BI/EPM Conference a success

At the time of writing this, Mark Rittman is enduring the arduous task of flyng back to the UK. It’s a big country Australia, but a long way away. That’s why on behalf of Rittman Mead Oceania, my business partner Richard Chan and I would like to thank Mark Rittman, Stewart Bryson, Tim Tow (AppliedOLAP) and Edward Roske (InterRel Consulting) for coming all this way to attend the Innaugral ODTUG BI/EPM conference in Sydney, and of course ODTUG. (if I forgot anyone my apologies)

The well attended conference gave BI/EPM users the opportunity to listen to some of the world authorities in their chosen field as well as some locally grown speakers who added their own experiences and flavour to the event. The slides from the presentations can be found on the ODTUG website.

Being the first time ODTUG has held an event here it was a great way to gauge the usage and interest in BI. We don’t have a great deal of bloggers here so from the conversations had during and after the event, many users may start sharing their ideas and development technics.

I have to be slightly bias and mention that personally my favourite presentation was that of Stewart Bryson, the Oracle Business Intelligence Server Versus Oracle Optimizer talk was brilliant (Sorry boss, I hope that doesn’t put me in the bad books) and worth the read so please have a look at the slides.

Mark had great attendance and full dancecard over the two days, (giving the Friday keynote and 5 of the 10 presentations) with some of the most relevant and engaging subjects with the OBI 11g product.

Hopefully we can have Mark and Stewart here again sometime soon.

On Saturday after the event, Mark, Stewart and Pamela Bryson, Tim and Darlene Tow gave one of the major Sydney attractions a go by walking up the Sydney Harbour Bridge, a good way to view Sydney in it’s entirity, and the weather did not dissapoint. After that walking some rehydrating beverages were needed which lead well into the evening.

Thankyou again to you all and a safe journey home.

Rittman Mead Oceania was also represented a few days earlier at the New Zealand Oracle User Group conference in Auckland.

Our national airline Qantas suddenly changed the plans of thousands of passengers by closing the doors to workers the day before I was to leave and I thought I was not going to make it and leave Richard to fend for himself who managed to leave a day earlier. Luckily that  situation was rectified and all in all it was a very succesful event which I was glad to attend. We did not present at this conference unfortunately but next time we shall. I look forward to it again in 18 months.