Planning on taking in some analytics in Orlando? The 2018 ASUG BI Community Brochure is your guide!

The ASUG BI Community has a great slate of BI and Analytics sessions ready for you to add to your ASUG Annual Conference/Sapphire now agenda! Our intrepid Community Facilitator, Tammy Powlas, has put together a great addition to your information arsenal. Remember, these sessions have been picked by the ASUG BI Volunteer team to try and cover the questions that attendees have been asking about.

This great document has some awesome content, including:

A List of all the sessions selected by the ASUG BI Community, sorted by session number so you can easily search and add to your online agenda:

And a “who’s who” of the Volunteers…please feel free to stop any of us and ask questions. We are your voice to SAP and are always looking for feedback and discussion!

I’d be remiss if I didn’t plug for my personal session, too!! Fellow ASUG Volunteer and SAP Mentor Jamie Oswald and I will be hosting a panel discussion on a very serious topic. Come to hopefully be entertained AND educated!

If you like the above content and want to chat with other like minded BI folks, make sure to add the ASUG BI Community Roundtable to your agenda:

BI Community Meet and Greet: Thursday, June 7 from 12:30pm to 1:30pm at the ASUG Hub/Roundtable Section.

Session Abstract:

As attendees of the 2018 ASUG Annual Conference, you are invited to network with the ASUG business intelligence (BI) volunteers and other SAP BI community members. Spend an hour networking and forging new relationships within your community. Take advantage of this timely opportunity to learn more about ASUG and to find out how to leverage the user group along your journey utilizing SAP solutions and services.

As always, feel free to drop me a note on Twitter or a comment here. I look forward to seeing everyone in Orlando!

Announcing SAP Inside Track Newtown Square 2018

SAP Inside Track Newtown Square is back for 2018 and happening during Philly Tech Week! The ‘East Coast’ SAP Mentors and Alumni are excited to bring Inside Track back to Newtown Square and are looking for speakers and attendees. If you have a story that you’d like to share, then we’d like for you to submit it right here. You like your technical content enterprise flavored, with a large side of community? Then you need to register for SITNSQ right here.

As speakers are selected, we’ll be updating our SAP Community Network Wiki with the latest agenda. Keep an eye out as we announce a keynote speaker and try to tie our excitement around enterprise tech with the larger Philadelphia technology scene during Philly Tech Week 2018.

I think it’s important enough to mention twice: Call for Speakers is LIVE! Events like Inside Track are only as successful as the content they provide. I’m sure we’re going to have a great slate of awesome sessions, but I would love to have a session or two that came directly from the woodwork of the vast SAP community out there. Remember: come for the excellent content, leave with a new sense of community and feeling that you’re not alone out there!

BI+A 2018 Wrap-up: Smaller is better

With a new location (Huntington Beach, CA) and calendar shift for the event (February), Eventful Conferences only had six months to plan the 2018 BI+A Conference. In its second year, has the event transformed from the conference formerly known as the SAP BusinessObjects User Conference? If it continues with the vibe from this year, then it may just have succeeded.

I could imagine that the six month turnaround between conference occurrences had an attendance effect. With employees working harder and harder to justify travel funding to conferences, going to the ‘same conference’ only six months later may have stifled repeat attendance. But I think that the smaller attendance completely changed the feel and vibe of the event in a good way. I never felt hurried, while the venue was compact enough to allow folks quick transit between sessions. Those hallway conversations that happened between sessions and want to continue later? You were able to pick that person out of the ‘crowd’ at the next break and pick up where you left off. Session rooms were comfortably full and folks tended to stick around and chat amongst themselves and the presenter.

While there were a lot of jokes about liking the location (especially those from Northern climates), winter decided to show up in time for BI+A. The temperature in Philadelphia was warmer than Huntington Beach that week! The venue was great: enough space for sessions, not terribly spread out but with a big hall for keynotes (and a Healthcare panel). I appreciated coffee being available all the time and the menu made me eat healthy. The wifi was pretty steady. The ‘show floor’ was small, but inviting and I thought that the ‘expert help’ offering seemed to go underutilized. Which is a shame, because the SAP experts there to offer assistance were some of SAP’s best technical resources. Take note for next time: sign up and bring your questions!

The sessions that I attended were current, well-prepared and engaging. I didn’t feel like I was being lectured or the speaker was droning on. Questions asked were usually relevant and audience members adding their experiences seem to be encouraged by the speakers. I think that this became the event’s vibe: Share and Learn. For me, when I talked about my BI roadmap and rollout experiences, I quickly discovered that I was not alone and some folks even had some ‘creative’ solutions to my same questions.

Of course, things weren’t all candy and roses. The discussions around the updated SAP Analytics roadmap and the sunsetting of SAP Lumira Discovery were prominent. Some folks were definitely taking the news a bit harder than others. Perhaps they had sweat equity in their company’s rollout or maybe they were just trying to impress others with their sweet, sweet Lumira knowledge. Either way, attendees were discussing the future of their analytics roadmap and where SAP Analytics Cloud would (or would not) fit.

I think that this conference might have hit it’s mark in 2018, even if it meant to do so unintentionally. With another SAP BI conference scheduled for the following week, I feel BI+A took a different tack in the wind and rewarded it’s attendees with a fresh breath of air. I think the 2019 SAP conference ecosystem would be well-served keeping this conference at the size, location and schedule build of 2018. We have enough big BI conferences that a smaller one like BI+A is a welcome respite.