The APEX Track at Kscope13 - A Peak at What's to Come

This is the second year in a row that I've had the pleasure of serving as the content lead for the APEX track team for ODTUG's Kscope. The first year was a little strange as I was just learning the ropes. This year I knew what to expect and things have been going much smoother. I really think this year will be the best year yet - here's why:

An EXCELLENT Content Team

Once again I had a fantastic team of APEX gurus that helped create and shape the APEX track for Kscope. This year I thought I would change the team up some but I was pleasantly surprised when a few that had participated the previous year emailed to ask if they could do it again. No, I don't mind at all! Here's a list of everyone that participated this year:

• Anton Nielsen
• Christian Rokitta
• Dietmar Aust
• Doug Gault
• Francis Mignault
• John Scott
• Martin D'Souza
• Peter Raganitsch
• Roel Hartman 
• Tony Miller

The largest responsibility on the team's plate is selecting which submitted abstracts will make it into the conference. Other responsibilities include scheduling, promoting, etc. As I'm sure you can imagine, this is one busy group of people. Everyone participates as much as they can and I want to thank them all for their time - thanks everyone! I have to thank Roel a second time because he really went above and beyond what was expected of him (something he does consistently) - thanks Roel!

Superb Content

It's no secret that Kscope has the best content for APEX. This year the APEX track has 19 sessions during the week spread across 3 rooms for a total of 57 presentations. Also, as has become tradition, the APEX development team from Oracle will be taking over the Sunday Symposium so we can all learn right from the source.

Excellent Speakers - From Newbie to Guru

If you just looked over the list of APEX presentations, you no doubt recognized many of the presenters as some of the best and brightest in the industry. However, some of the feedback from previous years indicated a need for more new speakers. This year, thanks to Roel's great idea, we took that to heart and created a newbie track of sorts. We've dedicated 3 sessions (1 session from Monday through Wednesday) to these new Kscope speakers so all eyes will be on them!!! I'm confident they will handle the pressure just fine... ;) Here's what you can expect:

1. Monday, Session 3
• Jeff Holoman - Had-APEX!
• Ricardo Stumpf - EUAD, BUAD, and APEX: End-User Produces High-Quality Software with APEX
• Raj Lalchandani - Integration APEX and E-Business Suite: Distributed Account Management Automation Case Study
2. Tuesday, Session 8
• Nathan Catlow - Securing Oracle APEX - Cross-Site Scripting
• Debyra Groskreutz - Automating APEX and the Underlying Oracle Database Tools for Use in Personalized Medicine Studies
• Brad Nance - Techniques for Achieving Section 508 Compliance of APEX Applications
3. Wednesday, Session 12
• Joseph Acero - Developing Real World Applications in the Cloud
• Tim Austwick - SQL Injection Attacks and Defenses
• David Mann - Explore New Data Dimensions with APEX and Free/Open Source Graphing Libraries

Responsive Design Mini-Track

Responsive Design techniques and practices have received a lot of attention lately - and rightfully so! To ensure the topic was adequately covered we approved 4 presentations on it. When Shakeeb Rahman from the APEX development team noticed this, he suggested we coordinate a little closer to create a Responsive Design Mini-Track (he even provided an outline to get the ball rolling). Luckily the speakers were very receptive to the idea and the Responsive Design Mini-Track is now a reality. Checkout the lineup:

1. Martin D'Souza - Intro to Responsive Design in APEX
2. Christian Rokitta - Building a Responsive Application using Theme 25
3. Mark Lancaster - Building a Responsive Application using Twitter Bootstrap
4. Dimitri Gielis - Advanced Responsive Design in APEX

Dynamic Action Deep Dive (DADD)

Last year I was a little overwhelmed, and admittedly unprepared, by the number of people that joined me for the DADD (many thanks to Suzanne Anglim for helping to control the chaos). This year were going to do it again on Thursday. That's right, Thursday, so if you're interested in learning about Dynamic Actions from into to advanced in just a few hours, make sure you plan accordingly (tip: use this as your excuse to spend another day or even a night in New Orleans). I promise to have things better prepared this time around so we can all hit the ground running!

The DADD is hands-on mini-course designed to get APEX developers introduced to Dynamic Actions and  working with some of the more advanced features within just a few hours. This is a BYOL (bring your own laptop) event but anyone is welcome to just come and watch or make new friends and partner up.



I'm looking forward to seeing everyone at Kscope13!