Blog from collaborate 2012

[altquark]

Morning listers ! I'm going to try and capture whats going on here at collaborate for those that arent here. Theres an insane number of attendees - in my opinion more now to force quest to stop their collaboration with the other groups - it seems a full 50% of attendees are quest. Yesterday was mostly SIG day - biggest changes i saw was a reversal in windows 7 32bit browser support, and elimination of HPUX as an ongoing platform. Linux, solaris and AIX are going to be the only unix supported platform it seems. Oracle/jde are goibg big with iOS - tey seem to love the ipad, and seem to not be so keen to support google products right now.

With so many people here, its a logisitical nightmare - no real dinner plans last night (very few people knew there was a quest open bar for 1 hour) - and there was no breakfast this morning - literally i'm standing here watching a line of 200 attendees disappointed by the 20 or so croisants being laid out. A huge grown just erupted as the mandalay staff just announced no more muffins - 30 minutes before the end f breakfast ! My guess is we're on our own for food.I noticed people giving up as i was walking into the conference area - line outside starbucks started to impact the casino floor !

So oracle seems to be taking away at this conference rather than giving - and all the attendees are hungry for more than just a few pastries. Lets hope that oracle/jde delivers!

 

[shurtle]

Thank you for posting! I will look forward to updates!

 

[altquark]

The first session this morning was from Captain Mark Kelly, husband of Gabi Giffords and commander for several shuttle missions. Not a bad speech, he managed to relate his experiences as an air force pilot with the ability to communicate (remember "collaborate" is the name of the conference !). Interestingly enough, no oracle involvement with the opening session - in fact, lyles session is actually at 11am - which I believe is the first oracle/JDE session of the conference.

I personally am staying here at the Mandalay bay - which is a long enough walk from my room, through the casino to the conference center. I have colleagues staying at the luxor, MGM and Excalibur - and I know there are people staying at hotels even further down on the strip. While Vegas does have a lot to do, everything about this conference ends up costing more money to the attendee. Not a good thing having to spend $30+ each way for taxi's.

My first session I'm attending is on offshore development from a relatively small real estate firm. Of course, it's interesting to see smaller companies engaging offshore development - and the reasons for them engaging offshore sources. It's a good space filler for me though just before Lyles session !

 

[altquark]

At lyles session now - there seems to be a bunch of interesting props on stage ! Lyle is like the carrot top of JDE without the hair !

 

[altquark]

Lyles session was exciting - introduction of a new technical pice to JDE - one view reporting - which is in effect end-user reporting built intomjde directly. Very powerful, and will appeal to a lot of customers.

Unfortunately the demos were hampered with wifi issues - there really isn't any wifi here and so many of us are having to put up our Mifi devices, which are causing issues with some of the presentations.

Many people saw the mobile applications for the first time here too - showing how the expense management module works on an iPhone. Very cool.

Lyle ended on a competition (one gun, one duck and one flag) where JDE wanted to see customers sign up and plan their upgrade to EnterpriseOne 9.1 applications live online through the upgradejde.com website. It'll be interesting to see what companies sign up for this.

The conference ran out of drinks at lunch - jokes are that the mandalay bay was hopefully not running JDE MRP !

After lunch was an interesting E1 presentation that delved into the applications 9.1 a lot deeper. Introduction of some new functionality revolving around the one view reporting - and information on the technical catalog - which might not have been known about by many of the attendees.

Lots of push for the "100 day upgrade workshop" - a one day workshop. Not sure of the cost for that though.

Gary greishaber then went into the roadmap a little more -roviding information in the future of e1...

 

[peterbruce]

Jon,

I am very grateful for the updates - espcially if you having internet connection difficulties, please keep them coming. It is very thoughtful of you to help out those of us who are unable to attend - especially those at the other end of the planet.

 

[Larry_Jones]

Sounds like the Vegas conference catering hasn't changed from the last 2 times. I remember the same things happening then. What's funny is that Quest was given LOTS of feedback on this and it was supposed to be fixed . . .

 

[altquark]

Well, its been an exhausting first FULL day ! Lots and lots of information - the introduction of OneView reporting was a fascinating new product and will certainly be something I think every customer will be willing to look at.

I finished the day by sneaking into an IOUG presentation by a vendor of a box that provided large flash memory for lower cost than Exadata and sat between the SAN and the RDBMS servers. Evidently, their box provided Exadata performance on existing Oracle RAC systems at 1/20th the cost of Exadata. A nice little arrow to have in an Architects' Quiver !

Tonight started with the Exhibition Showcase, where again lines of people at all-too-few food booths soured the occasion. We were obviously spoiled in Orlando and Denver with excellent instantaneous service. The exhibition hall seemed to be packed full of vendors - more so than in the past few years - and more willing to give out "freebies" especially if you were wearing a "customer" ribbon ! Always a good event to network and meet with old acquaintances. Managed to spend a few minutes with John Schiff and watch an interesting Fusion Applications demonstration at the Oracle booth.

Lastly I managed to crawl down to the "Geek Meet" - where we were entertained by Elvis and some of Jean Driscoll's music. It was really good to see Lyle and much of the JDE Team come to this event - being a smaller, informal event, it really helped some of the "true techies" get in touch with some of the strategic directions being presented earlier in the day.

So finally off to bed - to rest my weary feet before doing it all over again tomorrow !

 

[altquark]

[ QUOTE ]
Sounds like the Vegas conference catering hasn't changed from the last 2 times. I remember the same things happening then. What's funny is that Quest was given LOTS of feedback on this and it was supposed to be fixed . . .

[/ QUOTE ]

Larry - I think its just the way that Vegas is. Expensive and poor service. After you've used up the tickets on sodas - a cost for a soda refill is almost $5 ! And the staff aren't very courteous. But the conference content makes up for the location.

People are openly wondering how much Quest profits out of the $10m or so revenue from the conference. Certainly the lack of any "name" acts for a conference this size - together with the lack of decent food makes many wonder if most of the revenue is profit....

 

[Gomer79]

Thanks for keeping us all in the loop...even on the food lines!