ASUG BI and BusinessObjects: Coming Together

[TammyPowlas]

Late January in Atlanta the ASUG Business Intelligence and BusinessObjects volunteers, along with the SAP POC's, met for the first time to plan the year-round activities and the ASUG annual conference in May. Some of us met in the hotel the night before:

Ernie Phelps, Florida Hospital

Jennifer Cofer, REI

At first, it was intimidating as there were 34 people in one room!  An additional table was needed.   This was a far cry from my first experience 3 years ago when there were 6 of us planning the year-round community.

We split up - one side of the room was handling the conference schedule and the other side was planning the year-round webcasts.  Both groups had challenging tasks ahead in less than 36 hours to complete.

On the program side, we learned we had 39 sessions to split up amongst many more SIGs than we had before.  Additionally, we were given the task of scheduling BusinessObjects hands-on sessions for the annual conference:

• BO Explorer


• Introduction to Crystal


• Meta Data Manager


• Data Services


• Pioneer


• Xcelisius

Three of us brought colored post-its to schedule around the room; the veteran planners knew exactly what to do; we had our initial plan finished by lunch.

Then, during lunch time, the SAP Mentor and Legend Ingo Hilgefort joined the program team (he spent most of the time with the year-round planning side of the room), along with SAP's Uddav Gupta, Isabelle Nuage and Evan Alini; they made several excellent suggestions for the conference schedule and the hands-on sessions.

On the year-round planning, several webcasts are in the works to prepare you for annual conference - watch the ASUG Events Calendar for dates/times:

• Introduction to Crystal


• BO Explorer


• Xcelisius

Meet your ASUG BI BusinessObjects Team, with the SAP Points of Contacts



Here's the team, pictured:

First Row: Isabelle Nuage, Jennifer Cofer, Tammy Powlas, Katie Newlon

Second Row: Rudy Julian, David Woo, Dana Carrier, Joyce Butler, Rajeev Kapur, Atul Patankar, George Peck, Greg Blair

Back Row: Ingo Hilgefort, Evan Alini, Gabe Orthous, Brian Durning, John Madren, Ernie Phelps

 

We invite you to meet us in May in Orlando at the Annual Conference or online via the many upcoming webcasts we'll be having.