Collaborate 08 Hyperion Track - Thursday

Today was the last day of Collaborate. I went to the continental breakfast this morning. The blueberry bagel tasted like, well, perfume, to be honest. While I don't much like eating perfume, I was able to rub the bagel on my shirt collar and now I spell like a department store makeup counter. I bought a strawberry banana smoothie that was actually tasty though it separated into weird red and white floating things after about 10 minutes. Smoothies shouldn't separate.

My only presentation of the day was in room 302, an area I had not previously even visited. My presentation was an encore of the previous "Financial Reporting Tips & Tricks" session in which they had to close the doors 10-15 minutes before the start due to fire codes. The only notice of the presentation encore time was in the addendum pamphlet handed out on-site.

I watched the door as people came in expecting it to be jammed with people I'd seen at my other presentations. To my surprise, there were 50+ people that I had definitely never seen before. At the start time, there were over 100 people in the room. I asked how many of them used the Hyperion Financial Reporting or Hyperion Reports products. Fewer than 10 people raised their hands. I then realized that the title "Financial Reporting Tips, Tricks, and Best Practices" might be misconstrued as a presentation on financial reporting in general and not the product Hyperion Financial Reporting.

I calmly explained to the room that this was going to be an hour of optimization tips on the specific Hyperion product and the majority of the room began to look really uncomfortable. I then told the room that rather than be bored for an entire hour, I'd be totally okay if those not using Hyperion left. A couple of people left and then I said, "no, seriously. I'm not going to be offended at all. It would bother me more if you stayed and wrote horrible things on the review form." Relieved, all but 8 people walked out.

I asked the 8 people to all come up front by me, and I had probably my second most enjoyable presentation of the conference (after the Essbase Guru Panel). It was very interactive. People just asked their questions aloud as we went along (without even raising their hands, which just showed how comfortable we all were) and it turned into a one hour Hyperion Reports training class. Thank you to all my 8 attendees!

After the presentation, I went back to the Hyatt for some meetings with some other Collaborate attendees. I had a nice discussion by the Oracle Bookstore with John Brkopac and Rich Clayton (both in management in Oracle Product Marketing) about the changes going on with Hyperion within Oracle. Suffice to say that things are changing rapidly and sales are accelerating. Speaking from the experience of owning half of a Hyperion consulting firm, there's no reason.for anyone who's worth her salt in Hyperion to be out of work.

I'm relieved that the conference is over. I'm back in my hotel room, and I think I'll take a nice long nap before I head out for a relaxing dinner with the interRel people who haven't flown back yet.

[Addendum from May 6, 2008] I wrote the above entry back on April 17. I just didn't remember, in my exhaustion-addled state, to post it. As such, I'm going to back post this to April 17 so it's with the rest of my Collaborate entries.