Dave's Adventures in Business Intelligence

It’s 10:00 pm, do you know where your Dave is? He’s at home, finally, after a long but interesting day at the GBN conference. I am going to again post a few highlights from today and save some of the in-depth thoughts for later.

Computers Evolve During Stressful Times

The keynote this morning was delivered by Vicki Farrell, the Manager of Marketing Strategy from Hewlett Packard. She presented a couple of interesting points, one of which was that computer technology seems to get the biggest boost during times of economic stress. It’s at this sort of time that people really start looking to get more out of technology as a way to make up ground. She finished out her presentation with a picture of the garage where HP started. (I am sure there is a rule from HP that requires that 😉 )

Text Analytics Are Cool

I attended a presentation on text analytics that was interesting enough. I never seem to get anything that I can use in my job from these presentations, but the concept is one that I am quite interested in so I try to attend them. The presented talked about monitoring sentiment by scanning both internal project documents and external web sites. She did get a bit confused when someone asked about RSS; she thought that was some sort of sound file.

Semantic Layer Usability Testing Was Interesting

Unfortunately it was also covered by a non-disclosure agreement so I can’t talk about it. 🙁

Too Many Universe Design Sessions

I say this with my own universe design session coming up tomorrow, but I really think we had too many sessions this year. The technology hasn’t changed that much since last year (other than some improvements in SAP BW support in 3.1) and I saw a lot of the same stuff in the few designer sessions I did attend. My stuff is not the typical Designer material so I hope it will be well received by the folks that manage to stay for the last presentation slot on the last day of the conference.

SAP Mentors Rock!

One of the best sessions I attended was delivered by fellow SAP Mentor Ginger Gatling from the SAP Labs. She did a great job of presenting – in less than an hour – what SAP is, what they do, what they had for BI before they purchased Business Objects, how the product suite fits together now, and ended with tips on how people with different Business Objects skills could leverage them in the new environment. Yes, all in one hour. And she was entertaining and energetic while doing it too. 🙂

Catching Up With Old Friends is Fun

I have chatted with quite a few BOB members and other friends I have known for years through our common interest in Business Objects. That is one of the best parts of the conference for me every year. 😎