could see the impact. Oracle Academy's mission in Africa is to democratize access to technology education by providing free, high quality computing resources, curricula and training both to the students and the educators. 00:09:38:20 - 00:10:18:10 Unknown Oracle Academy helps to bridge the digital divide because it helps equipping student and educator was essential digital skills, and by doing so, it aims to equip young Africans with the digital skills needed for the modern workforce, particularly in high demand fields such as software development, artificial intelligence, cloud computing. This mission aligns closely with global efforts in tech education, which focus on closing the digital skills gap, promoting Stem learning, and fostering innovation driven economy. 00:10:18:12 - 00:11:04:17 Unknown And when we talk about Stem learning, I would like to also stress the opportunity it gives to women and young female students to have access to technical, education, because I'm a big fan of promoting Stem for the young girls for them to, really get interest into this, subject. So, in Africa where, internet penetration and digital infrastructure are still developing, Oracle Academy plays a crucial role in bridging the digital divide that were mentioned earlier by collaborating with universities, high schools, government institutes. 00:11:04:19 - 00:11:34:18 Unknown It supports curriculum enhancement, teacher training and practical learning opportunities because we have we are giving access to students and teachers to a hub where they can find all the resources to be really educated and trained to the latest technology. And these ensure that Africa's youth is not left behind in the global digital economy. So this is a, very important role. 00:11:34:20 - 00:12:06:23 Unknown And I will say that Oracle's academy efforts in Africa are critical, a critical component of a broader global movement towards inclusive and equitable tech education, fostering local talent and driving economic growth, and an increase in digital world. 00:12:07:01 - 00:12:40:17 Unknown So, like I said, I am currently, director for Government Affairs in Africa. And through the conversations we're having with government that are really trying to, put in place and implement a digital transformation strategy, we realize that education and training is key into this effort. Government collaboration plays a pivotal role in expanding the reach and effectiveness of Oracle Academy across diverse African communities. 00:12:40:19 - 00:13:20:23 Unknown While Oracle Academy provide the curricula, the training, the technology resources, government will act as a facilitator, an enabler, so that they help to integrate digital education into the national education system. This partnership is essential for creating sustainable, large scale impact. I can give the example where I have participated, in discussion between Oracle Academy and, some African governments in where we have close partnerships. 00:13:21:00 - 00:13:50:23 Unknown Through ministries of national education or ministries of higher education, or even government institutes that help Oracle Academy engage with a lot of public universities and higher education institute and on board them as a member. This is what I mean by large, large scale impact to be able to reach a larger number of public, education, institutions. 00:13:51:00 - 00:14:34:12 Unknown And I can say that governments can endorse and integrate Oracle Academy’s program into national high school and university curriculum, ensuring that students gain relevant computer coding data science skills as part of formal education. Because this is what we were saying earlier, because they are not well trained and they don't have a modern curricula, sometimes they are left behind,they are not exposed to, technology and education industries also play a key role in aligning this program with national development goals, ensuring they meet industry and market needs. 00:14:34:14 - 00:15:21:19 Unknown We can see that we have large, program being put in place by, more and more government, long term strategy, five year vision, etc. you'll see that, center of those strategy because they are also the one on which the government, put the effort in terms of enforcing and empowering the digital economy. So, because we have, insufficient number of teachers proficient in digital tools and methodologies, it's obstructed the effective adoption of technology in the education sector. 00:15:21:21 - 00:16:07:14 Unknown So with institution like Oracle Academy, we can provide professional development to educators. And government can also help by scaling this effort and integrating teacher training program with the international education policies. This is an example of how government can collaborate with us. And of course, they can also encourage, digital skills certifications, both for the teachers to ensure that they are well trained and well equipped to deliver the training and also to the student to push them into the next level of, learning, I would say. 00:16:07:16 - 00:16:42:20 Unknown So I would say that government collaboration magnify the impact that we can have with Oracle Academy by ensuring that we have a systemic and long-term change in Africa's education sector, and by working together Oracle Academy and government, the African government, we can empower more students. By reduce the, the, the digital divide, and we can build a real tech savvy workforce capable of driving innovation and economic growth in the continent. 00:16:42:22 - 00:17:38:04 Unknown Thank you Annick, I like what you really said about, how government collaboration can actually amplify the impact of Oracle Academy. Thank you very much, Annick. Now, I would like to ask if you could share one key message for governments and other development partners about collaborating with Oracle Academy. What would it be? I will say that investing in digital education through partnerships with Oracle Academy, it's an investment in Africa's future workforce and economic growth because by integrating Oracle Academy's world class computing curricula into national education systems, government and development partners, by the way, can equip millions of students with the digital skills necessary for the jobs of tomorrow through strategic collaboration and enhancing infrastructure training, 00:17:38:04 - 00:18:07:10 Unknown educators expanded access to technology. African can bridge the digital divide, and we can. There thus foster innovation and drive inclusive economic development. Now's the time to act and skill digital education to ensure that no student is left behind in the global tech revolution. Because we are living in a global world nowadays. Thank you. Thank you very much, Annick. 00:18:07:12 - 00:18:37:09 Unknown Now, as part of our final question, I would like you to touch on African youth's in Tech. What advice would you give to us African youths aspiring to build careers in tech? Well, everybody is about creating a startup, right? They'll want to create a startup. But now we need to understand what the use of those starts up. There are so many opportunities nowadays, but young people must be ready for that. 00:18:37:11 - 00:19:33:00 Unknown They need to learn and master the fundamentals with a strong foundation in key tech skills like coding like that to science, like cloud computing, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence. And this is where taking advantage of free learning platforms like Oracle Academy, for example, makes a difference. They should leverage online learning and certifications. We spoke about certifications and if the ongoing certification program from leading tech companies like Oracle, it is important as an achievement for them because it's very valuable when they'll be on the job market, because it will prove to recruiters and company that they have a competitive edge. 00:19:33:02 - 00:20:02:13 Unknown They have a competitive edge in the job market and the completion of certificates. We'll talk about cloud skills, for example. It's called high on their resume. And it will give them the foundation to develop a career in tech. And they should also not forget to embrace continuous learning. The tech industry evolves very, very rapidly, so staying updated is crucial. 00:20:02:15 - 00:20:38:06 Unknown Lastly, they should be resilient and think big, I was talking about startup, but we have challenges. It has challenges like limited internet access, lack of resources. But we need to be perseverant and creative have out of the box thinking it will set them apart. And they should not aim at just being a tech shooter, but they should also try to be a tech innovator and develop solution that solves real problem in their community. 00:20:38:07 - 00:21:04:15 Unknown Now this is very and I wish this wouldn't end. And your point about, Africa is not not just being, users of this tech, but, you know, innovators of this tech is very key. And I must say that this has been a very insightful conversation. And on say big thank you to you Annick for sharing your experience with also now Oracle Academy is transforming technology education in Africa. 00:21:04:16 - 00:21:36:22 Unknown And I dare to say that you rock. And to our listeners I would say visit our website academy.oracle.com to learn more about Oracle Academy's learning resources. Subscribe to our podcast. Share with your friends. You can also follow our Academy on X, Instagram and Facebook. Listen to us next week and also visit our website. And please drop or write a review for us or rate us on our website. 00:21:36:22 - 00:21:56:12 Unknown And please also follow our social media pages. Thank you very much and do enjoy the rest of your day everyone. That wraps up this episode. Thanks for listening and stay tuned for the next Oracle Academy Tech Chat podcast.
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Real-World Applications of P6 in Construction Projects
02/18/2025
Real-World Applications of P6 in Construction Projects
In this episode host Lorna Juma speaks with recent construction management graduates, University of Nairobi, Lewis Miringa and Joyce Ojamong about real-world applications of P6 in construction projects. Learn how Primavera P6 has shaped the careers of two recent Construction Management and explore the increasing role of tech in construction. ----------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript: 00;00;09;02 - 00;00;36;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 the Oracle Academy Tech Chat, where we discuss how Oracle Academy prepares the next generation's workforce. 00;00;36;03 - 00;01;13;20 I am your host, Lorna Juma. In this episode, I am joined by Lily Smearing and Jasper Jamal Rees, recent construction management graduates from the University of Nairobi. Join us as we hear their stories. Learn about, how Primavera P6 has shaped their careers and explore the increasing role of tech in construction project management. Whether you're a student, educator or professional in the construction field, this episode will offer valuable insights into the practical impact of P6 on construction projects and career growth. 00;01;13;22 - 00;01;40;16 Welcome Luis and Joyce. Now, to start off. Can you give me a bit about your background and the respective courses you undertook? Joyce, I'll start with you. Thank you. Lana. I'm so grateful to be here. My name is just a general environmental graduate and construction management graduate from the University of Nairobi. But until recently, where I am currently practicing as a scientist. 00;01;40;19 - 00;02;05;11 Data. So, I basically monitor on project site activities. Thank you. Luis. Thank you, Lorna. My name is Luis meeting. I am a graduate from the University of Nairobi on pursuing construction management. Currently working on Junior Challenge development at city. We also are developing a lot of seating data. Thank you so much. And Leo is just, to have that conversation. 00;02;05;14 - 00;02;31;29 How did you first hear about the Oracle Academy program and its inclusion of Primavera P6? Thank you. My first introduction when I came to learn about Oracle Academy was through creation. This is a student body in full construction real estate student association at the University of Nairobi. Faculty in the Built Environment and at the Department of Real Estate Construction Management and quantity serving. 00;02;32;01 - 00;02;59;12 So, I will part of the students conceived and then time which is the regression body. And the part of the initiative we had wanted to do is have also invited people who can be relevant when they graduate out in the industry. And how do you do this? Is, well, one of the ways is equipping these students with skills that actually in the industry. 00;02;59;16 - 00;03;30;12 So, part of what we're using construction is, Scheduling software. Scheduling software. So, we did that bridge broken. Think the country director. We need what I've been doing, which was well-received. They invite us a meeting them we this class with these. So, when we got there, it was like, let's get into what happened. We came to realize that these are being part of. 00;03;30;14 - 00;04;06;05 And there's a lot of an academy that offers these courses on products that Oracle offers. So, we got there, learned about. The curriculum they do offer and part of it was to have the university, partner with Oracle and get us to have account. So, though I will share the content. We were able to initiate this partnership. The university was already done was giving an account a member account where lecturers are able to sign up students. 00;04;06;07 - 00;04;36;06 Now students get to their own instances, but accounts for these accounts so they are able to access these curriculums. In on the afternoon. So, through this, I was able to learn more about D6, pretty much about the project management curriculum. Good. Even, attempts to download the BC software as a student version. Practically use it. New scenarios I need, which is really amazing. 00;04;36;09 - 00;05;10;09 And that was my first experience. And we the analytics and, thank you so much for that story. So just moving on to you. What motivated you to enroll and learn about this specific tool? And that is Primavera P6. Thank you, Lana. So, my first experience with P6 is from the Python version. So just talked about, with organized our actual training by P6, we were made aware that this is a tool that is widely used in the industry. 00;05;10;12 - 00;05;33;01 So, that motivated me to learn more about putting my video pieces as well as the resources that you provided, that Oracle provided. You were able to get tutorials from the student home and it able also be gained a certificate after the training sessions. And, just having the available resources for you to go through was motivation enough. 00;05;33;02 - 00;05;57;07 And I'm so grateful for that opportunity. How has gaining, Primavera P6 skills given you a competitive edge during your job search? So, during my job, such, there was an opportunity of, site coordinator in a construction site, and I was called for an interview, and they were looking for someone with a vast, project management skills, in particular. 00;05;57;07 - 00;06;23;09 Skills. Link. And since Primavera P6 is a skills link tool. I got to be. I was asked more about it. And the skills that I had and the knowledge that I was able to explain the cost aspects, there's considering aspects, the resource management aspects and that, let me get the job opportunity. And now, Lois, moving over to you. 00;06;23;11 - 00;06;54;04 Can you share specific examples where these skills helped you stand out or secure an opportunity? See what I can mentioning. And it's really nice when somebody asks you something that you are really conversant about. So, when I was actually attending the interview, I was asked, to give a scenario on how you would allocate resources to an activity and how will you know you, and I'm not, resources already located. 00;06;54;09 - 00;07;21;20 This is the kind of questions where you, you actually see deadlines and, and answer them because, but back in school. Oh, we interacted in the P6 till about scheduling. And so, and you are really, really conversant about it. So, it's, it's, it's a question that we answer in confidence. You even give a practical scenario of how you will schedule unit, which is actually what I need. 00;07;21;22 - 00;07;46;15 And I know it pretty much. And I am employed and another scenario, after working there for some, some time, we were actually sent to an did it for a crash program, which is also a concept in P6 when you are really lagging behind in the in, in, in in the scheduling in in addition, you know, the credit, you have to come up with a crash program. 00;07;46;20 - 00;08;19;10 Are you interested in activities and catch up with the lost time. So, part of what we were tasked to do is come up with a crash program. And if, we were given timelines when given due process and asked to come up with a schedule of how you are going to complete these tasks, which was handing over units, but 48 of them in in a period of three months, something you interact with it, you do it. 00;08;19;12 - 00;08;51;22 Because you understand it, which is actually what I need. And, turned out to be successful. So, it is it is something that is applicable out here. As much as you learn, it is good. So, what I'm hearing is a lot of, importance of academia, industry collaboration, which, you know, gives you access to industry tools. And once you are conversant with them, you know, you get a lot of confidence, gives you a differentiating factor, even when you're applying for jobs, even when you're undertaking the interview. 00;08;51;25 - 00;09;20;04 Great. Thank you so much. Now, Joyce, now that you started working in the construction industry, how are you applying Primavera P6 skills in your daily task? You learned so much that, you find that in large construction projects you have multiple contractors, multiple contractors with different tasks that, they have we have to schedule them in a way that we don't lose time as we go along the projects. 00;09;20;06 - 00;09;45;23 So daily, we schedule activities. Primavera P6 provides a work on structure. So, you want to group your activities into smaller tasks and then to be able to schedule them appropriately, allocating enough time for all the contractors. The other thing is you can monitor progress as you go along. So, you monitor progress against what was planned. 00;09;45;25 - 00;10;13;01 And that way you're able to manage time along that project. You manage cost, you know, when you extend your time plans, it comes in extra extrapolate. So, management of the project items is made using the Primavera P6. And Lois, moving over to you. Can you share, specific projects where you've used, P6 to manage timelines, resources or budgets? 00;10;13;06 - 00;10;52;04 Okay. And as I've mentioned before, it was vital, fresh program. Vital was a project that was apparently pain changing and we had to put some good input, some efforts to be able to catch up with time. So about, P6 it's a software that involves a long-term planning, budgeting and even risk analysis when it comes to, the planning aspect itself and the scheduling you get to, you get to when your activities, what breakdown structure you sequence activities inside that. 00;10;52;08 - 00;11;15;20 Then in these activities you want to assign resources to them. Once you assign resources, you are able to track at any given specific time. Is the project actually running behind schedule? And if it is and running behind schedule, which activities are, making it lag behind? And in terms of cost, at least you can budget at any given specific time you can do to pinpoint these projects as of budget. 00;11;15;27 - 00;11;35;03 And if this is its budget and if it's not, if it's not by budget, what is bringing the total to the cost? I was able to pinpoint and say these and these activities are the ones which are costing us. And what can we do to be able to, to, to keep that amount that has been brought about as an overall. 00;11;35;05 - 00;12;25;21 So these are some of these schemes, some of the things that a business does when it comes to the part of the risk analysis, it is something, really amazing because, for the other or many, scheduling software, the interacting with the impact of risk analysis actually fall into this things, which is really amazing in, in a case where you can be able to identify, risk even as an it's really amazing, an instance I can give these thing, we go the procurement department and we have, we have the procurement department, we have the engagement to work to anybody, the procurement department to get materials for the guys and see we have 00;12;25;23 - 00;12;49;20 some materials, some inputs that are supposed to arrive. And this month. But no procurement gets a message but realize or they get some idea that this content is not going to arrive this month due to delays expected and whatever achieved in that month. This information is very critical not to procurement, but to the guys in the field. This comes as a risk. 00;12;49;27 - 00;13;14;16 So, in P6 you're able to raise this risk because in the field this is you guys able to identify each stage. Just be able to know which does depend on this risk. And what is the impact of this risk to the overall schedule. How is it going to impact our delivery. These are some of the skills that you get to practically engage with during you interact with P6. 00;13;14;19 - 00;13;43;17 And as you can see now when you come out in the field, they are quite applicable. So, my experience we in Primavera P6, we are able to generate a procurement schedule. So, in a program. Excuse me, let's take an example of Alto for example. And so, we have two good time games for certain tasks. So, for example we need like the latest bid for active technical submittal the latest date for that submittal to be approved by consultants. 00;13;43;19 - 00;14;09;02 We have the latest date for example delivery to site and its approval. And after that now after the approval of the sample, then we do now go to manufacture. And you find that some are important. So, they have like a long-time leading period. So, the Primavera you're able to check these durations and able to serve and able to know where the risk is. 00;14;09;02 - 00;14;34;26 And so, you want to serve them at the right time. So, we are also Primavera B6. You like schedule? Adjusting time delivery for installation so that we won't have problems of storage issues on site, for example. And so, this is just more of a scheduling tool helping to solve the procurement issues on site. The other item I wanted to talk about is health and safety risks. 00;14;34;29 - 00;15;08;00 So, scheduling again, you know, able to serve any health and safety risks that, you see that the project might face. So, for example, a high-risk activity might be working on tight. So, you do want to schedule another activity and, what, work on tight activity. So, when someone is working at a scaffold at a height in the event scheduling and you us just below it because that is a ready and safe for their work. 00;15;08;09 - 00;15;33;26 So, with B6, you want to know, and you want to tell this and schedule it appropriately. And then things would be like, vehicle movement on time, you know, and teenagers where it's not safe working on a particular road, for example, at eight on the construction site. So, you could do lead to when there are no deliveries on site, for example. 00;15;34;20 - 00;16;03;02 So, it's more of a scheduling, thing that serves the risks of the project, helps you identify the risks and be able to come up with mitigation measures. The other thing I wanted to talk about is how because you can get customizable components from P6 so that to you want to present presented, in meetings. And you're able to make decisions so you can just track the project as you go along. 00;16;03;04 - 00;16;46;18 Yeah. Just quick mention about a mode that are driven decision making for even for the part of the resource. When you are allocating resources to activities, P6 is able to be somewhere you can be able to actually view this resource is actually over utilized. And you cannot assign another, another, another task. They're not assign this resource to another task at this moment, even in in in the in the concept of portfolio management, you can be running a project and say you need to accompany running three projects that I will and the assignment be shared services that a company uses to it's able to detect tell you that this resource is seems to 00;16;46;18 - 00;17;12;13 be available, but it is overly utilized in order to able to even be able to allocate resources. Space means able to know anything. You need to add more resources without issue. So, you have enough and, and also the aspect of collaboration and teamwork. When you look at, other scheduling software. It's such a feature that is widely available. 00;17;12;13 - 00;17;33;08 And then when it comes to P6 especially, you know, with the adverse mix to what happens in other cloud, you're able to work as a team if you're working on the same file but different people. Construction project is all about stakeholders. You have the design team, you know, the quality control team. You have those guys executing the tasks in the field. 00;17;33;13 - 00;18;00;16 But these people have to work on the same sort of one affects the job. So having a schedule in a centralized place where all these people get to play, but access is given depending on the level. And rather than having a file that is locally saved in the, in the, in the, in my computer where I need it, if I need some input from another person, I share it with him. 00;18;00;18 - 00;18;26;22 Then he does his own things. She has. It would be it's kind of an outdated thing now, which comes to an end to get we find out. You find like now it's kind of a beam environment. We are all working together, working on the same platform, scheduling. There, happy anything out there and information is readily available. It's something which is a practical and you, I'm using it. 00;18;26;22 - 00;18;57;03 I'm using about P6 joints. I feel like you have one additional point. Yes. How P6 helps in contact management. So, you find that, when multiple projects, they be in need of creating and integrated skills. And so, it would be important to tell all the other conductors at the, beginning of the project that the P6 selected by the integrated program created by P6 is the main point of reference. 00;18;57;10 - 00;19;26;09 So, if any contractor deviates from whatever it's in the scheduling, then they would, do they billable on that on, issues that they may have raised there. So, any notices can be tracked, notices can be tracked. And also considering the dependencies that you create using the notebooks where you actually do the activities to, be carried out at the same time or one after the other. 00;19;26;10 - 00;20;05;18 That's a very great tool with P6. So, with that being clean so you can manage big claims. Well and it helps in contact management, music and sort thinking. Thank you, Joyce Lewis. When, when we come to predicting what will happen in the future. This is something known as what if analysis. See, we are doing, a projection of we would like to bring these resources, and we would like to move in this direction, but we don't actually know what the impact of it would be to like we need to take this direction. 00;20;05;20 - 00;20;29;21 But now we want to know what the impact of will be taking this direction, something that somebody could analyze for many weeks. But when it comes to P6, because that that's what the analysis feature, we, if you have what was asked to tell you, you said they're going to complete in three months, but now he wants you to complete it in two months. 00;20;30;01 - 00;20;55;10 The big question is what you want me to do for you to complete in three months? It's a big question. Which is? Which has an answer. But now you need to analyze and know what needs to happen for you to calculate. Do they have so in P6 you can basically put us in that scenario or without creating a different file, you can be able to do this line. 00;20;55;13 - 00;21;15;05 You, schedule say and now create a create a scenario of if I add these resources, what will be the impact in the original stage, you'll be able to visualize each and even printed as I thought. So. So we know you can start. You say I need you to add meetings and this you can give me that, report generated from these for deep analysis. 00;21;15;10 - 00;21;37;21 You tell me that you can even answer like from a meeting. So, if you said I need you to add me, like, say it. If this plot and these plans to be to be added to my project, or I need these number of parcels and given to me for me to complete something, you've only done it. The what if analysis have seen these will be the impact on the project. 00;21;37;25 - 00;22;04;24 Something that is really amazing in in P6 and you're able to even create as many of this as you want. It's not limited on this. It is just so impressive. To hear how you gave a speaking, you know, and how conversant you are, with P6 and maybe I should just ask you guys when you graduated because, you, you studied, like, professionals who have been in the field for quite a while. 00;22;06;04 - 00;22;31;27 You know, is when did you graduate? Actually, I graduated the last year. September. That is...
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Unpacking the Database-AI Connection: Why It Matters
02/04/2025
Unpacking the Database-AI Connection: Why It Matters
In this episode host Lorna Juma speaks with Dr. Lawrence Nderu on Unpacking the Database-AI Connection and Why It Matters. If you’re an educator, student, or tech enthusiast curious about the backbone of artificial intelligence systems, this episode is your gateway to understanding the vital role of databases in artificial intelligence and machine learning. ----------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript: 00;00;09;02 - 00;00;35;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. Welcome to the Oracle Academy Tech Chat, where we discuss how Oracle Academy prepares the next generation's Laplace. 00;00;35;06 - 00;01;08;10 I'm your host, Lorna Juma. In this episode, I am joined by Doctor Laurence Darrow, a lecturer and research fellow in the Department of Computing at Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology. Today, we're uncovering how databases, power artificial intelligence and machine learning, two of the most transformative forces in the tech world. If you're an educator, student, and tech enthusiast curious about the backbone of AI systems, this episode is your gateway to understanding the vital role of databases in AI and machine learning. 00;01;08;12 - 00;01;35;11 To start off, Doctor Lawrence, thank you so much for joining us. Can you give me a bit about your background and the classes you teach? Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. I really think that this is a very important conversation and happy and, to work with you guys to promote the use of these solutions and these technologies for the purpose of making sure that, we have a generation that is well informed and ready for work. 00;01;35;13 - 00;02;06;07 So to start with, I am a lecturer and also the chairman, Department of Computing at the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology. I'm also the founder of Jacob Moffett, which is a digital innovation hub that is based at the University of Jomo Kenyatta in Gloucester. Work and culture. In technology. I currently I do teach units that relates to AI and machine learning and also applied machine learning. 00;02;06;10 - 00;02;34;01 I also do supervise the students at the level of BHB and Masters. While working on areas of AI and machine learning. And those are the areas that that that the working on. I also read research teams that are working on innovations and I Jacob, in terms of building solutions that are using AI as the basis for, solving some problems and also others that are using AI to improve the operations. 00;02;34;03 - 00;03;00;17 Thank you, doctor Larry Entwistle. Glad to have you join us as an expert to discuss this important topic. Now, could you break down the fundamental relationship between databases and AI? Why are robust databases critical for building effective AI models? Thank you. So the first thing is that the data is the food for AI. And we have had the same being said every now and then. 00;03;00;17 - 00;03;29;18 That data is the new oil. And I think that also means that we need these data to be data that is accessible in a way that is use that work. I mean, and efficient manner. So, it means that AI is being powered by data and whether this data is structured data or unstructured data. We need data to be know about is accessible and also accessible in an efficient manner. 00;03;29;20 - 00;04;01;18 So the connection really is the fact that traditionally when we dealt with the data, we were looking at it like say more or less data that was relational based databases. Now we know that data is found in many other formats. We have data, of course, in structured. We have data in semi-structured. We have data in unstructured formats. All these data needs to be stored in ways that it can be consumed, be consumed by AI, systems. 00;04;01;21 - 00;04;28;27 And that's where now the connection comes. Because the better the data, the better you are able to create models in the AI that are effective. And they are also able to answer very many questions that that one would want. So to answer that question is that the connection is clear, that we need, data to power AI systems, and we need systems that can be able to store these data in a way that that, that I can consume it in a better way. 00;04;28;27 - 00;04;54;06 And we have the pipeline. We need that pipeline that provides data and then feeds into the, AI models or AI systems so that they can be able to make decisions and improve our ability. And now, as an educator and researcher, how do you recommend teachers and institutions incorporate database hands on teaching into their AI and machine learning curricula? 00;04;54;09 - 00;05;25;13 What approaches or tools have you found most effective for engaging student in this critical area? Number one is that if I may just mention something about as a Jomo Kenyatta, we reviewed our curriculum and one of the things that we did, in the reading of the curriculum that is currently being used is that we are very keen to make sure that we retain and then and force the aspect of covering database systems. 00;05;25;16 - 00;05;57;22 So there is and you cover sections in database systems in detail, looking at how to design them to the extent of looking at the advanced concept in databases, which of course goes to the extent of talking about considering security and such aspect in databases. So, it is a very important component to when you are teaching databases, one has to consider, number one, the fact that these are the people who then go ahead and now come on. 00;05;57;24 - 00;06;26;28 I introduction to AI and also machine learning. And they will be consuming these, these databases. So what we have done is that we, able to provide this background and then when it comes to no coverage tools like Oracle databases, the country AI, which of course, I found very important because it uses AI in vector search, for data retrieval, analysis of AI driven applications. 00;06;26;28 - 00;06;52;14 It's a very well thought up idea in terms of trying to integrate advanced AI, capabilities directly to the database engine. The idea behind this is because we, we would want smart data handling capability to be ingrained in the data. We would want to have advanced analytics to be also, ingrained within these, these kind of databases. 00;06;52;17 - 00;07;20;04 And also if you think about known going to the industry, we would be the industries would work to get, insights from their data on what they can be able to do with that. So what I would say is that when you are now teaching and you look at, you have taught concept in databases, and now when you go to teaching things like machine learning or AI, you are able to show that compute the students or even the runners. 00;07;20;06 - 00;07;42;05 The connection between having a good foundation in databases and using various tools and understanding how to make use of, various, tools that are coming up. Like I mentioned, data restrict the I was at points that I needed, making the process of, being able to, to get insights from your data are very important. 00;07;42;10 - 00;08;11;12 So it means that these people, when they go in the industry, they have skills and practical skills that they can be able now to demonstrate in the industry that whatever they are, brand has value and they can and value to the businesses. So it is very relevant that as we teach, first of all, the thinking through about the curriculum, the way it is designed in such a way that it allows for students to do practical concept that leads them to be applicable to the industry. 00;08;11;15 - 00;08;52;00 It's very important and includes that exist within for or instructor for instructors that that are already online that that they can be able to use some of the courses that that are being designed for them, that they can be able to use the event for, programing, databases, that exist today at PL SQL. Like I mentioned one, we have a database programing with SQL itself to be able to give a foundation and then going to things like, artificial intelligence so that the concept in artificial intelligence, we don't just think that they can only be implemented in Python, we can implement them in Java, we can implement them in other things. 00;08;52;02 - 00;09;14;11 We just need to understand the concept. And then we are able to do that practically. That's that. That it empowers that person, empowers the students, that eventually we are able to get our, you know, our system, having done those practical’s. And now for students interested in pursuing a career in, I do think they should start by building a strong foundation in database skills. 00;09;14;14 - 00;09;39;08 How does database knowledge empower their journey in AI and machine learning? Well, I think that what I would say is, number one is that if you look at the Oracle Academy, which, is a tool that is really very valuable, to teach and also, demonstrate some of the tools that also exist and also provision of software tools, cloud and also software tools. 00;09;39;10 - 00;10;00;18 And we also have BigQuery. But you can download content that you can download. And it also provides assessment that you can use in class. The idea is that you don't have to use it the way it is. You can take it and then you add or even subtract the items that you want to do it. So it's content that is ready and you can use it as it is. 00;10;00;18 - 00;10;34;23 Or you can be to, custom it the way you would want. It allows for, researchers to be able to focus on being able to improve and having something that we can start with. So, there is a point that exists, especially the library. The EDI, and power, even students we are talking about, even students logging in and cutting out some of the practical aspects like, say, they can be able to make use of the Oracle Cloud or Oracle Cloud Academy apex. 00;10;34;25 - 00;11;02;20 They can also use Oracle Academy license software that I wanted to say that again this available to on the member hub. Those are codes that to make sure that you are able to get us to that being able to do practical aspect important we also mentioned and I think this is in this day and age is very important for the students is that they can also be able to, get certificates, which of course, can enrich their profiles. 00;11;02;20 - 00;11;28;23 You can be able to get, a badge, you can be able to get some certificate that you can be able to, display and writing in terms of where you use it or where you, you are able to, to, to, to make use of that. I would also say that because databases have their role, and really we are talking about, tools that the initially I say more the focus was on relational database. 00;11;28;24 - 00;12;01;12 We have moved from there to No SQL databases and Oracle provides and the NoSQL databases, which, provides very good there for organization or for application. It provides capability for scalability for distributed key value databases, because of course, no SQL databases can be a use that approach where you have key writing databases, they provide high veracity, they provide high volume workloads that that's something that is very attractive for that. 00;12;01;15 - 00;12;26;10 We also have the, ideal, Oracle database. IBM, which is more or less built to optimize and automated solutions, but you can deploy and manage. I see that because the reason why I'm talking about that is because of the fact that it integrates within the database. 23 I which of course it helps you in implementing. 00;12;26;10 - 00;13;10;01 In a vector search, which we already know, walking the AI how vector search has been used to even in other. I gave a domain to be able to help improve the branding of, AI systems. I also would want to mention that another very important one is the database or cloud services which is Oracle Database Cloud Services. They exactly which provides some level when autonomous databases and this services that you, you can be able to deploy there with varying levels of control and automation so that users can be what can be that the organization can be able to work with that having different levels of control. 00;13;10;06 - 00;13;42;18 So all those tools are available to the instructors or to their actors, and we can try them out. Because students have the ability. When you go to the Oracle Academy, you have both tools available within the member tools. And I very of course, you also have the cloud and software services, as I've said, and those are very important tools that today, make an instructor be able to provide, real practical world, applications for whatever you are teaching. 00;13;42;20 - 00;14;03;02 And just now moving on to the final question. And maybe you have covered this, but maybe if you have anything additional, if you could give, what a piece of advice to, to your students, what would it be? So, number one, I would say that, it's very, good time now to be a student. 00;14;03;02 - 00;14;34;09 I would say that because even organization or companies that like Oracle that are building software and all that, they are also thinking about empowering you at a bit class level. So it is very important that as a student, one tries to be able to take advantage of these tools that have been provided. The idea is that when you work with the crowd from the university, even if you go out to the business, you will find yourself being able to fit into better. 00;14;34;09 - 00;14;57;04 Well. So my advice is that all these companies are now closer to us. Closer to us means that, even universities that are in developing countries like we are, we are able to get, these software as we are able to get, these tools, we are able to get to this curriculum. So whatever is being taught. Yeah, is something that you can say is globally be covered elsewhere. 00;14;57;11 - 00;15;24;29 So why not take advantage of that? Why not get as many certificates as you can? You don't be need to be the most clear on what is covered in class. Because think about, what certificates that exist, how well they tried to make sure that you are where you want and when you go for interviews, even for job application for those ones who are looking at that, you will be different. 00;15;25;05 - 00;15;50;06 And you can only be different if you take those steps. Thank you. Wow. Thank you so much, Doctor Lawrence. And thank you so much for, you know, just your time and sharing your expertise with us, for this enlightening and engaging discussion. You know, this is a complex topic and you have broken it down into small, digestible bits, for our listeners who are especially our students. 00;15;50;06 - 00;16;16;07 So thank you so much. And for our listeners, visit our website, academy.oracle.com to learn more about Oracle Academy's, teaching and learning resources, subscribe to our podcast. Feel free to share with your friends. You can also follow Oracle Academy on Instagram and Facebook. Just to keep up with our activities. Thank you so much. That wraps up this episode. 00;16;16;13 - 00;16;21;12 Thanks for listening and stay tuned for the next Oracle Academy Tech Chat podcast.
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How do AI and Data work together?
01/22/2025
How do AI and Data work together?
In this episode host Tyra Peirce speaks with Scott Stroz, MySQL evangelist about how Data and AI work together. ----------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript: 00;00;09;02 - 00;00;34;16 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;01;19 I'm your host, Tyra Peirce. In this episode, I speak with Oracle, my SQL developer advocate Scott Stroz, about how AI uses data, and the database skills students need to have as they work with AI. So, Scott, you're a returning guest for me. Can you give me a little bit about your background and role at Oracle? For those who may not have listened to our previous podcasts. 00;01;01;22 - 00;01;24;27 Sure. So, first and foremost, I consider myself a full stack developer and I've been a full stack developer for longer than the term full stack developer has actually been in existence. And in that time, the only technology in my stack that has remained constant is MySQL. I used it on my first job as a web developer, and I still use it today, and I've used it pretty much every day in between. 00;01;25;00 - 00;01;47;09 A lot of people, even people in the tech industry, they frequently ask, what does it mean that you're a developer advocate? And there's a lot of people I'm friends with and, I've met in developer relations, where we each kind of have like our own elevator pitch, like a quick, you know, 1 or 2 sit ins answer to basically get people to understand what it is that we do. 00;01;47;11 - 00;02;10;12 And the one that I've come up with is my job is to help developers be better at their jobs and I accomplish, or I hope I accomplish this in, different ways by producing content for developers through blog posts or, videos or podcasts such as this. I also, speak at conferences and I do a guest lectures for colleges and schools. 00;02;10;15 - 00;02;29;26 You are such a wonderful resource. And I we work together quite a bit, and I, I think it's good because I think that a lot of times developers don't understand what they're getting into or the different ways that they can develop and change codes. And I love that. I've got an expert that we can call on, and especially about this new topic. 00;02;29;28 - 00;03;00;18 So, kind of segue into that new topic. How does a I use data to learn SQL? It's a kind of a complicated answer, but it's also probably simpler than some people might think. With the recent release of Heat Wave, which is an AI solution in, Heat Wave that's available on Oracle Cloud, I've started playing around a little bit more than I had been, but it hasn't been with like the front end where I asked, I can I chat by questions, and it would give me answers. 00;03;00;21 - 00;03;22;07 It's been more feeding data into an AI engine, which in this case was heat wave Gen I. And while I was tinkering, I came to the realization that AI is not some black magic that just can pull answers out of thin air when you ask the question. It's just all based on math, and it's not even a new kind of math. 00;03;22;07 - 00;03;41;28 The math has actually been around for a long time, and I gotta say, I was a little a little disappointed. I was kind of hoping for some black magic, but for a genuine AI solution to be able to find pertinent data. So, if you ask a question, I put a chat bot the way it needs to find the answers. 00;03;41;28 - 00;04;14;16 And the first thing we need to do is we need to make sure that we get what are called embeddings of the source data. And this is basically what we use to feed in AI. And if we want it to say get embeddings for a collection of PDFs in any solution, we can actually use heat wave AI to run a stored procedure that will fetch the documents out of a bucket, a storage bucket in Oracle Cloud, and then it breaks down each document into a series of tokens. 00;04;14;18 - 00;04;43;24 Now, in the AI world, a token is a small series of a small set of characters. It can be a single word. It can be multiple words, or sometimes it can actually just be a small part of a longer word. And then using some mathematical algorithms, these tokens are converted into what we call a vector. And a vector is nothing more than an array of hexadecimal data, hexadecimal values that represent that token. 00;04;43;27 - 00;05;11;01 And this is our embedding. And those are stored typically in a database. There are other systems. This isn't just unique. The heat wave Gemini, other Gemini systems have a very similar process for ingesting the source data. And one of the most popular uses of AI solutions is what's called a retrieval augmented generation, or RAC, or what we would know as like an AI chat bot. 00;05;11;07 - 00;05;33;29 So, you open up a chat window when you start asking questions, and the AI spits back answers based off of the source data, and it's using the way it gets the answers to the questions is it actually takes the question. And using those same algorithms that you used with the source data, it actually gets embeddings for the question itself. 00;05;34;01 - 00;06;04;13 And then using some built in database functions. And in the case of heatwave and AI uses, a function that determines how far the tokens in the question are from the tokens in the source data. And again, that's some mathematical algorithm that I haven't even begun to try and understand. And with heat wave genAI, when you ask the questions, there's actually another stored procedure you can run to actually run like a chat bot. 00;06;04;25 - 00;06;41;06 And it will take the embeddings that matched in the source data and send that to the large language model that resides in the database. Or Liam is what people more commonly known as that. And it takes those that information those embeddings that matched and it generates a more human sounding response to the question. I've noticed when I've gone through and I've asked, and I a question like you can still tell it's a computer when they respond, but they are getting better and better and better, and the information coming back is excellent. 00;06;41;09 - 00;07;15;05 And it is really, really good information. They still don't have the human and the human inflection, the human tone. And you can tell when you're right, but it's getting really good. And so, then on to my next question. How can I use data to improve performance? So, because the entire process, which you know, from ingesting the data to actually retrieving relevant data from the embeddings, is based on math, the results can actually be incredibly accurate. 00;07;15;05 - 00;07;37;29 Like you just said, it's it gets better and better almost every day, and AI systems can process large amounts of data and make that the data and available. That tends to be more accurate than if you did like a database, like search, in a SQL query, or even a full text search in a database, or even better than what you get in some search engines. 00;07;38;02 - 00;08;13;02 Why does the quality of data impact the results AI provides? Well, it's funny that even in a new technology like AI in old adage is still true. And that is garbage in, garbage out. And all this really means is if you input bad or inaccurate data, your results are not going to be accurate. When you feed data into an AI system, you need to make sure that it's high quality and it's accurate because if it's not, then any results you get are not going to be high quality and they're not going to be accurate. 00;08;13;04 - 00;08;34;24 What are some of the skills that database professionals should have when they work with AI? Something a lot of people may not be aware of is that every AI solution, whether it's a chat bot or something else, it uses some kind of storage, usually a database, on the back end to store the embeddings for the data. 00;08;34;27 - 00;09;04;09 And while there's nothing particularly special or different about how we store vector data compared to other data types such as strings or dates, it's something that database professionals need to keep in mind when ingesting that data. Can I back up here? Let's go back to the. While there's nothing particularly different or special about how this data is stored compared to other data such as strings and dates, there is one thing database professionals need to keep in mind when ingesting this data. 00;09;04;12 - 00;09;31;18 Embeddings can take up a lot of space. So, for example, I was working on a demo for Heat Wave AI, and I used a PDF that was just a few megabytes in size, and it generated over 55,000 rows of embeddings. Now, the process of creating and retrieving embeddings can also be resource intensive. 00;09;31;21 - 00;09;53;02 So, there might not be special skills needed to store and retrieve the embeddings in the AI data. But we need to make sure that the system has enough resources so that the CPU and Ram is adequate, as well as having storage space. So those are probably the three things that database administrators or people who work in databases need to concentrate on. 00;09;53;02 - 00;10;11;29 More than anything else when working with the AI system. So, Scott, one final question then if you could give one piece of advice to faculty, your students, what would it be? All right, so I'm going to cheat here. I'm going to give two pieces of advice. So, the first piece of advice will be to learn as much as you can about AI. 00;10;12;01 - 00;10;32;22 AI is everywhere, probably even in places it doesn't belong. And while I think the fad is going to die down, I also think AI is here to stay. There won't be a single area in the IT field that won't be influenced by AI in some way. So, the more you know about different AI solutions, the more value you valuable you're going to be. 00;10;32;22 - 00;11;01;07 Not just your current employer, but to future employers as well. My second, this second piece of advice would be not to fear AI. I talked to a lot of developers, and I often get questions at conferences from younger developers concerned that AI is going to take their jobs and while AI tools, especially those that are designed to help write code, are impressive, they are far from perfect. 00;11;01;09 - 00;11;22;20 I have a personal project that I work on, and I use AI tools when I'm coding to try to cut down on some of the boilerplate code that I that I might need to write, and I'll ask for snippets of code given a specific language and tasks I need to achieve. And I have never gotten a response where I could just plug the code in, and it worked. 00;11;22;22 - 00;11;43;18 It's never happened. I'd say probably the best I got was about 90%. I'd say probably in the area of about 85% would be the average. So even though the AI chat bot is helping me write the code, I still have to know how the what the code is supposed to do. I always I've always needed to tweak it and so that's a nice adjunct. 00;11;43;19 - 00;12;11;22 It saves me time from, you know, not having to write everything, but you still need somebody to look at the code to see be like, oh, this, this is wrong. That's, you know, I told what I wanted in the note, but it's for some reason it's giving me in Java notation is, is one thing that actually happened when and again, I hear people, you know, they, you know, when I talk to people and they say they're concerned about, I think I'm afraid I'm going to lose my job. 00;12;11;22 - 00;12;41;11 I, I tell them something that I heard at a keynote talk about AI, and it's, it's about two years ago. And the interesting topic of the keynote was, is AI going to take your job? And the answer to that question, which the presenter gave on the last slide, was, no, as a developer, AI is not going to take your job, but a person using AI will. 00;12;41;13 - 00;13;00;08 I think that's very poignant advice that. And so, it's almost like you've got to be a developer. You've got to understand so you know how to use it so you can maintain your job. I think that's a really good piece of advice to all those faculty and students out there that are really wondering what the impact of AI is going to be. 00;13;00;21 - 00;13;22;25 A big thank you to Scott for speaking with me today about data and AI. It was really insightful. Please visit academy.oracle.com to learn more about Oracle Academy and the resources we offer to faculty and students 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.
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How do you find your voice as a woman in tech?
01/07/2025
How do you find your voice as a woman in tech?
In this episode host Tyra Peirce speaks with Win Chang, Director Cloud Engineering, Susan Poser, NACI Director of Partner Engagement, and Susan Miller, Sr. Director, Global Product Security about working as a women in tech and how women can find their voice. --------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript: 00;00;09;02 - 00;00;34;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. Welcome to Oracle Academy Tech Chat, where we discuss how Oracle Academy helps prepare our next generation's workforce. 00;00;34;27 - 00;01;01;00 I'm your host, Tyra Peirce. In this episode, I speak with Win Chang, director, cloud engineering, Susan Poser, director of partner engagement. And Susan Miller, senior director, Global Product Security, about working as a woman in tech and how women can find their voice. A little bit about my guests. Susan Miller graduated at Santa Clara University with a bachelor's in computer science and started her career as a software engineer. 00;01;01;02 - 00;01;26;26 She quickly obtained a master's in computer science and artificial intelligence and an MBA. She then moved into technical program management, overseeing program managers, release engineers, doc writers labs, and then security was added on. Now Susan is in a corporate oversight role for security assurance for products and services across all Oracle. Susan Poser has held a variety of roles during her 40-year career. 00;01;26;29 - 00;01;55;14 Susan has two Bachelors of Science, one in business and another in journalism, and then earned her MBA and finance from San Diego State University. She has held roles in finance, accounting, marketing, business operations, solution engineering, culture and employee engagement and now partner ecosystem, all for high tech companies Unisys, Teradata and Oracle. Outside of Oracle, Susan is the board chair for Athena, a global women's advisory organization. 00;01;55;17 - 00;02;25;09 When Chang majored in computer science with a minor in business at University of Houston, she started her career in software development and has held numerous roles, including technical support, education marketing, pre-sales manager, Cloud Acceleration Director and VP of Customer Experience. She is currently the Solution Engineering Director for Higher Education. She is the founder of Oracle Professional Asian Leadership and Employee Resource Group focused on raising culture awareness and providing leadership development. 00;02;25;11 - 00;02;46;07 She is also on the board for Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation, an organization committed to protect the historic site and celebrate immigrant contribution that define the strength of the United States. Thank you, Susan, Susan and Win, for joining me today. So, my first question to all of you, can you give me a bit about your background and your role at Oracle? 00;02;46;11 - 00;03;20;13 Susan Miller, do you want to go ahead and start? Yeah, sure. Thank you, chair, and thanks for having us today. I'm a senior director of global product security. I get the chance to work with all the security leaders across all our Oracle divisions, and I get to ensure that teams are adhering to the security assurance standards. So, one of my strengths then is to the ability to share best practices from other divisions and allow all at Oracle to learn from the best of the best, and then that eases their adoption and the flow of information across all the divisions. 00;03;20;15 - 00;03;45;09 Winner Susan Poser, do either of you want to jump in? Sure, I can jump in. This is Susan Poser, and I pretty much worked on the sales side of my whole career at Oracle, starting in pre-sales and then value selling to employee programs for resellers. So, when my last position was eliminated, the leader of the partner organization and the sales team asked me to join his team to help transform our culture to be more partner friendly, partner forward. 00;03;45;11 - 00;04;12;23 So now I work very closely with our sales and operations teams, as well as our sales leaders, to embed partner content, and processes into our business as usual so that our sellers will embrace and leverage our partners more as we move forward in this cloud world. And finally, when what about you as a cloud engineering director, I managed to be a cloud architect and support our sales team for higher education. 00;04;12;25 - 00;04;48;14 We cover the entire territory of the United States. Our role is to provide technical assistance to the field sales team. And a typical day for me would be participating on, calls with my direct reports, delivering presentations at a conference or, participating in customer meetings and also assisting our, customers. One of the best parts of this job, this is to be able to talk to our customers and share how or our Oracle solutions can provide and solve their most important problems. 00;04;48;16 - 00;05;08;27 I love all the diverse background that all of you wonderful women come from, and all of the different, paths you took to get to where you're at. So, leading on to my next question. Can you share a proud moment or a major accomplishment from your career so far? And this time? Susan Poser, I'd like to start with you. 00;05;08;29 - 00;05;25;20 I've had a few, but one that had the biggest impact to Oracle as well as, I think to our customers, is with my role and our value selling team, which was called Oracle Insight. A matter of fact, that's how I met win was we had done, an engagement with our customer and that she had worked with. 00;05;25;22 - 00;05;46;24 But when you think of, our value selling team or Oracle Insight, it's, you think about, like, management consultants. We hired a lot of excuse Allen McKinsey types of folks, and we would go in and work with our customers to understand how, understand what their priorities were and how technology could help enable some of their, you know, 3-to-5-year goals. 00;05;46;27 - 00;06;17;19 I was responsible for the systems and the processes and the internal and external communications, as well as the marketing. We were the longest running sales program at Oracle, and we scaled from nine people when we started the program to over 500, impacting billions of dollars in revenue. And, you know, one of the key things that enabled us to do that was because of the knowledge management, the processes and the systems that I had put together that allowed us to scale and make this impact for both Oracle and our global customers. 00;06;17;21 - 00;06;55;09 And then Susan Miller, what about you? Well, with the onset of the and quick adoption of I machine learning, that's the reason to be able to participate in many executive forums representing security and besides ensuring regulatory and privacy coverage, we're also making sure that security assurance is paramount. So, I've been able to gain adoption now of new process flows, new guidelines, practices, and I've now expanded our interactions with data scientists and other security architects and of course, others corporate oversight groups as well. 00;06;55;11 - 00;07;16;02 It's been successful, and I'm very proud of it. I can't even imagine with how AI is coming to the forefront, especially within Oracle and in the tech industry. I think that is so amazing. And then when finally, over to you again. So, when I was the key account director for a large health care company, we grew our Oracle footprint by over 1,500%. 00;07;16;05 - 00;07;45;23 And that was done by a combination of team collaboration and developing this deep, trusted customer relationship. We earned the Presidential Award for Account Management three years in a row, and it was a defining, time for me, to see how our customers, succeeded with Oracle products and solution. And then secondly, I just wanted to add that being the founder of the Oracle Professional Asian Leadership, has been a real highlight for me. 00;07;45;23 - 00;08;14;11 Today. We have over 700, members globally, and that is been something that I'm very proud about. Well, and you should be. That was the second time Win, and I engaged was with Opal and it was one of the fastest growing employee resource groups in Oracle. So, she should be very proud of that. Absolutely. I think when you and I met back when you covered that healthcare company years ago with, Java one for kids, I think that that's when we first came into contact all those many years ago. 00;08;14;14 - 00;08;34;14 You're right. So next question. How were you able to find your voice and to advocate for yourself as a woman in tech? And when this time I'm actually going to start with you. That's a great question. And I have to say that earlier in my career, I really struggled with trying to find my voice. I didn't have a mentor. 00;08;34;15 - 00;09;02;27 Matter of fact, I probably didn't even know what a mentor was. And, once I found my advocates, that made a big difference. I have to say that my I created this personal board of directors that actually two of my personal board of directors were on this call. Susan. So, they are just amazing. And, I'd say that to this personal board of directors is kind of like a baseball team where you have all different types of coaches. 00;09;03;00 - 00;09;28;18 You know, like a first base coach or a third base coach. So, I'm assembled my own board of directors, and they've been a game changer. I leverage these resources, but I have difficult tasks or proactively ask them for advice, what I needed. And I think that, really helps me to keep my head. You know, I used to think that if I just kept my head down and did hard work and everybody would know what I'm doing. 00;09;28;18 - 00;09;52;12 But the truth is that, only you know what you do best. So, it's really important that you learn to advocate for yourself. I think that that is so important, advocating for yourself. And I love how you call it your personal board of directors. So, Susan Poser, over to you. I would agree it was challenging giving, given how male dominated the organization. 00;09;52;12 - 00;10;11;16 So, I've been a part of have been. I'm sure both Susan and Win would say the same. But I've had some great male advocates and mentors, as well as some strong female leaders that provided me guidance and were really good role models. I found that if you don't know your value and don't advocate for yourself, no one else will. 00;10;11;18 - 00;10;29;08 And I learned this the hard way. Early on I thought like when said right, that my good work would speak for itself, and I missed an opportunity to be promoted because I didn't advocate and understand my value. So now I kind of keep a folder of kudos, you know, emails that I get from people, you know, thanking me or, or, you know, recognition that I received. 00;10;29;13 - 00;10;52;26 So, when I'm up for a promotion or when I'm requesting a raise or when I'm requesting, you know, a level change, I review all these to remind me that I'm not a closer right. And I use this to keep firm on my request to get promoted. You know, and so that's actually helped me get promoted to VP when I was actually getting pushback that, you know, it was a new role that nobody had done it before. 00;10;53;01 - 00;11;21;04 And I had to prove it out first. And I just stand firm because I knew the value that I was going to bring to the table. So don't shortchange yourself. Know your value and stick firm on your, what you believe in. Honestly, I think that's great advice that I'm going to use for the next promotion. Like, I love that you started keeping track of your kudos and all of the mentions that you got because I and all the emails, I think that is such wonderful advice that I'm honestly going to use for myself next time. 00;11;21;11 - 00;11;35;23 It gives you confidence, right? Like when you read all that and you think, wow, look what I did, right? It builds your confidence. And I think as we're going back through a year, we don't realize everything we accomplished in a year or two years or three years. We just know what we're doing in that last month or that last six weeks. 00;11;35;25 - 00;11;52;28 We don't realize some of these longer-term projects or where you started and now where you ended up are in such different places. And I think that is valuable advice that I'm going to take for myself next time. So, and Susan Miller, finally over to you. Just like a win and Susan were saying, it's so important to advocate for yourself. 00;11;52;28 - 00;12;11;19 And I came across a five-part process that I'll let you know about. So first of all, tell your story. How did you get to where you are today? It's in be. Maybe there was some kind of diversity that happened, some kind of problem, you know, that you overcame. And the challenge that drove you to in a particular career direction. 00;12;11;20 - 00;12;31;18 So be able to tell that story. Secondly is, you know, what do you want to be known for? What topics align with your skills and your strengths as well as the role that you want? So, create a statement that sets you apart from others. And the third part of the process is maybe identifying a few key words. 00;12;31;18 - 00;12;59;25 You know, come up with 3 to 4 words that describe you. For instance, I feel like I'm driven, supportive. Challenging myself and upbeat. And you use these words to basically create your brand. So, use them, when you're talking to others until it sticks. And then fourth is to craft your pitch. You know, be ready with 3 to 4 sentences and have in your back pocket which describe you. 00;12;59;28 - 00;13;25;19 So instead of saying, oh, you know, I'm really, really busy, maybe you can just explain what you've just accomplished or what you're working towards next. And fifth and finally be able to showcase your capabilities and skills. You know, get creative, insert yourself and specialize. Be visible. Perhaps there's an article for a newsletter you'd like to write or presentation that you want to submit for a conference. 00;13;25;22 - 00;13;55;01 So, or engage with a volunteer group or an employee resource group. Maybe you'd like to learn from another. Have coffee or lunch outside your organization. So, learn by growing and getting it out there and presenting yourself in a positive way. I love that as to and I especially love what you said about identifying your keywords. I always talk about the one superpower I have, which is I may not know the answer to the question, but I always know or can find somebody who has the answer to the question. 00;13;55;01 - 00;14;17;20 So, I really, I really identify with identifying your keywords because I use that as myself. Susan Posner, I'm gonna have you start with this one. Two throughout your career, I'm sure some things have not gone according to plan. How have you learned from your failures and why is failure important? Well, I think failure is a great way to remember and learn. 00;14;17;23 - 00;14;36;22 I mean, I don't know about you guys, but when I fail at something, I seem to remember it better than when I succeed. I have a few failures, and hopefully I've learned a few things, but I'll just share one. I was presenting to a very senior executive and she could make grown men cry, I'm sure. When knows who I'm talking about. 00;14;36;24 - 00;15;01;03 I relied on some information from a colleague on what she thought I should present, and when I did, it totally backfired on me. I didn't call up my colleague, and. And he didn't defend me. He was sitting there in the room and saw this whole thing blow up on me. Right? But I did learn that I need to trust my gut and do my own research and push back when I don't agree, rather than thinking that others know better than me. 00;15;01;03 - 00;15;24;03 So, I have learned that, and I have not forgotten that. That is honestly quite the story. I don't know if I've got wind quite like that, but I have a couple in my in my back pocket too, and I just can't even imagine going through that. So, win over to you. I've got a failure story. I mean, bloody hell. 00;15;24;03 - 00;15;46;18 Who doesn't have a failure? But I remember once when I was supporting this health care company, they ran into a software bug, and it caused their system not to generate a specific report. The owner of the, this particular job at the health and health care company built that, because this job did not run, he was really worried that his job was in jeopardy. 00;15;46;20 - 00;16;06;17 And he came to me very upset and wanted an explanation on what happened. And at first, I brought the, you know, issue up to an internal team. I brought them all together to analyze the problem. Eventually, we discovered that a trigger that should have been labeled failure didn't get labeled a failure, just said a warning. 00;16;06;22 - 00;16;37;21 And so, I got the team actually to come together and not just take a, you know, take a look at this problem, but review all the triggers to ensure that moving forward that they're all labeled correctly. And so I went back to the customer, a humble pie and, and explained to him what had happened. And because of this failure and how I addressed it directly with the customer, the customer and our relationship actually became better because they saw that. 00;16;37;21 - 00;17;07;05 We took his feedback, we took care, remedied the problem, and what was a horrible situation actually ended up coming, you know, back in. And it really changed his view of Oracle as a company because we took care of the problem and didn't just brush it under the, you know, brushes under the carpet. So even though it started out very ugly and not a lot of fun, we were able to make, lemons into lemonade. 00;17;07;08 - 00;17;28;02 I love that, one of my biggest failures, one of my most monumental failures, led to one of my biggest successes and led me on to greater projects. And so, I totally understand exactly what that was like. Like, you've got to eat your humble pie, you've got to go in. And as I say, take your lumps and you learn from it. 00;17;28;02 - 00;17;47;16 I, I, I really think that there's this huge wisdom in learning from failures. And, and I think that's how we grow is as women, as managers, as leaders, as we always we know we're not going to be perfect, and we're willing to change from and use our failures as lessons. Okay. Susan Miller, over to you. Oh, yeah. 00;17;47;16 - 00;18;09;20 So yeah, just like when and Susan, you know, failure is become an important learning opportunity for me. And just recently I was able to make a change that I was so excited about. It was an efficiency change, important step in our security approval process. And I gained support with those in my meeting, and I was able to convince the sister team to make the change. 00;18;09;20 - 00;18;31;16 I was so excited about it. And then I eagerly sent it out to the team and sent it out to the executives. But there were some on my distribution list that didn't participate in the meetings, but they were stakeholders, nonetheless. And so, when it got escalated, they pushed back on it after I thought I gained approval on it. 00;18;31;19 - 00;18;57;18 And so, I had to have several side meetings to get those inform, and they just grasped on to it and didn't fully understand. So, I learned that, you know, it was considered a failure. But I learned to ensure alignment with everyone, even those that aren't participating or might be quiet on a call and get their approval before making an official announcement. 00;18;57;20 - 00;19;17;06 But live and learn, right? Honestly, I think that's such great advice. I think that, as we go through, we get approvals for things as we like, talk about things. I...
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Implications of AI and Privacy
12/03/2024
Implications of AI and Privacy
In this episode, host Tyra Crockett Peirce speaks with Wei Jiang, an Oracle AI researcher and former university professor, about the privacy impacts of AI. --------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript: 00;00;09;03 - 00;00;35;11 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;13 - 00;01;05;09 I'm your host, Tara Pierce. In this episode, I speak with Wade Young, an oracle, an AI researcher, about the privacy impacts of A.I. To start off, can you give me a bit about your background and your role at Oracle? Sure. Thank you for inviting me today. So, before we join Oracle for 2022, I had been a computer science faculty member within the University of Missouri System for over 14 years. 00;01;05;12 - 00;01;38;03 My maintaining your background is privacy, preserving data analytics and applied cryptography currently. Hamer Research scientist at Oracle Labs East, working on privacy, preserving machine learning solutions, using secure multi-party computation techniques. We investigate price preserving solutions for both traditional machine learning tasks and fine-tuning language models as all around us. What are some of the AI impacts on personal privacy? 00;01;38;05 - 00;02;17;27 This is a great question. There are a few factors I can think of. One, from the data management perspective, requires a larger deal a large amount of data. Training data and the increasing amount of training data makes the data protection more and more challenging, especially when data come from multiple sources and contains sensitive information. The second factor I can think of is regarding the memorization capability of AI as reasoning become more accurate and use memory capability can potentially leak sensitive information. 00;02;17;29 - 00;02;48;05 For example, it happened in the past that a large language model response contains a real security number. Another issue is the fake image and news generated by A.I. So, AI generated images and attacks are very difficult to distinguish from the real ones. These fake images and news can cause a lot of harm to individuals during mutations and invading their privacy. 00;02;48;07 - 00;03;18;17 Another point is also enabling the development of smart aerosol layers and the email spams that could bypass the current malware detection systems. Why isn't a person, computer or mobile device these compromised the invasion of privacy as an agreed risk? Honestly, that is terrifying to hear. And it's so given everything is going on today that is a really terrifying thing to hear that we just can't tell the differences anymore. 00;03;18;17 - 00;03;52;02 And so, with AI, algorithms require large amounts of data to operate. How is data managed to maintain privacy? So why Burden thing to do is to really minimize the information flow so we can set up proper access control policies to eliminate unnecessary access to the data share only what is needed and keep data within their own silos. Secondly, we can apply data, anonymization, technique to hide a private information. 00;03;52;05 - 00;04;25;26 For example, we can suppress and generalize direct or indirect identifying information in front of data such as share security number, address, personal name, zip code, diagnosis. And we can also protect inundated by adding some random noise. Another tool we can use is called the encryption. So, a dating option as another layer of protection by ensuring only the party encoding the decryption key can access the original data. 00;04;25;28 - 00;04;59;23 We also need to use pricey scene technology to train a machine learning model. So, by applying different price sequencing technology, we can prevent the disclosure of training data train model, use inquiry and forensic results. A.I. combines various pieces of data about a person to make inferences, creating risks of privacy, invasion. Are these inferences subject to privacy risks as information can be used in new, unintended ways? 00;04;59;25 - 00;05;32;06 Yes, and definitely so. These inferences allow attackers to carry out certain attacks and they can potentially leak sensitive information. So, for example, membership first in attack determines if especially information was used to train machine learning models. This attack can be used to infer sensitive information about any individual who stay. There might be use theory training, which clearly pose a privacy threat to the individual. 00;05;32;08 - 00;06;13;25 Another kind of attack called the modern-day version of that modeling version of that. So, which allows Tiger here to learn the training data was some pretty soon the training data which could reveal private information. Another attack is called a model iteration attack. Which enables Tiger to derive is a similar model of the heat hidden competition model by repeatedly querying the hidden model and obtaining the information without an attacker can reproduce a highly similar model with a fraction of the cost for training the Asian model. 00;06;13;27 - 00;06;43;27 The learned model can be subsequently used to initiate model invasion and membership fee for attack. What is the commonly used privacy enhancing technologies for machine learning and what are their pros and cons? So traditionally there are a lot of crazy enhancing technologies. So, for now, the most popular ones, I would talk about a few popular ones these days. 00;06;44;00 - 00;07;11;25 First one is called the Internet of Data Generation. So basically, since any data can be generated based on certain properties of the real data in general, since other data generation are reasoned efficient, and the resulting data are effective for machine learning tasks. However, it is hard to analyze and approve their privacy preserving properties. Another thing is called the key enemy. 00;07;11;27 - 00;07;45;18 It is one the data anonymization technique. So, to make a data set anonymous, the original attribute values are suppressed and generalized, such that a data recurring in the resulting dataset is indistinguishable from at least K minus one other data writer. So, although this technique offers a far more security guarantee, it may be difficult to determine. The right amount is for K, and it is often reducing model accuracy. 00;07;45;20 - 00;08;20;22 Another very popular technique called differential privacy. So differential privacy as carefully calibrated noises to the original data model vendors overall results to prevent him for his attacks. The technique offers a formal security guarantee with a good efficiency, but it is often challenging to know the right amount of noise to use and model accuracy can be adversely affected. Another popular technique called the Fader learning. 00;08;20;24 - 00;08;47;01 So, he is learning during training. They remain in their own silos and the model learn locally and then combine to derive a global model which can be shared among the participating parties. So though federated learning is efficient, and effective, local model parameters can still be really information about sensitive training data. 00;08;47;04 - 00;09;21;02 The technique I am most familiar race is called the secure multiparty competition. That's kind of, you know, my maybe grant to Disney's a cryptography technique allow us to train machine learning models without directly accessing sensitive training data. You can also keep the train mono use inquiry and every result private as well as guaranteed moderate accuracy. However, secure multi-party computation partygoers work hard to design and implement. 00;09;21;04 - 00;09;43;19 They are computationally expensive and do not scale well. That's a lot of information about different ways to train, and it's so entirely fascinating on all of the things that are coming up that everybody's going to need to start learning about how we secure our data more effectively. When we when we enter this new era of artificial intelligence. 00;09;43;21 - 00;10;13;29 My last question, if you could give one piece of advice to faculty or students, what would it be? I said this on my working experience of the in both academia and industry. I believe collaboration is essential to find the right person to work with and achieve a highly effective collaboration. We need to be as part of our own technical domain and knowledgeable about technology and tools to the first quality. 00;10;13;29 - 00;10;34;28 Allow us to be the go-to person. Right? When I read a problem comes up the organization related to you, to your technical domain. The second quality them to find the go to person for guidance and help you there to solve a problem at hand. The side of overall high spirits. So, I would like to end this question. 00;10;34;28 - 00;10;54;27 We still coach knowing something for everything and everything. And this one thing I think that is a really wonderful piece of advice because teamwork is so essential, especially as we're going into this next phase of technology with AI and making sure that, you know, we become an expert on one thing and that we can find people to help us. 00;10;54;27 - 00;11;15;06 I think that's always a really important, important skill to have been being able to work effectively with others. So, thank you two ways for speaking with me today about AI privacy, who is very insightful. Please visit Academy dot Oracle dot com to learn more about Oracle Academy and the resources we offer to faculty and students. And please subscribe to our podcast. 00;11;15;11 - 00;11;22;25 Thanks. Way. That wraps up this episode. Thanks for listening and stay tuned for the next Oracle Academy Tech Chat podcast.
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Why Learning Oracle Primavera Cloud helps Prepare students for a Career in Construction
11/19/2024
Why Learning Oracle Primavera Cloud helps Prepare students for a Career in Construction
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....
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Using Primavera in the Classroom
11/12/2024
Using Primavera in the Classroom
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. -------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript: 00;00;09;03 - 00;00;34;12 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;14 - 00;00;57;07 I'm your host, Tyra Pierce. In this episode, I speak with Dr. Aziz, a professor in construction management at the University of Washington. Dr. Aziz and I speak about how learning P6 is helping prepare his construction students for careers. Welcome, Dr. Aziz. Thank you. To start off, can you give me a bit about your background and the class you teach at University of Washington? 00;00;57;14 - 00;01;17;26 But I thank you for having me again. It's a pleasure to be with you. I have a doctoral degree in civil engineering majoring in construction, engineering and management, and I'm an associate professor with the University of Washington. Before joining the academia, I used to work for a civil infrastructure company in Calgary, Alberta. But I had two roles to do. 00;01;17;26 - 00;01;45;11 A project analyst for mega projects and the project control engineer responsible for the development of construction schedules, for the company of projects which mainly were bridges and highways. So that was my main job with the company. In 2003 I joined the University of Washington to teach and research in construction management. Where now I am an associate professor along with teaching the university. 00;01;45;14 - 00;02;11;12 I prefer that we keep in touch with the industry. And so, to convey the latest information and this knowledge to our students of the classes and that's where I have a little bit side work for consulting and training on construction management training and Primavera and other software applications. I get to know Primavera, you could say, since the 1980s, the late 1900s, it is a very long time. 00;02;11;14 - 00;02;33;15 And that was during my studies in Egypt. And then later I used Primavera for several professional and training jobs. And when I joined UDAP, I started to work with Primavera through the Oracle Academy. I teach a number of classes UDAP. So, my first one is the planning and control, and that's for planning and control and scheduling of construction projects. 00;02;33;17 - 00;03;01;17 This is mainly the principles and practices of the critical Path method, the major method that we use in construction management. I also teach the construction computer applications. It's a hands-on lab for software use in the planning and control of construction. And then I also teach the certificate program classes, which also hands on technology is a software application for planning and construction. 00;03;01;20 - 00;03;24;14 Then I have a set of graduate classes for project economics and risk analysis and for the heavy construction estimating. So, you could see that the university keeps me busy with teaching mainly in the construction management area. So, that is a really interesting and unique background. I like how you are still involved in industry in making sure that you're keeping abreast of what is going on. 00;03;24;16 - 00;03;54;14 And so, which is I think while you're very qualified to give an answer to this next question that I have. What are some essential skills that construction management students need to learn? A great question. Construction management students are practical type of students. They are hands on students or learners. And so, in our department, to try to give them the skills that they need to be qualified was in order to practice and do the job quite well in the industry. 00;03;54;16 - 00;04;21;24 As you could see that there is kind of four essential categories of skills that they need to have. First one is to create cost estimates, construction schedules, safety plans. They should be very well and excellent in communication. The management side of the industry. Another one is to ability to have the ability to analyze construction documents, analyze construction methods and materials and equipment so that you will be able to select the proper ones for construction tasks. 00;04;21;27 - 00;04;47;13 You should be able to apply the electronic based technology to manage construction processes and tasks. And that's where the major software used by the industry. We teach them at the of the art department in our classes. And then finally, to be able to understand the construction accounting project control, risk management, our quality assurance, all these types of work that they will be working with in the industry once they graduate. 00;04;47;15 - 00;05;18;16 And that is so interesting that there's all these different types of skills, whether it's accounting or scheduling or project management or even time management that is just kind of really essential to construction management, which kind of leads onto my next question How does studying software packages and maybe in particular Primavera help to teach students these skills? Well, as I mentioned, the construction management in our program uses in several classes a suite of software applications to teach our students various disciplines. 00;05;18;17 - 00;05;40;01 We have planning and control, we have cost estimating, we have virtual reality. And so, applications like the Revit for BIM on the screen and blue beam for quality take off Comfortline for cost Estimating Primavera and Project for planning control. Several other applications. We have to get them be ready for that. And so, in some of my core classes primavera the focus. 00;05;40;01 - 00;06;13;28 And so, in my undergraduate construction computer applications, the professional certificate classes and in the capstone graduate class, they need to work with the software to do the work of planning, scheduling and so on. The and the CM, the construction management field. The students need tools to help them with hands on practice. And so specifically on the planning and control area, the students need to have software application that can implement the technical rules of the critical path method CPM as the main measure method that we use in the management of project. 00;06;13;28 - 00;06;46;16 And so, they need to be able to work with the software that implement to that. They need to be able to generate construction schedules and reports, facilitates updating of projects, generate progress reports, major performance like using the earn it value analysis method and carry out risk analysis. We also need to have a resilient application that can communicate with other software application such as Excel and Project and many of those other applications that are used by the industry as well are Primavera and the add ins provided that to me as an educator. 00;06;46;18 - 00;07;14;01 And so, since 2005, after two years from joining the university, I started to contact with the Oracle Academy, where I received the 100 of licenses of Primavera. That was like a grace for me to have Primavera where to be used in the classes since I used to work with it in the industry. And so, it becomes very a great opportunity to get them to learn a software that's being used by the industry as an educator. 00;07;14;01 - 00;07;40;10 Also, I then more than the technical, the scheduling capabilities that the students need to know, which is managed by the software itself, but they also get to work with the Enterprise project, the structure and the organizational structure. These are constructs in Primavera I use them to develop a structure for my classes, so I develop work areas for my students who are each student in a class. 00;07;40;10 - 00;08;02;14 I have access to one specific work area to create projects, to create resources separate from all other students. At the same time, I have an instant access to all that the students do in the work areas so I can interactively fix errors that might have in their projects and I keep the integrity of the class so no one would copy the work of others. 00;08;02;20 - 00;08;36;15 And so, the enterprise project, the structure and the OVS allowed me to generate that. It also allowed me to generate and create collaborative areas where multiple students could actually work on the same project. This collaboration is great when we do capstone projects and join a project, and it also allowed me to create quizzes and exam areas. Many are working in an exam setting and then you have your own specific area that you are working in Primavera, and the next students are also working on the same software, but they cannot copy from each other and shoot using the apps and the ops. 00;08;36;15 - 00;09;02;07 I was able to create that environment where everyone is responsible about the project that they do without having to work or to deal with any other student in that class. I think that's really interesting because it's kind of giving them that real world feel that they're actually seeing in their classroom where they're where collaboratively, but then they're working separately and being able to work together, I think is really a unique opportunity, which kind of leads into my next question. 00;09;02;10 - 00;09;33;24 What are some career paths for construction management students? The essential industry for us is the construction industry, and so the serious students can work in a construction and also in related construction industries. The main employer is the construction industry, which include public and private sectors government agencies, private corporations, general contractors, specialty contractors like homebuilders, consulting firms, even real estate developers and construction material suppliers. 00;09;33;26 - 00;09;56;07 Students can also work in the related industries. What do I mean by that? It's like the oil and gas industry, like the aviation and aerospace industry. Many of these companies that work in these industries also use the planning and control software. And so, CM students with the knowledge of this planning and control and these technology-based software can work in these industries. 00;09;56;07 - 00;10;24;21 And in fact, some of my Graduates work at Boeing and in Blue Origin. Many of these mega companies that do aerospace and aviation same students will be seeking positions like field supervision, site engineering, management, construction and schedulers, project controls and so these are the major jobs that they will be searching for. But later on in their career, they will move into construction project management, project managers and senior managers. 00;10;24;21 - 00;10;49;24 And they could also reach the CEO of a company. And in fact, some of our CEO's around in the companies that we have here are based in Seattle and in neighboring states are graduates from our graduates, from our classes in the in the program. And so, it's a career, a career full of position that they have something to look at, some goals to look at, not just to be a site engineer, but they could also reach the top level in a company. 00;10;50;00 - 00;11;15;15 And that's really interesting to see that there's different types of places to work, whether you're working for a homebuilder or for the government or for a big builder, and then they can actually progress on to management levels and even up to the end into the C-suite, which I think is super interesting. So how have knowing software, software packages like P6 or others as well helped your students in their internship or job searches? 00;11;15;17 - 00;11;42;11 Well, thanks. That's a great question. Just to give you a bit of a background, our construction management department has all of its students almost 100% to placement in the industry. So while we are learning our classes, our program, they have to be in an nternship. And so we have almost 100% a placement for our students and most of them, nearly all 100% of them receive return offers after they graduate. 00;11;42;14 - 00;12;06;24 And so, the knowledge of technology-based software application is crucial in the CM practice. As I mentioned, construction management is a hands-on field and that's why we offer our students exposure to several applications, including Primavera. So, they are ready to join the workforce. Primavera is one of the leading applications for planning and control and having it in our in their toolbox over the students is a plus, as is essential. 00;12;06;27 - 00;12;33;11 And so, Primavera again helps all of those students to get to know how to implement planning and control, not just at the school sitting outside again during their internships. It helps them to lay down good jobs as well as the with the industry. Usually, we have interviews coming to be done by the major construction companies as well as from the government. 00;12;33;11 - 00;12;56;18 And so, during these interviews, most of our students gets to be placed with these companies. And then onto my very last question. If you could give one piece of advice to faculty, your students, what would it be? Another good question. Teaching is essential, right? And so, t has an impact on the students learning specific subjects, specifically construction management. 00;12;56;18 - 00;13;27;16 As I mentioned, it's a practice, it's a hands-on environment, discipline. And so, students need to learn by doing. And so, it's imperative that when we teach them planning and control and the use of technology, because the application again, such as Primavera, we use real projects and we use a hands-on approach to learning. We need a small project to allow students to understand the concept, create a project and its activities, dependencies, resources and costs, and generate proper schedules and deliverables. 00;13;27;18 - 00;13;59;20 And so having a large obscure project will not be helpful as the students will be overwhelmed with the details that will obscure the learning and the essential skills that they need to know. And so, showing students menus and commands without practice, without hands on. Will not be sufficient. And so, my advice is for educators and for students is to work with the small size projects and work with a software that allows you to practice how to plan, how to schedule, how to control the project. 00;13;59;25 - 00;14;26;14 It's not just opening menus and see what's going on. You have to practice by your hand using a small project. This has been very successful with me and all of my classes. They have real construction projects. We have the hands-on training for probably over multiple quarters, and so students get to be very much hands on they are becoming very much ready to join a university, join the workforce once they graduate from the program. 00;14;26;14 - 00;14;46;06 And so again, my advice is to use a small-size projects with hands-on approach for learning. I think that is honestly one of the best pieces of advice, as I've heard lately, is to start small, get comfortable with that small set of skills and then increase and get more and more and more knowledge so they're not overwhelmed. 00;14;46;06 - 00;15;07;03 I honestly was sitting there thinking, as you’re answering like this is really, really good advice you can take to other aspects of learning as well, not just in construction management or construction scheduling, but any kind of project planning like or any kind of learning in general, like getting comfortable with a small set of skills and then doing more and more and more as you get as you get more proficient. 00;15;07;03 - 00;15;32;10 I really, really like that. That's some of the best advice I think I've heard as going through what I've been talking to educators. So, thank you very much. And thank you to Dr. Aziz for speaking with me about his class, at the University of Washington, and the skills students need to pursue a career in construction management. To learn more about Oracle Academy and our resources, visit Academy dot Oracle dot com and subscribe to the podcast. 00;15;32;11 - 00;15;40;06 Thanks for listening. That wraps up this episode. Thanks for listening and stay tuned for the next Oracle Academy Tech Chat podcast.
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Tips and tricks for setting up cloud for your classroom
10/29/2024
Tips and tricks for setting up cloud for your classroom
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. ---------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript: 00;00;09;03 - 00;00;35;10 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;11 - 00;01;06;09 I'm your host here appears in this episode. I'm joined by Oracle Principal Solution architect and adjunct University of Buffalo instructor Victor Stachura. In this episode, Victor and I speak about setting up cloud software and how it differs from setting up on premise software. Welcome, Victor. Thanks, Tyra. Glad to be here. So, to start off, can you give me a little bit about your background, your role at Oracle and the class you teach at University of Buffalo? 00;01;06;13 - 00;01;30;10 Sure, I can do that. I've got a long history, which means I've got a lot of experience. I've been working for a long time. I've been with Oracle for about just over three years. I've been teaching at the University of Buffalo for over ten years. I'm always in an adjunct role. Right now, I'm a principal solution architect, so I'm in a pre-sale’s tactical role. 00;01;30;12 - 00;02;01;12 Prior to that, at other companies, I was director of Enterprise architecture, software engineer, presales consultant, all kinds of different things. So, the courses I teach one is called Enterprise Models, which is basically a consulting solution architect type course, and the other one, which is more applicable to this podcast was called Big Data Technologies. So, students learned about concepts of big data, and they were hands on with Hadoop. 00;02;01;14 - 00;02;28;00 So, for someone who's interested in using cloud in their classroom, what is a key difference between cloud and on prem software? Well, when I started this course and I've been working with Oracle University, I was very excited to find out that they offer OCI credits to students. I was very concerned about installing Hadoop on each student's laptop because they all don't have laptops. 00;02;28;02 - 00;02;52;26 Some have Windows, different operating systems, some have, you know, Mac, you know, laptops. Some are using tablets. Some are using their phone. So, the previous instructor had a lot of problems with all the students and all the devices and trying to get software loaded up saying, great, let's use OCI. Everyone's working off from the same platform no matter what device they have. 00;02;52;29 - 00;03;20;21 They can access the cloud, and they can go from there. So that was really kind of the idea and the genesis of this whole thing. I wanted to eliminate a whole boatload of problems installing in different devices. So, what are some particular things that you think about when you set up a cloud environment, particularly for the classroom? Yeah, that's a really good question because these students, they were undergraduates, so they had very limited cloud experience. 00;03;20;23 - 00;03;42;11 I think there's a lot of people in industry, even to this day, even though cloud is a multibillion-dollar business for us and other companies, all they know is the marketing literature. I get out a credit card. I can go create an account. I go spin up a compute instance. I can move along. They don't realize all the details that have to go into that. 00;03;42;13 - 00;04;06;17 These kids, I had to give them instructions, too. You had to create private and public keys. What are keys? What are the tools you use to create these keys? They don't know anything about that. Yeah, you can speed up your spin up your environment. Well, you need an Internet gateway so you can access it. You need to use things, you know, different access tools to get into that environment. 00;04;06;19 - 00;04;27;10 You got to change network settings. There are security lists. There's, you know, security on the network cards, storage. You want to use block storage. There's a whole other set of commands you have to do to attach that. So, you need to understand the basics of cloud infrastructure, networking. If you're actually going to go and use some of these things. 00;04;27;10 - 00;04;52;13 It's not just a platform as a service. How to set up a cloud instance differ from setting up an on prem instance? Yeah, it's really understanding. In the cloud instance, you have to understand all that networking. You have to touch all those different parts of OCI and get used to using a lot of new tools. If I'm going to install software on my laptop, I'm going to download IT installer, let it run and away I go. 00;04;52;16 - 00;05;13;22 Okay, so in some respects it might be simple to do that. But again, when you're in a classroom environment, you got 50 kids or 40 kids and they all have different versions of hardware and software, it becomes complicated really quick. I think that's really interesting because we're all operating on different operating systems. I know I have a mac and some of my coworkers have PCs. 00;05;13;24 - 00;05;30;19 And so, when we go in and we're putting things in like our mail programs and we're trying to do share mailboxes, things like that, the commands that they use are different than the commands that I use based on operating system. And I think that, you know, it's cool that once you're in the cloud, that kind of levels, that playing field and everybody's the same. 00;05;30;27 - 00;05;50;15 Exactly. I gave these students very detailed instructions, typed this command, typed that command. I only had to do one set of instructions if I had Mac and Windows at least two. And then there's probably some other variants in there. If somebody throws in Linux or Unix or something else, even like you've got another set of instructions on top of that. 00;05;50;15 - 00;06;12;28 Exactly. Exactly. And these students, some of them are using iPads. They write on their iPads. A lot of them are using their phones. They're Yeah, I know there's tiny little screens, even though iPhone or a galaxy really large, they're using their phones. So how they interact in the classroom is very different than you and I or what we would think or how we. 00;06;13;00 - 00;06;31;28 However, we were back in school, we brought our computers, or we had our just taking notes in our in our notebooks and then going into the computer like that is crazy that they're starting to use their phones now to run their databases and things on the that's just actually several of them had the laptops that they're trying to OCI. 00;06;32;05 - 00;06;55;01 The instructions are on their phone and it's, you know, flipping back and forth. They can barely read it. No one is. They're skipping steps. It wasn't very efficient. I literally said to the class, we may go old school, and I may print these out for your paper because they were missing steps. But I digress. So, what are some key skills that students learn when they set up a cloud instance? 00;06;55;03 - 00;07;16;25 Well, they are going to learn about cloud infrastructure and what needs to be set up for that. They're going to learn about some of the networking infrastructure that needs to be set up. So, they're going to get some hands on with that and they may not have any experience to that. You know, getting that set up the security lists and block storage and those things that I mentioned previous. 00;07;16;27 - 00;07;45;07 The other skill is a soft skill that some students can do well, and others couldn't, meaning figure things out if it didn't work well. Okay, maybe they made a typo in the instructions or in the commands. Maybe they skipped a step. Okay. Or maybe is permission wasn't set up right. Some were very good, and they would do, you know, do a Google search and they would find it or ask a gen. 00;07;45;12 - 00;08;07;13 I know the question and they would solve it on their own. Other kids would say it didn't work. I don't know what to do. So, their lack of problem-solving skills is something I'm going to have to address going forward because I'm going to teach this again. Okay. They will learn some basic even UNIX or Linux commands. Okay. 00;08;07;13 - 00;08;29;27 Because look, there was the operating system we use at our compute instance, Ubuntu Linux. So that was something they're going to learn too. I think it's very interesting you talk about problem solving skills. I think of back in my development days when I had you have to do debugging or testing. I think that that's such an important skill that no matter if you're going to be a programmer or if you're writing instructions or any time you're working in tech. 00;08;29;27 - 00;08;55;07 I think debugging and learning how to figure out what went wrong is always a really, really important skill for everybody to learn. Absolutely. And the thing is, all of us in that class, when I when I taught it, we were not the first ones to encounter any of these problems. Somewhere in the world they found it out and they put it somewhere YouTube or all these tech sites that are out there, Slashdot or whatever. 00;08;55;09 - 00;09;15;16 And there was one group of students that were very good at, I'm going to Google, I'm going to research, I'm going to read the and that's what I was doing, Yeah, okay. Because this is the first time, I had to teach this course, and I had to learn it too. So, I'm doing that research. And then there was other students that I had a talk with, and I says, look, you need to learn to problem solve. 00;09;15;19 - 00;09;41;11 And no, what's going to give you the answer when you're out in the real world? They're going to give you general direction and you have to figure it out. Internet search engines are your best friend. There's so many things, whether it's like fixing a sink, you know, fixing the garbage disposal under my sink or like figuring out how to debug my email software or like figuring out why Apex or Excel is not working for me. 00;09;41;11 - 00;10;03;05 Like, there's so many, so many ways that even in not just our computer science and programing classes, but in everyday life, the learning how to problem solve is a really essential skill for students to have. Absolutely even in your jobs, you get it. Bring something to the table. And I give them an example myself. I got hired at a bank here in western New York. 00;10;03;08 - 00;10;22;28 I was the head of the strategy for the integration platforms. Okay, So I come in, I find out where the coffee urn is and all that type of stuff, and I go to my new boss. This is where do you want me to start? He goes, Learn and form an opinion. Okay, can I have a couple of names to start with? 00;10;22;28 - 00;10;45;05 And he gives me a couple names. So, I basically started an interview process, and those people gave me more names and I had to learn, figure out the questions to ask, and then come back in a month. And here's my opinion. You know what's more nebulous than that? No one said, Vic, go do this, okay? And so, you have to you're going to be expected to bring something to the table. 00;10;45;07 - 00;11;12;17 I 100% agree. And so on to my last question. If you could give one piece of advice to faculty, your students, what would it be? Well, I came up with quite a list of what I'm going to do differently but review the basics. Okay. Because there is a large variability in skills. In my class, some people were very well versed in basic Linux commands, others weren't. 00;11;12;18 - 00;11;37;12 So, I have to go through that, provide some teaching for them and refuse to talk about the problem solving, how to go about do that. Here's some websites you can use. Okay, I'm going to go over an architecture diagram of a basic cloud environment because they have no pictorial concept in their mind what it should look like. 00;11;37;14 - 00;11;59;08 It's very nebulous. Okay, I have this virtual machine that's my computer and I have a there's a virtual network card and virtual storage and security lists and gateways and service gateways and internet gateways and all this type of stuff. So, I'm going to kind of go through all these basics with them before we actually get into the instructions. 00;11;59;10 - 00;12;16;12 I think that's really important to be able to go back to basics. So, you know, when you're an instructor, you're going in your teaching aside, go back to basics depending on the class of your teaching. So just kind of level set for everybody. I think that's such an important such an important piece of information is, hey, these are basics. 00;12;16;12 - 00;12;37;13 We're going to start here, and then we'll build upon those basics once everybody's comfortable. I think that's such a such a great piece of advice. So, a big thank you to Victor for joining me on the podcast today. If you're a student learning more about Oracle Academy, please check out our website and subscribe to the podcast. Thanks for listening. 00;12;37;16 - 00;12;44;04 That wraps up this episode. Thanks for listening and stay tuned for the next Oracle Academy Tech Chat podcast.
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Tips and Tricks for teaching students using Oracle Academy and the Cloud
10/15/2024
Tips and Tricks for teaching students using Oracle Academy and 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.
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The importance of data and continuous learning
10/01/2024
The importance of data and continuous learning
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.
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AI and Prompt Engineering
09/17/2024
AI and Prompt Engineering
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.
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The ethics of AI in Academia. Benefits and promise of AI. What should you consider? Pitfalls to avoid?
09/03/2024
The ethics of AI in Academia. Benefits and promise of AI. What should you consider? Pitfalls to avoid?
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.
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Why are industry certifications important for students?
05/28/2024
Why are industry certifications important for students?
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.
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Career Fields in Hospitality
04/16/2024
Career Fields in Hospitality
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.
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What is Business Intelligence and what should I know about it?
04/02/2024
What is Business Intelligence and what should I know about it?
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...
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info_outline
Why do we need more women in tech?
03/08/2024
Why do we need more women in tech?
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.
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What can you do with a Construction Engineering Degree?
02/20/2024
What can you do with a Construction Engineering Degree?
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.
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How Autonomous database and AI change the work of database administrators
02/06/2024
How Autonomous database and AI change the work of database administrators
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...
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Hear from NetSuite founder and EVP Evan Goldberg on leadership and success Part 2
01/23/2024
Hear from NetSuite founder and EVP Evan Goldberg on leadership and success Part 2
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...
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Hear from NetSuite founder and EVP Evan Goldberg on leadership and success
01/09/2024
Hear from NetSuite founder and EVP Evan Goldberg on leadership and success
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...
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What is cloud computing and how does it work?
11/15/2023
What is cloud computing and how does it work?
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 -...
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My software is not “user friendly” How design impacts software usability
10/23/2023
My software is not “user friendly” How design impacts software usability
In this episode Tyra speaks with Aylin Uysal, Vice President of User Experience Design at Oracle. Aylin and Tyra talk about why intentional design is essential to product development. Aylin also explains the difference between UX and UI as well talks about why empathy and critical thinking skills are important to the design process for an overall user experience.
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Why using graph analytics can help you get insights into your data.
10/10/2023
Why using graph analytics can help you get insights into your data.
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What do Data Scientists do?
09/26/2023
What do Data Scientists do?
In this episode host Tyra Crockett is joined by Oracle Principal UX Data Scientist Ping Mamiya Chao and they answer the question. What does a data scientist do?
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Data Security Basics---How and why you should secure your data
09/12/2023
Data Security Basics---How and why you should secure your data
In this episode Tyra is joined by sql developer advocate Chris Saxon and MySQL developer advocate Scott Stroz. Data security is a hot topic. Chris, Scott and Tyra talk about why securing your data is important, and how to secure your dataTo learn more about Oracle Academy, and how educators can get access to free resources, visit
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What is Machine Learning?
08/15/2023
What is Machine Learning?
In this episode host Tyra Crockett speaks with Oracle ACE Director Edelweiss Kammermann on machine learning. Edel defines machine learning and gives examples of how it is used, and the skills students need if they plan to pursue a career in machine learning
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