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Don't Call it a Comeback


Exactly twenty-four years ago to the date, I started my first job out of college with Oracle in Bethesda, MD.  I still vividly remember that day – right down to the part where I descended into the tunnel that passes under Wisconsin Ave. thinking it was the Metro, only to end up on the other side of the street looking totally lost. 

For the first few years there, I moved from one sales consulting role to another, supporting clients across state, local, federal, higher education and even communications verticals with their eBusiness Suite technical needs.  Most of my days were spent preparing and delivering demonstrations to all kinds of customers.  I cut my teeth on both Oracle and UNIX in those days, as we had to build our own portable demo systems that ran on “portable” SPARC-clones called Tadpoles.  Remember those?  Didn’t think so.

It wasn’t until around 2002 that I was introduced to APEX and tasked to build a couple of demos with a pre-release version of it.  Even after that brief exposure to APEX, I was hooked.  So much so, that I asked to be transferred to the APEX team where I took on a new role as a product manager.  While we were small, we made a lot of waves with countless demos, POCs and pretty much anything else that got customers excited about the true powers of APEX.  It was perhaps three of the busiest and most hectic years of my career.

In 2005, I got the itch to try life outside of Oracle.  After all, I had been there close to 10 years and it was the only place that I ever worked post-college.  Thus, Sumner Technologies was born that October and flourished and even transformed a couple of times until it was snapped up by Enkitec in 2012.  Then Accenture for a few months.  Then back to Sumner.  And finally, Viscosity.  All of these positions intimately involved APEX, whether it was training, consulting, product or even management. 

So here we are – exactly twenty-four years from my first day at Oracle.  So much in the world has changed since then – too much to even pretend that I can cover here.   But it's the change in the past few months that has had the most impact on so many of us.  Society has been disrupted by the pandemic on a scale not seen before, causing organizations of all sizes to re-think and fundamentally change how they conduct their operations.

What hasn’t changed over the last twenty-four years is my passion for delivering applications to customers who need them – and doing so quickly, securely and with the highest degree of quality.  This passion has only grown over time as both the need and number of applications required has also grown.

So, I am both humbled and honored to announce that starting today, I will be heading back to Oracle to lead a brand-new team charged with designing and developing applications to help get us through the current pandemic.  This team – which is still being assembled – will be using APEX to quickly build web applications that scientific, medical and public health professionals need to combat the ramifications of the pandemic and beyond.

The challenges that this new team will face will be ever-changing and fluid, as requirements are still being discussed and established.  But that’s perfectly OK, because APEX and the team can and will adapt to this change as needed.  With the power of APEX behind us, we will be able to meet almost any demand and provide systems to assist those that are literally on the front lines of the pandemic, enabling them and the rest of us to finally get back to normal.

#MOCA #LetsWreckThisTogether #orclapex

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