Tuesday March 10 – Day 2
So my second day didn’t look like it was going to be hectic but things aren’t always how they appear. On Tuesday, I was scheduled for booth time and two sessions. I turned into another intense day! I actually enjoyed it all!
I started on a call with SAP in the morning but learned pretty quickly that it was rescheduled. Score! I now have time to work with LinkedIn, do some research and send and respond to emails. I enjoy using LinkedIn to keep in touch with everyone that I meet!
On my way down to the booth, I crossed paths with the legendary Mico Yuk. Full of energy and wearing great shoes, we quickly caught up before continuing on our way. Once I made it to the booth, Ryan Goodman stopped by to chat and show me the latest developments with Centigon’s CMaps Analytics. There’s some truly cool stuff that’s very easy to use here. We spent some time in the Analytics pod looking at their work and discussing the details of embedding mapping technologies into Web Intelligence.
I was then asked to join a discussion on visualizations and HANA with a group from Decision First and a guest in the booth. After discussing visualizations and HANA in the guests environment, I returned to the Analytics pod to help demo Lumira Desktop, Edge and Server and discussed the differences among the offerings. Once the demos concluded, a quick check of my watch told me that there was no time for lunch before I had to go test the lab for my 1 pm Web Intelligence Session.
Similar to the previous day, the Web Intelligence session was packed. The guys even added more laptops to accommodate the interest! We covered the basic to advanced topics and took even more great questions.
After the session, I went back to the booth and walked down to Pitney Bowes to learn more about their MapInfo integration solution for Web Intelligence. I really enjoyed the demo and am appreciative that they answered all of my questions. There’s some pretty impressive tech going on there!
I got into a discussion with one Decision First sales rep about a blog that I wrote a couple of years ago on linking BPC on Microsoft SSAS vs BPC on SAP NetWeaver. Along the way, I was happy that I could be at the Welcome pod to give away a couple of our books “Implementing SAP HANA”.
It seems that the time flew by once again and it was time to get back to my hands on lab to ensure that the servers were prepared for the second Dashboards session. For a 4th time, everything was flawless and we had another great session on Dashboards. I compiled some of my favorite questions from that session in this blog.
I then attended a client party at Emeril’s that was cohosted by Decision First and NIMBL, our new SAP partner. Sampling a new merlot, I met quite a few new people and was able to catch up with some folks that I haven’t seen in a while. I then joined a few of the Decision First folks and a client at Fiamma for a late dinner. We had conversation around HANA, Analytics, architectures, grappa and lemoncello!
Because I had a 6 am flight on Wednesday morning back to Atlanta, I was in bed by 11:30 to be up by 3:30 am.
In a nutshell, I describe the conference as busy, intense, successful and engaging. If you were able to attend, I hope that you enjoyed the conference and got as much out of it as I did as an attendee and presenter. If you were not able to attend, I hope that you check out the Reporting and Analytics Conference this fall (R&A 2015) or the BI 2016 conference next year. Decision First has discounted admission rates that can save you quite a bit on your budget in conference attendance and you’ll get invitations to the best parties at the conference!
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