What are you doing the rest of your life? Or at least what are you doing for the rest of the 20th of September?

What are you doing for the rest of the 20th of September, 2017?

Alas, I cannot provide Dusty Springfield for a number of reasons (alas she’s dead, were she alive I’m not sure we’d be BFFs (alas, again, for me this time), and I’ll bet the number of you Gentle Readers who actually like this kind of music rounds down to zero but maybe this exposure will change a few minds), but I can provide an excellent opportunity for Bay Area (NB – One should, apparently, never refer to the area as “Frisco” lest hirsute, enraged, and man-bunned baristas take umbrage.) Oracle EPMers to meet, greet, commiserate, and congratulate one another at the San Francisco Bay Area Oracle EPM Meetup.

Whew, even for me that’s an awful lot of parenthetical references.  Let me boil that down:  There’s a Bay Area Oracle EPM meetup on the 20th of September.  You should be there.  

Back to my self-indulgent/sometimes informative active voice below.

Where, When, What, and Who

Who

Let’s go completely backwards (Why not the right way round?  Heh, why not?) on this one and give you the who first.  The who is, of course you, Gentle Reader as ultimately, that’s what meetups are all about:  people.  And this ODTUG EPM meetup has that in spades with Marc Seewald of Oracle as well as Western Digitals’s Bill Roy, Sree Putreddi, and Mark Govostes.

All of this being organized by longtime Oracle EPM manager Frank Chow in cooperation with the ODTUG EPM Community.  

What

Beyond the normal meetup networking and sharing, there is real business and technical content.  To wit, Mark Seewald will cover something near and dear to every Oracle EPM customer:  Oracle EPM’s roadmap.  Seriously, with all of the noise and rumors swirling about you owe it to yourself to hear just what Oracle has to say.

Your fellow customers aren’t MIA:  the team from Western Digital will be there to discuss their journey from on-premises to Exalytics and the cloud.  Without exaggeration, that’s got to be a fascinating story both in terms of how it was done but why.    

Here’s their agenda:

• Overview of WDC
• EPM @ WDC
• Why did WDC decide to move to EPM Cloud
• WDC Current Oracle EPM Footprint (On-Prem & Cloud)
• Roadmap of WDC Oracle EPM Cloud
• Business / Technical challenges
• Metadata Management / Integration / Automation
• Q&A
• Support model (On-Prem Vs Hybrid)
• User adoption of EPM Cloud products
• Open Questions

When

It’s on Wednesday, 20 September, 2017, from 2:00 pm to 6:00 pm.

Where

At Google’s offices, Google Bldg Plymouth 1. 1500 Plymouth Street, Mountain View, CA.

And oh yeah, Why

Why?  Why?  Really?  Why?  Ah, why.

Why is because while Kscope is awesome, like Christmas it comes but once a year; meetups are on offer all year round.  Yes, they aren’t a week of awesomeness, but the same people (well, at least some of them) come to meetups plus others who don’t get the chance and the same subject that is near and dear to all of us – EPM in all its forms – is the subject of discussion.  It’s vital to your job (come to think of it, mine as well) to be au courant on all things EPM and meetups are an excellent way to do that.

Join Frank, Marc, and the guys from Western Digital, won’t you?

Click here to attend.

Be seeing you there.

Kscope 17, day 1, part 2

OMG, I’m already exhausted

I’m not sure anyone could tell the difference (or indeed, care) that after the first full day, I am already at 3 ½ hours of sleep.  It isn’t going to get better.  And yet, Gentle Reader, here is Yr. Obt., Fthl., & Most Hmbl. Svt. tip tapping away with my usual drivel.  Into every life some rain must fall on your (not mine) head.

So, Cameron, what did you do yesterday evening?

If I didn’t have Twitter, I’d never know, using the theory of “Pictures or it didn’t happen”.  Hoo-boy, it was busy.

Check out yesterday’s post for detail up the evening community entertainment.  I am semi-ashamed to admit that I went to the BI, not the EPM, event.  Why, Cameron, why?  ‘Cos I got to see this:

This isn’t the last surprising Gabby snap.  Read on…

Embarrassing photos aside, the event was fantastic and were just pipped to 1st place (it was a pub quiz with a Texas flavor) by those !@#$ing cowboys.  Bastards.

Cameron and Natalie’s EPM meetup

This is the 10th anniversary of my bestie Natalie Delamar.  ODTUG Madame President went all out as usual with a party.  It was amazing.  Thank you, Ride or Die Girl.  It’s been quite a trip, and one I wouldn’t have missed for anything.

Here’s a picture of the layout.  Amazing, Natalie.  I can’t figure out how you have time to do all that you do.

It was a hopping party.

Dan Keith, Amy Dailey, Tim German, Celvin Kattkooran’s forehead (I am not going to pursue a career as a photographer), and Tim German.

Here I am with my buds Amy Dailey and Natalie.

The real surprise.

Who knew that Gabby Rubin moonlights as a barman?  The drinks he made were amazing.  Incredble.  Awesome.  Thank you so much, Gabby.

All for now

I’ll try, maybe, to get today’s events in.  Follow my Twitter feed for up to date information.

Be seeing you.

Miami, Florida ODTUG BI-EPM Oracle Cloud Stack User Event live blog

Where are you?  Probably not at the ODTUG BI-EPM Cloud Stack User Event.

Yr. Hmbl. & Obt. Svt. writes that because you’d not be reading my blog if you were.  Actually if you are here and you are reading this blog this can’t be a very good event.  With luck the number of people that fall into this category rounds down to zero because it actually is a pretty good event.

But I digress.

I’m going to try to live blog  totally suck when I try to live blog this meetup (Correction – I have been informed that this is a summit.  Fancy.) as well as do as much live video as I can on Periscope.  You can watch that if you are a Periscope user or also watch it via my Twitter feed @CameronLackpour.  Your choice as I aim to please.

To be a little fair to myself (eh, still lazy to the core), my laptop was being used for the presentations and my phone was being used for recording so apparently I’d either need to buy another laptop (nope) or phone (double nope) to be able to blog and present and record all at the same time.  Whew.  Given that the Chancellor of the Exchequer – me – isn’t going to allow that kind of capital expenditure I think I’m going to have to give up the notion of live blogging in future and settle for doing it after the fact.

Here’s the Periscope feeds (because again, I’m lazy and I suck and also because I accidently stopped the broadcast cf. I suck):

The first 1:50:18 https://www.pscp.tv/w/1ZkKzERnjkaxv

The second 2:43:50 https://www.pscp.tv/CameronLackpour/1lDGLRlReqoxm

I know it’s a lot (thank you, wireless carrier, for your “unlimited” data plan as I’m going to do my best to stretch that definition to the limit) to watch but there’s awfully good content if you ignore my presentation.

Lunchy-lunchy

This has to be some of the best food I’ve ever had at a conference.  It was awfully good.

Here’s the remnants of the food:

I don’t know if I’d suggest that you come to a meetup (sorry, summit) because of the food but it’s a thought.

The speakers

So again, if you want to experience the summit, watch the Periscope sessions.

Here was the lineup – all good, even the Periscope sessions.

Here was the lineup – all good, even my presentation:

12:00 PM - 12:45 PM Networking and Lunch
12:45 PM - 12:55 PM Welcome and Introductions
1:00 PM - 2:00 PM Oracle Keynote Speaker: Jacques Vigeant, Senior Director Product Strategy
2:00 PM - 2:40 PM Doug Hahn, Enterprise Technology Officer at Invesco, How Do I Decide What Cloud is Best for Me?
2:40 PM - 2:55 PM Break
3:00 PM - 3:40 PM Phil Bernhardt, Finance Director of Strategic Planning at Scholastic Book Fairs, Scholastic Book Fairs Transitions to Oracle PBCS
3:40 PM - 4:20 PM Cameron Lackpour, Oracle ACE Director, Making the Administrative Transition: On Premises Planning to PBCS
4:20 PM - 4:30 PM Break
4:35 PM - 5:15 PM Lakshmi Balusu, VP of Financial Systems at Perry Ellis, A Journey to HCM Cloud
5:15 PM - 5:25 PM Closing Announcements: ODTUG Volunteer Opportunities and ODTUG Kscope17
5:30 PM - 7:00 PM Poolside Networking Happy Hour

One of things that was interesting was that the audience at this meetup (sorry again, summit) was a real mix of attendees:

1. It actually was almost completely customers – a good thing as otherwise it is a consultant fest presenting to other consultants.  Boring.
2. It actually was a real mix of levels – yes, it is an Executive Summit but there were both directors, real honest-to-goodness executives, and Hyperion admins, so again, a good thing and not the norm for meetups which trend towards the geek.

The presenters

For those of you unwilling to view the videos, here are some snapshots of the Best and Brightest as they present.

The ever ebullient, enthusiastic, and positive Jessica Cordova kicking it off

Jacques Vigeant giving the keynote (it was really good)

Doug Hahn, an honest-to-goodness executive and a very good speaker

Phil Bernhardt presenting on a truly successful PBCS implementation

Yr. Hmbl., Fthfl., and Obt. Svt. at work and OMG I hate looking at myself

Lakshmi Balusu talking about the Good, Bad, and the Ugly of HCM Cloud

What did you think about the event?

Here’s Ileana Ryan’s take on things:

Click on the snapshot or here:  https://www.pscp.tv/w/1OyKAoZdvQMJb

Thanks to all

None of this would have happened without the aid of:

Oracle

ARC EPM Consulting

Skybridge Global

TopDown Consulting

Key Performance Ideas

and of course ODTUG.

Thank you sponsors and thank you attendees for coming together for such a great event.

Be seeing you.

Miami, Florida ODTUG BI-EPM Oracle Cloud Stack User Event

The when, the what, the where, the why, and the how

Come this 13 April 2017, from noon to7 o’clock, a mere 29 days from the writing of this blog post (don’t get excited as this is written on Pacific time so it’s still 15 March), the ODTUG EPM-BI Oracle Stack User event will come, like a whirlwind of Oracle Cloud, to the EAST Miami Hotel in, not all that surprisingly, Miami, Florida.  

This is more than a meetup.  Super meetup?  Superduper meetup?  How about an Executive Summit?  Yup, that sounds about right.  Wait, no, it’s a Cloud Executive Summit.  Could it be any more au courant?  I think not.

Why oh why oh why would you attend?  Simply because you want to understand why and how your peers (be they customer or consultant) live, work, and succeed in the Oracle Cloud.  It’s also a great opportunity to meet said peers and make that personal connection.

How do you attend?  Merely click here:  Miami ODTUG EPM-BI Oracle Stack User Event   

Agenda or More Stars Than There Are in the Heavens

12:00 PM - 12:45 PM Networking and Lunch

12:45 PM - 12:55 PM Welcome and Introductions

1:00 PM - 2:00 PM TBD Oracle Keynote Speaker

2:00 PM - 2:40 PM Doug Hahn, CTO at Invesco, How Do I Decide What Cloud is Best for Me?
2:40 PM - 2:55 PM Break

3:00 PM - 3:40 PM Phil Bernhardt, Finance Director of Strategic Planning at Scholastic Book Fairs, Scholastic Book Fairs Transitions to Oracle PBCS

3:40 PM - 4:20 PM Yr. Fthl., Hmbl., & Obt. Svt., Oracle ACE Director, Making the Administrative Transition: On Premises Planning to PBCS

4:20 PM - 4:30 PM Break

4:35 PM - 5:15 PM Lakshmi Balusu, VP of Financial Systems at Perry Ellis, A Journey to HCM Cloud
5:15 PM - 5:25 PM Closing Announcements: ODTUG Volunteer Opportunities and ODTUG Kscope17

5:30 PM - 7:00 PM Poolside Networking Happy Hour

Where’s it going to be?

Miami EAST Hotel

I’m pretty sure we’re not cool enough to hang out a hotel like this.  Okay, scratch that: you may be cool enough; I am not.  But I’ll be there regardless.

Who’s who

An event like this doesn’t happen by mere happenstance or without an awful lot of effort.  Many enthusiastic, talented, and hardworking people came together to make this happen.  Let’s give them their due:

Nichole Scott of Oracle

Jessica Cordova of ARC EPM

Nate Coate of Key Performance Ideas

Patty Kittiko of SkyBridge Global

Danny Boher of TopDown Consulting

Jessica Cruttenden of ODTUG

To recap

The what

Again, what’s this all about?  Nothing but the future of Oracle (and by extension, you) in the Cloud (and thus extension,  you) from true customer executive to true consultant geek.

The why

Good grief, I haven’t convinced you yet?  No?  Why?

Let’s make this easy:  

• You’re an Oracle customer (or maybe you’re thinking of becoming one)
• You understand the Cloud is the future
• You want to learn more, more, and more
• You live/work/are spiritually linked to Southern Florida

Where else can you go to meet your peers (both of the executive and geek persuasion) and learn all about Oracle Cloud?  This must be the place.

If you’re in Southern Florida, I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t attend.  Seriously Gentle Reader, it behooves you to attend if you care about Oracle in the Cloud even a eensy-weensy bit,.

The where

Where do the elite Oracle Cloud geeks meet?  Yup, that’s right: at the Miami ODTUG EPM-BI Oracle Stack User Event, ‘natch.

The how

It’s easy peasy, no big deasy.  Simply go here and sign up.  It’s a mere $20 if you’re an Oracle customer, and a not-all-that-bad-considering-everything $125 if you’re a partner.

The when

Thursday, 13 April 2017, 12 pm to 7 pm Eastern.

Be seeing you there.