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!

EPM Connection - Dallas in November

Per Doreen Fox-Dwyer from the OAUG Hyperion SIG, the dates (and location) have been announced for the next EPM Connection conference. It's going to be November 16 & 17 in Frisco, Texas at the Westin Stonebriar.

While I'm thrilled to see it's going to be in the DFW area (where I live), I'm not thrilled to see it will be held in Frisco. It's more than 20 miles from either DFW international airport or Dallas Love Field airport. Basically, it's up in the upper-Northeast corner of the Dallas area, so it's not really close to most people living in Dallas. That said, I think most people will be planning on staying at the hotel overnight (it has 300+ rooms), so I guess commute doesn't matter. On a personal note, it's really close to my house (I live in the middle of nowhere), so I'll be happy and bright-eyed during the conference! The Westin Stonebriar is a nice new property (with an attached 18-hole golf course).

I think that the event will go quite well. There's a vibrant user community in North Texas (though they're used to getting their Hyperion content at user groups for free) and it's cheap for people to fly into DFW. If they add an Essbase track (maybe replacing some of the Enterprise and Strategic Finance presentations), they'll have attendance mirroring what they saw at the well-organized event in New Jersey (thank you, Kristin Newman!).

Keep an eye out here and I'll announce as they put out their call for papers and start allowing registrations.

UPDATE:

Papers are being accepted through July 30, 2011 at:

http://connectionpoint.oaug.org/conferencesandeducation/conferences/2010/cpepmnov/callforpres.php

Also, registrations are now being accepted on the EPM Connection (also known as OAUG Connection Point EPM) website. Prices vary wildly depending on when you register, whether you're staying for both days, and if you're an OAUG member. The lowest price of $275 is for a one-day, OAUG member who signs up by October 9th. If you're not an OAUG member and you wait to sign up for both days on-site, the price skyrockets to $695. In other words, if you plan on going, don't wait. Go here now and don't forget to use interRel's promo code (interrelclient) if you want to be invited to our client appreciation event on Tuesday night:

http://connectionpoint.oaug.org/conferencesandeducation/conferences/2010/cpepmnov/registration.php

Kaleidoscope - Hyperion/EPM Agenda Approved

Cameron and Gary Beat Me To It

At least two of my fellow ODTUG Hyperion SIG members (and so called "friends") broke the story first, but allow me to elaborate as the Hyperion/Essbase/EPM content chair on the agenda for ODTUG's Kaleidoscope 2010.

Before I continue, as you've read previously on this blog and others, the only national conference with a major Hyperion presence in 2010 is Kaleidoscope. If you're looking for the best parts of the old Hyperion Solutions conferences, come to Kaleidoscope. Ask anyone who went in 2009 and they'll all agree that it was the best training money they spent all year.

The conference is June 27 to July 1 in Washington DC. Unlike some conferences, the content starts first thing in the morning on Sunday and goes through lunch on Thursday, so make sure you fly in on Saturday and don't fly out until Thursday afternoon or evening.

Sunday Developer's Symposium is Back

The opening Sunday in 2010 (like in 2008 and 2009) will be turned over to the Oracle Product Managers to tell us everything that they have planned that hasn't yet been released. This is, for most people, their one opportunity each year to really talk to the people responsible for development to see what's about to be released, what's in beta, and what's a twinkle in the eye of Oracle EPM product management.

The Sunday "Oracle EPM Developer's Symposium" goes well beyond PowerPoint slides. The day is organized by my long-time friend and Oracle Sr. Director, Al Marciante, and he will make sure that see actual product in development.

The day is also designed to be interactive. Part of why the Product Managers are coming is to hear what you think about what they have in mind. For Sunday, all the Hyperion attendees get together in one really large room. Monday through Thursday, the attendees break out into several tracks.

5 Tracks for the Hyperion Attendees

There are five major tracks that you'll find interesting:

• Essbase. There is an entire track devoted to Essbase content and each day is themed to a different aspect of Essbase. Some of the days include Aggregate Storage (ASO), Essbase Utilities, Essbase Under the Covers, and Advanced Essbase. There will be no conference (including OpenWorld) in 2010 with more Essbase sessions.
• Hyperion Applications. One of the comments from last year was that there weren't enough presentations on Hyperion Planning and HFM, so this year, we devoted an entire track to them. This track also has sessions on some of the lesser known products like Life Cycle Management, EPM Architect, Hyperion Strategic Finance, Integrated Operational Planning, and FDM. We also devoted time slots to some of the modules that haven't even been released yet (but will by Kaleidoscope 2010) like Disclosure Management and Financial Close.
• Hyperion Hands-On-Labs. There will be a series of 3+ hour hands-on labs to give you real-world experience in Hyperion. Some of the classes include Essbase Studio and Integrating OBIEE with Essbase. If you learn more by doing than hearing, this is the track to park yourself in. There will be plenty of power outlets, don't worry.
• BI, DW, and Hyperion Reporting Tools. As we all know, some of our favorite products are being phased out in favor of some OBIEE products like Answers, Dashboards, and Publisher. If you want to learn more about the Oracle Business Intelligence side of things, then this would be the place to find it. For what it's worth, I'm not the content chair for this track, but the awesome Mark Rittman is, so I know it will be good (or I'll eviscerate him on my blog ;-).
• Hardcore Hyperion. One of the things people liked at previous Kaleidoscopes was the advanced/guru/hardcore content that conferences tended to omit. Even the late/great Hyperion Solutions conference had stopped doing sessions for the true Hyperion expert. We've expanded these "Top Gun" presentations into an entire track in 2010 and it's not just Hardcore Essbase. In addition to Essbase, there are entire days devoted to advanced HFM, Planning, and even Smart View. If you don't go to classes on Hyperion anymore because there's nothing you don't already know for your chosen product, come to this track. It's where I plan on spending most of my time, so pull up a chair next to me. I'm usually in the back row near the power outlets.

Business Users are Welcome Too

The number one request from last year was that add even more Hyperion Planning and Hyperion Financial Management content. Apparently, the Planning and HFM users, developers, and admins were not finding a home at any other conference. We've solved this by adding an entire Hyperion Apps track and also devoting days in the Hardcore Hyperion track (see above).

The other request was for more beginner and intermediate level content. In 2008, we only had Essbase content and it went great (though it did tend to skew to the more advanced users). In 2009, we added some content on the other applications (like Hyperion Planning) but again, we tended to skew to the intermediate to advanced users. Our theory was that beginner and business users would be going to the Collaborate conference.

Well, with the scarcity of Hyperion content at Collaborate 2010, we felt that we had to provide a home to those more functional users (with non-technical backgrounds). To that end, we added beginner, intermediate, business, and functional content to both the Essbase and Hyperion Apps tracks. This way if you miss one of the OAUG EPM Connection conferences (or you want more than 2-days of information), you'll be quite satisfied with Kaleidoscope.

For those of you still wanting the guru content, never fear. We didn't want you to think that we were going all soft, so that's why we spun out or guru-level technical content into its own Hardcore Hyperion track.

See the Agenda Visually

Gary Crisci, President of the ODTUG Hyperion SIG, was kind enough the put the agenda into a Google Doc. Hopefully, Gary will keep this updated so that if speakers don't accept their invites or sessions get added, you'll be able to get an updated agenda.

You should also visit ODTUGKaleidscope.com. This will not only have the most recent list of accepted presentations, it's also where you'd go to register. They're already accepting registrations if you have some budget money left and only a couple of days left in 2009 to spend it. I'm signed up to deliver either 3 or 4 presentations at Kaleidoscope (mostly in the Hardcore Hyperion track), so I'll definitely see you there.

On a vaguely related note, for those of you who played it at Kaleidscope 2009 and for those of you feeling bad that you missed out, there will be multiple midnight sessions of Werewolf. For what it's worth, my name is Edward Roske and I'm a villager. Gary on the other hand? Obviously a werewolf.

EPM Connection New Jersey - Update

This is an update to my posting from last month on the first of the EPM Connection regional conferences (also known by the easy to remember name "OAUG Connection Point - Enterprise Performance Management" regional conferences). It looks like this conference will definitely be

February 23-24, 2010 at the Hyatt Regency

The dates are definite now (there was some slight confusion before). It's definitely Feb. 23-24 in Jersey City, NJ. The host hotel is the Hyatt Regency in Jersey City. Right now, rooms are blocked at the conference rate for $139/night until the room block is filled. To find more about the conference lodging, visit http://oaug.org/conferencesandeducation/conferences/2010/cpepm/travel.php.

Educational Content

Some of the sessions are already approved and posted on the EPM Connection website. (No, I'm not one of the pre-approved speakers, Mom.) Here is the presentation list as of December 19, 2009:

• "Upgrading HFM to Fusion 11.x — Introduction to New Functionality and Upgrade Considerations" by Rob Cybulski from Finit
• Converting from Hyperion Enterprise to HFM: Design Considerations and Best Practices" by Rob Cybulski from Finit
• "Global insurer, Marsh and McLennan, moves Long-Range Strategic Plan to Hyperion Strategic Finance from spreadsheet models" by Tom Gibbons from Marsh & McLennan with Hanyul Lee from Bluestone
• "I Know How to Spell HSF … Now What? The Hyperion Product You Never Realized You Always Needed and Probably Already Own" by Jay Laabs from Bluestone
• "Oracle EPM 11 system administration — under the covers!" by Eric Helmer from Hackett
• "Achieving a Common Goal: Creating an Oracle EPM Center of Excellence" by Laura Gregor from Pearson
• Validating Your Financial Information Using Financial Data Quality Management (FDM)" by Laura Gregor from Pearson

It's interesting to note that of the 7 presentations selected so far, 2 are on HFM, 2 are on HSF, 1 is on FDM, 1 is high-level on EPM, and 1 is very techie-level on EPM. What we don't see are any presentations on Hyperion Planning or Essbase, the two best selling Oracle EPM products. I'm somewhat surprised they didn't preselect any in these categories.

There will eventually be 35+ presentations (not sure if this includes the vendor presentations or not) so I'm guessing this is just a temporary scheduling quirk. The deadline for abstract submission was December 15, and when the rest of the presentations are selected, we'll have a better idea of the product coverage of the conference.

With the exception of Eric's (which really doesn't seem to fit with the above sessions), all of the above also seem to be very introductory presentations. Again, I'm not sure if this is a temporary quirk or if it's the aim of the conference to have more beginner-level content.

Registration

We only have 2 months to the conference, and since the schedule's not posted yet, time is rapidly running out for people to determine if they want to go and then register to do so. To help make it easier to get approval in this short time frame, the nice people at OAUG have made the cost of the conference an affordable $495 (if you register by February 16). After that date, the rate goes up to $595 for what is basically an on-site registration rate.

You'll notice that the rate of $495 doesn't go up until a week before the conference. In my opinion, this is bad for the conference organizers, because they really won't have any idea of the expected conference attendance until a week or two before the conference. People will procrastinate until February, because they really don't have any incentive to sign up early.

Because people will be signing up at nearly the last moment, I expect attendance numbers to be minimal until February. Correspondingly, don't be surprised if the conference organizers get spooked when they see those very low pre-enrollment numbers and start doing things like offering discounts. Note that I have no actual knowledge that this will happen (I'm no longer involved with the OAUG Hyperion SIG), it makes logical sense.

If you want to be a kind soul and sign up now to give them a better idea of their conference size, stop procrastinating and visit this link:

http://oaug.org/conferencesandeducation/conferences/2010/cpepm/registration.php

More Information

If you want to stay abreast about the conference, bookmark the following link:

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

They seem to be updating it very regularly. It's actually changed since the beginning of this week, so make sure you check it frequently. Assuming I get a presentation selected, I will be at "EPM Connection NJ," so if you're going, I'll see you there.

OAUG Hyperion SIG - Leadership Update

Board of Directors

While I was taking a break from blogging, the OAUG Hyperion SIG held elections for its board of directors. Some of them have been previously announced here, but congratulations go out to the following full list of people:

• SIG Coordinator, Kristin Newman
• Programs and Education Coordinator, Doreen Fox-Dwyer from Hess
• Marketing Coordinator, Julie Jacobs from Titan-Pinnacle
• Communications Coordinator, Todd Rebner from AdvancedEPM
• Secretary, Todd Randolph from Optimum
• HUG Coordinators, Angela Slayton from HealthMarkets & Mark West from P3
• Partner Liaison, Suzanne Hoffman
• Domain Lead Coordinator, Cathy McCain from Lockheed

I still think the OAUG Hyperion SIG Board of Directors has too many partners/vendors and not enough customers, but with Doreen, Angela, and Cathy, they're making strides in the right direction.

Domain Leads

I'd congratulate the Domain Leads, but most of their terms expire at OpenWorld in a couple of days. So if you'd like to be a domain lead, now's your chance. The OAUG Hyperion SIG is soliciting leads for the following areas:

• Essbase
• Hyperion Planning
• Strategic Finance
• Crystal Ball
• HFM & Enterprise
• Financial Data Quality Management
• Data Relationship Management (formerly MDM)
• Infrastructure
• Data Integration (HAL, DIM, ODI, EPMA, etc.)

They'll be taking nominations until October 19 and they're really looking for customer experts in those areas. If you want to do your part to help the Hyperion and Oracle EPM community, e-mail cathy.l.mccain (at) lmco.com to request a nomination form.

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.

ODTUG Hyperion SIG - Elections

During Kaleidoscope, elections were held for the new ODTUG Hyperion SIG board. The winners (well, we're all winners, as my 3rd grade Physical Education teacher taught me) are:

• Al Marciante, Oracle (advisory board member)
• Angie Wilcox, JCPenney
• Cameron Lackpour, interRel Consulting
• Doug Bliss, ACE Cash Express
• Edward Roske, interRel Consulting
• Gary Crisci, Morgan Stanley
• Jeff McAhren, Health Markets
• John Weimar, Kerdock
• Natalie Delemar, Randstad
• Quinlan Eddy, Star Analytics
• Tim Tow, Applied OLAP (de facto board member)

It's a nice mix of users and vendors with almost exactly even numbers of each. It's a large board, to be sure, but it works.

As many of you know, I was the President of the ODTUG Hyperion SIG until after these elections were held. The first order of business for the newly elected board was to decide on an elected President (since I was president by proclamation more than anything). Gary Crisci successfully overthrew me in a bloodless coup, so I'd like to congratulate Gary on becoming the new ODTUG Hyperion SIG President. I'm still on the board so I still get to attend the bi-weekly calls: Gary has been doing a great job of keeping the board in line.

If you want to join the ODTUG Hyperion SIG, all it takes is joining their Linked In group:

http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1796201

ODTUG Kaleidoscope - Overall Agenda

I'm sitting here in the Oracle ACE Director briefing not being able to write about what I hear in the briefing. As such, I thought I'd write about what my conference plans for the next few days since I may not get another moment of free time for the next week.

Saturday, June 20

The first day of Kaleidoscope is always devoted to community service. Last year, they helped rebuild a school in New Orleans. This year, they're removing invasive plants from Martin Dunes on the Pacific coast. While I am a pro-nature sort of guy, I'm not 100% positive I'm going to spend the day on the beach killing evil plants. I love the environment, but this is my only potential down day until the conference begins.

We're the premiere sponsor of Kaleidoscope this year, so we have some massive booth at the front of the convention center. The booth is also supposed to be setup on Saturday, so that may also take me away from the dunes. I hope to get out there, though. There's a planet that needs saving, and it's not like it's going to save itself.

Sunday, June 21

This is the Hyperion Developer's Symposium day. I already did a previous entry on the main content for this day:

http://looksmarter.blogspot.com/2009/05/kaleidoscope-announcements.html

I think I'm kicking off the day and then turning it over to the day's host, Al Marciante from Oracle. The symposium should last until 4PM followed by a speaker's briefing from 4:15-4:45.

Steve Miranda will be delivering an evening keynote from 5-6PM. Steve is the SVP of Fusion Apps development for Oracle. Some of the Hyperion attendees might be overlooking because they might think it'll be a briefing on Fusion Apps. From what I've heard, it will actually be more of "how do you manage a huge development project." In other words, the presentation will be more of a business management presentation. I'm going to attend, and I hope my fellow Hyperion attendees do to. There will also be a demo of some Fusion application, but again, I think it's in the context of development management.

Following Steve's keynote is the welcoming reception from 6:15-8:00PM. There will be good hors d’ oeuvres (Kaleidscope is known for their quality food) and some jazz music. I think I have to be staffing our booth in the exhibit hall (where the reception is being held). We actually have a fun new booth concept we're trying (it involves a lot of playing of video games), so I'm looking forward to booth duty slightly more than I normally am.

Monday, June 22

The main keynote for the whole conference (which seriously shows how much ODTUG loves the Hyperion community!) is the great John Kopcke. He's Oracle's SVP of BI/EPM and he'll be keynoting from 8:30-9:30AM. He's going to be talking about EPM and the "Management Excellence" concept Oracle's been advocating for more than a year now. I'm really excited John's giving this presentation, so attendees, make sure you get up bright and early to pack the room!

Sessions are on Monday from 10:00-5:15PM. The evening is open for attendees to run amuck through downtown Monterey pillaging, overturning cars, optimizing SQL, that sort of thing. To avoid this chaos, interRel is hosting a dinner for some people that evening (and I presume I'm supposed to be there).

From 10PM-midnight, we're trying something new for this conference. We're hosting a "Midnight Madness" chocolate buffet, caffeine bar, and "Ask a Hyperion Guru" panel. This session (party?) will also be our one opportunity to address the whole Hyperion community at Kaleidoscope, so we're going to spend a couple of minutes giving an update on the Hyperion SIG.

Tuesday, June 23

This day is pretty simple. Hyperion sessions from 8AM-5:15PM. I then spend the evening doing various Oracle ACE Director activities. There's a panel from 5:15-6:15 (called "Sundown sessions" in the program), a reception from 6:15-7:15, and then an off-site dinner for us Oracle ACEs at the Monterey Beach Resort until 10PM.

Wednesday, June 24

Proving that no one at Kaleidoscope cares in the least if I'm a morning person, there are again sessions starting at 8AM and running until 5:15PM. The evening is a closing night special event involving jazz, food, comedy, food, god-forbid dancing, food, frivolity, and so on. I might ditch early and start up a poker game in my room.

Thursday, June 25

Sessions start at 8AM (why, God, why?) and go until noon. I then head to the Monterey airport for a roundabout series of flights back to DFW. As you can imagine, there aren't a lot of direct flights from Monterey->DFW, so I'm routed through San Francisco. I think I would have actually prefered to drive to SFO so I could fly direct, but I'll just enjoy my tour of the Pacific coast.

Pretend You're At the Conference

If you're company had financial cutbacks making it impossible for you to go to K'Scope this year or if you're otherwise incarcerated (shoutout to Bernie Madoff!), you have some options for following along. ODTUG has a page that aggregates all the blogs about Kaleidoscope:

http://odtugkaleidoscope.com/blogs.html

You can also watch everyone's Twitter feeds about the conference here:

http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23ODTUG

Of course, you can always follow my Twitter feed here:

http://twitter.com/ERoske

Twitter will be a big part of Kaleidoscope this year. All of the sessions will have their own Twitter hashtag (basically, "#ODTUG Snnn" where nnn is the session ID). This will allow attendees to the sessions to not only discuss the presentation while it's going on, they'll be able to ask questions of the presenter.

Each speaker is supposed to have an application running live on their laptops showing the live Twitter feed while they're presenting. This could be very confusing for some speakers who aren't used to questions appear on their screen while talking. I'm used to doing webcasts where this is the norm, so I don't expect any issues. I suppose we also have to worry about attendees tweeting uncool things while someone is presenting. Heckling is a whole lot easier if you don't have to speak IRL. This will either be the coolest micro-networking communication idea ever or it will crash & burn. It will be different, no matter what happens.

I will be doing a follow-up post after this one explaining which exact sessions I'm delivering in case anyone wants to tweet me some questions in advance.

OAUG Hyperion SIG - Election Results

We finally have an elected board for the OAUG Hyperion SIG. Congratulations to the following winners:

• President: Kristin Newman, interRel
• Secretary: Todd Randolph, Optimum
• Programs & Education: Doreen Fox-Dwyer, Hess

Kristin and Doreen have been active in the SIG virtually since its inception, and I think I speak for everyone (with the possible exception of the people who ran against them and lost) in saying that I'm happy they're still around. Their continuity and proven commitment will serve the SIG well going forward.

Todd is a new addition to the SIG, and I only hope he works half as hard as Doreen and Kristin have over the last year as he tackles the role of board secretary. If you know these three, send them your congratulations. If you don't know them, send your congratulations after explaining who you are so you don't freak them out. The internet has enough stalkers already without you adding to the mix.

I would also say thank you from the entire Hyperion user community to the outgoing president, Ed Delise. Ed founded the Hyperion SIG back in 2007 and has been a major driving force in getting it to where it is today. As an Essbase domain lead for the Hyperion SIG, I will sincerely miss Ed and his leadership. We appreciate everything you've done, Ed!

OAUG Hyperion SIG - Elections End Soon

Voting closes Friday, May 22nd at 7:30 CST

This Friday is your deadline to vote for several very important positions within the OAUG Hyperion SIG: President, Secretary, and Education Coordinator. The OAUG Hyperion SIG is the umbrella organization over all the North American HUG (Hyperion User Groups) so their leadership is essential if we don't want the HUGs to die off.

Go to http://tinyurl.com/hyperionsigelection and vote before close of business on Friday if you want a hand in choosing people who truly have the best interests of the Hyperion (and Oracle EPM) community at heart. Results will be announced on May 29, but I might just do some exit polling of my readers before that date and we'll see if we can predict the winners ahead of time.

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.