Putting ERP to Work in Higher Ed

Examining the ongoing challenges of delivering high-quality, value-added ERP services in Higher Education.

Thursday, April 12, 2012

HEUG Debrief

It has been three weeks now since I spent a few days in the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center for the Higher Education User Group (HEUG) Alliance '12 Conference. This conference brings together IT professionals from higher education customers of Oracle ERP systems for three days of information sharing, networking, and discussion. Hard to believe, but this was my fifth year attending (and presenting) although it seems like only yesterday I was a newbie (at MGM Grand that year...)

My organization is fortunate to have three members of the Product Advisory Groups (PAGs) to provide feedback and input to Oracle Corporation as they plan the future direction for various systems and modules. While my PAG reps arrived in Nashville on Thursday, I didn’t arrive until Sunday. By that time they almost knew their way around the “bio-dome” and helped me avoid getting totally lost! They also forged some strong relationships (I hope) with other institutions and made our wishes known to the powers that be in Oracle Product Management!

The Executive Forum was quite insightful this year. Michael Horn from the Innosight Institute, who co-wrote Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns with Clay Christensen and Curtis Johnson, was especially evocative in his discussion of the pressures on higher education and the notion of “disruptive innovation.” My favorite bit was “why did you hire that milkshake” – see here for more info… We also heard from Nicole Engelbert from Ovum regarding market trends and Tom Fisher from Oracle Cloud Services.

In the general sessions I was able to spend time learning about Oracle E-Business Suite, Fusion Applications, Oracle Hyperion EPM, and OBIEE. It is always insightful to learn how other institutions are using these applications. It was especially fun to see old friends from Harvard’s implementation of Hyperion Planning present about their progress at Berkeley! And Fusion Accounting Hub (including Essbase under the covers replacing GL Balances) was mighty intriguing... My own presentation (Oracle iProcurement) was sparsely attended but we fielded several good questions – not a tremendous success, but far from a failure.

Perhaps the brightest success of the week was that the E-Business Suite PAG -- generally a minority at the conference -- decided to call attention to itself by passing out Mardi Gras beads at the opening afternoon Mix and Mingle. The beads were quite popular and generated a lot of positive buzz. When HEUG President Ted Simpson strode on stage wearing a string of purple (or were they green?) beads the EBS folks went crazy!

In summary, an exhausting but valuable few days... Major kudos to HEUG leadership and the Alliance program committee for their hard work! I look forward to seeing everyone next year in Indianapolis!

Labels: Alliance12, Conferences, HEUG

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Team Building with LEGO Towers: Part 2

(I am ashamed... it has been 4 months since Part 1 of this story! Well, better late than never...)
Introduction
As you learned in my previous post, Team Building with LEGO Towers: Part 1, in this exercise teams build a tower using LEGO bricks, with the goal of maximizing total return on investment. The only driver for revenue is height ($3/cm), while expenses include both material (.50/brick) and labor ($2/min for planning, $5/min for construction).

My Analysis
About a week before the exercise, I sat down to analyze the challenge as if it were a "real project" -- to expose the various lessons and guidelines. One of the primary objectives of this exercise--and one of the most profound challenges I witness daily--is to decompose a problem and identify the best path forward given the results of that thoughtful analysis. It struck me that the ROI calculation is actually trickiest because of its simplicity. For me, the first activity once the exercise began should be to dig into the revenue and expense drivers, formulate a strategy that is fully informed by that deeper understanding of the ROI calculation, and to build using an approach fully cognizant of the risks.

Cost/Benefit Analysis

Each LEGO is approx 1cm tall
Therefore, for each minute of building, need to have 5cm in height
Although it looks meaningful, the difference in price between Planning/Construction can be made up with only 1cm of height per minute (easy!)
Most profitable per cm is a single brick per level -- should figure out quickly how tall I can build with just the 1x1 or 1x2 bricks!
6 bricks per level = 0 profit (on materials cost alone)
Lowest profitable height ~35 cm

Project Risks

Do not finish assembly in time
Do not test free-standing early enough
Tower falls over or collapses
Wider base may allow increased height but costly in time and margin
Not enough of the right pieces for my chosen design

Approach

Immediately sort the bricks by size during the Planning phase
Segment materials analysis from the solution design
Build max stack of single-unit blocks at first and stage on the base
Build discrete stackable units, each of which is profitable in its own right
Begin assembly with three minutes to go; build for > 1 minute stability
Minimize # of levels with 0 profit

My Results...
...don't really count. Given the amount of time spent reviewing Nick Heap's initial idea and adapting it, shopping for the LEGO bricks, writing the PowerPoint, etc., it would be hard to argue that my project planning time was anything less than several hours. Nevertheless, over Thanksgiving, I built myself a small tower (85cm) in only ten minutes. Who knows how I might have done as a true participant in the exercise!

My Team's Results
We had four teams, roughly equal in size. Our maximum height was 133.5 centimeters (which I found to be quite impressive although I do not know the world record for this exercise...) Although this was only 10cm taller than the closest competitor, the approach taken by the teams, in terms of planning vs. construction time, materials, etc. were different enough that the net profit was not a close contest; Team White won by a wide margin as shown below.

Post-Mortem Analysis
After the build was complete, all measurements captured and the trophy awarded, I asked the teams to discuss their results, including the following questions:

What was the first thing each team did?
What additional info would have helped?
Did you formulate a plan?
How were you organized?
Did you modify the initial plan?
Did you take advantage of pre-existing expertise?
What else did you learn?
Do you think you can do better with another try?

As we discussed the exercise, the team identified several success factors:

Defined strategy / approach up-front
Division of labor – multiple building "units"
Clear roles/responsibilities within the team, especially once "build" began
Importance of teamwork and multi-tasking

On the other hand, we identified a longer list of pitfalls:

Too much emphasis on stability concerns led to more expensive "foundation" and less height
Too much time planning (analysis paralysis); didn't leave enough time to test assumptions
Insufficient time understanding ROI drivers and costs
Underestimated strength of LEGO bond; as a result, approach was too conservative

Conclusions

My favorite observation of this activity was the fact that so many teams were desperate for me to measure their structures lest they collapse too soon. Every one of the structures stood for a full 30 minutes after the measurements were captured. This means that nobody took enough risk! Every structure could have been taller (in the same time frame) but the risk of collapse and the lack of time to test assumptions (especially regarding the potential strength of a single-brick LEGO tower) led to significant risk avoidance. There were also plenty of observations about inter-personal and group dynamics, but those are not for sharing here... But I can guarantee if you repeat this exercise in your organization you will learn a lot!

A final observation: my team, at least, loves LEGO. You should be prepared, if you run this exercise for your team, to face team-wide disappointment with your next hands-on activity!

Monday, January 9, 2012

Team Building with LEGO Towers: Part 1

Introduction
The opening premise was that I needed a hands-on activity for my semi-annual staff meeting. Such activities are not my bailiwick; hand me clay and ask me to make a vessel for my feelings and I'll make a crude ash tray, surpassed easily by almost anything coming from the hands of a toddler. So I embarked on an epic quest to find a tactile team-building exercise that I wouldn't hate myself for thrusting upon my team. "There must be something with LEGO," I thought, and commenced Googling... Thankfully salvation came from a fellow by the name of Nick Heap.

It had everything I wanted: team work, project management, ROI, and LEGO. Naturally, I created a PowerPoint deck to guide the morning.

Guidelines
The rules:

Build LEGO tower with positive Return on Investment (ROI)
Tower must be able to stand freely for 1 minute
20 minutes maximum time from starting horn
No other materials can be used in the construction
Two phases: Planning and Construction (important cost implications below)
You can manipulate bricks (sort, count) during Planning, but Construction begins the moment two bricks are joined together
Each team will report its strategies and lessons learned during the post-build debrief

How to calculate ROI:

As demonstrated above, Revenue is driven strictly by the height of the tower (in centimeters). The complexity comes with the expenses (doesn't it always?). Materials are priced at a straight $0.50 per brick, whether it's a 1x1 stud or a 2x8 brick. Labor costs differ during the Planning vs. Construction phases -- which makes the honesty of the time-keeper much more crucial!

The Raw Materials

What should your shopping list be? I must admit that I spent 30 minutes at the LEGO Store in Burlington, Mass., puzzling over this challenge. Knowing I would have four teams, the decision to buy four green plates was easy. At first glance, the obvious answer seemed to be LEGO 6177, the "Basic Blocks Deluxe". You might think that in a kit like this the distribution of pieces by color would be roughly equivalent. Nope. Not even close. In this kit, the yellow, red, blue, and white bricks have nearly equal distributions -- except for the 1x6 and larger. The lime green, green, black, orange, and brown bricks are many fewer but almost align (but not quite -- for some odd reason the brown have four fewer 2x2s; the black and green have 3 additional 1x2; the lime and orange have 5 extra 1x1...) If you are truly concerned about absolute parity across the competing teams, you'll have to do a fair amount of counting and sorting. Ultimately, my shopping list was:

3 LEGO 6177 (650 pieces each)
4 gallon-sized ZipLoc bags (for the yellow, red, blue, white)
5 quart-sized ZipLoc bags (for the other colors)
4 32x32 green base plates

We only used the yellow, red, white, and blue bricks, although I also crafted a trophy for the winning team by adapting this pattern. Total cost, roughly $115. But with revenue (measured in fun) nearing infinity, I feel pretty good about the return on investment!

Will be back soon with Part 2 -- results and lessons learned.

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

2012: A Preview + Resolutions

All signs point toward a crazy/incredible year.

At work we remain on track to complete upgrades to PeopleSoft 9.1 HCM in April and E-Business Suite 12.1 Financials in November. We are plumbing the depths of the new functionality in Oracle EPM 11.1.2 for planning and budgeting (in production since mid-November, but with a host of unknowns). Later this week I am supposed to gain admin privileges on an OBIEE 11g sandbox—there are only a thousand things I want to do with that shiny new toy. We have active projects in research admin, student financials, treasury, and more. And that’s only the stuff we know about; new requests are coming in so fast and furious that in the calm before the holidays I built a new application using Intuit QuickBase (starting from one of their many great template apps) to manage intake and prioritization; I expect to deploy it to my leadership team this week. And on Monday I will be putting QlikView 10 in action to analyze time-tracking and productions support metrics from last quarter. Yessir, it should be an exciting year.

My 2011 was a crowded with professional development and networking activities, in addition to the normal daily grind. I attended five national conferences (presenting at four of them) across the spectrum of higher education and IT. I finally ticked off the PMP box on my resume and started my ITSM/ITIL journey. 2012 should bring more of the same. I am already on the agenda for the HEUG Alliance in Nashville (March) and formulating proposals for EDUCAUSE Annual Conference (due by Feb 12!) and Open World. I am off to Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) training in two weeks. And just before the recess a copy of Managing Successful Projects with PRINCE2 landed on my desk. So if the projects don’t keep me busy… There is always something new to learn.

I established a host of resolutions for 2012, mostly of the personal-life and health varieties. I won’t bore you with them here, although I feel compelled to mention the robust Excel model I built to track my progress (and my wife’s): naturally, everything rolls neatly into a tri-color dashboard!

More pertinent to this space, I also defined a bunch of work-oriented resolutions. Here goes:

1000 Tweets
100 New Followers
Follow 100 New People/Companies
Post 26 Blogs to jasonshaffner.blogspot.com
Post 100 Blogs to internal department blog
2+ Conference Presentations
1+ New IT/PM Certification
Update our departmental Confluence Wiki at least once every business day

See you again soon; I have at least 25 more blogs in 2012!

Saturday, November 5, 2011

What is a project?

Two weeks ago I attended a pre-conference seminar at EDUCAUSE 2011 in Philadelphia on Creating Agile Organizations. during the icebreaking part of the day, the facilitators asked us to huddle at our tables over this question: what is a project? There were audible groans. At least twice I heard "I'm a PMP, I know what a project is." Yet across forty project management professionals we struggled.

Let's examine the PMBOK definition: "A project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service or result."

Out of fairness to the standards boards across the pond, how about the PRINCE2 definition: "A project is a management environment that is created for the purpose of delivering one or more business products according to a specified Business Case."

And now some of the definitions the seminar attendees came up with:

A project is a set of activities that are time bound (start/end dates) with a specific set of objectives (scope). Should have some minimum thresholds (e.g. how much time it takes to complete). May be of interest as a track-able item from management's perspective.
A project has discrete scope, defined start/end dates, and meets organizational definitions (hrs, resources, origin) for a "project"; typically outside normal operations.

I look upon these attempts at defining the word and think "Gee, those PMI and PRINCE2 definitions are so much tighter." Their current simplicity reflects untold hours of careful wordsmithing, a painful and unending process as anybody who has ever crafted a mission statement or novel can attest... With such clean definitions out there why is there still so much consternation about "what is a project?"

For some reason (unknown to me) one problem seems to be the lack of precision in the "official" definitions -- they are too broadly applicable, and one must be careful not to treat too many undertakings as "projects" -- thus an interminable attempt to define define "eligibility" for the gravitas-laden title "project".

Consider these thoughts from other groups in the same EDUCAUSE seminar:

It is usually about something large and new (not incremental). (Anything larger than 80 hours.)
Needs approval; needs funding; typically align to strategic vision.
A set of functions to be implemented in a set period of time, that requires more than a defined number of hours.
A request that takes more than one day to complete. Usually involves more than one person.

We could imagine so many potential gating criteria:

8 hours
40 hours
80 hours
200 hours
2,000,000 hours
Has a budget
Has budget > $X
Has more than one resource
More than five resources
Not involving Group X or Group Y
Has IT involvement
Ordained as a project by the governing board

This is beyond wordsmithing; we're talking philosophy now. Every time I find myself in such conversations, i want to tear my hair out. At first I think this differentiation is about reducing red tape--not wanting to burden a small project with the baggage of process and procedure. Sometimes it seems as if the evil root cause is the "cult of project managers" looking at smaller projects as somehow below their station and wanting to maintain the purity of their profession. Other times I think that it is the parochialism of individuals grounding their rules in those witnessed at current or past employers or clients; too often these rules are presented as points of fact. There is no one reason, and no explanation makes the debate all that meaningful to me. More time is sometimes wasted debating whether or not something is a project than just moving on and managing it like one. Why is that such a horrifying proposition for some?

For me, a project is anything that has these characteristics:
- Defined start and end
- Would benefit from a codified strategy mapped on a timeline
- Can be conceived as a series of inter-related actions

In other words: if it smells like a project, it is probably a project. And this: almost any undertaking would benefit from project management. Yes, even those pesky "operations." Just ask my wife: I basically have a GANTT chart for Monday supper! (And definitely had one for our honeymoon, collected in a beautiful green three-ring binder).

What do you think? Hit me via Twitter (@jasonshaffner) or e-mail with your perspective!

Labels: #PMOT, Conferences, Project Management, Rants

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Oracle VirtualBox and OBIEE

Where have you been my whole life, Oracle VM VirtualBox and the OBIEE 11.1.1.5 image? Lurking in plain sight, probably advertised on Oracle corporate and partner Twitter posts just outside the latest 50 each time I pulled out my iPhone between meetings, in elevators, or waiting on line at SBUX. We went through so much trouble configuring a demo machine (with Windows Server 64-bit… ouch) when all we needed to do was hook up to a fat pipe, download you, and turn the key to start.

I learned about the VirtualBox Image last week at #OOW11 in San Francisco, in a throw-away comment from the product manager for OBI Scorecards and Strategy. Flew home and checked the specs – 4 GB RAM? I’ve got that on my home laptop. Fat pipe, not so much. It took nearly 12 hours to download the install packages from ftp.oracle.com but only another hour to get OBIEE up and running.

Other than 4 GB of RAM, what does one need for this install? 7zip (http://www.7-zip.org/) and an FTP client (FileZilla - http://filezilla-project.org/). And Oracle VirtualBox, which you can download from here: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/virtualbox/downloads/index.html

The real heavy lifting (for you network, anyhow) comes with the SampleApp V107 Image. As you can see at this link the download is roughly 25GB. This took forever over my slow Wifi on my slow at-home Comcast connection. The installation guide steps through all the (rather straight-forward) installation steps from that point forward; it also contains all the passwords one needs to get the party started.

Once connected, the “General Index” provides a learning map – literally hundreds of dashboard pages devoted to individual concepts and terminology in OBIEE. For example, dig into Section 0.2 to learn about the security set-up in the Sample App as well as key features in OBIEE such as the “Act As” proxy option. Or navigate to 3.20 to see various options for formatting your Answers reports. Or visit 8.7 to see how OBIEE allows fidelity of interactivity between both relational and flat-file data sources. After traipsing through each dashboard and drilling down to “Edit” with the objective of sorting out the underlying configuration, the power and flexibility of the technology become obvious—and far more tangible than literature, conference presentations, or canned demos.

More later this week after my hands are a little dirtier…

Labels: #OOW11, OBIEE, Oracle

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

OOW Day Two

New words / phrases that have entered my vocabulary this week so far:

Hadoop
Exadata
Exalogic
Exalytics
InfiniBand
NoSQL
Big Data
Parallel Everything (vs congruent term Share Nothing)

The day started with keynote address from EMC and Oracle. Interesting session because EMC pitched their hardware solution, including the option of end-user self-service server provisioning, and then Oracle basically said "you don't need those guys [EMC] if you buy our engineered solutions."

No matter what session I attended -- EBS Roadmap, EBS Financials Vision and Strategy, Higher Education Solutions Roadmap, or BI Strategy -- at least 15 minutes was spent on the power and speed of buying packaged HW/SW components from Oracle. This Exa-thing is clearly the focus of this conference, and making applications people talk cores and DRAM seems to be the prime mission. I am a little fatigued.

That said, the conversations about "unstructured data" and Big Data are pretty interesting. EMC demoed a dummy auto insurance app that crunched social media data as an input into pricing -- lots of pictures of drinking on FB and your premium could go up. The technology on display was intellectually compelling; the Big Brother possibilities less so. In our world of admin computing, we generally have the luxury of well-structured data, but the potential tools out there today -- Hadoop is open-source but Oracle is packaging a version -- could have important applications in the academic and research computing arenas.

I wish I could say I learned some things at the EBS and Higher Ed roadmap discussions, but not much has changed since OAUG and HEUG in the spring. 12.2 is "not imminent" and they strongly recommend upgrading soon... PeopleSoft remains the strategic platform for higher ed... Essbase will be the reporting platform for Oracle Fusion GL... Buy Exadata.

The most interesting session of the day was surprising -- who would have suspected that two geeks from the development organization would do the best job so far explaining how all the Exa stuff fits together?

I spent a little quality time on the vendor floor. There was an actual sumo wrestler in diaper, but I didn't get a photo with him. I can't believe I'm going to say this, but the conference doesn't give enough dedicated time for the vendor exhibit hall. Or lunch. Looking forward to Day Three.

Monday, October 3, 2011

OOW Day One

Sunday is for SIGs – Special Interest Groups oriented around geographic regions, products, or business processes. These groups, associated with the Oracle Applications User Group (OAUG), typically meet twice each year – at OAUG Collaborate and Open World. In between, most of the SIGs have e-mail discussion boards, educational webinars, etc. For more info start here: OAUG SIGs

SIGs are a great way to meet people and hear from Oracle. Unfortunately, they’re also held on Sunday before the conference has officially kicked off, so they can be a little sparse. Yesterday, I missed the Upgrade (R12) SIG and E-Business Suite SIG but made it to the Moscone Center in time for the Hyperion SIG. In that session, I learned that Oracle would be announcing later that evening the release of “Exalytics” – an optimized “parallel-everything” pre-built server for analytics, with Essbase at the core. I knew that a major focus for this conference was going to be the Exadata (purpose-built appliance for Oracle Database) and Exalogic (purpose-built appliance for Oracle Middleware) but this was interesting news indeed. Unfortunately, I would have rather found out the release date for the next major Hyperion EPM version, but was told merely “2012” which is not particularly helpful.

The Higher Education User Group (HEUG) is an unusual SIG in that rather than focusing on geography or technology, the HEUG focuses on an industry. We have long been involved in the HEUG, with two current members (Ryan and Tom) of Product Advisory Groups (PAGs) that interface directly with Oracle development to lobby for higher education interests. There was a strong turn-out (at least 50) for this session and they held a reception immediately afterwards at a nearby restaurant to allow for more networking time. Since we use a small piece of pretty much every Oracle product except JDE, we have a little something in common with everyone there. The most interesting dialogue I had was with Lone Star College, which implemented 44 modules (!) of PeopleSoft Enterprise and Campus Solutions in 18 months, with a total of 40 (!!!) customizations platform-wide. Ouch. Makes me feel just a little better about our current slate of upgrade projects…

After rubbing elbows and trading business cards for an hour, we returned to the Moscone Center for the main event – Larry Ellison’s keynote speech. It was a strange one. The San Francisco Giants gave Mr. Ellison a world series ring for his years of support. Partner and CIO of-the-year awards were presented. And then Mr. Ellison began his presentation. For one hour, he talked about hardware. Data compression. Infiniband. DRAM. Parallel everything. Lots of math. Some talk of customer case studies, with the final punchline each time the performance gains. 60x, 18x, 23x, 40x. All very impressive, but a little boring for those of us with application software on the mind. Exalytics was announced with ten minutes to go, and Ellison showed some ugly stats that looked eerily like our own Hyperion Planning performance, and then what would happen if we had Exalyctics. Very exciting, though all talk of pricing was omitted from the slides…

I hope to learn enough this week about Exa- this and Exa- that to put a more layman’s definition together, but my head is spinning far too fast. Off to see Exalytics in action at the 8am keynote; will report back tomorrow!

Labels: #OOW11, Conferences, OAUG

Sunday, October 2, 2011

T-Minus-One to OOW

First things, first: this blog has very little project management or enterprise systems. But I'm on the road for work, so I’ll be using that fact as an excuse to blog some more esoteric thoughts.

Let us start with Virgin America. Never mind that I was fortunate enough to snag one of two rows on the whole plane with an empty middle seat... Or that I devoured the final book in The Hunger Games (start to finish, no joke) and Episode 2 from Season 1 of "Luther" (which might be my new favorite show). Or that you can borrow a Google Chrome netbook for the flight (if so inclined; I wasn’t). Instead, let's talk price (<$350 RT BOS-SFO) and leg room (ample) and overhead space (not an issue) and entertainment system (back of every seat) and that in-flight food and beverage order system (service for snacks -twice- less than 5 min!) I have a new favorite airline. Sorry, AA…

San Francisco is beautiful, but more crowded that I remember. I bought a 7-day Muni pass, thinking it would prove profitable if I could avoid two taxi trips my whole time here. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of trekking thru Chinatown on market day (I have never seen so many Yu Choy greens on a city bus) and don't get me started on the disaster of trying to take the cable car back across town.

Posted to Facebook that I will never complain about the Boston MBTA again after today’s ordeal. The first decision on where to spend my afternoon came from an unexpected rationale -- I left my collar stays at home, and with a presentation ahead of me, a trip to Thomas Pink was in order. I bought the collar "bones" for $25; wish I could afford the shirts... Is there an outlet somewhere? The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) was right around the corner from Pink (and the Moscone Center—see below). I hadn't done my research and literally had no idea what to expect. Although I have a quarrel with some modern art no matter the venue, I was overwhelmingly pleased. I can never see too many exhibits of photography in Paris, and I thoroughly enjoyed the special exhibit of furniture and electronics designed by Dieter Rams (from Braun). His ten design principles are worthy advice for any IT professional. The current rotation from the permanent collection was solid, too; I especially liked a triptych of Lichtenstein paintings that emulated Monet’s Rouen Cathedral series.

After touring the galleries and sipping an Anchor Steam at the café, I walked two blocks to the Moscone Center. 2 minutes to get my badge, and nearly 5 to secure the NASCAR-like sponsor-emblazoned messenger bag and other materials. I will share my observations on the schedule and other materials in another blog tomorrow. Before leaving the convention center, I took advantage of the emptiness to marvel at Larry's boat. That thing is huge.

Near the hotel, a restaurant called Pescatore called out to me because the wicker chairs outside made me thing of Paris (even though Pescatore it is an Italian restaurant); I make a walk by reservation, hit the hotel for a quick refresh, and head back for a solid dinner of mixed greens w gorgonzola balsamic and a fantastic cod with potatoes, rapini, and caper butter. Their artisan Manhattan ain't half bad.

Which brings me to the lobby (free Internet) and the iPad, to blog meandering thoughts from the day. Have I mentioned lately how much I love this thing?

Sunday, September 25, 2011

Gearing Up for San Fran, #OOW11, and Picasso

Less than a week until the first sessions of Oracle Open World. As I mentioned in a blog last week, it has been six years since I attended this massive and overwhelming convention. How many companies has Oracle acquired since then? Twenty? A hundred? Yet some things never change: the sessions I’m most excited about pertain to this mysterious thing known as “Fusion” (cue ominous music).

I have never had the chance to play the “tourist” in San Francisco, and by the looks of the packed agenda for Open World, there won’t be occasion for it this year. My Thursday-morning presentation will hang over my head all week, as will the worry that I will choose poorly among the hundreds of concurrent sessions. I aim to strike a balance between learning tangible things that will help my team immediately with seeking serendipity—stumbling across something novel and innovative that could make a real difference for the institution 2-3 years hence. My example of the latter from six years ago was a session on XML Publisher / BI Publisher which was still shiny and new… (I’m a big fan, and still trying to gain traction with this tool at my institution, but that’s another story for another day…)

San Francisco has a special place in my heart—I spent the first six weeks of my post-college career there, with a cubicle on a mid-teens floor in the Transamerica Pyramid. We were sixty fresh-faced college grads, with aspirations to fly high in corporate finance, psyched about the fancy Motorola SkyTel pagers that for those few weeks served to coordinate bar-hopping rather than signal a crisis. My favorite memory was kayaking in Sausalito, where we basked in sunlight and watched the fog darken the streets of the city.

Thanks to Virgin America—far and away the cheapest direct flight option out of Logan—I actually have a full afternoon on Saturday to relax and enjoy San Francisco beyond the Moscone Center and environs. What shall I do? (Other than put finishing touches on my presentation!) I had been considering Alcatraz, until I saw that the de Young Museum has a Picasso exhibit that was just extended to October 10th. Perfect. (Even better since my wife doesn’t particularly care for Picasso, which means I don’t have to feel lousy that she’s missing it!)

I wonder which will prove more serendipitous, the Picasso exhibit or the random eye-opening Oracle technology or applications session I plop in the 2pm slot on Wednesday afternoon?

Labels: #OOW11, Conferences, OOW11, Oracle, Travel