Bringing MEEP to the Netherlands...

I have just spent a few days in Holland. I was invited to attend a session held by Jeroen Evers from the Company Fameus (soon Miracle Benelux), called MasterClass Sessions.

The Ordina MasterClass Sessions are actually trying to achieve the same as the MEEP, but over a longer period of time; To produce Database Experts by letting them read good books (at the moment they are reading ‘Cost Based Oracle Fundamentals’ by Jonathan Lewis) supported by using practical hands on exercises.

They have to finish the whole thing in 18 months. The final goal is to make all the DBA´s from Ordina (one of the largest and best Oracle consultancy companies in Holland) skilled in the art and science of maintaining a real life system in a proactive way, based on the understanding of the logic of the Oracle Database.

The Technical level in the MasterClass session was a bit too high for me to participate, but the good thing was, that I every once in a while recognized things that I had read in the Tom Kyte book.



So I guess that, if I was to go through the Tom Kyte book again in a few weeks, I would benefit even more. So I guess I will be doing just that :-)

During the session, I realized that throwing in a few sessions like this, into MEEP would be a good idea. A full day, where you go through relevant topics and where you can work with the stuff you have read about.

The idea requires that one of the skilled consultants from Miracle would be able to take the time to prepare a few exercises and would have the patience to teach and help.
This is not meant as a test, but more as a kind of Workshop, where the student would have the opportunity to develop his skills and also ask all the stupid questions.

Anyway, I gave a small presentation about the Miracle Extreme Education Programme to the class, consisting of about 20 DBA´s.
I spoke about how Mogens Nørgaard came up with the idea and how the programme is set up, which books are going to be read etc. I also spoke about my own background and how I go through the material and finally a little bit about the expected outcome of the programme.
After the presentation the DBA´s had the opportunity to ask questions, and many of them did.




It was a very good experience for me. I wish to thank Jeroen and all the Ordina guys for giving me the opportunity to participate.

From next week, it´s back to the Tom Kyte book again. By then, I will have finished the Lex de Haan book about SQL. But I have a strange feeling, that I´m not quite done with that book. And I will keep it close to do the excellent exercises once in a while.