Kscope15 Day 2

Sleepy already

Kscope15 is great.  Too great.  It makes me sleepy and the sleepiness gets worse as the conference progresses.  Why?

Because it is so awesome.  Proof?  See the below for the South Florida EPM meetup held in my suite.  Yes, it’s freshman year and a dorm party in my room.

It peaked at about 30 (yes, really) people and was crazy fun, like 2 am fun.  Thanks go to the cochairs of the meetup --- Jessica Cordova and Kris Callabro.

And now truly to day 2

8:30 RPD Magic and Hyperion Planning

I’m sitting in on Gianni Ceresa’s session on integrating Planning into OBIEE.  He’s hacking the Planning schema so he is automatically awesome.  I love hacks around the approved way.

 

 Keep on reading

MMIC aka Glenn Schwartzberg told me this morning that blogs are dead.  As someone who blogs about once a week (and obviously more this week) I have to ask – is it?  Am I?  Please leave a comment (assuming of course anyone reads this) and give me some feedback.

I’ll keep on blogging as the day goes on.  If you aren’t here, you should be.

Be seeing you.

Kscope15 day 1 & 2 as it happens

An important note about tonight if you are from South Florida

If you’re from South Florida, they are having a meetup in my suite tonight from 8:00 pm till ???.

For details, see Jessica Cordova’s booth at the Welcome Reception – ARC EPM – for a flyer providing the room number and all details.  You can also contact Jessica on @JCordovaEPM.

Saturday, 20 June 2015

Late again

I know, I know, I said that I would do this live, and here I am a day tardy.  I will try harder today.

Volunteer day

Saturday is always Kscope’s volunteer day.  This year was actually focused on technology so the typical unskilled-labor-is-best-for-Cameron-as-he-is-hopeless event didn’t happen.  

Brekkers

Here’s the kickoff to the day.  Yes, ODTUG feeds you, just the first of the very best extant Oracle conference.

Dear Leader

Monty is hard to miss:  the cowboy hat, the cowboy boots, the Texas accent, the larger than life personality, and did I mention he’s a really great ODTUG president?  This is the kickoff where the geeks get their direction.

And the geeks breaking off to their STEM stations.

Riding that bike

I was the part of the team that used muscle power to generate electricity and then to the really important thing – smoothies.  Yes, they taste better when you make the blender spin.  It’s also good to be at least moderately fit.  I wish I had my heart monitor on.

Here’s my good buddy Joe Aultman about to take up the mantle of a riding a bike that might not be totally suited to his height.

Presentations

Yes, yr. obt. svt. is presenting with Tim German aka @CubeCoderDotCom.   Here we are rehearsing, with @henry_robin providing a critique.

And that’s it for Saturday

OMG, I am already exhausted.  We’ll see if I can manage to get a wee bit of sleep before the rest of the week wipes me out.

Today, 21 June

The Sunday Symposiums are one of the greatest parts of Kscope.  Oracle Product Management part the curtains and talk about the product roadmaps.  This session is safe harbored and we are not allowed to blog or tweet about the session so you will see some people pictures but no product details.  More’s the pity if you aren’t here.

The EPM content Big Wig

Here’s Opal Alapat, aka @opal_EPM about to kick off the sessions that I am not allowed to talk about.  Did I mention that you should be here?  To those of you who have twigged onto the value of the Sunday Symposiums, huzzah.  For those of you have not…tsk, tsk, tsk.

That’s all for now

What I can write about, I will, but as noted my hands are somewhat tied.

Be seeing you.

KScope15 – the everything else EPM sessions I want to attend and live blogging

More to life than this

Hah!  For a moment you thought I was the Great and Good John Goodwin, didn’t you?  Well, a massively less intelligent manifestation of John.  Double Hah!  You’re wrong, it’s just yr. obt. svt., alas, but I couldn’t let the opportunity pass by.

What I mean to say is that there is more to life than Essbase and Planning as hard as that may be to believe but it’s true, I promise you.  And in that vein, here are the other EPM sessions at Kscope I hope to attend.  

Live blogging you to death

Or is that boring you to death?  You decide.  It may be a bit delayed as it is a bit of a busy week, but I’ll do my best to keep you informed with daily posts.  Of course those of you who will be at KScope will do your best to point out how wrong I undoubtedly am but that’s part of the fun.

And tweeting you to death.  In case you’re not a Twitter follower of me I’m on @CameronLackpour.  I’ll actually be doing as much if not more updating via Twitter as I can easily do it from my phone.

And with that digression, here are my hoped-for sessions by day for reporting and infrastructure/data.

EPM Reporting

Monday

Introduction to Enterprise Performance Reporting Cloud Service

Dave Roberts , Oracle Corporation

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

Topic: EPM Reporting - Subtopic: Other EPM Reporting

Cloud, cloud, cloud, cloud, and did I mention cloud?  OPRCS isn’t exactly FR in the cloud, it’s more like a collaborative report writing and review tool.  I think of it more as a workflow based approach to understanding numbers.  Or perhaps I have it all completely wrong.  Attending this session should end that uncertainty.

Dynamic Hyperion Financial Reports

Celvin Kattookaran , Huron Consulting Group

When: Jun 22, 2015, Session 3, 11:30 am - 12:30 pm

Topic: EPM Reporting - Subtopic: Financial Reporting

Again my alas younger, quite likely smarter, and undoubtedly better looking brother from a completely different set of parents has interesting  content.  This time he has somehow tortured enhanced Financial Reports to actually be dynamic.  I’ll try not to think of the inflexible reports I’ve built in years past and after watching this, vow to never do it again.

Smart View Reporting on Essbase

Rudy Zucca , 123OLAP

When: Jun 22, 2015, HOT- EPM 2, 11:30 am - 12:30 pm

Topic: EPM Reporting - Subtopic: Other EPM Reporting

Rudy is another highly skilled instructor.  Many customers (and a few bitter ender consultants) haven’t made the switch to Smart View.  Time to do so.

EPM Foundations and Data Management

Smart View Power Tools: Break New Analytical Ground with Smart Query

Ron Moore , TopDown Consulting

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

Topic: EPM Reporting - Subtopic: Smart View

I have seen Smart Query at a client exactly zero times although I have presented on it at conferences.  It’s actually a pretty cool piece of functionality that seems to have a poor adoption rate mostly because people don’t even know of its existence.  Ron is a talented presenter and instructor (in Ron’s previous life, I took an ASO class from him in his Wall Street office) and I’m sure he’ll make this a tool we’ll all want to use.

Tuesday

Smart View: Improving Upgrades/Migrations, Rollouts, and Reliability.

Charles Beyer , Huron Consulting Group

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

Topic: EPM Reporting - Subtopic: Smart View

I have not the slightest regret that deployments like this are not in my bailiwick.  Having completely ducked that one through the serial infrastructure incompetence that I am well known for, it probably would behoove me to at least hear how the seemingly impossible is made possible.

Power On!: How GE Lit Up Smart View and Brought Good Things to Life for Its Users

Gary Adashek , General Electric

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

Topic: EPM Reporting - Subtopic: Smart View

Smart View.  Thousands of users. Improvements to Smart View.  Eeek.  I wonder how Gary did it; it ought to be interesting to see how.

Smart View with OBIEE

Matt Milella , Oracle Corporation

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

Topic: EPM Reporting - Subtopic: Other EPM Reporting

Smart View, Smart View, Smart View; everything’s Smart View.  Matt, the former Smart View (How many times can I use the product name in a paragraph?  Count along with me.) product manager is now Mr. Business Intelligence.  Matt’s sessions are without fail always interesting and innovative.  I’m curious to see how Smart View interacts with OBIEE.  And for those of you not counting, that’s six.

Wednesday

Relaxed Reporting: Tips and Tricks on Building Dynamic Financial Reports

Joe Monteith , The Bean Consulting Group

When: Jun 24, 2015, Session 12, 9:45 am - 10:45 am

Topic: EPM Reporting - Subtopic: Financial Reporting

Another dynamic Financial Reports session.  How wrong have I been?  How long have I been wrong?  How does he do it?  I’ll be there to find out.

Become Jythonic: Delivering Jython Best Practices for FDMEE Scripts

Francisco Amores , Infratects

When: Jun 24, 2015, Session 12, 9:45 am - 10:45 am

Topic: EPM Foundations and Data Management - Subtopic: Data management/integration

How I wish, wish, wish I could write decent Jython.  Wish.  Francisco is a great guy and perhaps from him I could actually be something other than a total Jython hack.

The New Mobile Frontier: Hyperion & Oracle Business Intelligence

Edward Roske , interRel Consulting

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

Topic: EPM Reporting - Subtopic: Integrated EPM-BI Reporting

I’ve long been skeptical of the actual utility of viewing anything other than very simple dashboards on a phone or even a tablet.  I am waiting for Edward to disabuse me of that notion; this notion might do that.

EPM Foundations and Data Management

Monday

Using FDMEE to Move Data Between EPM Applications

Michael Casey , Oracle Corporation

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

Topic: EPM Foundations and Data Management - Subtopic: Data management/integration

Solve this issue and much of the pain FDMEE causes for traditional ODI developers goes away.

Tuesday

ASO Reporting Automation with ODI

Matthias Heilos , FinTech Innovations

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

Topic: EPM Foundations and Data Management - Subtopic: Other EPM Data Integration

I am a huge fan of Matthias; his work of the highest quality.  Anything, and I mean anything, he does is worth everyone’s time.

Interfaces and Mappings: A Deep Technical Tour of ODI's Workhorses

Jason Jones , Key Performance Ideas

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

Topic: EPM Foundations and Data Management - Subtopic: Data management/integration

Jason is all kinds of awesome and has helped me numerous times with real computer science concepts and design approaches when my approaches go KABOOM.  Are you smart enough to keep up with Jason?  Do you have the Comp Sci degree I wish I had gotten?  This is your chance really understand the inner workings of ODI.  Don’t worry, Jason is quite good at abstracting complex technical concepts so that even yr. obt. svt. can understand them; as you are amongst the Best and Brightest (you are reading this blog, right?) you will have no difficulty.

Wednesday

Sanitizing Crazy EPM Environments: How We Went from 18 Servers to Just Three

Kieron Cassidy , Infratects b.v.

Co-presenter(s): Joakim Kulan, ISS World Services A/S

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

Topic: EPM Foundations and Data Management - Subtopic: Other EPM Foundations

Infrastructure puzzles me.  Correction, infrastructure terrifies me.  But fewer servers scare me less.

And that’s the end of my sessions

But of course not the end of the conference.  There’s the Community Service day, the Sunday symposiums, the Monday night event, the ACE lunch and learns, the parties Tuesday, the special event Wednesday, and of course the Deep Dives on Thursday.  It is a jam packed weak and if you are not able to attend this year, you owe to yourself and career to do so in 2016.

Be seeing you in Hollywood, Florida!

KScope 15 -- the Planning sessions I want to attend

Oh dear!  Oh dear!  I shall be too late!

Late, late, late, that’s what I am.  Why?  Cos I have been busy, busy, busy with both my presentations (ugh, procrastination is its own punishment) and because Developing Essbase Applications:  Hybrid Techniques and Practices is in its final proof step.  Want to read a 464 (57 more pages than the last) page deeply technical book in a week?  I’m doing it.  I think I get to sleep sometimes, but not all that much.  

The presentations you will be able to hear and quite possibly jeer in just over a week, the book now has an Official Release Date of 15 October 2015.  You’ll have to wait on the jeering (at least at my chapter)  until that oh happy day.  I am working, still, on the presentations although happily only the last bit of polishing.  With luck the anxiety dreams about the conference will at that point end.  I can but hope.  Note to self – would you please never, ever, ever, ever, ever procrastinate again?  Please?  Stay tuned to this blog approximately 365 days from now to see if I listened to my whining.

So off to Planning, finally

I like to say that while I lurv Essbase, and practice it as much as I can, I bought my house (And my bank account, and car, funded a at-this-point theoretical retirement plan that does not involve me dumpster diving for food, as well as a seemingly-ever-expanding-and-OMG-expensive collection of hiking and camping gear.  Apple Watch?  Piffle, try Suunto.  Get lost like me?  Then you’ll want a DeLorme inReach Explorer Satellite Messenger.  I’m still working on convincing myself that I need one of those for those times I apparently lose the ability to read a compass, so long as I get a new pair of boots.  It ain’t a hobby obsession till you go broke feeding it.)  In other words, Planning has been very, very good to me and I know which side my bread is buttered.

And with my bank account’s future in mind and also because I find torturing the life out of implementing creative solutions with Planning to be pretty interesting, here are the sessions I’m going to try to attend.

Monday, 23 June 2015

Gain Hands-On Experience with Oracle's Fastest-Growing Product: Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service

Matthew Forrester , Peloton

When: Jun 23, 2015, HOT- EPM 4, 8:30 am - 10:45 am

Topic: Planning - Subtopic: Other Planning

Cloud, cloud, cloud.  Did I mention cloud?  It’s the future, and if you want to have one, it behooves you to attend this session.

No more unknown members! Smart data load validation for Hyperion Planning using ODI

Ricardo Giampaoli , TeraCorp

Co-presenter(s): Rodrigo Radtke de Souza, Dell

When: Jun 22, 2015, Session 3, 11:30 am - 12:30 pm

Topic: Planning - Subtopic: Optimization

Data quality.  Do you practice it?  Handle renegade data?  Rely on that accursed dataload.err?  I have a feeling R&R aka the Crazy Brazilians (They actually aren’t in the least, it’s just that I cannot tell Rodrigo from Ricardo and vice versa, hence the moniker.  Also, I am an idiot.) are going to bring a very innovative approach to this which will remind me why I am just an ODI dilettante..

Planning Panel

Chris Rothermel , Rothermel Consulting LLC

When: Jun 22, 2015, Session 3, 11:30 am - 12:30 pm

Topic: Planning - Subtopic: Other Planning

Chris is the ODI geek brave enough to take on Oracle Product Management and win and retain the Planning KMs in 11.1.2.4 and beyond.  How could this not be interesting?

Redesigning Hyperion Planning BSO to Hyperion Planning ASO

Cindy Eichner , Finit Solutions

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

Topic: Planning - Subtopic: Emerging Technologies

Tim German and I presented fairly exhaustively on this last year and given the limitations we found (along with ASO’s power) I have to wonder what the use case for ASO is, particularly in the light of Hybrid which does just about everything ASO does.  Actually, within Planning it can be argued Hybrid is a better fit, so I am really curious what the argument for ASO Planning is at this point.

Tuesday, 24 June 2015

Voiding Your Warranty: The Planning Repository Exposed

Brian Marshall , US-Analytics

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

Topic: Planning - Subtopic: Optimization

I have to say I am intrigued by this as I have written a ton of queries against the Planning repositories.  That isn’t to say that I’ve exhausted that vein so I am curious to see what Brian has come up with.

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: Assessing Your Hyperion Planning Application

Tracy McMullen , interRel Consulting

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

Topic: Planning - Subtopic: Optimization

I’ve recently started doing assessments.  I wonder if Tracy looks at the same things I do.

Wednesday, 24 June 2015

What's New and Coming in Calculation Manager

Mark Rinaldi , Oracle Corporation

Co-presenter(s): Sreekumar Menon, Oracle Corporation

When: Jun 24, 2015, Session 12, 9:45 am - 10:45 am

Topic: Planning - Subtopic: Other Planning

As I note in Celvin’s session, the Calc Man team are doing all kinds of really cool and innovative things.  Calc Man is definitely the future.  Dear Oracle, so long as I can continue to write code, I will be your biggest fan.

Oracle's Hyperion Planning & Strategic Finance: What's New and What's Coming

Shankar Viswanathan , Oracle Corporation

When: Jun 24, 2015, Session 12, 9:45 am - 10:45 am

Topic: Planning - Subtopic: Other Planning

As noted, given that I largely making a living on Planning, I would be more-than-usually insane not to attend this. 

Cf. my point above about How Can I Use the New CDF Functions in Calc Manager?

Celvin Kattookaran , Huron Consulting Group

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

Topic: Planning - Subtopic: Design

Celvin, my younger but definitely smarter brother from a completely different set of parents, and I seem to be in a race to see who can identify Calc Man CDFs.  The Calc Man team are seemingly tireless in this and are expanding Planning, and btw, Essbase with all sorts of cool stuff.  And oh yes, Celvin seems to be winning the race.

What's New and Coming in Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service

Shankar Viswanathan , Oracle Corporation

Co-presenter(s): Marc Seewald, Oracle

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

Topic: Planning - Subtopic: Emerging Technologies

Cloud, cloud, cloud and Planning.  Now if I could just afford the monthly partner tariff….

Thursday, 25 June 2015

Thursday Deep Dive: Planning

Shankar Viswanathan , Oracle Corporation

Co-presenter(s): Prasad Kulkarni, Oracle Corporation

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

Topic: Planning - Subtopic: Other Planning

I moderated this last year and thought it was excellent.  Having said that, I note Shankar is running this himself this year, so perhaps it was not as excellent as I thought.

Planning 11.1.2.4 Hands On Tour

Rudy Zucca , 123OLAP

When: Jun 25, 2015, HOT- EPM 10, 9:00 am - 11:00 am

Topic: Planning - Subtopic: Other Planning

Rudy is a gifted instructor; his firm is my standard recommendation to clients when it comes to training.  ‘Nuff said.

That ought to be enough Planning for one conference

As I noted in my Essbase Kscope15 post, I’m not going to make most of these, no matter how I try.  This is frustrating as I want to attend every possible session.  Happily I will be able to download and watch the sessions post the conference.  Did you know that there will be limited livecasting as well?  Alas, no Planning, but at least there’s HFM on offer.

Now I’m off to finish those presentations…

Be seeing you.