Last week I had the privilege to attend and speak at the WIS SAPInsider conference BI2012, held in Milan Italy, from June 6-8.
It was co-located with Financials 2012, HR 2012 and GRC 2012, and so there were hundreds (I think over 1000) of attendees, and a large amount of track sessions to attend at any one time.
I presented three times, on the following subjects:
Universe Design Best Practices with BI4 - key takeaway point was you need to focus on user interaction, technical soundness and performance to build a universe as best as possible
Data Services, Sybase IQ and BusinessObjects as a Data Warehouse Platform - key takeaway point was that Sybase IQ is a high-performing data warehouse-specific database that you can use with Data Services and BusinessObjects for a great platform
Advanced Crystal Reports Techniques - key takeaway point was that Crystal Reports has some really advanced functionality not available in other tools in the portfolio, and it still has some great use cases for customers today
What I most enjoyed about the conference was getting to meet so many attendees from different European and Middle Eastern countries, who each had a story to tell about their BI implementation and how they were using BI to succeed in their organisations. Other highlights were track sessions on BusinessObjects Predictive Analysis (which caused me to sign up for the ramp-up that night!) and a customer panel on What Customers Look For (& Don't Look For) In Consultants.
As part of my DSLayer podcast focus, I also spent some time randomly interviewing attendees and speakers for a minute each, asking them to comment on the number one thing they were taking away from the conference.
Below is the compilation video:
Thanks again to WIS for putting on a great conference.
