On the way to…the 2012 SAP BusinessObjects User Group Conference

This conference’s edition is brought to you by our good friends at the US Airways Club/Envoy Lounge, Terminal A- Philadelphia.  For the first time in 15 years, I have frequent flier status on an airline.  So this looked like a good time to use my free lounge pass. 

This year’s SAP BusinessObjects User Conference (SBOUC) takes place on September 10-12, with ‘bookending’ activities on Sunday (Influencer Summit) and Thursday (SAP Analytics Day).  The 1/2 day SAP Analytics day comes free with your conference admission, too.  Activities include a ‘Developer Wars’ dashboarding competition on Tuesday night, as well as a concert by Foreigner on Wednesday night.  This gives attendees three full days of education sessions, hands-on workshops and Influence activities.  This year, I am definitely looking forward to seeing what the ongoing BOBJ Influence Councils have been up to, as well as seeing as many customer sessions as I can.

Without further ado, here are my lists of sessions to check out (and one’s I’m presenting)!  If you’re looking for sessions to fill your schedule, feel free to check these out: 

Monday, September 10

10am: ‘Awash in the watchlist. You want me to monitor what?’

– SAP Mentor Greg Myers will be talking BOBJ server stuff that is sure to be interesting to BOBJ Admins.

3:15pm: Inspiring Analytics: Tips and Examples for Achieving Better Business, Not Just Better Systems

– Timo Elliot from SAP always gives great talks about analytics and market forces.  Heady stuff that will make you think about how to use/implement BI.

Tuesday, September 11

10am: ASUG Semantic Layer Influence Council

– Join Pierpaolo Vezzosi and myself as we cover what the Semantic Layer Influence Council covered, as well as some feedback from SAP.  This will be the last meeting of the SLIC, as we’re looking to end this council’s current charter and re-launch after the conference.  

2:45pm: The Undervalued List of Values

– In his presentation debut, please join my fellow team Ozzie Ghani as he walks you through how to creatively use the List of Values!  I will be MC’ing his session and Ozzie is planning on doing some live demos of building the LOVs in the session.  I am definitely looking forward to this one!

4pm: Building a Multisource Universe

I figured I’d stay in the semantic layer track today.  Pierpaolo Vezzosi will be walking you through how to build a multisource universe in IDT.  With Pierpaolo, it’s probably a safe bet that live demos will be involved!

Wednesday, September 12

8am: Strategies for Deploying SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0: Virtual, Physical, and in the Cloud

– I had the chance to co-present with SAP’s Ashish Mozaria at ASUG Annual Conference/SAPPPHIRE and I can tell you that he is a great resource when it comes to the BOBJ server platform. If you’re thinking about how to architect your BI4 environment, then I would definitely recommend checking out this session.

10:30am: What Happens When SAP BusinessObjects Gets “Too Big”

– David Pizzato from Allstate copresents with SAP Mentor Eric Vallo from EVTechnologies as they talk about managing large BOE environments.  As I work for a firm with a large BOE environment, this session seems to be something to check out.  Plus, if you haven’t figured out today’s session pick theme- it’s BI Platform, baby!

That’s just some of the sessions on my agenda.  If you’re looking for quality content, you can’t go wrong selecting a session from any of the many SAP Mentors and ASUG Volunteers presenting this year!  Feel free to leave your suggestions in the comments.  

Want to follow the action from Orlando?  Follow the hashtag #SBOUC or the @ASUG_BI twitter account for up to the date information.