For the week of August 17th, 2012:

• IOUG’s DBAs & Developers as Future Leaders of IT
• What’s IOUG Doing This Year at OpenWorld 2012
• Coming Very Soon: The New IOUG.org

“IOUG Podcast 17-AUG-2012 DBAs and Developers as Leaders / OpenWorld Tech Sessions”

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IOUG’s DBAs & Developers at Leaders of IT

In this week’s IOUG 5-minute Briefing, Maria Anderson, IOUG’s Director of Volunteer Engagement and Leadership Development, has an article related to leadership principles and why they are important to the role of a non-IT-manager. Citing her inspiration from Capt. Mark Kelly’s keynote at Collaborate 12 this year, Anderson notes that “… we as IT professionals do not do a very good job of including the development of these  (leadership) skills into our careers.  We become concerned with developing our technical skills, but we ignore the leadership skills thinking that they’re ‘only for managers.’  This is the myth of leadership – that it’s only for managers.  Regardless of whether you are in a formal leadership role or not, everyone can demonstrate leadership qualities in a variety of ways whether you’re a DBA, developer, architect or business analyst.”

How do you build these desirable qualities?  There are a number of ways IT professionals can start building leadership skills into their careers. Get involved with the IOUG either as a member or a volunteer. Read more about leadership topics and follow bloggers and authors related to the topic, such as Peter Bregman and Michael Bungay Stanier. And finally, learn from others around you, especially those you personally admire and consider to be mentors.

Ask yourself how the people in leadership roles that you admire grew into those roles in the first place. As the role of the IT professional today continues to change and evolve, providing basic technical skills is no longer sufficient. Our customers look to us to be expert advisers and contributors, as well as to understand more than just a small piece of IT.  At times, we must be the eyes, ears, and sometimes even the voice of management when representing our organization, particularly in relationships with other service providers and especially our customers. To be able to do this, we must possess excellent interpersonal and communication skills, as well as demonstrate leadership capabilities. The IOUG is planning to offer some great leadership development events this year and this is really just the beginning of your journey.  If you have more ideas about what kinds of leadership events you would like your IOUG to offer, send a note to Maria at maria_anderson@ioug.org and let her know about your thoughts on what you need to succeed.

What IOUG Is Doing at OpenWorld 2012

Earlier this week, we published our schedule of IOUG-led technical training sessions being offered at this year’s OpenWorld 2012. Sunday, September 30th at OpenWorld is where the User Groups of the world get to show off their best features, to kick off the week of Oracle-centric knowledge sharing.  IOUG is exclusively offering eight parallel tracks of solid Technical sessions which will be presented by IOUG’s Best from Collaborate giving you the opportunity to learn from the vast experience base of those who use and implement the technologies of Oracle on a daily basis. But we’ll also be there all week-long bringing you the customer-led sessions that we’ve become known for year after year, across all of the technology landscape.

Monday night, October 1st will be the chance for you to join all of your fellow IOUG members at the IOUG Community Happy Hour, sponsored by Embarcadero, for cocktails, food and your chance to win great prizes. All IOUG members are invited to attend, so please stop by the IOUG booth in the User Group Pavilion for your entry pass and directions to the most fun user event in the town on Monday night!  If you’re not already an IOUG member, then just sign up online now, or at the booth and you’ll be included in our exclusive IOUG-only benefits all year long.

Coming Very Soon: The New IOUG.org

And because you said it, and we listened, we will be premiering a brand new IOUG.org website shortly before OpenWorld to give you the best User Group experience possible. Look forward to enhanced navigation speed to the topics you need, find your RUGs and SIGs when you want them, and be able to search our vast repository of knowledge articles and white papers with greater accuracy and much more tangible results. We’re adding a new calendar and scheduling features, and brand new discussion messaging and forum functionality to keep you in touch with each other, and help you discover other like-minded individuals in our technical user group universe. As we approach the dates of OpenWorld, stay tuned to your e-mail for the announcement of the general availability of the new website and its associated cavalcade of new IOUG member-exclusive features.

Finally don’t forget next week’s two IOUG-exclusive free webinars, next Wednesday, August 22nd covering the new features in Oracle Enterprise Manager (OEM) 12c and the following Wednesday, August 29th when we explore the world of VMWare and Oracle VM especially focusing on the needs of the Database Administrator to performance tune and troubleshoot in a virtualized environment  Register now online at ioug.org and visit the section entitled “Upcoming Webinars.”