My Friend, Mike Riley, Has Cancer

I found out this summer that one of my best friends - one of the entire Hyperion community's best friends - has cancer. This is his story.

But first, a mea culpa:

In 2008, I Was An Idiot

Back in early 2008, I wrote a blog entry comparing Collaborate, Kaleidoscope, and OpenWorld.  In this entry, I said that Collaborate was the obvious successor to the Hyperion Solutions conference and I wasn't terribly nice to Kaleidoscope.  Here's me answering which of the three conferences I think the Hyperion community should attend (I dare you to hold in the laughter):

Now which one would I attend if I could only go to one?

Collaborate. Without reservation. If I'm going to a conference, it's primarily to learn. As such, content is key.

I actually got asked a very similar question on Network 54's Essbase discussion board just yesterday (apparently, it's a popular question these days). To parrot what I said there, OpenWorld was very, very marketing-oriented. 80% of the fewer than 100 presentations in the Hyperion track were delivered by Oracle (in some cases, with clients/partners as co-speakers). COLLABORATE is supposed to have 100-150 presentations with 100+ of those delivered by clients and partners.

In the interest of full-disclosure, my company, interRel, is paying to be a 4-star partner of COLLABORATE. Why? Because we're hoping that COLLABORATE becomes the successor to the Solutions conference. Solutions was a great opportunity to learn (partying was always secondary) and I refuse to believe it's dead with nothing to take it's mantle. We're investing a great deal of money with the assumption that something has to take the place of Hyperion Solutions conference, and it certainly isn't OpenWorld.

Is OpenWorld completely bad? Absolutely not. In addition to the great bribes, it's a much larger conference than COLLABORATE or ODTUG's Kaleidoscope, so if your thing is networking, by all means, go to OpenWorld. OpenWorld is the best place to get the official Oracle party line on upcoming releases and what not. OpenWorld is also the place to hear better keynotes (well, at least by More Famous People like Larry Ellison, himself). OpenWorld has better parties too. OpenWorld is also in San Francisco which is just a generally cooler town. In short, OpenWorld was very well organized, but since it's being put on by Oracle, it's about them getting out their message to their existing and prospective client base.

So why aren't I recommending Kaleidoscope (since I haven't been to that either)? Size, mostly. Their entire conference will have around 100 presentations, so their Hyperion track will most likely be fewer than 10 presentations. I've been to regional Hyperion User Group meetings that have more than that (well, the one interRel hosted in August of 2007 had 9, but close enough). While Kaleidoscope may one day grow their Hyperion track, it's going to be a long time until they equal the 100-150 presentations that COLLABORATE is supposed to have on Hyperion alone.

If you're only going to one Hyperion-oriented conference this year, register for COLLABORATE. If you've got money in the budget for two conferences, also go to OpenWorld. If you're a developer that finds both COLLABORATE and OpenWorld to be too much high-level fluff, then go to Kaleidoscope.

So, ya, that entry may live in infamy.  [Editor's Note: Find out a way to delete prior blog posts without anyone noticing.]  Notice that of the three conferences, I recommended Kaleidoscope last and dared to say that it would take them a long time until they had 100-150 sessions like Collaborate.  Interestingly, Collaborate peaked that year at 84 Hyperion sessions, and Kaleidoscope is well over 150 Business Analytics sessions, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

In 2008, Mike Riley Luckily Wasn't An Idiot

I had never met Mike Riley, but he commented directly on my blog.  He was gracious even though I was slamming his tiny little conference in New Orleans:

Hyperion users are blessed with many training opportunities. I agree with Edward, the primary reason for going to a conference is to learn, but I disagree that Collaborate is the best place to do that. ODTUG Kaleidoscope, Collaborate, and OpenWorld all have unique offerings. 

It’s true that ODTUG is a smaller conference, however that is by choice. At every ODTUG conference, the majority of the content is by a user, not by Oracle or even another vendor. And even though Collaborate might seem like the better buy because of its scale, for developers and true technologists ODTUG offers a much more targeted and efficient conference experience. Relevant tracks in your experience level are typically consecutive, rather than side-by-side so you don’t miss sessions you want to attend. The networking is also one of the most valuable pieces. The people that come to ODTUG are the doers, so everyone you meet will be a valuable contact in the future.

It’s true, COLLABORATE will have many presentations with a number of those delivered by clients and partners, but what difference does that make? You can’t attend all of them. ODTUG’s Kaleidoscope will have 17 Hyperion sessions that are all technical. 

In the interest of full disclosure, I have been a member of ODTUG for eight years and this is my second year as a board member. What attracted me to ODTUG from the start was the quality of the content delivered, and the networking opportunities. This remains true today.

I won’t censor or disparage any of the other conferences. We are lucky to have so many choices available to us. My personal choice and my highest recommendation goes to Kaleidoscope for all the reasons I mentioned above (and I have attended all three of the above mentioned conferences).

One last thing; New Orleans holds its own against San Francisco or Denver. All of the cities are wonderful, but when it comes to food, fun, and great entertainment there’s nothing like the Big Easy. 

Mike was only in his second year as a board member of ODTUG, but he was willing to put himself out there, so I wrote him an e-mail back.  In that e-mail, dated February 10, 2008, I said that for Kaleidoscope to become a conference that Hyperion users would love, it would require a few key components: keynote(s) by headliner(s), panels of experts, high-quality presentations, a narrow focus that wasn't all things to all people, and a critical mass of attendees.

At the end of the e-mail, I said "If Kaleidoscope becomes that, I'll shout it from the rooftops.  I want to help Kaleidoscope be successful, and I'm willing to invest the time and effort to help out.  Regarding your question below, I would be more than happy to work with Mark [Rittman] and Kent [Graziano] to come up with a workable concept and I think I'm safe in saying that Tim [Tow] would be happy to contribute as well.  For that matter, if you're looking for two people to head up your Hyperion track (and enact some of the suggestions above), Tim and I would be willing (again, I'm speaking on Tim's behalf, but he's one of the most helpful people on planet Hyperion)."

K(aleido)scope

Kaleidoscope 2008 ended up being the best Hyperion conference I ever attended (at the time).  It was a mix of Hyperion Solutions, Arbor Dimensions, and Hyperion Top Gun.  With only 4 months prep time, we had 175 attendees in what then was only an Essbase track.  Though it was only one conference room there in New Orleans, the attendees sat in their seats for most of a week and learned more than many of us had learned in years.

After the conference, Mike and the ODTUG board offered Tim Tow a spot on the ODTUG board (a spot to which he was later elected by the community) to represent the interests of Hyperion.  I founded the ODTUG Hyperion SIG along with several attendees from that Kaleidoscope 2008. I eventually became Hyperion Content Chair for Kaleidoscope and passed my Hyperion SIG presidency on to the awesome Gary Crisci.  In 2010, Mike talked me into being Conference Chair for Kaleidoscope (which I promptly renamed Kscope since I never could handle how "kaleidoscope" violated the whole "i before e" rule).  Or maybe I talked him into it.  Either way, I was Conference Chair for Kscope11 and Kscope12.

During those years, Mike worked closely with the Kscope conference committee in his role as President of ODTUG.  Mike rather good-naturedly ("good-natured" is, I expect, the most commonly used phrase to describe Mike) put up with whatever crazy thing I wanted him to do. In 2011, he was featured during the general session in several reality show parodies (including his final, climactic race with John King to see who got to pick the location for Kscope12).  I decided to up the ante in 2012 by making the entire general session about him in a "Mike Riley, This Is Your Life" hour and we found ourselves laughing not at Mike, but near him.  It included Mike having to dance with the Village Persons (a Village People tribute band) and concluded with Mike stepping down as President of ODTUG...

... to focus his ODTUG time on being the new Conference Chair for Kscope.  Kscope13 returned to New Orleans and Mike did a fabulous job with what I consider to be Hyperion's 5 year anniversary with Kscope.  Mike was preparing Kscope14 when I got a phone call from him.  I expected him to talk over Kscope, ODTUG, or just to say hi, but I'll never forget when Mike told me he had stage 3 rectal cancer.  My father died in 2002 of colorectal cancer, and the thought that one of my best friends was going to face this was terrifying... and I wasn't the one with cancer.

I feel that the Hyperion community was saved by Mike (what would have happened if we had all just given up after Collaborate 2008 was a major letdown?) and now it's time for us to do our part.  Whether you've attended Kscope in the past or just been envious of those of us who have, you know that it's the one place per year that you can meet and learn from some of the greatest minds in the industry.

Mike Helped Us, Let's Help Him

Kscope is now the best conference for Oracle Business Analytics (EPM and BI) in the world, and Mike, I'm shouting it from every rooftop I can find (although I wish when I climbed up there people would stop yelling "Jump!  You have nothing else to live for!").  I tell everyone I know how much I love Kscope, and on behalf of all the help you've given the Hyperion community over the last 5 years, Mike, it's now time for us to help you.

After many weeks of chemo, Mike goes into surgery tomorrow to hopefully have the tumor removed.  Then he has many more weeks of chemo after that. He's a fighter, but getting rid of cancer is expensive, so we've set up a Go Fund Me campaign to help offset his medical bills.  If you love Kscope, there is no one on Earth more responsible for its current state than Mike Riley.  If you love ODTUG, no one has more fundamentally changed the organization in the last millennium than Mike Riley.  If you love Hyperion, no one has done more to save the community than Mike Riley.  

And if after reading this entry, you love Mike for all he's done, go to http://bit.ly/HelpMike and donate generously, because we want Mike to be there at the opening of Kscope14 in Seattle on June 22.  Please share this entry, and even if you can't donate, send Mike an e-mail at mriley@odtug.com letting him know you appreciate everything he's done.

I'm Totally Lost: Which Conference Do I Go To for Hyperion and Oracle EPM/BI Content?

The final Hyperion Solutions conference (the great big conference Hyperion used to put on with non-stop Hyperion content and over 4,000 attendees) was in the spring of 2007.  Back then, everyone knew which conference to attend, because there was only one national conference (Solutions) and then a whole lot of regional HUG (Hyperion User Group) meetings.  But then Oracle bought Hyperion and immediately disbanded the conference leaving the user community in disarray.


There are now several options depending on what you're looking for.  While I could attempt to make some sense out of the whole conference jumble in a blog post, I decided it would be better explained in a webcast.  To that end, I'm devoting two webcasts this week to the question “Now that the Hyperion Solutions conference is gone, which conference should I attend?”


I'm going to compare the benefits of the better known 2011 conferences:

• Collaborate. April 10-14 in Orlando, FL.
• Kscope. June 26-30 in Long Beach, CA.
• Connection Point. Probably in July in Seattle, WA and November in Atlanta, GA.
• OpenWorld. October 2-6 in San Francisco, CA.

I'm in a unique position to do this, because I don't work for Oracle and I have some ties to every one of these events (so you could say that while I'm biased, I realize the value each one can bring to the right audience).  Usually, our webcasts are only open to Oracle customers (not partners) but in this case, I want everyone to know why you'd want to go to each of the conferences so they don't find themselves wasting money at a conference that's totally not right for them.


Click on the links below to sign up for either Tuesday or Wednesday's webcast:

   Tue, Mar 1, 2011 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM EST

   Wed, Mar 2, 2011 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM EST

I will spend around 45 minutes covering all the conferences and then take questions from the audience.  Before you sign up for one of the conferences, devote 45 minutes of your life to making sure you won't find yourself trapped in the 7th circle of hell (otherwise known as stuck at a conference you hate).

ODTUG and OAUG - New Board Members

Over the summer, the two major Hyperion SIG (Special Interest Groups) held elections to their Boards of Directors (I think I got that pluralization right). Since it's sometimes hard to find out about these elections (making it difficult to congratulate the winners), I thought I'd compile them all here.

ODTUG Hyperion SIG

This is the SIG associated with ODTUG and the Kscope conference. This SIG has 9+ members of their board but there are only two named positions on their board. Their newest members are:

- Joe Aultman, AutoTrader.com

- Alice Lawrence, LSG Sky Chefs

- Glenn Schwartzberg, interRel Consulting

- Brian Suter, Dell Inc.

Glenn is a founding member of the SIG who went away for a year, missed us, and came back to the fold. The other three members are new. As for why 3 of the 4 new people are from customers of Hyperion and not partners, it's actually written into the ODTUG Hyperion SIG bylaws that over half of the members of the board must not be from vendors, partners, or suppliers. It keeps the consulting companies from overrunning what should be fundamentally a user group.

As for those two named positions, Angie Wilcox (from JCPenney) is the new SIG President and Alice Lawrence is the new SIG Secretary. Angie replaces the well-respected, highly regarded, and never duplicated Gary Crisci (though Gary will be staying on the SIG Board). Alice takes Angie in the Secretary role as Angie steps up to wield the Grand Poobah's gavel.

OAUG Hyperion SIG

This is the SIG that basically took over the regional HUGs (Hyperion User Groups). It's closely aligned with Collaborate though as that conference has turned out not to be a good home for the Hyperion community, this SIG has become the driving force behind the regional EPM Connection Point conferences. The winners of their summer elections are:

- SIG President: Andy Jorgenson

- Geo/SIG Liaison: Suzanne Hoffman, Simba Technologies

- Partner Liaison: Darren Grogan, Guidant

- Communication Coordinator: Colleen Pietrobono

Andy Jorgenson (co-founder of Pinnacle who is at the moment enjoying his retirement by skiing damned near every run on planet Earth) is taking over as SIG President from Kristin Newman. We'll all miss Kristin who accomplished a great deal during her tenure including organizing the first of the OAUG Connection Point EPM (AKA "EPM Connection") conferences in New Jersey in early 2010. Andy will fill her shoes well as he is a long-time friend to the Hyperion community and he is also an Oracle ACE for Hyperion.

The OAUG Hyperion SIG has two major organizational differences from the ODTUG Hyperion SIG. First, people run for specific positions on their SIG board. That's why each of the people listed above is listed with a specific position they won. The other difference is that the OAUG Hyperion SIG board doesn't limit their ratio of customers-to-vendors, so they tend to be a bit more partner-heavy.

As of the date of this posting, the Leadership page for the OAUG Hyperion SIG isn't updated with these new positions, but I assume it will be as soon as they appoint a new person to watch over their website.

Send your congratulations over to all the new board members of both groups. I'm extremely glad that there are people who take time out of personal lives to help better educate the rest of us. Thank you!

Collaborate 2010 - OAUG Presentations

The next Collaborate conference is April 18-22, 2010 at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. This is a joint conference of three large Oracle user groups: OAUG, IOUG, and Quest.

There were some people (I was one of them) who were wondering if Collaborate would be the successor to the Hyperion Solutions conference just with a lot of other Oracle products thrown in. The Hyperion attendance fell from 2008 to 2009, so it wasn't surprising when the Collaborate organizers decided to cut the Hyperion/EPM presentations at Collaborate 2010.

While IOUG historically has some Essbase and OBIEE presentations (and in 2009, Quest had a couple of general EPM sessions), the main Oracle EPM/Hyperion/Essbase group at Collaborate is OAUG since they inherited the mantle of the old HUGs (Hyperion User Groups). Everyone was curious as to how many presentations OAUG would allot to Hyperion in 2010.

Looks Like About 35 Sessions from OAUG

Not including the ones from IOUG and Quest (because it's way too hard to figure out from their sites which ones are Oracle EPM specific), OAUG has approximately 35 sessions devoted to Oracle EPM (Hyperion and Essbase). I got this number by going to the OAUG Presentation Search and selecting "Hyperion EPM" (which doesn't make a lot of sense product naming wise, but whatever). It gave me the following list:

1. "How Workforce Planning and Oracle Data Integrator restored sanity" by AdvancedEPM Consulting, Inc.
2. "Sub Ledger Accounting in Release 12 Technical Perspective" by AST Corporation
3. "Creating a Hyperion Planning Solution with Full PeopleSoft Integration in Under 90 days" by Berlin Packaging
4. "Soaring through Economic Turbulence with Oracle's Strategic Finance and Crystal Ball" by Blue Stone International, LLC
5. "Product Cost Modeling Using Oracle Business Intelligence and Hyperion Planning" by Calix Networks, Inc.
6. "Becoming The Cube Whisperer" by Catholic Health Initiatives
7. "Implementation of Hyperion EPM Systems Integrated to Oracle EBS" by Coherent, Inc.
8. "Consolidate Oracle EBS, Hyperion EPM and other Apps onto one set of hardware by virtulization" by Cricket Communications
9. "Integrated Business Planning" by Emerson
10. "Hyperion Financial Management(HFM): Design Considerations in HFM for External & Management Reporting" by Hess Corporation
11. "Using the Hyperion Financial Management (HFM) API to Create Custom Solutions" by Interpublic Group of Companies
12. "Best Practices in Consolidations" by interRel Consulting
13. "Introduction to Hyperion Financial Management and FDM" by interRel Consulting
14. "Finding Profitability in 8 Weeks: An Introduction to Hyperion Profitability & Cost Managemen" by interRel Consulting
15. "Using Essbase Outside of Finance: Challenging Requirements for Performance Accountability" by interRel Consulting
16. "Oracle Hyperion Smart View For Office New Features & Integration Points" by Kerdock Consulting
17. "Revenue Planning: When is detail it appropriate and how will it impact my Planning implementation" by Kerdock Consulting
18. "What's New for Version 11: Hyperion Financial Management" by Kerdock Consulting
19. "Hyperion Planning for Higher Ed: Business Considerations at Rice University" by Kerdock Consulting
20. "Advanced Financial Master Data Management with Oracle Hyperion Data Relationship Management" by Key Performance Ideas, Inc.
21. "Cash Flow Reporting Within Hyperion Financial Management" by Laureate Education Inc
22. "Leveraging Your Hyperion Investment for Non-Financial Operations" by Linium
23. "Enterprise to Hyperion Financial Management: Improving efficiencies and reporting at TSYS" by MarketSphere Consulting
24. "Security in Hyperion Fusion 11" by MindStream Analytics
25. "Be "Productive Day One and Ensure User Adoption with Oracle User Productivity Kit and Oracle Tutor" by Oracle
26. "Oracle's Strategy and Roadmap for Oracle's Hyperion Performance Management Applications" by Oracle
27. "Integrating Risk and Compliance Strategies The Latest in Oracle GRC Applications" by Oracle
28. "Introduction to Hyperion Enterprise Planning Solutions" by Oracle Corp Inc., Boston
29. "Integrated Operational Planning - Bridging The Gaps Between Finance, Operations, And Sales" by P3 Solutions
30. "Key Success Criteria for Oracle Hyperion Planning and Oracle HFM Integration" by Ranzal
31. "Mission Critical! Implementing Highly Available Global Oracle-Hyperion EPM Installations." by The Hackett Group
32. "Strategies for Helping Government Agencies Optimize Oracle BI Tools and Processes" by The IRUS Group, Inc.
33. "Optimally Leverage your Oracle Hyperion Investment" by TUSC
34. "Essbase Tuning & Optimization at USADrug" by USADrug
35. "Financial Reconciliation to Reporting (RTR) Town Hall Meeting" by VeriSign Inc

Now the reason I'm saying that there are "about 35 sessions" is that some of the ones listed don't really seem like EPM presentations (like #2, #25, and #35 above). Keep checking http://oaug.collaborate10.com/agenda/search because I'm sure they'll reclass everything correctly at some point.

There is a major scarcity of Essbase presentations. There are two that mention Essbase in the title and judging by the abstract, #6 is also an Essbase presentation. That means OAUG will have just 3 Essbase presentations. Of course, you can't really expect all the products to be covered well with only 35 presentation slots.

I also find it really interesting that Oracle was only given 3 presentations and that's 3 if you include #25 above which really isn't related to EPM. That puts interRel in the peculiar spot of having more Oracle EPM presentations than Oracle does. If anyone from Oracle would like to co-present one of the interRel ones with us, send me an e-mail and I'll be happy to split the presenting workload with you.

Should I Bother Going?

It's quite clear that Collaborate is no longer trying to be a national conference for Hyperion. Even once you add in the content from IOUG and Quest, it's clear that Collaborate seems to be aiming to provide just enough Hyperion content so that people going to Collaborate for other products can feel happy if they also own Hyperion. If you are primarily interested in learning about Hyperion, skip Collaborate in 2010 and go to either one of the regional OAUG EPM Connection conferences or the national ODTUG Kaleidoscope conference. It's not worth it to spend between $1,385 and $2,125 on Collaborate for this little content.

Is there any reason to go to Collaborate 2010 if you only care about Hyperion and Oracle EPM? Well, it is in Vegas, and for some of us, that's the only reason we need.

A Word to Hyperion Vendors

And some free advice to Hyperion-centric consulting firms: if your company primarily does Oracle EPM, I'd save the money you were going to spend on a Collaborate booth and exhibit at Kaleidoscope and EPM Connection. There just won't be enough Hyperion attendees to make the ROI worth it to have a major presence at Collaborate. Ignore this advice if you want, but don't complain when the majority of the Hyperion attendees at Collaborate are other Hyperion partners who made the same mistake.

Regional EPM Connection Conferences - Update

OAUG Connection Point - Enterprise Performance Management

Back on October 30, I wrote about what little information I had on the upcoming regional OAUG conferences on Hyperion and EPM. The name that OAUG is giving to these conferences is way too long and way too hard to remember, so I'm going to start calling them "EPM Connection" conferences. If OAUG doesn't like it, they should come up with a shorter, catchier, more marketable name (like Dimensions, Solutions, Collaborate, Kaleidoscope, or OpenWorld).

I have some new information to impart compliments of the OAUG eNews from November (scroll way to the bottom):

http://www.oaug.org/communications/publications/enews/2009/2009-11.htm

Date Change: February 22-23

Contrary to earlier information that put the dates slightly later, the conference is now going to be held on Monday and Tuesday (Feb. 22-23) in Jersey City, NJ.

Tracks Revealed

There are going to be 5 tracks at the first EPM Connection conference:

• Budget, Forecasting & Planning
• Financial Consolidations & Reporting
• Business Intelligence & Analytics
• The Office of the CFO
• EPM Product Roadmap

The non-product orientation of the tracks seems to imply that this will be more of a business-oriented rather than technical conference. Considering that this is put on by OAUG, we sort of expected that though. To drive this point home, OAUG had this to say about their desired audience:

This event is ideal for accounting and finance professionals of all experience levels, internal audit staff with a focus on external and compliance reporting areas, and IT professionals who need to understand what the accounting and finance groups need to achieve.

I don't like how EPM is getting pigeonholed as only applicable to finance/accounting types, but you can't win 'em all.

More Information

OAUG is telling people that more information will be coming soon to this website:

http://oaug.org/conferencesandeducation/conferences/2010/connectionpoint/

At the moment, there is less at that link than I just discussed in this blog posting, but I'm sure more will be posted soon since EPM Connection is now just 3 months away. They'd better hurry with their call for papers (if they're even going to have one).

2010 Conferences - Speaker Deadlines Coming Up

If you want to be a speaker at either Kaleidoscope or Collaborate in 2010, the deadlines for submitting session topics for consideration are almost up. I know, it seems way too early to me too, but I guess Collaborate is only 6 months away.

Like most conferences, Collab & K'Scope will give a free pass to the conference to any accepted speaker. This makes it a lot easier to convince your boss to send you since these national conferences usually run upwards of $2,000 USD per person.

OAUG/IOUG/Quest Collaborate: Deadline is October 20

Collaborate will be held April 18-22, 2010 in Las Vegas at the Mandalay Bay. Yes, the deadline is tomorrow. Don't feel bad if you don't have time to get a paper together. Word on the street has it that OAUG (the main driver of Hyperion and Oracle EPM content at Collaborate) has reduced the number of Hyperion presentations to only 30. So not only are the odds of getting one of the slots pretty slim, most Hyperion attendees will be avoiding Collaborate in 2010 in favor of one of OAUG's regional Hyperion conferences (which will have more content than the national one anyway).

There are two good reasons to go to Collaborate: either you like gambling in Vegas (and face it, who doesn't?) or you're going for non-Hyperion content too. If you are going, you might as well get a free pass, so submit a presentation and hopefully get a free pass. The track you'll want to submit under is "BI/Data Warehousing/EPM":

http://oaug.collaborate10.com/presenterinfo/

The call for papers for the regional conferences isn't out yet, but I'll blog it when it's announced.

ODTUG Kaleidoscope: Deadline is October 27

Kaleidoscope will be held June 27-July 1, 2010 in Washington DC at the Marriott Wardman Park. As I mentioned in an earlier post, this is the national conference you'll want to be attending in 2010 (and I'm not just saying that because I'm the Essbase/Hyperion Content Leader for Kaleidoscope '10). The call for speakers for Kaleidoscope has been going on since the end of September, but the deadline for submitting your abstract is Tuesday of next week.

There are 4 topic areas with Hyperion and Oracle EPM content in them at Kaleidoscope:

• Essbase. Looking for Essbase content? Whether you’re a developer or an administrator, a novice or a guru, this track will is your home for Essbase information in all forms. Whether it’s sessions on tips and tricks, optimization, Essbase ASO, calc scripts, workarounds, Essbase success stories or Essbase esoteric, the “Essbase track” is your Essbase home.
• Hyperion Applications. Hyperion Planning, Hyperion Financial Management, Hyperion Profitability and Cost Management, Hyperion Strategic Finance and the rest of the Oracle EPM (formerly Hyperion) packaged applications are found in the “Hyperion Applications” track. Everything from case studies in implementing specific applications up through tips, tricks, and best practices for developing, administering, or using the Hyperion applications will be covered here.
• Oracle Business Intelligence & Hyperion Reporting Tools. The Hyperion community is used to Financial Reporting, Web Analysis, Interactive Reporting, SQR Production Reporting, Smart View, and Workspace. The Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition developers have been using OBIEE Answers, Dashboards, Publisher, Delivers, Business Indicators, and the OBI Server. Oracle is bringing these products together, so we’re merging the content. Whether you’ve been doing OBIEE or Hyperion front-end development, this track will show you the future of Oracle’s combined reporting technologies.
• Hardcore Hyperion. If you’re looking for case studies, then this is not the track for you. You’ve asked for even more advanced, guru, hardcore, expert, “Top Gun” Hyperion content, and your wishes have been answered. The “Hacking Hyperion” track is your home for content that you won’t find anywhere else the entire year. If you have secret optimizations, ideas for modifying underlying tables and source code, tuning tips that you haven’t heard anywhere else, or any other content that would tickle the fancy of a seasoned Essbase, Hyperion Planning, HFM, or other Hyperion app developer, then join us as we enter the undocumented (and probably unsupported) world of Hyperion.

If you want to speak at Kaleidoscope, visit:

http://www.technicalconferencesolutions.com/pls/caat/caat_abstracts_upd.main?conference_id=68

Hyperion Solutions Conference Returns (in 2 different ways)

Solutions 2.0

The story first broke at Collaborate 2009 in Orlando when Kristin Newman (who's now President of the OAUG Hyperion SIG) announced that talks were underway to resurrect the Solutions conference. Now this meant different things to different people. Some thought of Solutions as the big, annual conference where 4,000+ Hyperion users got together. Others thought of it as a place where users of Hyperion could gather to be educated in-depth about Hyperion. So the question was, what exactly was going to happen in Solutions 2.0?

Turns out, there are two answers.

The National Conference

As I've blogged about before (some would say that I've blogged about it ad nauseum), where there used to be one major gathering in the USA per year, there became at least three post-Oracle acquisition: Oracle OpenWorld, OAUG/IOUG/Quest Collaborate, and ODTUG Kaleidoscope. If you added Hyperion attendance for all three of these conferences in 2008, you got less than a third of the people who made it to the last Solutions. So where did all the people go?

They stayed home. Simply, since no one was quite sure where to go, 3,000+ Hyperion Solutions attendees went... nowhere. Well, the good news is that the dust seems to have settled on these major conferences and we seem to have a winner: ODTUG Kaleidoscope.

Of the three conferences with major Hyperion content, it was the only one to grow its attendance from 2008 to 2009, and it's growing even more next year. Compare that with Collaborate which reduced the number of Hyperion presentations from 2008 to 2009. Further, Collaborate is reducing their presentations on Hyperion even more in 2009 to less than 50 total sessions. OpenWorld will have fewer Hyperion attendees this year than 2007 or 2008 and the trend will probably continue into next year.

In other words, if you want to have a ton of different options spanning the gamut from the introductory Oracle EPM sessions to the hardcore Hyperion presentations, go ahead and make your reservations now for Kaleidoscope. It will be held in Washington, DC from June 27-July 1 at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel. For more information, visit http://odtugkaleidoscope.com/.

If you want a free pass to Kaleidoscope (and who doesn't with companies as frugal as they are these days), ODTUG is currently looking for presenters for the 2010 conference. Some of the Hyperion (Oracle EPM) categories for which they need speakers include Essbase, Hyperion applications (Planning, HFM, HSF, et al), Hardcore Hyperion, and the OBIEE/Hyperion Reporting Tools. The deadline for submitting abstracts is October 27, so hurry to:

http://www.technicalconferencesolutions.com/pls/caat/caat_abstracts_upd.main?conference_id=68

The Regional Conferences

But what about those who can't devote a week of travel to Hyperion? For those users who want 2 days of intense Hyperion content including multiple presentations across multiple themes, theOAUG Hyperion SIG now has an answer for you.

The Hyperion SIG will be putting on a series of regional conferences in in 5 different cities around the USA over the course of 2010. These 2-day events will have 5-7 tracks of content and each track will have 10 or so different sessions in it. As such, users of Hyperion will be able to travel to their region's conference for more than 50 different sessions. For those cutting back on travel in 2010 (or those who only have 2 days to give to the cause of Hyperion and Oracle EPM learning), these conferences are a great option.

They're still trying to iron out the details for 2010, but as the Essbase Domain Lead for OAUG, I've been privy to some advanced briefings. Barring some political snafu, these conferences will definitely be happening. OAUG is finally to the point where they're starting to make the general population aware of these conferences.

OAUG Hyperion SIG Partner Briefing Call: October 9

There will be two introductory calls to brief the partner community on Friday, October 9. The first will be at 8AM Central and the second at 2PM Central. The dial-in number is (219) 509-8020 and the participant code is 154751. That's from an e-mail I received, so if that number doesn't work on the 9th, make sure to visit http://hyperionsig.oaug.org/ to see if they've updated the call-in information.

In case there were any partners who didn't received that e-mail, here's the bulk of it (reprinted with permission from OAUG Hyperion SIG President, Kristin Newman):

Dial-in Number:1-219-509-8020
Participant Access Code:154751

WE ARE EXCITED TO FINALLY ANNOUNCE AND SHARE INFORMATION WITH THE HYPERION AND BI COMMUNITY ABOUT 2010 CONFERENCES!! THIS IS A CALL YOU DON'T WANT TO MISS!!

Agenda:

1. Collaborate 2010 - Information on Hyperion presentations and focus for 2010 - presentation numbers, target audience, etc.

2. Regional Conference Model for 2 day "Solutions" type conferences across the USA for 2010.

This is a unique and innovative opportunity for Partners to be involved on the ground floor up! The OAUG has supported the Hyperion and BI community in supporting the need for Education in the local markets!

This has been in works all year and the Board of Directors of the Hyperion SIG and OBI SIG want to share first hand what we've been advocating for and what is happening.

We will discuss the conference model, sponsorship opportunities, speaking opportunities, tracks, etc.

If you receive this e-mail as a member of either the OAUG Hyperion SIG or OBI SIG, but you think that other decision-makers at your firms should attend, please forward this invite to them. We will hold 2 calls on Friday, October 9th to choose from. Additionally, we will discuss this model at our semi-annual meeting at OOW on Sunday, October 11 at the OAUG Hyperion SIG meeting (1-3pm). After Open World, we will publish this information on our website!

We look forward to sharing information with the Hyperion & BI Partner Community!!!

Kind Regards,
Kristin Newman
President/Coordinator
OAUG Hyperion SIG Board of Directors
E-Mail: hyperionsig(at)gmail.com
214.223.7171

So if you're a partner/vendor interested in presenting or exhibiting at one of the regional Solutions 2.0 conferences, make sure you attend the call on the 9th.

So, to be clear...

If you're looking to go to a national conference in 2010 that comes the closest to what you got out of Solutions, go to ODTUG Kaleidoscope. If you want something more regional in scope (like the Hyperion User Groups of old but on cool, designer steroids), make plans to attend whichver of theOAUG regional conferences in 2010 is closest to you.

So where does that leave Collaborate and OpenWorld? Well, I'd go to OpenWorld or Collaborate if Oracle EPM and Hyperion were not my primary concerns. These conferences will still be there for people looking to find out about multiple products though the EPM content will be noticeably light in 2010 (even more so than it was in 2009).

Personally, I'm breathing a sigh of relief because we finally have a clear answer as to where the Essbase and Hyperion user community will be gathering in 2010. I'm just glad we found out before the budget season closed. Go forth and make your Hyperion conference travel request for 2010.

Where does that leave me?

Not that anyone particularly cares, but I have to go to all of the conferences and that now includes five more regional conferences. An Oracle ACE Director's speaking life is never done.

Collaborate - Wrapup

Picture of Collaborate boxed lunch, compliments of Eric Helmer.

My apologies to those who were following throughout each day, but this post will suffice to wrap up the conference for me. In case you're wondering why I decided to stop blogging during each day, it's because nothing interesting was happening.

Boring conference. Good or bad? Discuss.

This must be one of the most boring, underattended conferences I've ever seen. Let's start with the boring part. There's no news to be had at this conference. No one is breaking big stories or making huge press releases. Controversy is sorely absent and no one is announcing major decisions. The most interesting pseudo-news story of the conference was the possible creation of a second Solutions conference, but it's really only an idea right now.

For us bloggers looking for interesting topics, there's little to be had. You can only write about the food not being fit to feed pigs (lest the SPCA get upset about cruelty to animals) before you start to feel you've covered it. Charles Phillips said during his keynote that Oracle will start to make some product announcements at Collaborate, so maybe it'll be better in 2010.

Education level dropping to critical levels, Captain.

There are those who come to conferences to learn and being entertained is low on the priority list. For those, I don't know about the other tracks, but the Hyperion track didn't offer great educational opportunities. The number of total presentations on Hyperion was less than 100 (compared to close to 300 in the Solutions days), so even the presentations that weren't infomercials (and there were some annoyingly bad consulting company infomercials) could only cover so much. The number of Essbase presentations (less than 10?) was sadly pitiful considering the number of Essbase users world-wide is into the millions.

Normally, the interRel presentations can be counted on for some detailed training material, but since there were so many Hyperion products to cover and only a handful of slots allocated to each product, even our presenters were forced to go broad but not deep. [Side note: we did have a number of Hyperion-centric attendees who started just going to interRel presentations. I really think this is cool, by the way. interRel fan club in the making?] Simply put, to provide a solid educational opportunity, they need to have a whole lot more sessions (a la, Hyperion Solutions conferences) or only focus on the key products and go really deep (a la, ODTUG Kaleidoscope conferences).

Where have all the people gone?

This may be the only large conference I've ever attended where no one will go on record with the attendance numbers. I'll give you an example. Here's Ray Payne (who's a decently nice guy, by the way, and if he resurrects Solutions will be my hero) responding to a question fromSearchOracle.com about attendance numbers from Collaborate:

That's actually a good question. We knew that we were going to be down in attendance. I have traveled over the country in the past four months and attended several other events, saw what was happening, and we were planning for it. The good news is that we saw a last-minute up-tick. I don't have the final numbers, but we actually had, from my understanding, a good number of walk-ons. So we were pleasantly surprised.

Well, it's understandable that OAUG doesn't have any numbers, because this interview was completed well before the conference began... oops, correction, it was done on Wednesday, May 6, the last full day of the conference. Apparently they had difficulty counting all the Orlando residents who were walking by the convention center, saw someone was holding a conference, and decided to come in to buy a last minute pass. When they finish counting all these impulse buyers, we should see final numbers. Until then, I'm forced to go on things people have said unofficially as well as my own impressions. If anyone has official numbers, please send them to me and I will immediately update them here, because I don't want to be the source of any bad information.

The number that I heard unofficially was 2,200 attendees from OAUG, and 2,400 from Quest and IOUG put together. This would give us around 4,600 total attendees, but I heard from others that these numbers were inflated, because these aren't necessarily full conference attendees. Apparently, the scuttlebutt around the conference is that these numbers included attendees who only but majorly reduced price single-day conference passes. Someone told me that the reported number of real full conferencegoers was less than 3,500. Now we also have to wonder if that 3,000 number included exhibitor passes and the real number is even lower than that?

Per the FAQ on the Collaborate website (which also humorously states "and we expect more in 2009"), there were 7,500 attendees at Collaborate 2009. Since this year is 4,600 by the most optimistic counts and a lot of people are claiming the 3,000, attendance has obviously plummeted. That's a drop of 40-60% from last year. But could it really be this severe of a decrease? The Hyperion attendance numbers seem to back it up. Let's assume that the presentations at which I spoke are representative of the overall Hyperion track (I had about 8% of the Hyperion presentations). Here are a couple of things I noticed about attendance at my sessions:

• The ratio of vendors to customers was about 3 to 1. I've never seen a user conference this skewed.
• Last year, I gave a presentation that filled the room to the point where they had to have me give the presentation again to handle the overflow people who couldn't get in. There were over 200 people there. This year, I gave the same presentation (it got great ratings in '08). Attendance? 25 people.
• My highest attended presentation was 80 people. Note that I didn't see any other normal Hyperion presentation (skipping the keynote is basically what I mean here) draw this many.
• While the 80 people was my highest attended presentation on Monday, my highest on Tuesday was 40, and my highest on Wednesday was 25. By the time Thursday rolled around, one of the Hyperion presentations, per the speaker himself, had four people in it.
• The daily attendance dops were seen by every one of the Hyperion presenters. One of Tim Tow's presentations had 3 attendees.

Supposedly, there were around 1,000 Hyperion attendees at Collaborate 2008. This year, the numbers I heard ranged from 500-600, but I really don't believe there were this many unless you also lump in the BI/DW guys. If the number really was 500-600, though, then this is right in the 40-50% dropoff range that the numbers above reflect.

While I really hope that these numbers are inaccurate, I'd love to hear your opinions on the attendance. Again, if anyone has accurate counts, let me know (or point me to the right press release or source on the web) and I'll update it here immediately.

High points

Lest I seem like a non-stop flow of criticism, there were some things I really liked about this year's conference:

• Plenty of space to walk around without being bothered! Just kidding, Collaborate board members. I'm sure this is a sore enough point that I will ease up.
• Better food. Yes, I know I complained about the food earlier on in this very same post, I was mostly talking about the lunches. The evening offerings (Monday's and Tuesday's at the exhibit hall as well as Wednesday at Islands of Adventure) were very, very good. The evening desert offerings were very impressive. While alcoholic drinks weren't free on Wednesday night this year, I frankly prefer that over the rationing ticket method, so kudos there too. The food is definitely quite an improvement over last year, and I will give credit where credit is due. Fix the luncheon fare next year, and I promise to tell the world using as many creative compliments as I previously did snarky criticisms.
• Rooms were together. While the EPM content in total was spread over 11 rooms all across the massive OCCC, most of the good quality content (i.e., that put together by the OAUG Hyperion SIG) was confined to 3 main rooms. Even better, all three of the rooms were right next to each other. If you ignored the Quest sessions, IOUG sessions, and the couple of scattered OAUG sessions, you could go to all the sessions without walking more than 100 feet between rooms.
• Better product coverage. Last year, a lot of Hyperion products didn't get a single presentation devoted to them. This year, the good folks on the OAUG Hyperion SIG board made sure that all products got covered. I wish they had more presentations to allot, but they did get a good mix from what they were allowed to do. I know how hard it is to prepare one of these schedules, and my compliments go out to Ed Delise, Kristin Newman, and Doreen Fox-Dwyer.
• Location, location, location. Sorry, folks in Denver, but I prefer Orlando in May to Denver in April (it snowed one day during last year's Collaborate). I know some people hate when conferences get into rotating between Las Vegas and Orlando annually, but those cities do know how to handle a convention.

In conclusion...

They really did work to make this year's conference better than last year and a lot of those changes seem to be coming from the OAUG leadership. Aside from the fact that no one really got to see them, the improvements were noticeable. I hope that Collaborate continues to get better. The problem is that it may be too late. With half the Hyperion attendees in 2009 of 2008 (and no one from Hyperion really knew about it in 2008), there may be no Hyperion/EPM people left in Las Vegas at Collaborate 2010.