I recently returned from Reading, UK, where I had the opportunity to attend the UKOUG 2023 conference. This year's event was particularly engaging, commemorating the 40th anniversary of the UK Oracle User Group.
My participation at the conference had a dual purpose. Firstly, I attended to present, and while I was there, I had the chance to join several presentations that piqued my interest. I'm genuinely impressed by the innovative solutions showcased and the quality of work demonstrated by the presenters and their teams.
My winners
My standout presentation was LLMs are the Future of Conversational AI by Antony Heljula of TPXimpact. Antony shared his experiences in developing chatbots that leverage large language models in conversational AI. Truly groundbreaking!
A close second for me was Gianni Ceresa's (DATAlysis) presentation titled ID Please: Did You Already Ask That to Your Data? Gianni delved into the crucial aspects of data lineage and governance, addressing the absence of a single, comprehensive solution to trace the origins and handling of data. It was highly informative and sparked contemplation on how we develop and manage analytics solutions. The discussion went far beyond mere features and functions.
My another two winners that left a lasting impression on me were:
- Football Meets Graph Analytic - New Insights for the Coaching Team by Abi Giles-Haigh of Oracle.
- Finding Widlake is a Bit Like Finding Wally by Brendan Tierney of Oralytics.
Both presentations showcased practical examples of utilizing Oracle AI technology in everyday life situations in a straightforward and efficient manner. Outstanding work!
I probably shouldn't forget to mention Philippe Lions and his Become an Analytics Hero Using Oracle Analytics Augmented Insights, AI, and ML in which he indicated some new AI related features. use of LLMs in "Insights Chat" which are now coming into OAC. By the way, Philippe made a picture of me, explaining Vision AI model I've created and then he used the picture above in his slides.
My contributions
As mentioned earlier, during the conference, I had the honour of presenting two papers that I submitted earlier this year:
OCI Vision and Oracle Analytics: Just Like a Box of Chocolates:
This presentation explores the seamless setup of an analytical solution within Oracle Analytics Cloud, utilizing a machine learning model created with OCI Vision AI service. The model aids in identifying pneumonia-infected lungs from a larger dataset of X-ray images.
Extending Oracle Analytics' Machine Learning Capabilities with OCI Services
The second presentation discusses various options available to business users when applying machine learning in Oracle Analytics Cloud (OAC). While I aimed to cover an extensive range of topics, including out-of-the-box machine learning support, AutoML experiments, and more, I acknowledge that it might have been ambitious for a single presentation.
To make up for this, I've recorded the demos and will publish them on this blog for anyone interested in exploring these solutions further. Feel free to check them out and delve into the world of extending Oracle Analytics' machine learning capabilities.
The PDF version of this presentation can be downloaded here.
Conclusion
What to say as a bottom line. This was the first time that I attended and presented at UKOUG. I think it was great to meet a number of colleagues and peers working with OAC and ML/AI. I got some really cool ideas to explore and investigate. Hopefully, having them resulted in our solutions.
It was also worth checking out how SIOUG conference compares to UKOUG. I must say, in some way SIOUG is actually even better!