[English] Devs On Tape x Kscope23 – Our Guest: Shakeeb Rahman!

00:00:00: [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:00:03: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Devs on Tape.

00:00:16: Again, from the States in Denver,

00:00:19: we are recording at the K-Scope 2023.

00:00:22: And ladies and gentlemen, today, we

00:00:24: have a very special guest in our podcast.

00:00:27: Our guest is part of the APEX team as an architect,

00:00:30: and he's working for Oracle, obviously.

00:00:32: And yeah, we are talking about his invention

00:00:35: back in the days, the universal theme.

00:00:38: We also will talk about the starting of being a web

00:00:41: developer in the early 2000s.

00:00:44: And yeah, today we have the privilege

00:00:46: of exploring the transformation and growth that

00:00:48: led him to this current position and the leader of design

00:00:53: and special projects for Oracle APEX.

00:00:55: We have many things to talk about.

00:00:57: Our guest today is Shakib Rahman.

00:00:59: Hi, Shakib.

00:01:00: Hi, Kai.

00:01:01: Thank you so much for having me here.

00:01:03: Yeah, I'm very glad that we found a spot on your time

00:01:07: schedule that we can talk about many interesting stuff today.

00:01:10: So maybe you can introduce yourself

00:01:13: to our listeners who might not know you.

00:01:15: I don't think there are any, but maybe you can just

00:01:18: add more information to that.

00:01:19: Sure, absolutely.

00:01:20: So hi, everybody listening.

00:01:22: My name is Shakib Rahman, and I'm

00:01:24: an architect on the Oracle Apex development team.

00:01:26: I've been with Oracle for quite some time now.

00:01:29: Joining the APEX team in 2009 under Mike Kitchwa.

00:01:32: I was actually hired for a special project at the time.

00:01:36: And today, I look after the design and user experience

00:01:38: of APEX.

00:01:39: But I also work on a lot of special projects

00:01:41: where we use APEX on a day-to-day basis.

00:01:44: So you are always talking about, in your talks and in the intro,

00:01:48: there are always the special projects, right?

00:01:50: So it's kind of a mystery what you're doing in there.

00:01:53: Can you talk more about what are those special projects

00:01:55: you're working on?

00:01:57: - Sure, yeah.

00:01:58: It may sound like a mystery, right?

00:02:00: What are these things?

00:02:02: There's a lot of use of Apex within Oracle.

00:02:05: And one of the things that I look after

00:02:08: is using Apex to build solutions that we ourselves need.

00:02:13: So for example, one of the projects that I look after

00:02:16: is something called ARIA People.

00:02:18: It's the employee directory at Oracle.

00:02:19: We sort of talked about it a lot at conferences.

00:02:21: And it's an application that our team has sort of built.

00:02:25: In fact, it's predated my career at Oracle by many, many years.

00:02:28: It's probably one of the-- it is the most popular APEX

00:02:31: applications.

00:02:32: It's probably one of the most relatable APEX applications,

00:02:35: because it's really an employee directory.

00:02:37: It's a really nice, easy way to get in, get out.

00:02:40: And it's an application that I'm very proud of at Oracle.

00:02:45: So you're still working on that, or you just

00:02:48: gave it to your team, your leading?

00:02:51: Well, I think it's definitely a team effort.

00:02:54: everything we really do, I think it's hard to say,

00:02:56: like, hey, I'm the only one that worked on this thing.

00:02:59: So it's definitely a team effort.

00:03:00: We have a team that works on special projects, right?

00:03:04: I consider them part of the Apex team.

00:03:06: So the Apex team as a whole is quite a diverse team

00:03:11: at Oracle, diverse in many ways.

00:03:13: We are geographically dispersed quite a lot.

00:03:16: So you're from Germany here.

00:03:17: We have quite a few members in Germany,

00:03:20: across Europe, across India, in the UAE,

00:03:25: in South America, in Mexico, in Canada,

00:03:28: and of course dispersed even across the United States.

00:03:31: So, and within this geographically dispersed team

00:03:34: of I don't know, but like 90 plus people that build Apex,

00:03:39: we have folks that focus primarily on product development

00:03:43: of the Apex product.

00:03:45: There are folks that develop, focus on the development

00:03:47: of the Apex and Autonomous Database Service,

00:03:50: and Apex and OCI.

00:03:55: And there's a few folks that focus specifically on

00:03:56: internal development improvements for our team.

00:04:01: And just like that, there's also folks that focus on

00:04:05: special projects.

00:04:07: And some of these projects,

00:04:10: they go from internal facing applications

00:04:11: to external facing applications.

00:04:13: For example, we recently launched forums,

00:04:15: which I can get into a little bit later.

00:04:17: We launched this internal surveys service.

00:04:17: We have like, you know, I look after a live sequel

00:04:21: and Dev Jam and Ask Tom and many other Apex applications.

00:04:26: - So that was quite a journey you walked, right?

00:04:30: So I think the first time we've met

00:04:32: was at Kscope Chicago in 2016.

00:04:35: And back in the days, you were just into it like,

00:04:38: don't get me wrong, I don't know if it was the introduction

00:04:40: of the Universal Theme and Apex 5,

00:04:42: if it's on the same--

00:04:44: - It's a little bit, it's one year later.

00:04:46: So Universal Theme came out in 2015.

00:04:48: I remember the date, it was April 15th, 2015.

00:04:52: I know this because it was tax day in the United States.

00:04:55: And that was the day that we released Apex 5,

00:04:58: you know, made it generally available for everybody.

00:05:00: And that was the release of the initial Universal Theme.

00:05:04: - And this was basically my second year in the business

00:05:07: with Oracle Apex, and I started with Apex 4.2,

00:05:10: like dynamic actions were at my daily work, right?

00:05:15: And then the universal theme came.

00:05:16: And you were talking about that.

00:05:18: Like, on every single conference,

00:05:20: I was attending on premises or remotely.

00:05:23: And I saw your beautiful presentations.

00:05:25: And I saw it in the presentation.

00:05:27: I was talking to my colleagues.

00:05:29: And I said, I want to do presentations like this.

00:05:32: Because there were animations that are--

00:05:36: I remember exactly what you're talking about.

00:05:38: And it was so great that every single colorful leaf

00:05:44: was leading to one topic of Universal Team.

00:05:46: And I think I saw this presentation like 50 times.

00:05:49: And I was still impressed how much love you put in there.

00:05:53: So it was pixel perfect.

00:05:55: It was perfectly timed with your presentation.

00:05:59: And I knew that the Universal Team would be great

00:06:03: and will get even better because you are leading that, right?

00:06:08: So no, I don't want to put more honey in my jar.

00:06:12: I don't know if it's really--

00:06:14: Thanks for buttering me up, right?

00:06:15: That's the right phrase, yeah.

00:06:18: But yeah, Universal Team is now the main component,

00:06:21: I would say, for an APEX application.

00:06:23: But always when we were talking to customers and people

00:06:27: around us, what's the thing of APEX?

00:06:31: Why should you use APEX to build applications?

00:06:34: Then we say, yeah, you don't have

00:06:36: to write all the boilerplate code

00:06:38: to get an application up and running before you get actually

00:06:40: to the business logic or the core of what you want to solve.

00:06:44: problem, right? And with the universal theme, you get a responsive, good looking and very

00:06:49: flexible theme that you don't have to care about before you're starting an application.

00:06:53: Just say, start with an Apex application, use universal theme, it should look like this.

00:06:57: You put some things on the color picker, and then it's going good. And you were always

00:07:02: talking about universal theme and everything in Apex should be crisp.

00:07:06: Oh yeah, I remember that term. That's right.

00:07:09: Every time it has to be crisp.

00:07:10: I just like to say that, yeah.

00:07:11: So what leads you to--

00:07:14: obviously, Universal Theme was planned, right?

00:07:16: You needed to do that, I think.

00:07:18: It was not your idea, right?

00:07:21: Well--

00:07:21: To do some new UI.

00:07:24: It's an interesting genesis of the Universal Theme.

00:07:28: I think it became quite clear as we were working

00:07:30: on many releases of Apex.

00:07:32: So just to take a step back a bit,

00:07:34: I joined the Apex team in 2009.

00:07:36: But really, my first contributions to Apex

00:07:39: came in early themes that were shipped with Apex.

00:07:44: So I worked on a few themes.

00:07:47: They were shipped with Apex 4, I believe, even.

00:07:49: And then we had new themes in Apex 4.1.

00:07:52: We started introducing new numbers.

00:07:54: So every time there was a new theme, there was a new number.

00:07:56: It's like theme 20, theme 21, theme 22, theme 23, 24.

00:08:00: 25 was a responsive theme that came out in Apex 4.2.

00:08:04: So every release of Apex, we had this new theme.

00:08:06: And what do we tell developers?

00:08:07: "Hey, Mr. Developer, go and refresh,

00:08:12: "actually go and update your application,

00:08:14: "change your theme, and pretty much redo the entire thing."

00:08:18: - Yeah.

00:08:19: - Right, it was quite a process,

00:08:20: especially going to this responsive theme.

00:08:22: And we thought that's just not a sustainable model.

00:08:25: We can't ask our customers to go

00:08:27: and redo their entire apps every single time.

00:08:29: So we thought, well, we have to have a modern theme,

00:08:33: a modern user interface framework

00:08:36: that will stand the test of time,

00:08:38: and something that we can update and refresh

00:08:41: with every release of Apex and make it better and better

00:08:43: and better without having developers

00:08:45: to incur the cost of updating their applications

00:08:47: or really rewriting those applications.

00:08:49: - Yeah, I'm guessing that this is some kind of hard work

00:08:54: to find one single solution that fits everyone,

00:08:57: because I remember I liked like theme 28, I think.

00:09:02: - 28?

00:09:04: - I don't know.

00:09:05: Maybe 21.

00:09:06: - 21, I think.

00:09:07: I don't know.

00:09:07: - There was a really popular theme

00:09:09: that everybody used for their applications, right?

00:09:11: - Yeah, and they're all using the theme

00:09:14: they want to use for the applications,

00:09:16: and then you have to maintain each and one of them.

00:09:18: - Oh yeah, all new markup,

00:09:19: every single theme has different markup,

00:09:21: different style sheets, different set of images.

00:09:22: - Yeah, and they're manipulating the stuff,

00:09:25: and then you try to push,

00:09:26: pull everything on one card, right?

00:09:29: You just say, I have to create a theme

00:09:31: that is good for everyone.

00:09:33: Everyone needs to do that,

00:09:34: and they don't say, no, I want to stay at 21, right?

00:09:38: Or whatever. - Correct, correct.

00:09:39: - So I guess this is a very hard decision to say.

00:09:43: - It was a, and again, like a,

00:09:46: it was so difficult to come up with this concept

00:09:51: of this general purpose theme.

00:09:53: What do you make it look like?

00:09:55: - Yeah.

00:09:55: - Like, in a way, it's sort of abstracting

00:09:58: everything that we do in Apex.

00:09:59: Everything that we do in Apex is,

00:10:00: we have generic components that you can use

00:10:03: to build any kind of application.

00:10:05: And now you're looking at the UI layer

00:10:08: of this, which is really the first impression that people

00:10:10: have about these applications.

00:10:12: And the UI layer really dictates how people perceive

00:10:16: the application, how people will use the application,

00:10:18: what kind of complex capabilities

00:10:20: you can add to that application.

00:10:22: If the UI layer can't support it,

00:10:23: then your application can't have that functionality.

00:10:26: So it was quite an interesting way

00:10:29: of looking at how do we put together a general purpose

00:10:32: theme that can be customized.

00:10:34: And I would like to say Universal Theme has

00:10:37: a few components that made it what it is, a few key features.

00:10:44: So if I take an analogy of a tripod,

00:10:47: there's like three legs of a tripod

00:10:48: that really give it stability and allow it to actually

00:10:50: function as a tripod.

00:10:52: Maybe for those three things for Universal Theme

00:10:55: would be the fact that, one, it's responsive.

00:10:58: So it's going to work on different screen sizes,

00:11:00: different things.

00:11:01: The other one is that it's versatile.

00:11:04: So you can actually do a lot of different things

00:11:06: with Universal Theme.

00:11:07: It should be versatile enough that you can use it

00:11:09: to build any kind of application.

00:11:11: But that alone is not enough.

00:11:14: It has to be responsive, versatile,

00:11:17: and finally customizable.

00:11:19: So we can't just have a color scheme.

00:11:22: Like in our previous themes in Apex,

00:11:23: we would have like, oh, here's a red theme,

00:11:25: or here's a blue theme.

00:11:27: The default look and feel, the default color theme,

00:11:30: the color scheme for universal theme is blue.

00:11:34: It's the most sort of,

00:11:35: the color that's the most neutral for business applications.

00:11:40: But the whole point was you can customize this.

00:11:43: And that led us to building new technologies

00:11:45: like Theme Roller, which for the first time ever,

00:11:47: until that point, live in your application,

00:11:50: you can go and pick a color,

00:11:51: pick different parts of your application

00:11:53: and change it on the fly.

00:11:54: And that was like a mind-blowing moment.

00:11:57: Yeah, I remember a time when I approached two customers

00:12:02: and they were asking, should we go to Universal Theme

00:12:04: or even should we use Apex?

00:12:06: And if you like live create an application

00:12:09: and then you change the color scheme

00:12:11: to their corporate colors and they say,

00:12:13: oh, it's looking already like an application we should use

00:12:16: or we have in our intranet, right?

00:12:19: And that was one of the key factor, I think.

00:12:21: So you started to make that.

00:12:23: My first thoughts when I saw Universal Theme was,

00:12:26: All right, Bootstrap too?

00:12:28: Because I looked into the code, like the naming of the classes.

00:12:31: Correct.

00:12:32: Basically, right?

00:12:33: So now it's a standard.

00:12:34: Almost every front-end framework is using classes like this,

00:12:37: and you add class to elements and change something.

00:12:39: And I said, OK, this is just Bootstrap.

00:12:42: Even the coloring is almost that.

00:12:44: Now I know what journey you were going on to.

00:12:47: It was not just using kind of Bootstrap for Apex?

00:12:51: So just about Bootstrap as well, I did look at Bootstrap.

00:12:54: Bootstrap was very popular.

00:12:55: In fact at the time I think it was called Twitter Bootstrap

00:12:57: and somebody else actually built it.

00:12:59: I even talked to the guy that built Bootstrap.

00:13:02: But really the only thing in Universal

00:13:05: that's inspired from Bootstrap is the grid system.

00:13:10: That was primarily from the Bootstrap style of class names

00:13:14: and the structure of the 12 column fixed grid.

00:13:16: Everything else we looked at Bootstrap as an inspiration

00:13:20: to see like hey this is a general purpose framework.

00:13:22: Everybody's building blogs and websites

00:13:24: and applications on it.

00:13:25: but we couldn't tie it to a specific library, right?

00:13:28: We had to build that in-house because we want to have that full control over the

00:13:31: user experience. And that again goes back to,

00:13:34: we have all these unique sort of components in Apex, right?

00:13:38: We have interactive reports, right? We have classic reports, we have lists,

00:13:42: we have different types of navigation menus, there's tabs,

00:13:45: there's different types of regions, charts,

00:13:47: and all of these things need to sort of feel cohesive. You know,

00:13:51: need to be built in a way that's cohesive when you build an application.

00:13:54: So look at all the different baseline components.

00:13:57: There's buttons, you know, like links, all these things.

00:13:59: And then have a layer of customization on top of that,

00:14:02: which is more than just colors even, right?

00:14:05: So theme or give us the colors, but then,

00:14:08: hey, you have a list, you have a media list,

00:14:09: or you have a set of cards,

00:14:12: but not everybody wants the same type of cards.

00:14:14: So we had this other innovation in Apex 5,

00:14:17: which was called template options.

00:14:19: So it's a really fancy way of saying,

00:14:21: we're gonna add additional classes,

00:14:23: And that's going to change the way that we're

00:14:25: going to style this component.

00:14:27: So what we did was we had template options

00:14:29: for all of our components in Universal Theme,

00:14:31: all the template-driven components.

00:14:33: So now you could check a checkbox

00:14:36: or select an item from a select list,

00:14:37: and it would change the appearance of that item.

00:14:40: Like small, medium, large, x-large, and then stretch

00:14:42: item, remove padding, and so on.

00:14:45: This is what--

00:14:45: Absolutely.

00:14:46: Yeah.

00:14:46: But we also had some things like styling.

00:14:49: Like, oh, here's cards.

00:14:50: Like, you want a featured card, a block card, a compact card?

00:14:53: or whatever, like how many lines of text do you have?

00:14:55: And all these things that kind of made it more versatile.

00:14:58: So now the same component, the same underlying Apex component,

00:15:01: the same markup could be used in many, many, many different ways

00:15:06: to the user.

00:15:06: So there's a plugin structure in Apex

00:15:09: which provides people to contribute, kind of contribute.

00:15:13: Do you plan-- this is just coming out of my mind right

00:15:16: now--

00:15:17: are you planning to contribute visual representation

00:15:23: of items and regions as a contribution from the members.

00:15:27: Like I have an item and I have template components

00:15:30: and I saw it earlier in your presentation

00:15:32: that the page you were creating

00:15:33: were looking exactly like DoorDash

00:15:35: 'cause you have this hero image

00:15:38: and then you had this small image on top of that.

00:15:41: So it looks like the Twitter heading in the profile, right?

00:15:44: So I would never come to something like this

00:15:48: when I create an application.

00:15:50: I would love to have something like this

00:15:52: to be downloaded, put it into Apex,

00:15:54: and say, I have theme one for this page,

00:15:57: or I have theme two for this page.

00:15:59: And I have it in my space and say,

00:16:01: OK, I will have that like this, because Shakil provided us

00:16:05: a template option or template thing.

00:16:08: Are you planning to get more contributions in this?

00:16:13: With the introduction of template components

00:16:16: in Apex 23.1, I think we will start to see this.

00:16:20: So template components, it's really a feature

00:16:23: that Tim and I--

00:16:24: Tim leads the UI development for all of Apex.

00:16:28: This is a feature that we've been waiting for many, many,

00:16:31: many years.

00:16:31: Like, for the longest time, we sort of

00:16:33: had to live within the constraints

00:16:34: of the existing templating system and the templating

00:16:36: engine that we have.

00:16:37: And we enhanced it a few times over the years.

00:16:40: Like, the last big enhancement to the templating engine

00:16:43: has been with the addition of custom positions.

00:16:46: So now you can have any number of display positions

00:16:49: and what they support and so on.

00:16:50: And that was a monumental feature architected and developed

00:16:54: by Vincent and Patrick and many others.

00:16:58: And that's what led the way to have more flexibility

00:17:00: in Universal Theme, but also to build this Redwood theme

00:17:03: that we can talk about later.

00:17:04: With template components for the first time ever,

00:17:06: now we're able to build a UI component in Apex.

00:17:10: It's not tied to a lot of PL/SQL.

00:17:12: It's more tied to the HTML and the presentation of data.

00:17:17: And so now we're using the plugin architecture.

00:17:20: That means that you can have custom attributes.

00:17:22: So let's say you have this new component you want to build.

00:17:25: You want to build a restaurant application,

00:17:29: like a food delivery application,

00:17:30: and you want to show a block of all the cards.

00:17:33: You can use our cards component, but it's fairly generic.

00:17:35: But imagine you had a restaurant card component that

00:17:39: was optimized just for that one use case.

00:17:42: You have a cover photo, like a brand logo, the time

00:17:46: delivery, the ratings, the rating count,

00:17:52: right, like are you the pro member, all of those things

00:17:55: can be declarative attributes now. So when

00:17:56: you as a customer want to build this

00:17:58: application, you drag this, you know,

00:18:01: restaurant card component onto the

00:18:02: screen, you pick the right attributes,

00:18:05: they're all clearly labeled, and that's

00:18:07: it. You have your awesome component with

00:18:08: all the configuration options.

00:18:10: I heard an open mic night yesterday, some

00:18:12: guys were talking about something that

00:18:12: community will do in the future, in the next month. So there will be a template

00:18:17: component plug-in challenge. That's right. They told us. I have to

00:18:22: say it like this because I'm not in this position. There will be a challenge

00:18:27: where the community will be called to create exactly what

00:18:32: you already said, right? Like create a great template component that does one

00:18:37: job. It looks good, right? And it works like you're expecting it. And there will

00:18:42: be a jury that will vote for a rated.

00:18:46: And then it will be--

00:18:48: yeah, it has to be open source.

00:18:49: It has to be published to Apex World so everyone can see it.

00:18:52: So we give that all the guys who are doing that.

00:18:55: It's going to be an awesome template component

00:18:57: competition.

00:18:57: I'm really looking forward to it.

00:18:58: I'm looking forward to seeing what comes out of it.

00:19:00: Because I think for the first time,

00:19:02: we've enabled a much larger audience of people

00:19:06: to participate in this.

00:19:07: I think there's an entire class of developer

00:19:10: that is focused on HTML and CSS

00:19:13: that we're not really addressing with normal plugins.

00:19:17: Plugin development, plugins can be anything,

00:19:19: but with a template component,

00:19:20: you're really looking at a UI component perspective

00:19:23: and how to extend Apex.

00:19:25: So I think there's a huge future

00:19:28: for what people will do with this.

00:19:31: It's gonna be incredible.

00:19:32: - What comes in my mind at this is like what Ronny does

00:19:37: in the company before joining the Apex team,

00:19:38: like this big plugin loaded application.

00:19:43: And if I see all the different parts of the application,

00:19:46: the widgets, if they would be template components

00:19:50: from the visual part, and they were provided to everyone

00:19:54: out there, this would be a very great thing for Apex.

00:19:58: Because you have like--

00:19:59: - Game changer.

00:20:00: - Yeah, exactly.

00:20:01: That was basically what I was searching for.

00:20:04: So you get all the different plugins,

00:20:06: you have the visual representation you want to have.

00:20:08: So I saw so many nice plugins, but on the visual part,

00:20:11: there was just one bad styled select list,

00:20:14: which was not even matching the rest of Apex.

00:20:16: And it was so massively good in the background

00:20:20: with the PL/SQL, but the visual representation

00:20:22: was basically nothing.

00:20:24: And now we are getting plugins, and we would see them,

00:20:28: I think, after the template competition thing,

00:20:31: that we have like kind of a store thing

00:20:35: that you can watch through it in Apex world.

00:20:37: So you can see whatever, and each widget, and plugin,

00:20:40: and template component you want to use.

00:20:42: Just download it, put it into Apex, put a data source on it,

00:20:44: put some attributes on it.

00:20:46: And because it's in competition, they

00:20:48: will really try to get really great templates out there

00:20:52: with as many attributes as possible.

00:20:54: So it's very flexible, and you have it in Cilas.

00:20:57: I'm very looking forward to that.

00:20:59: It's going to be awesome.

00:21:00: I think it's really going to open up Apex a lot more

00:21:04: for people to build out UI components

00:21:06: and having them be reusable, right?

00:21:08: The architecture is all the same.

00:21:10: People will be very familiar with it

00:21:11: from a plugin perspective,

00:21:12: but it's gonna be so much easier to build these things out

00:21:15: and it's gonna be awesome.

00:21:16: I'm looking forward to it.

00:21:17: - I mean, you are going to present

00:21:20: at every single conference, right?

00:21:22: So Ronny was talking about that Apex Connect

00:21:25: and they know and they get a feeling how big this is.

00:21:28: But with the competition, we give it a headstart

00:21:30: and just accelerate that to--

00:21:33: - Yeah, let's get the best and brightest folks on it, right?

00:21:35: people that really understand Apex and have them go nuts.

00:21:38: I think we have sort of unlocked this potential and what I see coming from this is

00:21:43: there's a lot of websites right now where you can sort of look at like

00:21:45: Preact components, React components or other other type of UI components out there.

00:21:50: And now we're sort of bringing that to Apex.

00:21:52: Even if you were just to take like here's a top React components out there.

00:21:57: How could we surface this in Apex?

00:21:59: It's the same UI component, same UI visualization but now in a way that's

00:22:02: wrappered in all the Apex plugin goodness.

00:22:06: So an Apex developer, all they have to do

00:22:08: is drag and drop it, select some attributes,

00:22:10: do the thing that they're used to doing,

00:22:12: building Apex apps in a low-code declarative fashion,

00:22:15: and they get this awesome result at the end of the day.

00:22:18: I'm looking forward to that, and give it a head start,

00:22:21: and see how this community will grow and contribute to that.

00:22:24: So yeah, we already talked about the Universal Theme

00:22:27: and everything that's happening right now.

00:22:29: But let's take a step back.

00:22:31: So you're now an Oracle architect, right?

00:22:33: So we can talk about that in a few minutes,

00:22:36: but let's see at the beginning of your career.

00:22:38: What did you do?

00:22:39: How did you start with web development?

00:22:41: How did it all start before getting into Oracle?

00:22:44: - That's a really good question.

00:22:46: And it's gonna take some time to kind of go back

00:22:49: in memory lane a bit.

00:22:50: - Definitely, yeah, please.

00:22:51: - It all started like, I really,

00:22:54: I had my first computer way back, I don't know,

00:22:57: in '99, something like that, I guess.

00:23:00: So it wasn't, it's been a while.

00:23:03: So I was just fascinated by computers, right?

00:23:06: And I just spent every waking hour on the computer

00:23:09: doing whatever I could.

00:23:10: Like a lot of other kids, I guess, you know,

00:23:12: getting a new toy.

00:23:13: And so with the web, like one thing that I somehow,

00:23:17: I just gravitated towards was really good UI,

00:23:21: really good design.

00:23:23: And for a long time,

00:23:24: I always had a Windows computer growing up.

00:23:28: And I always looked at the Macs

00:23:29: and the design of Mac.

00:23:31: And I always found that very appealing.

00:23:33: It was very aesthetically well designed.

00:23:36: And so in the early 2000s,

00:23:38: I had this website called aquaXP.com.

00:23:41: And actually, it's a funny story.

00:23:43: Tim, who leads UX and Tim Kimbrell,

00:23:46: he and I knew each other,

00:23:48: we've known each other for 20 plus years.

00:23:49: And he had the competitor website, AquaSoft.

00:23:52: - Okay.

00:23:53: - And our mission, the mission of both of these websites

00:23:56: was to make your Windows XP computer,

00:23:59: Windows XP machine, look like a Mac.

00:24:01: - Oh, it could be that I was even on those websites

00:24:06: because I was exactly trying to do that back in the days.

00:24:08: - Yeah, so people would have like the little dock

00:24:10: application, the start menu would move to the top,

00:24:13: you had all these little applications

00:24:14: to like the Windows theme styles and so on.

00:24:17: So that's sort of where this whole thing started, right?

00:24:20: Like my interest in design came from looking at Apple

00:24:23: and their design, like you know,

00:24:24: the stuff that they're able to do.

00:24:26: I look at Windows applications and somehow I didn't find,

00:24:28: like I didn't think they were as well designed.

00:24:31: So we built this website,

00:24:32: like I built this website called AquaXP

00:24:34: and I remember talking to somebody on the internet,

00:24:36: you know, this is when forums were really big

00:24:38: and I was talking to somebody and I found some people

00:24:39: to help me work on it.

00:24:41: And at the time I was using Dreamweaver,

00:24:42: I didn't really understand HTML,

00:24:44: but someone told me that,

00:24:46: "Hey, your HTML, you don't have to use Dreamweaver for this.

00:24:48: You know, you can actually write the HTML.

00:24:50: It'd be so much cleaner and easier and whatever."

00:24:53: So I started looking into writing HTML

00:24:55: writing CSS and customizing things.

00:24:57: And it sort of naturally grew from there,

00:25:00: from building websites.

00:25:02: You know, I would like, you know,

00:25:04: have a number of websites where I use like Google AdSense

00:25:06: to generate a couple of, you know, a couple of dollars

00:25:08: here and there as like a high school student or whatever.

00:25:11: So since then, you know,

00:25:13: I've sort of had this personal interest.

00:25:15: And so when I went to college,

00:25:16: I didn't actually study web design or web development

00:25:19: because I thought like, hey, I already know those skills

00:25:21: or I can learn that on my own time.

00:25:23: So when I went to college, I studied systems engineering.

00:25:27: And before I got to college, there was a competition

00:25:31: that Oracle had.

00:25:32: So in the United States, a lot of kids,

00:25:35: they will participate in extracurricular activities.

00:25:38: So I was never really much of a sports person,

00:25:42: or I didn't really have so many extracurriculars.

00:25:44: I was really like a geek sitting at home with a computer.

00:25:46: But one thing I could do is build websites.

00:25:49: So there was a website building competition

00:25:50: sponsored by Oracle called ThinkQuest.

00:25:53: - Okay.

00:25:54: - And so I thought, well, me and a few other buddies,

00:25:56: like we got together and I said,

00:25:58: hey, I can design the website.

00:25:59: You guys can take care of all the content,

00:26:01: all the scientific research and all the hard stuff.

00:26:04: I'll do the website.

00:26:05: So we built this website.

00:26:06: It was called the Nth Dimension.

00:26:08: It was all about the string theory

00:26:10: and about unifying the concepts of general relativity,

00:26:13: of which is for really, really massive objects

00:26:15: to quantum mechanics and quantum physics,

00:26:18: which are super tiny, minuscule atomic particles.

00:26:20: And how do you join the two together?

00:26:21: There's a thing called string theory.

00:26:23: And so we built this website around string theory.

00:26:26: We submitted it to the competition

00:26:28: and we won in the competition.

00:26:32: So we didn't win first place or second place.

00:26:33: I think we won like third place.

00:26:34: But even then we won third place.

00:26:36: We got to go to open world at the time.

00:26:38: This is like 2005.

00:26:40: I think this is ThinkQuest Live 2005.

00:26:42: And that was really my first, you know,

00:26:46: exposure to Oracle, right?

00:26:48: To the Oracle as the company.

00:26:50: I've always heard of Oracle in some distant regard.

00:26:54: Oracle is not a consumer company.

00:26:56: They're a B2B company.

00:26:57: But this competition, which was to help me get into college

00:27:00: and my college application, really

00:27:02: gave me a career at Oracle, which is pretty incredible

00:27:05: to think about it now.

00:27:06: So this is encouraging our listeners,

00:27:08: even if they don't know where to go.

00:27:09: So just go to competitions, learn new companies.

00:27:13: It all started from a competition.

00:27:15: It was a website building.

00:27:16: Now it can be template component.

00:27:18: You never know.

00:27:18: So to be clear, you don't have to make a website

00:27:20: about string theory,

00:27:21: because this is very geeky and very nerdy.

00:27:23: I think you're very into this topic,

00:27:26: but I think there are competitions out there

00:27:28: where you can reach out.

00:27:29: Even those, the template component challenge,

00:27:32: I think this is another competition

00:27:35: where you can reach out to many--

00:27:37: - A bit more niche, but absolutely.

00:27:38: - Yeah.

00:27:39: - So that's how I really got into Oracle.

00:27:41: I attended Open World as a student,

00:27:43: and they had some cool activities there.

00:27:46: And I actually still work with people today on the Apex team

00:27:51: that have seen from Oracle at the time

00:27:56: when I was there as a student at that competition.

00:27:58: So anyway, competition's done,

00:28:02: Oracle sends an email out to some of the winners saying,

00:28:04: "Hey, we have internships available

00:28:06: "for the winners of these competitions to review

00:28:08: "and vet the websites that people submitted and created."

00:28:10: So I applied for the internship.

00:28:13: It was very close to where I lived,

00:28:15: which is near Reston, and there's an Oracle office

00:28:18: over there, so I got the internship.

00:28:21: I just told them, hey, I can't work full-time,

00:28:22: can I have fewer hours?

00:28:25: So I worked there for, I don't know,

00:28:27: it was supposed to be a two-month internship,

00:28:28: I probably worked for three, four months.

00:28:29: They liked my work, and then they extended my contract,

00:28:32: so I turned into a contractor for the next,

00:28:35: I don't know, two and a half years

00:28:36: as I was going through college.

00:28:38: So I remember I would finish up my classes,

00:28:41: and I would go into the office two days a week,

00:28:43: and the other days I would come in at 6pm

00:28:45: and leave at 9pm or something.

00:28:47: - Yeah, okay.

00:28:48: - It was awesome.

00:28:49: - But it was good money, right?

00:28:50: - It was pretty good money for an intern.

00:28:52: - Yeah.

00:28:53: - Yeah, I was super happy.

00:28:55: And I was at a computer,

00:28:56: I was learning web development and stuff.

00:28:59: And that was my first exposure to Apex as well,

00:29:01: during that time when I was a contractor.

00:29:03: So even today, for example,

00:29:06: Alan Citterson, Vlad, David Bliss,

00:29:11: many others on the Apex team,

00:29:13: They were on the Oracle Education Foundation team

00:29:15: and I've worked with them during my contracting days at Oracle.

00:29:19: Yeah, wow.

00:29:21: Awesome.

00:29:21: So you started-- you call it like web developer at Oracle

00:29:24: in 2006, right?

00:29:26: That's right.

00:29:27: So there are two-- almost three years.

00:29:29: And then there's a break, right?

00:29:31: That's right.

00:29:31: Is it a real break or is it just doing something--

00:29:33: It's an interesting break.

00:29:35: So my contract was coming to an end.

00:29:37: And I had to find a place to go.

00:29:40: I was about to graduate college.

00:29:42: This is 2009, and I interviewed with the Apex team.

00:29:47: So I interviewed with Mike Hitchwa and Mark and Joel.

00:29:52: I believe Patrick was just hired recently,

00:29:53: so Patrick was in Reston as well.

00:29:55: I believe Jason Straub was there.

00:29:57: So there's a handful of people from the Apex team in Reston,

00:30:00: and I go up to the eighth floor,

00:30:01: that's where Mike's office was.

00:30:02: Like there's a conference room in the back.

00:30:03: I kind of meet with the team,

00:30:05: you know, talked about what I could do.

00:30:07: I remember talking to Mike and he kind of said like,

00:30:09: "Hey, so show me what you've done with Apex."

00:30:11: And I was working on this app called think.com at the time,

00:30:16: which was part of the Education Foundation.

00:30:18: But anyway, I think they liked me,

00:30:20: but didn't like me enough that they could hire me

00:30:22: at the time because there was a big hiring freeze at Oracle.

00:30:26: So I couldn't get a job on the Apex team, so that's okay.

00:30:31: I was already contracting with another company,

00:30:33: another web consulting company right across the street.

00:30:35: So they gave me a full-time offer, I took that,

00:30:38: And three weeks later, I have a chat with Mike.

00:30:42: He says, "Hey, I really wanna bring you on

00:30:44: "to help us with some special projects.

00:30:46: "Would you be interested?"

00:30:49: I said, "Yeah, that sounds really interesting."

00:30:51: And Mike sort of sold me on Oracle

00:30:53: by saying it's a large company

00:30:55: and there's a lot of opportunity here.

00:30:57: And by the way, look at the garage.

00:30:59: There's really nice cars in the garage.

00:31:02: - Great, yeah, that's a way to get people, right?

00:31:04: So you were like seven months in a different company,

00:31:07: but already like three weeks after you started

00:31:11: at the company, you were already at Oracle, right?

00:31:13: - That's right, that's right.

00:31:15: Yeah, it was an interesting time.

00:31:17: Like this is my first full-time job out of college.

00:31:20: I'm at this company and three weeks into it,

00:31:22: two weeks into it, I already know that I'm gonna be

00:31:23: leaving to this other thing when Oracle has,

00:31:26: they're hiring FreezeLift and they have an open headcount.

00:31:29: So I still enjoyed working at this company.

00:31:31: I was the first engineering hire at this company

00:31:32: called Perfect Sense Digital, which is now

00:31:34: the creators of Brightspot, the popular CMS system.

00:31:39: But yeah, then I joined Oracle full time in November 2009.

00:31:45: And I worked on the Oracle Store project for several months,

00:31:49: making sure the UI of that--

00:31:51: really focusing on the UI of that application.

00:31:55: But I also worked a lot with Mike

00:31:56: on some of the Apex 4 UI things here and there.

00:32:00: And that's how I started getting into themes.

00:32:02: Then come Kscope in, I believe, June 2010,

00:32:06: it was in Washington, DC, which is local to me.

00:32:08: - Just around the corner, right?

00:32:09: - Right.

00:32:10: And that's when, you know, I was already working with Mark

00:32:13: on some themes and so on,

00:32:14: and we thought it'd be kind of nice

00:32:15: to have a co-presentation together.

00:32:17: So Mark and I did a presentation together.

00:32:19: It was my first ever presentation from Oracle

00:32:22: at a public conference.

00:32:25: And I talked, and I walked people through

00:32:26: how to customize their theme using Photoshop

00:32:30: and updating all the images and the CSS

00:32:32: to have a new look and feel.

00:32:34: And that was 2010 June.

00:32:36: - So you were all in UI stuff

00:32:39: and you started like what you said,

00:32:42: but now you're an architect.

00:32:43: So an architect does more than just UI work, right?

00:32:46: So what changed between when we learned to know each other

00:32:51: when you just created the Universal Theme until now?

00:32:54: What happened in between?

00:32:56: - So I think that my career sort of changed

00:33:00: from UI development and getting into the weeds of the UI

00:33:05: to applying that UI.

00:33:08: So we built this universal theme.

00:33:10: And I still worked on it.

00:33:11: That was really my primary area of development.

00:33:14: But there's a lot of things that we do on the Apex team

00:33:17: and a lot of projects that Mike gets asked to work on

00:33:22: or signs us up for.

00:33:24: So I'll get thrown into projects here.

00:33:26: And they're like, hey, there's an internal application.

00:33:29: to really update the UI of this thing.

00:33:30: Oh, there's this application that we want to build.

00:33:32: Let's go and work on that.

00:33:33: Hey, Shakib, can you look at the UI of this application?

00:33:36: So as we started to go and build more and more

00:33:38: of these applications or update the UI of these things--

00:33:41: for example, I worked on the Ask Tom refresh of the UI.

00:33:44: This is several, several years ago now.

00:33:46: But before that, it was a very classic application.

00:33:49: I remember that, yeah.

00:33:51: And then we updated it to universal theme

00:33:53: and had some custom things here and there.

00:33:56: And so progressively over time, I started working more on special projects and building

00:34:03: Apex applications rather than building the UI capabilities for Apex.

00:34:08: And then we also grew our team over the years.

00:34:11: So we were able to get really talented people.

00:34:13: There's no way I would be able to do what I'm doing now if I didn't have somebody like

00:34:17: Tim that's really taken on a lot of my development responsibilities from actual universal theme

00:34:24: development, the builder UI development, and many other special project

00:34:28: development. So that allowed me to use my time to work on these other strategic

00:34:32: projects to Oracle. And I think that really led its way to the pandemic when

00:34:39: Apex was really, you know, a big fat spotlight which was shown on Apex.

00:34:45: That was one special project I wanted to talk about because you said you're

00:34:49: working on this and that and however, whichever project Mark is signing up

00:34:54: for, there was one big project you were working on, right?

00:34:57: So the COVID applications for the United States, I think.

00:35:01: And there was kind of Larry Ellison, a couple of talks to a guy and was

00:35:07: promising that we will do it for a very cheap price, very quick at most.

00:35:11: Oh boy.

00:35:12: Yep.

00:35:12: Right.

00:35:13: So, so let me tell you a little bit of back story on this.

00:35:14: Yeah, please.

00:35:15: So let's rewind the clock to the pandemic, right?

00:35:19: Like this is for us, like really the, the pandemic really hit when the

00:35:23: lockdown started. And I believe this happened in the United States in mid-March.

00:35:27: So I remember actually going into the office in like March,

00:35:32: I don't know, like mid-March, early March. And we're talking about the pandemic.

00:35:36: And we're like, is this a real thing? We're not really sure.

00:35:39: Maybe there was a conference coming up in the UK. I was like, yeah,

00:35:42: maybe I can go. I don't know. It seems kind of sketchy. Right.

00:35:45: I remember talking to Kyle on the team and he was saying, Hey,

00:35:48: should we really be coming into the office? Like, I don't know. And I thought,

00:35:52: maybe like I'm not really sure yet but seems to be fine.

00:35:56: We go home that weekend,

00:35:58: Saffra sends us out, Saffra CEO of Oracle,

00:36:01: sends an email to all Oracle employees saying,

00:36:03: all Oracle offices are closed indefinitely.

00:36:07: - Okay. - Right?

00:36:08: Three days into-- - Full lockdown.

00:36:10: - Like full lockdown,

00:36:11: three days into that work from home situation,

00:36:13: this is March 18th,

00:36:17: about like 9 p.m.

00:36:19: I get a text message from Chris Rice

00:36:21: and it's sent to Joel Coleman and myself.

00:36:24: And he says, guys, we got to hop on a Zoom soon.

00:36:29: And that's when this whole thing started.

00:36:31: We hopped on the Zoom call.

00:36:32: Mike is already on there.

00:36:34: There's a few other folks on.

00:36:36: And we had just learned that Oracle had promised the US

00:36:41: government that we would build a system

00:36:43: to track the efficacy of early stage COVID-19 treatments

00:36:47: and that we would have the system live

00:36:49: by the end of the weekend or in a couple of days.

00:36:53: And of course, we were going to build it all in Apex.

00:36:55: Yeah, of course.

00:36:56: Of course, there's no technology left

00:36:58: that you could use for such a short deadline.

00:37:02: And then you started developing.

00:37:04: So I remember that they said that you were working closely

00:37:06: to Larry for the UI, or was it just Mike?

00:37:09: And Mike was reporting to Larry to get this design up

00:37:13: and running.

00:37:14: Well, that was an interesting time.

00:37:15: So we got on the call at 9 PM.

00:37:17: The first thing we do, just like any other Apex developer,

00:37:20: I'm sure if I talked to you together,

00:37:22: we would say, "Hey, we wanna build an app.

00:37:23: "What's the first thing you do?"

00:37:24: You probably go to QuickSQL,

00:37:25: you put together a data model, right?

00:37:27: - Exactly.

00:37:27: - So I have screenshots of,

00:37:28: like, "Hey, let's go to QuickSQL,

00:37:29: "let's look up these terms."

00:37:30: We were on, you know, we had a few scientists on the call.

00:37:33: You have to believe, like, Andy Mendelsohn

00:37:35: was on the call as well, right?

00:37:36: And Juan Loiza, and you know, these are executives,

00:37:38: and I'm sharing my screen just because, you know,

00:37:40: I just happened to have my screen up,

00:37:42: and I'm like, "Hey, let's go build a data model

00:37:43: really quickly and started building these apps.

00:37:45: And a couple of days, we had an app ready to share.

00:37:49: And we hop on a call.

00:37:54: I've never been on a Larry call in my life.

00:37:56: And Mike wants me to join the call as well.

00:38:02: We join and we give an update.

00:38:04: Larry turns to Mike and says,

00:38:06: "Okay, Mike, can you share the app that you've built?"

00:38:10: And Mike says, "Sure, Larry.

00:38:11: I'm going to pass it on to Shakib to demo the application.

00:38:15: Oh, I can just imagine how you felt in this moment.

00:38:18: Yeah, it was an interesting moment.

00:38:20: Probably the best time I've ever been put on the spot like that.

00:38:23: Yeah.

00:38:24: And so honestly, I said, all right,

00:38:26: and we walked through the application.

00:38:30: And Larry had some good feedback for us.

00:38:34: And at that moment, you sort of disregard for the moment

00:38:39: that this is the executive leadership of Oracle.

00:38:43: And it's not just Larry on the call.

00:38:45: It's really the entire executive leadership team.

00:38:48: And this is-- just to take a step back,

00:38:52: I've never seen an effort like this

00:38:54: where the entire company has come together

00:38:56: towards a singular purpose.

00:38:59: I think the pandemic really impacted all of us.

00:39:02: And everyone was under lockdown.

00:39:04: And we're trying to see what can we

00:39:06: do to help in this situation.

00:39:08: And I think the Oracle leadership team really

00:39:10: understood that.

00:39:11: And that's why they pushed us to say,

00:39:13: how can we use our technology for good?

00:39:15: How can we use the capability, the staff that we have,

00:39:19: the products and technology that we have,

00:39:21: to help in this fight against this pandemic?

00:39:25: And one thing that I think Oracle does really good

00:39:27: is understand data, make sense of data,

00:39:30: report on that data, so that others

00:39:33: can make better decisions.

00:39:34: And that's really what all we were building.

00:39:37: we're collecting, the application is quite simple.

00:39:40: It's basically a simple survey application

00:39:42: that any doctor could sign up for,

00:39:44: and they may be giving early stage COVID-19 treatment

00:39:47: for their patients, and we wanna know,

00:39:49: is that early stage treatment gonna work or not?

00:39:51: Right, so it's a simple screen.

00:39:52: It's like, hey, does your patient feel better, worse,

00:39:55: or the same as they did yesterday?

00:39:57: Right?

00:39:58: - I mean, if I compare this,

00:40:00: at the beginning of developing this application,

00:40:02: like you have one POC, for example, in the end of a weekend,

00:40:06: And I compare that to Germany.

00:40:08: So we had one application that was used to track each other.

00:40:13: So the devices were communicating.

00:40:15: Like contact tracing.

00:40:16: Exactly.

00:40:17: And this was a conglomerate between Telekom, SAP,

00:40:23: and I think there were a couple of others.

00:40:26: And they used so much time, and they used millions,

00:40:30: millions of money just to create the app

00:40:32: and to push it out in the store.

00:40:34: And there were errors in that, and there were problems.

00:40:36: I said, okay, you are working on Apex applications

00:40:38: to make something else regarding COVID happen in the US,

00:40:42: but this should have been the point

00:40:45: where someone else says, we can do that with Apex.

00:40:47: Of course, you need what's coming right now,

00:40:50: like PWA and stuff,

00:40:52: and then you need an API from the phone itself, right?

00:40:55: But if it's just the visual part,

00:40:57: like an application that is accessible,

00:40:59: where you can enter your data in, maybe a contact--

00:41:01: - Honestly, it's no different than any other application

00:41:03: that any of our customers have ever built, right?

00:41:05: We were basically building a form to collect data that's going to go into an Oracle database.

00:41:10: At the end of it, that's all this is.

00:41:12: And we've done these applications for years and years and years.

00:41:16: And all of our customers have done them.

00:41:17: And they've built mission critical systems across the globe.

00:41:20: So when we got this call to build this app, it was like, it was no big,

00:41:25: like it wasn't as like this monumental task, right?

00:41:28: We already had like the apex application development capabilities.

00:41:33: Like, we were confident we could do this.

00:41:35: Like, there was not a moment of doubt in our minds

00:41:38: that can we deliver this or not, right?

00:41:40: The technology was there.

00:41:42: There was not a moment of doubt that do we have a cloud?

00:41:45: Do we have infrastructure to deploy this application?

00:41:47: Like, this is very sensitive health data, right?

00:41:50: Health, private information, it has

00:41:53: to be treated with very, very strict security controls.

00:41:57: And the Oracle database is the underlying sort

00:42:00: of platform for these applications.

00:42:02: it's used across the globe in these capacities every day.

00:42:05: So we had a technology footprint.

00:42:07: It was just a matter of getting the folks together,

00:42:09: understand the requirements and building an application,

00:42:11: which is the same thing that happens

00:42:13: at every single customer site.

00:42:14: So our customer in this case

00:42:16: just happens to be the US government

00:42:18: and the project manager for this project

00:42:20: happens to be Larry Ellison.

00:42:22: - Yeah, and I think this leads Larry to the conclusion

00:42:27: or to the idea that APEX is the best solution, right?

00:42:30: So I had many stories, I heard many stories about

00:42:33: how he proceeded and asked other teams

00:42:35: why they're not able to be that fast, right?

00:42:41: - So what happened was, we had a number

00:42:43: of these design review meetings.

00:42:45: And in one of the meetings,

00:42:46: there was a lot of UI feedback, right?

00:42:49: And normally, you would pause, you'd take some notes,

00:42:53: and you'd say, all right, we'll come back in a week or two,

00:42:56: and we'll action the feedback, and then we can review again.

00:42:59: Instead, what we did was we said,

00:43:02: let's make these changes live.

00:43:04: So we started making these changes,

00:43:05: and I've said the story again and again,

00:43:07: and I love telling the story,

00:43:08: because it's the same story that happens

00:43:10: at customer sites with normal Apex developers

00:43:12: every single day.

00:43:13: You sit with your customer,

00:43:14: you ask them, what do you want to do?

00:43:16: Do you want to say this?

00:43:17: Do you want to move it around here?

00:43:19: And so if you ask an executive,

00:43:22: hey, can I have three hours of your time

00:43:23: to do a demo of my product?

00:43:26: Hell no, you're not gonna get that time.

00:43:28: But if you sit there and say, hey,

00:43:30: do you want to work on this application together?

00:43:31: And whatever you say, we can make it happen right now

00:43:34: in real time.

00:43:35: And that's exactly what happened.

00:43:37: So for three hours, we did this back and forth.

00:43:39: And I think that, and it wasn't just us working together

00:43:43: with Larry and other professionals there.

00:43:46: It was the entire executive leadership team

00:43:49: that witnessed this happening.

00:43:51: And I think that was a pivotal moment for Apex

00:43:54: and the way that Oracle looks at Apex today.

00:43:57: That was really the start.

00:43:58: And that was just in the early days.

00:43:59: We then went on to build a lot of other pandemic apps,

00:44:02: and probably the most famous one being

00:44:04: v-safe, which has been used by nearly 11 million people

00:44:07: and has reported 159-something million patient-reported

00:44:11: outcomes.

00:44:11: And that application, the success of that application,

00:44:15: has really led to a lot more investment in APEX,

00:44:19: a lot more attention paid to APEX,

00:44:21: and APEX now being used as the strategic tool

00:44:25: to build applications across the Oracle industries

00:44:28: and for the Oracle, you know, Sterner acquisition.

00:44:31: - Yeah, so Larry is heavily investing in Apex right now.

00:44:36: So we see almost in any part of the community,

00:44:40: people joining you guys in the development team, right?

00:44:44: So you got Vincent back in the days,

00:44:46: the Menno joined the team.

00:44:47: - Sure, rock stars.

00:44:50: - Yeah, exactly.

00:44:50: They are coming into your development team.

00:44:54: So we don't have the possibility to show a safe harbor statement right now.

00:44:57: I mean, everything you are saying here doesn't...

00:44:59: Big fat safe harbor.

00:45:00: Exactly. We just print it on a screen or something.

00:45:03: But if you are visiting or if you're looking into the future of Apex,

00:45:08: like maybe 10 years, 15 years, what would be the leading aspect for you?

00:45:14: What points to follow, right?

00:45:16: So what do you think Apex will become in the next 10 to 15 years?

00:45:22: Wow, that's a tough question to answer.

00:45:27: My event horizon is not 10, 15 years.

00:45:31: Let's stick to five years.

00:45:33: Five years is more reasonable.

00:45:35: I feel like Apex has a lot of challenges ahead and I feel like we're going to address them

00:45:42: head on and as best we can, as we've always done.

00:45:45: I think what really changed now more than anything is that I believe Oracle has seen

00:45:51: what it has in Apex and is acting on it.

00:45:56: For the vast majority of our customers and our partners in the Apex community, they've

00:46:01: always sort of seen this, so to say, "magic" of Apex and what it can do to their companies

00:46:09: and their organizations and their application development processes.

00:46:12: Oracle now gets it.

00:46:15: And there's a lot more investment in Apex.

00:46:16: And that's why we have, our team has been growing.

00:46:20: and like the Vincents and Manos and Ronnies and others,

00:46:23: these are individuals that are supremely talented.

00:46:28: And in order to move at the pace that we need to move,

00:46:31: we need to have this caliber of talent.

00:46:33: And this applies to everybody on the Apex team.

00:46:36: I think we've been really fortunate to assemble a team

00:46:38: of just incredible rock stars

00:46:41: that are so humble and down to earth.

00:46:44: And that's part of the reason why we love

00:46:45: coming to these conferences and talking to customers,

00:46:47: It's really, you know, it sort of gives us a lot of energy and drive.

00:46:50: So where I was going with this whole thing is in the next five years,

00:46:55: the next few years, you're going to see Apex tackle bigger and bigger problems.

00:47:00: And something that you've seen already for the past few years is that the

00:47:05: cadence of our Apex releases and the capabilities that we're providing with

00:47:09: every release is, you know, you're, you're seeing that accelerate the pace of

00:47:15: which new capabilities, new strong,

00:47:17: like really large fundamental changes to the Apex,

00:47:21: you know, functionality,

00:47:24: it's growing at a pace that's more than ever before.

00:47:27: And you're gonna see that continue.

00:47:28: Like the result of all these people joining the Apex team,

00:47:31: the FoEx acquisition, right?

00:47:33: You're gonna see that materialize in Apex,

00:47:36: and it's gonna be better for everyone, right?

00:47:39: The capabilities that we're not trying to build

00:47:42: applications aside and say,

00:47:43: hey, here's like some secret sauce

00:47:44: that we're going to use, we want to build it into the platform

00:47:49: so that all of our customers, including ourselves,

00:47:52: because I think we are one of our biggest customers, right?

00:47:54: We eat our own dog food.

00:47:56: We also benefit.

00:47:57: And we can also use our low-code approach

00:47:59: to build applications faster.

00:48:00: So that's where that whole continuous feedback loop

00:48:02: sort of comes in that I mentioned.

00:48:04: Yeah.

00:48:05: This was one last aspect I want to talk about.

00:48:08: So besides what I have--

00:48:11: another question about your personal inspiration,

00:48:13: let's talk about the continuous feedback loop you mentioned in your presentation.

00:48:16: So I think regarding the guys joining your team, they are all so passionate,

00:48:22: they are so into it and they were contributing to the product, to Apex

00:48:26: itself, using plugins or maybe just talking to you and give you the feedback

00:48:30: and they wouldn't just left their companies to join Oracle if they were

00:48:35: not so impressed by how you guys are working with us, right? So I can just

00:48:41: imagine that and Ronnie told us this in the last episode of Devs on Tape or the

00:48:47: recent one that he was just looking up to you guys and saying okay they are

00:48:51: coming to conferences, they are talking to us, they're completely next to

00:48:55: us right there. It's not just a team where you can send emails in to and wait for

00:49:00: something. Yeah exactly and then you're coming to conferences, you drink beer

00:49:04: together with us and we're talking about new features that the developers want to

00:49:08: have. And that's the reason you're just asking the guys and they say, of course I

00:49:11: would join your team. Right. And that's the way.

00:49:14: Well, hold on a minute. First of all, I don't think we're going to people asking

00:49:17: people to ask for, you know, hey, join the Apex team.

00:49:20: Right. But also I think a lot of it is that,

00:49:24: you know, we, the Apex community is something very, very special.

00:49:30: And I think Joel was really the catalyst for this,

00:49:35: right. The entire Apex community movement.

00:49:37: It was always about helping others

00:49:40: sort of succeed and do better, right?

00:49:42: And with the Apex community, I think,

00:49:43: whenever we talk to customers,

00:49:45: whenever we talk to people face-to-face

00:49:46: and they're using our product and they're using Apex

00:49:49: and trying to build something cool,

00:49:50: we learn a lot from that experience.

00:49:52: So actually, we are the people that gain the most

00:49:55: out of coming to these conferences,

00:49:57: and that's why we like to come here so much, right?

00:49:59: We love to talk to people that are using Apex

00:50:02: on a day-to-day, real-life basis

00:50:04: and understand what problems do they have,

00:50:07: What issues are they running into?

00:50:09: What is it that they want to do?

00:50:11: And we have the same at Oracle.

00:50:14: We have thousands of developers at Oracle that use Apex,

00:50:17: and we learn from a lot of them.

00:50:19: And that's how we make the product better,

00:50:20: is we have the same needs, the same challenges

00:50:24: of building applications that everybody else does.

00:50:26: And here's an opportunity to talk to

00:50:28: hundreds or thousands of customers

00:50:31: that are using your product to get that feedback direct.

00:50:34: Like it doesn't get any better.

00:50:35: So that's why I think the APEX development team will continue

00:50:38: to have this close relationship with the community.

00:50:42: Because in a way, we are also consumers of the product.

00:50:46: We're all developers.

00:50:48: We just happen to build APEX.

00:50:49: But we also build a lot of APEX applications.

00:50:51: Yeah.

00:50:52: And then you get the feedback, and you can improve APEX itself.

00:50:55: And then you get this relaunch, or this new generation

00:50:59: of the ideas app, to get new value, just feedback,

00:51:03: and this really feature requests.

00:51:05: So how many people are voting for one single feature you might not talk about

00:51:10: at a conference? And you said, okay, if there's so much,

00:51:14: like so many people wanting exactly this feature, we should talk about that.

00:51:19: And we, and I tweeted that, I think there was

00:51:23: Vincent talking about a guy from the community.

00:51:27: I think we can say it's Jürgen Schuster.

00:51:29: He was completely changing his mind, I think in a timeframe of only one year.

00:51:34: And that was the moment when you told us that you will consider to put more work

00:51:41: and energy on the ideas app and make it more transparent and change the way

00:51:46: the process of sending in an idea will ever be commended.

00:51:50: So if it's declined, it will be commended.

00:51:52: If it's accepted, then you will see how this idea will proceed into the product.

00:51:56: And I think everything

00:51:58: together in this continuous feedback loop, which is a great name, could be from Apple.

00:52:03: right? So like this is one feature or one thing you want to go

00:52:08: further with. It's the right thing to proceed. All right, so there's one

00:52:12: question left which is a little bit more personal. So obviously everyone who is

00:52:18: creative or who is doing like visual stuff has this inspirational source.

00:52:25: And I'm not saying that you're looking at bootstrap and building something similar.

00:52:29: system. So is there something between next to Apple obviously that is inspiring

00:52:35: you in your daily work? That's a tough question to answer

00:52:39: because I get inspiration from from every direction that I can. There's not

00:52:44: like one source that I turn to for inspiration. I think a lot of the

00:52:49: inspiration I get is from looking at what others are doing in the space and

00:52:54: and just trying to stay on top of what's happening

00:52:58: in the UX world and the UI world.

00:53:00: But it's not just limited to that,

00:53:01: it's also in the application development world.

00:53:03: Now AI is becoming a big thing.

00:53:06: I'm looking at ways, I think the entire,

00:53:08: I think pretty much every company is looking at ways

00:53:11: of how can we adopt AI?

00:53:13: And so long way of answering your question,

00:53:16: there's not a single point of inspiration.

00:53:18: I definitely look at Apple and I look at some of the leaders

00:53:21: in that consumer space, right?

00:53:24: But really, I also look at everything around us,

00:53:27: all the things that, we live in a golden age right now.

00:53:31: And I think with AI especially,

00:53:32: we're just getting started with AI.

00:53:36: And it's gonna fundamentally change

00:53:37: the way we interact with technology.

00:53:41: And it's gonna be orders of magnitude more significant

00:53:46: than the last thing that happened

00:53:49: with mobile devices and internet and so on.

00:53:51: And it's gonna be everywhere.

00:53:53: is going to be normal, right?

00:53:54: Just like in a way, if you look at Web 2.0

00:53:56: or responsive design, right?

00:53:58: For a while, those were like flashy terms, right?

00:54:00: Or cloud, I think cloud is still something that's,

00:54:04: you know, not completely uptaken by everybody,

00:54:06: but give it some period of time.

00:54:08: It's only a matter of time where it will only be cloud.

00:54:11: - It is cloud, right?

00:54:12: - Like nobody will want to maintain,

00:54:14: like you don't run your own power company

00:54:16: to generate power for your house, right?

00:54:18: You just pay a service and they just give it to you.

00:54:19: You don't run your own water, you know,

00:54:22: a treatment plant to have water, right?

00:54:24: So in the same way, you will just use the cloud

00:54:27: and AI will eventually be just one of those utilities.

00:54:30: It will just be there.

00:54:32: And I think we will progress a lot

00:54:35: and solve larger problems.

00:54:37: - So I'm glad that I said something safe,

00:54:40: Haba, kind of in the beginning,

00:54:42: because if you were saying it might be going

00:54:45: into the five year or 10 year or 15 year plan,

00:54:48: then that Apex gains some AI features.

00:54:53: I think it's not just Apex,

00:54:57: but I think everything will look at AI.

00:54:59: And I think Apex will be there,

00:55:00: and I want us to be leading in that space.

00:55:03: But it's really hard to say.

00:55:04: Like, I think AI right now means a lot of things

00:55:06: to a lot of people.

00:55:07: For a lot of people, it means chat GPT, right?

00:55:10: And I don't think you'll see,

00:55:11: at least I don't see, you know,

00:55:14: something that simple right now.

00:55:19: I think AI will fundamentally change the way that we're going to look at application development,

00:55:25: look at solving problems as a whole.

00:55:28: And for us on the Apex team, we're going to look at how do we continue to build a low-code,

00:55:34: how do we continue to solve problems, right?

00:55:36: And how do we do that in a way that's the easiest for someone to do?

00:55:39: And if that's using AI, awesome.

00:55:41: If that's using a new component or having template components,

00:55:44: people can kind of build out.

00:55:46: Imagine you're entering the source of an interactive grid

00:55:50: or an interactive report, and then you're not

00:55:53: writing SQL code, because this is the part in low,

00:55:56: which is not no code, like low code.

00:55:59: And then you hit the magic stick,

00:56:02: which is just generating SQL based on what you tell them.

00:56:06: I want to have the employees together with all the

00:56:08: departments, and I would like to know

00:56:10: where the salary is going up and down and whatever.

00:56:13: And the SQL query will be prepared for you, explained,

00:56:17: and then you save it.

00:56:18: - This is definitely something that Oracle is looking into.

00:56:21: There's the entire sort of focus group

00:56:25: looking into generative AI.

00:56:27: And I think Oracle as a company is diving into this space.

00:56:30: And there's gonna be a lot to come.

00:56:32: - It's based on data, right?

00:56:33: Who should be better in data stuff than Oracle, right?

00:56:38: All right, so inspiration, your gut source is like everywhere.

00:56:41: So trying to be on top of that, get everything from like newsletters, Twitter and so on.

00:56:46: This is a question later on.

00:56:48: But do you have a concrete idol?

00:56:51: Concrete is basically the way we work on that, right?

00:56:54: So do you have an idol, like in a person?

00:56:57: And it's not Johnny Ive?

00:56:58: No, it's not Johnny Ive.

00:57:01: And I don't have an idol.

00:57:03: Like I look at everyone for inspiration.

00:57:06: Yeah.

00:57:07: That's good.

00:57:08: I was guessing it's Johnny because of his vision of building things like visual presentation.

00:57:16: All right.

00:57:18: So we're now at the point where we could talk like days, I guess, because there happened

00:57:26: so much.

00:57:27: I would like to ask you some questions from our categories.

00:57:31: This is the way we try to compare our guests from different areas of the world and different

00:57:36: technical corners.

00:57:37: So I have a couple of questions from the hypothetically category.

00:57:44: So if you could undo one technological trend in the past, what would it be?

00:57:50: Oh, this is an easy one for me.

00:57:53: I think it would be social media.

00:57:55: Okay.

00:57:56: I just feel like the proliferation of misinformation and just like people being just hooked on

00:58:05: their devices because of the next update or whatever, I feel like that could be tamed

00:58:12: a bit more.

00:58:13: So that's something that I would undo.

00:58:15: Great.

00:58:16: So and the direct opposite, hypothetically, what would you like to invent and create in

00:58:21: in the future in the technological sector

00:58:24: that's not already existing?

00:58:26: - It's hard to answer this because I think

00:58:29: there's a lot of technology that exists already.

00:58:32: I'm not sure if I would like to create anything new.

00:58:34: I don't have like a novel idea,

00:58:35: but what I would like to do is I would like

00:58:37: to make technology more accessible to more people.

00:58:40: I think we're very privileged to be

00:58:42: in very advanced economies,

00:58:44: and I'd like for the rest of the world

00:58:45: to also be able to have the same access to technology

00:58:49: and be able to be more productive and, you know.

00:58:54: - Great, so you were saying in the question before

00:58:56: that you would undo social media.

00:58:58: So, the next category is in private.

00:59:02: Would you show us your screen time

00:59:03: on your iPhone without blushing?

00:59:05: So, are you kind of a zombie,

00:59:06: which is like a mixture of a zombie and a smartphone?

00:59:11: Smartphone zombie?

00:59:12: - No, you can totally,

00:59:14: I will happily show the screen time on my phone.

00:59:18: I don't think I'm addicted to my phone.

00:59:20: I'm terrible when it comes to text messaging and using social media.

00:59:24: I haven't used social media like Twitter even for a long time.

00:59:29: I try not to be tethered.

00:59:31: If I am tethered to it, it's probably checking email or something boring.

00:59:36: So I will talk to you if I see you at a conference, on the conference, looking at the device and

00:59:40: not working.

00:59:41: Yeah, but most likely I'm probably looking up like slick deals.

00:59:45: Yeah, okay.

00:59:46: Great.

00:59:47: Next question from the in private category.

00:59:50: Are you satisfied with your work-life balance?

00:59:53: - That's a really good question

00:59:56: because I think a lot of people

00:59:58: sort of have to make a trade-off at some point, right?

01:00:01: Like what is work, what is life,

01:00:02: and how do you sort of balance that?

01:00:04: For me, I think I lean way more towards the work side

01:00:09: and I'm trying to address that a little bit.

01:00:11: I definitely want to have,

01:00:13: like working and being part of this team

01:00:16: gives me a lot of purpose and satisfaction.

01:00:20: But I definitely work more than I probably should.

01:00:24: - Yeah, we had one guest answering this question

01:00:27: with there is no work-life balance,

01:00:30: but there's a work-life blending.

01:00:32: Because there are, yeah, parts of the work

01:00:36: which are so into, like, equals the hobby of the guest.

01:00:40: - That's true, that's a good way of putting it.

01:00:42: I think it's a work-life harmony more than anything.

01:00:45: Because a lot of what I do defines me as a person.

01:00:50: So it's hard to think if you take away my role

01:00:55: or what I do for work, it defines a big part of me.

01:01:00: - Yeah, so when you're sitting on the couch in the evening

01:01:02: and opening your laptop and creating an Apex application,

01:01:05: even if it's for private things or just exploring,

01:01:08: it might be some-- - It's not work.

01:01:09: - Yeah, it's not work, right?

01:01:10: So this is-- - It's more of a hobby

01:01:12: type of thing, it's an interest.

01:01:13: - Yeah, I think this is exactly what makes us good

01:01:17: in our job because there's no separation

01:01:20: between those two.

01:01:21: - It's interesting, there's a quote

01:01:22: that was attributed to me.

01:01:27: And they said that, this is actually Larry,

01:01:29: and he said, we were on a call some time ago,

01:01:32: and he said, "This is the life you've chosen."

01:01:35: And I love that quote because I can apply it

01:01:38: to a lot of things.

01:01:41: In a way, it's not like I'm forced to do this.

01:01:44: No one's forced to do that. At least I hope not.

01:01:47: But somehow you sort of enjoy it and you make it your life.

01:01:51: Yeah, sure. And you get the best out of it.

01:01:54: Right. So the next question, again, from in private.

01:01:57: I like those ones.

01:01:58: This one's

01:02:00: what role does your private environment play in your job?

01:02:02: So are you surrounded by geeks or are you surrounded by just completely people

01:02:08: completely other fields?

01:02:10: I'm not surrounded by geeks in my day-to-day personal life, I guess.

01:02:16: I would probably say I'm probably the most geeky one of all of them,

01:02:19: which is kind of refreshing in a way, like just to kind of see how normal people

01:02:24: who work and function, but in my private environment,

01:02:28: like, you know, I think I basically live on Zoom, right?

01:02:33: So when you're on Zoom with me,

01:02:34: you have a window into my house, into my life in a way.

01:02:38: Yeah, but it's refreshing to not just talk to people who are doing the same job.

01:02:43: Right. So you can even if you just turn off Zoom,

01:02:48: then you can really just think of every other thing besides work.

01:02:52: Right. That's right.

01:02:53: All right. Next category is consumption.

01:02:55: How do you consume news and new knowledge?

01:02:58: Are the newsletters, Twitters, books, maybe the Devs on Tape podcast or magazines?

01:03:03: Definitely the Devs on Tape podcast, for sure.

01:03:06: I do listen to podcasts when I'm traveling.

01:03:08: Yeah.

01:03:09: Yeah, I do look at like Twitter and Apple News a lot for like sort of what's happening.

01:03:14: I read BBC News quite a bit.

01:03:16: Yeah, that's my sort of my go-to places.

01:03:19: Yeah, so BBC News is news in general.

01:03:23: And if you just look on tech news, new knowledge, like there's a new framework coming out or

01:03:27: you want to learn something about AI, do you consume it like, as you said, over Twitter

01:03:32: or do you get some newsletters from news aggregators or reading blogs?

01:03:38: Mostly just like I guess social media in a way, right?

01:03:40: The thing that I want to undo.

01:03:42: I want to undo the toxic parts of social media.

01:03:46: I like the information sharing aspects of it, not so much the…

01:03:49: The trolling and hating, right?

01:03:51: Yeah.

01:03:52: And false information.

01:03:53: Yeah, so we will edit that in the hypothetically part.

01:03:54: So you just want to cut off social media regarding those points.

01:03:59: OK, so last question, also from the consumption category.

01:04:06: How do you deal with a growing flood of information

01:04:08: via various channels?

01:04:09: So news information are coming more and more,

01:04:11: like push notifications.

01:04:13: Every single app tries to send you push notifications.

01:04:15: I just turn it off.

01:04:16: I turn it off.

01:04:18: I do not have any--

01:04:19: very few applications have the privilege

01:04:21: of having push notifications enabled on my phone.

01:04:23: Yeah, so I'm grinning right now, because this

01:04:26: was one of the major features you were just--

01:04:27: It's a major feature and should be used with caution.

01:04:31: If you start seeing push notifications everywhere,

01:04:33: which is what every single app wants to do,

01:04:35: then you're just gonna be inundated with notifications.

01:04:38: And how do you live with that?

01:04:40: - I think this is one technical part

01:04:43: which was not so clearly communicated in the conference.

01:04:46: They were all saying, okay, I have to register.

01:04:48: Like, this is a very technical part right now.

01:04:51: If you are going to register a device

01:04:54: for push notifications at Apple's,

01:04:57: Then there you have a key pair which was going to generate

01:05:00: for device and for the app.

01:05:02: And this combined enables us to send a request to Apple

01:05:06: and Apple will send it to your device.

01:05:09: And everyone was saying,

01:05:10: and I think it was in one of the talks yesterday,

01:05:14: they said, "Why do I have to do it

01:05:16: for every single device I'm using?"

01:05:18: And the answer was, "Yeah, because it's like,

01:05:21: you need a key for every device to do so."

01:05:23: But I'm guessing that you need to be in control of the notifications or the

01:05:29: applications that can send you notifications.

01:05:31: And the only way to do so is if you can revoke that privilege from both sides.

01:05:36: So you can just like kill the key from the Apple side, like the application can

01:05:41: be canceled so Apple can say, okay, this service here or this client sends too

01:05:46: much notifications or maybe fake news or whatever, they cut it from the end and

01:05:49: say, okay, this client cannot send it to this device.

01:05:53: But the device can also, besides using the application,

01:05:57: which might not provide this unsubscribe thing,

01:06:01: this device could go to setting and unsubscribe.

01:06:05: And these both combinations, or this combination of the keys,

01:06:10: is the reason why you have to do it on every single service.

01:06:13: And this was not that clearly communicated right now.

01:06:16: Everyone thinks it's just not good enough implemented

01:06:19: that you have to reduce every single device, right?

01:06:22: It's very much intentional.

01:06:23: It's part of the process, right?

01:06:24: Like I think Apple has really been the leader in this space

01:06:27: of sort of, I don't know, caring more about the privacy

01:06:31: and then giving more users options and control

01:06:33: over which notifications,

01:06:35: which access they have to your device.

01:06:38: And I think it totally makes sense

01:06:39: that you would enable it per device,

01:06:41: even for native applications on iOS.

01:06:43: Like you install the app once,

01:06:45: it may be downloaded on the other device,

01:06:47: like on your iPad or whatever,

01:06:48: but you still need to enable push notifications

01:06:50: on the other device as well.

01:06:51: So it is a conscious step and I think it is a good thing to have that.

01:06:56: I think it makes you more in,

01:06:58: it gives you control over what notifications you get, which device and yeah.

01:07:03: Yeah, exactly. I once wrote like an APNS system and PHP back in the days when push notifications were introduced.

01:07:10: And I was wondering exactly about this point, why to do it like this?

01:07:14: So everything is device and you don't have any information about the client, just the key value pair.

01:07:19: And I was guessing you are interested in how this is working in Apex.

01:07:24: This podcast might not be the right point to do so because it's so technical.

01:07:27: You should totally talk to Vincent about this.

01:07:29: I'm sure he'll have a lot of opinions.

01:07:30: One thing I would like to say though is, and I think something that we should

01:07:33: improve upon in our messaging is when push notifications are appropriate and

01:07:37: which type of push notifications are appropriate, because right now I think

01:07:41: because it's so new, at least in the Apex world, that we have this ability to do

01:07:45: push notifications.

01:07:46: What I don't want to see is this outpouring

01:07:49: of push notifications in every single app

01:07:51: for every single little thing.

01:07:54: I'd like to see a more curated and more thoughtful approach

01:07:57: of enabling this so that the notifications that actually

01:08:00: matter are the ones that are pushed and not everything,

01:08:03: or at least giving users more control over it.

01:08:05: Yeah, exactly.

01:08:07: So we are already over an hour right now.

01:08:10: So not to bother our listeners, I

01:08:13: I promise we could just talk hours right now.

01:08:18: But yeah.

01:08:20: It's been a fascinating conversation.

01:08:21: I really enjoyed it.

01:08:23: Yeah, thank you for being here, Shakib.

01:08:24: It was very interesting and very cool for me.

01:08:26: I'm very looking forward to releasing this episode

01:08:28: to our listeners.

01:08:31: And I hope you have a great conference.

01:08:32: And yeah, we might talk about the different stories

01:08:34: maybe in a second part in the future.

01:08:37: Absolutely.

01:08:38: Hey, thank you so much for having me.

01:08:39: And I look forward to listening to Devs on Tape

01:08:39: for all the other guests that you have.

01:08:41: And I'm just psyched to sort of be here in person

01:08:44: at the conference and speaking with all the customers.

01:08:46: It's just been awesome.

01:08:47: And being able to share a little bit

01:08:49: about who I am with the audience,

01:08:52: I'm grateful for the opportunity.

01:08:53: Thank you.

01:08:54: - All right, thank you very much.

01:08:55: Have a good day and yeah, bye to our listeners.

01:08:58: Thank you for listening and be back in two weeks.

01:09:00: Thank you.

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01:09:14: (upbeat music)

01:09:16: - Thank you.