Three Days in the Netherlands
August 31st, 2006 by Mark Rittman
Well that’s the first of the BI Seminars over and done with now, and I was
pleasantly surprised that, firstly we had around thirty attendees, and secondly,
it more or less went off without a hitch.
I must admit I was expecting about a maximum of ten attendees, so thirty was
pretty good and about the maximum you could do and still keep it fairly
interactive. The audience was a mixture of Oracle employees, partners and
customers, with the bias being towards Oracle and partners - no pressure there
then - and overall, with a pretty good level of existing experience with
Oracle’s BI tools. The timing went pretty well - I took my cue from an email
conversation I had with Jonathan Lewis who suggested four, one-and-a-half hour
sessions each day, and because I was there for two days you could afford to take
a bit longer with one and shorten another.
My trusty laptop held out ok; because it’s a fairly important session I took
a backup USB hard disk with a copy of my Oracle virtual machine, in fact the
only problem I had was with my Apple remote and Keynote - twice it completely
locked out and I had to hard reset and switch to Powerpoint, which was pretty
ironic on a Mac. I think next time around I’ll try and get a small laptop
bluetooth mouse and use that as a remote, having said that I can’t seem to find
one anywhere except Apple’s Mighty Mouse which is fifty quid and a bit too big -
I’ll have to have a hunt around the ‘net.
Having done the first seminar, things I’d change next time around are to add
a bit more content around BI Suite Enterprise Edition, maybe even make it all of
the second day - this is definately the area most people were interested in. I’d
probably add some more on new features in OWB 10gR2, again this was one of the
most popular topics although it might just reflect the particularl make-up of
the Dutch audience. Also, given the experience level of the attendees, I’ll
probably drop the introductory stuff, or at least have it in reserve should I
get a more beginner audience. Overall though, I was very pleased with how it
went, an excellent audience and hopefully we all got a bit of value out of it.
August 31st, 2006 at 12:51 pm
Hi Mark,
I really enjoyed your Masterclass. It was very informative to me. I work most of the time on the back-end of a BI system, but you showed me very interesting front-end tools.
What I missed was an overall picture with all the tools on it, as a summary of the 2 days. Maybe I will draw it myself, you provided already all the required information.
Thanks for the 2 days.
PS. How did you spend your third day in Utrecht?
August 31st, 2006 at 5:11 pm
I’ve been looking at bluetooth mice as well. The Logitech V270 seems to fit your (and my) requirements.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000BDDBLG/
May not be available outside the US.
Sergio
August 31st, 2006 at 6:23 pm
If you’ve got a Bluetooth phone, Salling Clicker (qv) will let you use it as a remote for controlling Keynote and other apps.
August 31st, 2006 at 10:29 pm
Eric - good point, I was thinking along the same lines, that a ‘wrap-up’ session at the end, bringing it all together, would be a good idea. I’ll put this in place for the next one.
Sergio - I’ve had a look, yes it looks good, although it doesn’t appear to be available over here. I’m still sort of looking at the wireless mighty mouse, but it’s the portability thing that’s weighing on me. I’m suprised though that there aren’t more bluetooth mice out there, you can get RF ones but it doesn’t seem as elegant a solution. I’ll have to ponder it more.
Paul - well spotted. The only thing is the price though, $23.95, not much less than the cost of a mouse. Probably the most sensible suggestion though…
cheers
Mark
September 1st, 2006 at 11:00 am
Mark,
You could try Romeo as a free alternative for Salling Clicker.
I’m on Windows, so haven’t tried it myself.