People
This is by far the best aspect of the Kscope conferences. It was great to be a part of the Applied OLAP team this year. We had 10 attendees! Putting faces to names, seeing people I hadn't seen in years (in one case 15 years!) was a real joy for me. The nightly activities including Applied OLAP's night at the Seattle Aquarium and the Wednesday night MoPOP event and after party were a total blast.
Technical Content
Being able to interact and listen to the brightest minds in our field can be done nowhere else. I got a chance to speak with Oracle product management about new features in Essbase. I was able to present on BSO Solve Order and the new MDX Insert statement. These are the kinds of things that get me really fired up. I love helping to push things forward. I was also able to present a demonstration of Essbase parallel queries in our Dodeca product at our Sunday Symposium. This could be a game changing technology allowing multiple Essbase queries to be run by a single user simultaneously. I'll be posting more about this in the future.
Personal Growth
The fact is that presenting at a conference can be difficult. I tend to over prepare which hopefully benefits the people sitting in my presentations as well as me. Preparing a presentation takes a lot of time and hard work. It forces me to be better. I encourage others to try it if they haven't done it before. It is a very valuable skill to have. I'm already starting the process of thinking about abstract submissions for Kscope20. I will see everyone in Boston next year!
