it is the season for learning
With summer arriving, up north, it means the opportunities for meeting and learning from Hyperion users is among us.
The UK folks have the OUG EPM & Hyperion conference this week, with a full packed agenda covering a range of Hyperion topics as well as OBIEE for those wondering where the future lies. This will be my first year since 2006, when I’ll miss the conference, now that I’m based in the US.
So me highlights for me include AMOSCA’s session on “Unravelling the EPM spaghetti” and Edward Roske – always a great speaker with lot of tips and tricks to share crammed into his sessions.
But there’s plenty of action stateside happening too, thanks to the OAUG:
OAUG Connection Point – R12.1, July 12-13, Chicago.
OAUG Connection Point – EPM/BI, July 20-21, Seattle.
OAUG Connection Point – EPM/BI Nov 15-16, Atlanta.
For me the Seattle conference, presented by OAUG, Northwest Oracle User Group, OAUG Hyperion SIG and OAUG BI SIG, has added significance since it’ll be my first presentation in the US:
- “Why Data Visualization is Important in Delivering Actionable Insight”
Helping business users gain insight and enabling them to do their jobs better has always been a key component in my work ethic, I look forward to sharing and learning from the other participant and speakers.
So take advantage of these great opportunities and I hope to see some of you soon.
BOOTNOTE: I forgot the Oracle Development Tools User Group event Kascope11 which is later this month from 26-30 June 2011, held in Long Beach California.
Have your say on how you use Business Intelligence tools
Ever thought that it would be nice once in a while that you could actually reach out to the folks that make products to really tell them how you use their products?
Well, the Oracle Business Intelligence User Experience (BIUX) Team are doing just that, wanting to know what and how you use various Business Intelligence to do reporting. They ask several questions about what you use and how you use it and also cover the topic of mobile reporting.
OBIEE 11.1.1.5 released earlier this month introduced support for iPhone and iPad, if you didn’t know.
Click this link to have your say.
It’s listed as being able to complete in 10 minutes, although you should be able to do it in 5, I reckon 
The survey remains open until May 31, 2011. So get cracking.
technology can be so good, yet wrong
The ability to check your bills and make payments online is great, although sometimes the information is completely wrong
I don’t think I’ve had my contract for 2010 years … maybe time for an upgrade!
PS: I’m sure the computer isn’t wrong, just the human who created the program (my laptop told me so …)
another step forward in computing mobility
Last year I participated in an Oracle internal project to look at the future of computing in 2020 now it seems that has taken a step forward with the Sun Labs demo of a virtual client running on an iPad.
Although this is not an actual product today, nor does it mean there will be one according to the disclaimer, it does show how devices can connect to a users desktop remotely. This is an extension of the current SunRay software, which allows virtual user desktops which are centrally managed and served to clients.
Not really sure why they show all those pinches and zooms in the demo, seems rather distracting to me
good design is simple, bad design shows chairs
When presenting reporting designs to clients it’s important to focus on the clarify and impact of the reports or charts. There are many examples of excessive decoration or chrome and others also seek simplicity.
While some clients have requests for fancy dashboards – flashing colors, traffic lights or other ‘sexy’ paraphernalia, I can most often turn them down by focusing on the reader and how their understanding is helped by clarity with a focus on letting the numbers or data points tell the story.
I’ve had some spare time lately, so put it to use with some Oracle presentations – the last one was on Weblogic. Given that Weblogic is now an integral part of the Hyperion stack in 11.1.2, it made sense to review the new member of the family.
The Virtual Developer Day, was a mocked up conference room and auditorium with carpet and chairs, which navigating to the topics was easy enough it was all a wrapper for youtube content. Which, while it looked impressive (kind of), it didn’t help with delivering the messages* – there were many comments on the chats about what items to click on and where the actual content was.
Here’s a couple of screenshots of the main auditorium and conference rooms – for me this was overkill, developers don’t care as much about presentation they care about the details and information.
Before you go ahead and add decoration to reports, please think again and ask yourself if it adds any value or is just distracting. Hopefully together we can make the world a cleaner and more beautiful planet
* Don’t get me started on the presentations – they were fairly dull and the quality was poor – monotone presenters who didn’t seem to have read or rehearsed the material before it was recorded. And I’m not really any wiser about Weblogic.
openoffice 3.3 released
After a long 7 months the OpenOffice.org team have released the latest version of OpenOffice: 3.3 – this follows a couple of weeks after the release of Oracle OpenOffice 3.3.
Updates for StarOffice can be found on the Oracle site: https://sspatch.oracle.com/ (login required – does not require a service plan/agreement, just developer account)
Over 620 bugs were fixed in this feature release, with the release notes here and new feature list here.
Some interesting ones are: the embedding of standard pdf fonts, colored tabs (like excel), inserting objects in charts and improved slide layouts in impress.
Best of all the price is right, free!
You can download from the main site, I had issues initially with a slow download speed, so I selected the torrent option, which was much faster.
reboot
After a nice long break over the winter holidays it’s time to start blogging again. It’s amazing what a long break can do for you, I was pleasantly surprised to find much excitement in the little things:
- getting lost in books, my reading list was rather large and has now reduced significantly!
- the intoxicating smell of the morning coffee and taking time to enjoy it rather than gulp it down.
- walking into the local town and noticing the wildlife, blue jays, robins, cardinals, hawks and ever present squirrels.
There’s been a lot happening over the last couple of months, so I’ll be posting sporadically until I catch up and also updating the blog site – well that’s the plan! – or something like that anyway 
cold
Thankfully we’ve missed most of the winter storms, with the worst being a 3 inch dusting of snow and cold (below freezing) temps. Not as bad as the brother in laws place in Denver was -25 C on Monday!! Seriously cold. Brrr!!
halt
And now my time has come to leave the Sun family, as part of the back office support not required in the new Oracle. I’ve learnt and developed so much over the past 8 years, thanks to the generous and supportive people in all areas of the business.
It is however fortuitous timing as I’m taking the opportunity to relocate from the UK to be closer to the in-laws in Virginia/Washington DC.
So look out for me at any EPM/BI/Solaris events in the DC area.
My work blog at http://blogs.sun.com/thinslice/ will now stop and not be updated.
# halt
I’ll continue to update this, my personal blog, after some time to recharge the batteries and unpack
technology strategies for 2020
One of the hardest things to do is to predict the future, forecasting is fraught with dangers (especially of being incorrect):
- “I think there is a market for about five computers.”
- “X-rays are a hoax.”
- “Atomic energy might be as good as our present day explosives, but it is unlikely to produce anything more dangerous.”
So given the dangers should we even try?
The answer is a resounding yes as the effort in determining different scenarios and options for the future allows technology planners to understand business drivers and outlying technology (assuming that a cross-functional team is involved, if it’s just one person the outlook isn’t so good).
This forward planning also allow business to react quickly once a technological change has occurred.
What does this have to do with life at Oracle?? Recently a request went out to employees asking what their vision of technology would be like in 2020. The effort was headed by Frank Buytendijk, who is the face of Oracles Thought Leadership and is a great speaker – he’s spoken at several UKOUG Hyperion events and is well worth it, very interesting and entertaining.
The responses came in from all around the globe and a paragraph of mine was chosen as the first quote:
The washing machine finished its washing cycle at the same time the bagels popped from the toaster. Both sent data to the house hub. The toaster, being a newer model, registered the actual energy consumption and the fact that the bagel setting was used.
While many of the collaborators mentioned RFID tags and the ubiquitousness of computing, we failed to see what this recent WiFi Alliance poll suggested: that 75% of respondents would be grumpy without wifi for a week (more than would be grumpy without coffee for a week).
I can only assume it’s american coffee and not fresh roasted like my friend and supplier.
The responses were collated and presented at Oracle Open World last month, you can get the full output here (caution PDF). Another blogger also wrote about his submission. There weren’t any forecasts of hover boards …
PS: the three leading quotes were from: Thomas J Watson, President of IBM, 1948; Lord Kelvin, 1900 and Winston Churchill, 1939.
