Last week was a busy week for the UPK and Tutor teams at Oracle. It started with the the Collaborate Conference in Las Vegas and ended with our first UPK and Tutor Customer Advisory Board (CAB) meeting at Oracle HQ.

The Collaborate Conference is a yearly event sponsored by three of the largest Oracle User Groups.
• Oracle Applications User Group (OAUG)
• Independent Oracle User Group (IOUG)
• Quest - International User Group

The User Groups are completely user run organizations with Oracle participation. If you've never attended a conference, time to start planning for the 2011 event in Orlando! If that's out of your reach, there are many regional and industry user groups that meet on a regular basis. They offer a great way to get involved, network with other users, and increase your knowledge around the Oracle applications. For a list of groups near you, check out the Oracle User Group Center. I'll add that the biggest meeting of Oracle users is at the Oracle Open World Conference in San Francisco in September, where we will have many UPK & Tutor focused development and customer sessions. More information on Oracle Open World will be forthcoming over the next few months. We hope to see many of you there!

The CAB was a first for the UPK and Tutor team. Although we speak with customers regularly, this gave us an opportunity to meet in a more formal setting to discuss industry trends, business issues, and the direction of the products. Members serve a 2 year term and are required to attend 2 meetings per year, one in person, one via phone. We have some tweaking to do to our meeting format (most members wanted it to be longer!), but the overwhelming consensus was that it was a great success. There were many experiences and ideas shared and the wheels of the UPK and Tutor Development teams have been turning ever since. I'm sure you will see some of these discussions result in new product features over time.

What a great week!