The Kscope15 mobile app is finally here!

I can no longer be called Ned Ludd

You can call me cheap.  Anyone who owns a Motorola Droid 2 for five years must either be a skinflint or in love with obsolescent technology.  I did rather like the physical keyboard but the stupid thing cracked right across its screen and I had to go out and buy a modern phone.  

Other than a thorough review of my inner Scotsman and of course the fact that my friends no longer mock me for having the telephonic equivalent of a Heathkit superheterodyne shortwave radio, the reason you should care is that I can now install the Kscope15 mobile app.  

Installation
Everything you’re about to see is on iOS, but it is functionally equivalent over on the other side of the house.

Search for Kscope15 in the app store and you’ll see two entries:  one for the scavenger hunt and the other the conference application.   It’s as simple as tapping the Get button.

Set that password

Once installed, you’ll need to log in.  Of course you don’t have a password, so tap on the “Request a Password” button.

Use the email address you used to register for Kscope15 and tap on Request Password.

You will get an email asking you to confirm your password via a browser link.  This is in Thunderbird, btw.

I cannot tell you how much I prefer this to Outlook.  When I go to a client and have to use their email system and that Gawd-awful interface…shudder.  Enough ranting about UI, ‘cos the Kscope15 app is just ducky.

Ooooh, pretty, isn’t it?

Using the app

Tap on the three bar menu and the Kscope15 world is open to you.

Take a look at events:

View sessions and add them to your schedule:

See if your friends or enemies are at the conference, hopefully the former:

And see my old son’s sessions:

Take a look at the vendors to figure out where you can pick up free swag if for nothing else (surely you go for information, right?):

If you are directionally challenged, there is even a map, not that it will prevent me from getting completely lost a few times:
 

There’s more, more, more, much more

I encourage you to explore it.  It’s really quite a nice application.

It’s installed on my phone.

Be seeing you at Kscope15.

Kscope15 -- The Essbase sessions I want to attend

What am I talking about?

Why Kscope15, of course.  Could there be any other conference?  Thought not.  So why am I writing this?

To bore you to death share with you the sessions, events, and activities that make up the very (really) best EPM conference anywhere.  It really is that good.

I should note that these are the sessions I’m interested in.  You may have a completely different take on what’s worth seeing but I’ll bet our tastes overlap.

I should also note that I will never get to attend most of these sessions because of all of the Oracle and ODTUG obligations I have at the conference.  But a man can dream, right?

And finally I should also note that this post will only cover Essbase as it’s just too long to put all of the other tracks together into one post.  Look for multiple posts on this during the week.

OMG, one last, last note.  Check out Ludovic de Paz’ post on things to do in South Florida

when you’re not being a sad, pathetic, but awfully keen Essbase geek.  I hear there is life beyond Kscope although I couldn’t tell you what that actually is like.  Perhaps Ludovic can help.

And with that, we’re off.

All of the Essbase sessions I would like to attend but probably won’t

I seem to make a living more off of Planning and (gasp) ODI, but I do get the odd “pure” Essbase (It’s an interesting choice of words, isn’t it?  I’m not the only one who refers to Essbase that way.  Does that mean that the other tools are adulterated?  But I digress yet again.) project from time to time and I really enjoy them.  I really enjoy the puzzle solving nature of “How do I analyze this” almost as much as the “How do I optimize this” part of Essbase projects.  

Here’s what I’m looking forward to:

Monday, 23 June 2015

Unappreciated and Maligned Core Essbase Features

George Cooper , Gap

Co-presenter(s): Doug Pearce, Analysis Team

When: Jun 22, 2015, Session 2, 9:45 am - 10:45 am

Anyone who can write, “What deranged person would do that?“, has to be a good presenter.  George has been around in the Essbase world seemingly forever and really knows his stuff.

Pushing Essbase to the Limit: A Load and Stress Testing Exercise

Tim German , Qubix

Co-presenter(s): John A Booth, Infratects

When: Jun 22, 2015, Session 4, 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm

My fellow co-authors Tim and John are bringing more rigor to Essbase, cf. George Cooper’s session.  Given that so much of what we do is rule of thumb, and how incredibly inadequate that can sometimes be, I am really looking forward to this session.  I should also note that this session touches on some of the topics Tim wrote about in Developing Essbase Applications:  Hybrid Techniques and Practices.

Drillbridge: The Easy and Free Way to Implement Relational Drillthrough

Jason Jones , Key Performance Ideas

When: Jun 22, 2015, Session 4, 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm

So cool  So very, very cool.  It’s drillthrough from Essbase to relational but without Studio.  So cool.

Essbase: Advanced Design Patterns from the Trenches

George Cooper , Gap

Co-presenter(s): Bill Kamal Reddy, Analysis Team

When: Jun 23, 2015, Session 8, 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm

This is another one by George.  I’m interested in design patterns (I am trying not to write crap code; this is one way to design nirvana.) and what George has on offer looks like interesting stuff.

Tuesday, 23 June 2015

The Vision for Essbase and How It Should Already Change How You Do Things

Gabby Rubin , Oracle Corporation

Co-presenter(s): William Bradstreet, Bradstreet Business Services, LLC

When: Jun 23, 2015, Session 5, 8:30 am - 9:30 am

Bill participated on a Hybrid Essbase OTN Archbeat podcast with me and a handful of the Best and Brightest on Hybrid Essbase; he has actually for real and truly implemented Hybrid at a customer.  AFAIK, he may be the first in the world.

Enjoy Better MDX for Financial Metrics: From Design to Online Help

Ted Hollenberg , Time Warner Cable

Co-presenter(s): Ron Moore, TopDown Consulting

When: Jun 23, 2015, Session 7, 11:15 am - 12:15 pm

Ted is a real, live, honest-to-God customer who really knows his stuff.  Ron is a long time Essbase consultant and instructor.  I cannot imagine not learning something (or an awful lot) from this session.

I Develop in Essbase: Why Do I Need to Know SQL?

Cameron Lackpour , CL Solve

Co-presenter(s): Glenn Schwartzberg, interRel Consulting

When: Jun 23, 2015, Session 8, 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm

Yr. obt. svt. is presenting this along with MMIC.  If you don’t know SQL and you use Essbase, you’re really missing out.  SQL is the Swiss army knife of corporate computing.  Glenn and I have put together a moderately advanced presentation with a lot of techniques and code.  It should be good stuff, despite my participation.

ASO, BSO, and Hybrid Calculations: What's Fastest, How Hard Is It, and Which One Should You Use?

Cameron Lackpour , CL Solve

Co-presenter(s): Tim German, Qubix

When: Jun 23, 2015, Session 9, 3:30 pm - 4:30 pm

I am very, very, very excited about this one.  Tim and I are going to both present on different techniques and (and this is even more exciting) provide a method for determining what should be selected based on objective measures; there will be a subjective feasibility component as well.  It’s actual real honest-to-God consulting.  In some ways it’s an extension of the evaluation engagements I sometimes now do.  I plan on using this approach with those customers.  Come to think of it, I’m going to use it on my own approaches as well.

Customer Panel: A Panoramic View of Exalytics

Gary Crisci , General Electric

When: Jun 23, 2015, Session 10, 4:45 pm - 5:45 pm

A real, live, breathing, red blooded, Exalytics customer.  What will Gary say?  Knowing him, not a single punch or praise will be pulled.  It should be both enlightening and entertaining.

Wednesday, 24 June 2015

Designer Aggregation Scripts for ASO: Make Them Fit Without Being Too Tight

Ted Hollenberg , Time Warner Cable

When: Jun 24, 2015, Session 11, 8:30 am - 9:30 am

Ibid.

Essbase New Features and Roadmap Update: 2015 Edition

Steve Liebermensch , Oracle Corporation

Co-presenter(s): Gabby Rubin, Oracle Corporation

When: Jun 24, 2015, Session 11, 8:30 am - 9:30 am

The future, as presented by the Oracle Essbase product manager.  Do you care about the future of Essbase?  You should.

The Essbase of Things: Essbase on the Cloud, Essbase with OBIEE, and What It All Means

Steve Liebermensch , Oracle Corporation

When: Jun 24, 2015, Session 13, 11:15 am - 12:15 pm

The future of the future, as presented by the Oracle Essbase product manager.  Do you care about the future of Essbase?  You should.  Again.

Automation of Focused Aggregations Creation

Dmitry Kryuk , Independent Consultant

When: Jun 24, 2015, Session 14, 1:45 pm - 2:45 pm

I’ve blogged about focused aggregations in Planning.  Would you believe analytical and algorithmic?  Again, more rigor applied to Essbase.  It looks like I need to up my game yet again.

BYO MDX Editor: BMGS (Become More Groovy-Savvy) in the Process

William Hodges , The Hackett Group

When: Jun 24, 2015, Session 14, 1:45 pm - 2:45 pm

William’s session is based on his chapter in DEA Hybrid (I am not going to type this out again and again and again).  This is a really cool concept and if you dabble or live in MDX and Excel, it is highly recommended.

Hybrid: We Have a New Essbase Engine, and Its Fuel Is Data

John Booth , Infratects

When: Jun 24, 2015, Session 16, 4:15 pm - 5:15 pm

Hybrid, Hybrid, Hybrid.  It’s almost like Hybrid is the future of Essbase.  It is, actually.  John always does excellent work and I’m super curious to see what’s come up with, particularly wrt Planning.

Exalytics - Creating the Best Platform for Essbase, EPM and BI

Gabby Rubin , Oracle Corporation

When: Jun 24, 2015, Session 15, 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm

There’s little chance of me ever working on an Exalytics project given my company size of exactly one, but what happens in Exalytics sooner or later mostly trickles down to standard Essbase.  

Why Didn't I Think of That? How Can I Do It in Essbase?

Glenn Schwartzberg , interRel Consulting

When: Jun 24, 2015, Session 14, 1:45 pm - 2:45 pm

Glenn aka MMIC always surprises me with the weird and wonderful things he knows about Essbase.  I think he’s even sadder of a geek than me, which is saying something.  I think that’s a positive attribute.  Maybe.

A Simple Solution to Performing Complex Eliminations in Planning and Essbase

Joseph Watkins , Huron Consulting Group

When: Jun 24, 2015, Session 16, 4:15 pm - 5:15 pm

Joe does some fascinating work.  I am super interested to see how he accomplishes it-can-only-be-done-in-HFM in Essbase itself.

Advanced Calculations in Calc Manager

Ron Moore , TopDown Consulting

When: Jun 24, 2015, Session 13, 11:15 am - 12:15 pm

I know that Ron has been working with Calculation Manager product management and development.  This ought to be super interesting and a chance for Essbase rather than Planning use cases.

Thursday, 25 June 2015

Thursday Deep Dive - Essbase: What's New in 11.1.2.4?

Cameron Lackpour , CL Solve

Co-presenter(s): Gabby Rubin, Oracle Corporation

When: Jun 25, 2015, Deep Dive Session , 9:00 am - 11:00 am

I swear this is the last of the lot that involves yr. obt. svt., which given that it’s the last session of the conference (sob) is pretty predicatable.  What, you’re not sticking around for the after party?  The good news is that I’m solely the interlocutor and Gabby Rubin, Steve Liebermensch, and MMIC Glenn Schwartzberg will be actual brains.  This is similar to what I did last year with the Planning Deep Dive.  I’m very excited about this opportunity to put the screws to Oracle product management and you should be too.  :)

And that’s the end of the Essbase sessions

If you read through the notes and see that many of the sessions I want to attend are simultaneously schedule, that is the nature of a conference only a few days long.  Happily, all sessions are recorded and Kscope attendees can view them at their leisure.

My next post either tomorrow or the day after will be on Planning.

Be seeing you.

Summer Getaways Without the Traffic

Watching the Friday afternoon traffic crawling up I-95, I was struck with a thought:  there has got to be a better way to get to the Cape and Islands than playing Mad Max on the bumper-to-bumper interstate for endless hours.  

Six million people visit the Cape each year, four million of them in the summer and fall.  And on most summer weekends they all seem to be directly in front of you on the roads, right?  There’s got to be a better way.

There used to be a direct Amtrak train from Washington DC to Hyannis, stopping at major stations in Connecticut. “The Cape Codder” ran from 1985 to 1996 but only carried 1200 passengers in its final season due to its 5+ hour running time from Stamford.  And once you detrained in downtown Hyannis you were still miles from the beach.

There’s still express bus service running from New Haven to Hyannis but it’s no faster (though a lot cheaper at $42 one way). (All fares quoted are based on a June Friday departure)

The newest option is high speed ferry.  The Seastreak runs from East 35^th Street in

Manhattan to Martha’s Vineyard ($165 one way) and Nantucket ($175 one way) in five and six hours respectively.  Nice boat, but still a long ride even with the flat screen TV’s, full bar and comfy seats.  .

Seastreak also operates high speed from New York to Port Jefferson LI where you can connect with the Hampton Jitney (bus) to that tony beach community in 3 ½ hours.  Or you can chug across to PJ from Bridgeport on the traditional ferry, and then hop the bus.

If money is no object, you could always fly.  JetBlue flies non-stop in an hour from JFK to Hyannis or the Vineyard for as little as $179 one way.

Or there’s Cape Airwhose Cessnas will whisk you from White Plains to the islands in just over an hour for $565 one way.  Faster and more exclusive are charters from firms like Trade Windswhose fleet includes private jets.

Really?  Are we this desperate to decamp to the sun and surf when we have perfectly lovely beaches right here in Connecticut?

State-run Sherwood Island is right off I-95 in Westport and bikeable from the Greens Farms stop on Metro-North.  And Bridgeport’s city-owned Pleasure Beach reopens in June after a two decade absence.  The free water taxi runs seven days a week.  

Another alternative is the Jersey shore.  Catch Amtrak to Newark (or Metro-North to Grand Central and switch to Penn Station) and NJ Transit’s “Coast Line” will easily get you to all the shore communities from Long Branch to Bay Head. 

So wherever you’re heading for fun and sun this summer, don’t be a slave to bumper-to-bumper traffic.  Try transit!

I don’t ordinarily write about conferences other than Kscope, but when I do…

…I write about the Rittman Mead BI Forum 2015

Tim German and I just spoke at Rittman Mead’s annual BI Forum.  Alas, we didn’t go to the one in Brighton (I attended the Comshare EMEA conference there in 1992 but I cannot find any links to it – I think it was in the hotel the IRA tried to assassinate Margaret Thatcher in although I note that RM’s conference was in a different hotel).  Instead we went to the one in Atlanta (come think of it, I believe I attended a Comshare conference there as well – maybe 1991?  1993?  I can’t remember for the life of me.) and it was absolutely brilliant.

Why?  I find technology just fascinating (erm, you would imagine that based on this blog) and the presented technology at this level is all new to me.  Fascinating.

NB – For those of you who think this is a sycophantic recounting of their conference, it isn’t.  I’m pretty hard to impress and I was just blown away by the conference.  Think of this post as enthusiasm and well deserved at that.

NB #2 – Mark went out of his way to let the two token Essbase guys feel at home.  Many thanks, Mark.

Day by day

Day 0

The conference started out with a master class on Oracle Big Data.  We’ve all heard a lot of hype and hyperbole about Big Data.  I have to say that after watching Jordan Meyer and Mark present on it, I think Big Data might just deserve it all.  I also have to admit this is the first time I’ve had a bird’s eye view of R, EDA, Oracle Big Data SQL, and I-don’t-know-how-many-other-techologies, but the kinds of data, the statistical analyses, and reporting just blew me away, as did the rest of the conference.

Day 1 & 2

Rather than try to give my impressions of each one of the sessions, which would be difficult ‘cos I was mostly completely at sea, the conference covered subjects and technologies that are not in the toolkit of at least this Essbase hacker.  I’ll list it and try to give you a feel of my overall impression of the conference.

The list

• Brian MacDonald or Chris Lynskey, Oracle Corporation : “Looking Ahead to Oracle BI 12c and Visual Analyzer”
• Robin Moffatt, Rittman Mead : “Smarter Regression Testing for OBIEE”
• Bill Creekbaum and Gabby Rubin, Oracle Corporation : “Solid Standing for Analytics in the Cloud”
• Hasso Schaap, Qualogy : “Developing strategic analytics applications on OBICS PaaS”
• Tim German / Cameron Lackpour, Qubix / CLSolve : “Hybrid Mode – An Essbase Revolution”
• Kevin McGinley, Red Pill Analytics, “Agile BI Applications: A Case Study”
• Stewart Bryson, Red Pill Analytics, “Supercharge BI Delivery with Continuous Integration”
• Ryan Stark or Chris Lynskey, Oracle Corporation : “Big Data Discovery”
• Andy Rocha & Pete Tamisin, Rittman Mead : “OBIEE Can Help You Achieve Your GOOOOOOOOOALS!”
• Christian Screen, Sierra-Cedar : “10 Tenants for Making Your Oracle BI Applications Project Succeed Like a Boss”
• Sumit Sarkar, Progress Software : “Make sense of NoSQL data using OBIEE”

All of the sessions were good (somehow I think even the session Tim and I presented on Hybrid was at least adequate – sorry Tim), but the ones that I found most fascinating were the conceptual ones that could apply to EPM as well.  Robin’s presentation in particular really hit home as it captured the kind of structure and rigor that we should be bringing to testing in EPM projects.  Stewart also almost made me believe in Agile, which is really quite an accomplishment.  Even the more BI-specific technologies and approaches were absolutely fascinating.

A data visualization bake off allowed BI geeks to take a known dataset around public school classroom projects that need funding and presented their solution at the conference.  Sorry, I can’t tell you who won as I was continuing my OMG-this-is-so-f’ing-cool bit of shock and awe, but both of the solutions were really great.

There was also a debate on self-service BI vs. the traditional IT-oriented and controlled top down BI.  Oddly, there was quite a bit of discussion about buffets vs. Michelin three star restaurants (it was a metaphor for the different kinds of BI but it all left me a bit puckish).  I have to say that I was on the side of the former – this is where Essbase got its start and where my heart with the product still is.  Empowering people to take control of their data is one of the things that makes Essbase so great.  Self-service won.  :)

In action

If you want to download the presentations have a look here.

Want to see us in action?  Check us out on Flickr.

One other thing

This sounds kind of ridiculous, but the food at this conference was just fantastic.  Perhaps that’s down to the hotel, or perhaps the small size (60-ish) which allowed a different kind of buffet

Wrapping it all up

Will I go again?  If I can afford it (remember, yr. obt. svt. funds himself) yes, I will.  It was that good.

Thanks again to RM for inviting Tim and I to present and hopefully we didn’t let the Essbase side down.

Be seeing you.