UKOUG 2007: Abstracts redux

Well, I have finished judging all the abstracts in my stack (214 of the blighters!). How are you all doing? According to the latest e-mail from the UKOUG back office there's still a big chunk of abstracts which nobody has evaluated. I would guess these are mainly in the Apps domain, but I could be wrong. As I mentioned previously it is important for as many people as possible to vote on the abstracts, so if you are in the eligible camp and still haven't checked in, please find the time over the next few days (judging closes Monday 2nd July, 10.00am BST).

This week I have been looking at the database server papers. The usual suspects - tuning, RAC, RMAN - are present in the usual numbers. But there are some new hot topics (several people submitting papers in the same vein) for the database too. They are:

• Virtualisation
  
• Data and Audit Vault
  
• Linux administration
  
• 11g New Features
  

Hmmm, there must be a good reason why we haven't had papers on that last one before now....

Evaluating the abstracts is an interesting exercise. We get to see the range of topics which people feel strongly about (because nobody bothers to volunteer to spend the time and effort to talk about something which bores them). And those of us who have also submitted papers get to size up the opposition.