2017 passed quickly.

ASUG

I’m still proudly serving as the program chair for the ASUG Kentucky chapter, a role that I’ve held for three years. This was the second year that I helped organize the ASUG Developer Tools Day event in December. It was also the second year that I did not speak at the annual ASUG BI conference (now rebranded as the Eventful Group’s BI+A Conference); however, I did get to attend to assist my co-worker and fellow SAP Mentor Greg Myers for hands-on session with SAP Predictive Analysis .

Desktop Intelligence

If you would have told me in 2007 that ten years later I’d be helping customers retire Desktop Intelligence, I wouldn’t have believed you. But I worked with two organizations, one mid-sized and another a Fortune 200 public utility. In both cases I was not only surprised that Desktop Intelligence was still around but that the adoption of Web Intelligence was non-existent or anemic. It’s a good feeling to know that these two organizations are future-proof for the next few years.

Pre-sales with SAP

Although I transitioned from pre-sales back to managed services, I managed to do a lot more pre-sales work in 2017, helping SAP account executives and their customers better understand their BI environments with free BI-on-BI assessments powered by Sherlock from EV Technologies. Doug Turner and I worked with organizations of all different sizes and industries and got to know a lot of SAP account executives and sales engineers.

Web Intelligence

A big deal for 2017 was creating the fourth edition of SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence: The Comprehensive Guide for SAP Press, which was released on September 25th. When I worked on the second edition, I was a traveling consultant with nothing better to do than sit in a hotel room and work on a book. I’m grateful that my family tolerated me spending evenings working on this edition of the book. I continue to be amazed at how different writing a book is from blogging (at least for me). We added Christian Ah-Soon from SAP as a significant contributor to the book, based on SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.2 SP4 that went GA toward the end of our book deadline.

2017 Travels

courtesy of TripIt and Google Maps

I’m not traveling as much these days. I’m just an average passenger when I fly on Delta airlines and I miss my Platinum days very much. I still have TSA Pre-Check, so at least there’s that.

• ASUG Volunteer Meeting (January 21 – 22, 2017)
  Chicago, Illinois
• SAP Insider BI 2017 & HANA 2017 (February 25 – March 2, 2017)
  Las Vegas, Nevada
• SAP Lumira 1.31 customer coaching (March 19 – 22, 2017)
  San Antonio, Texas
• SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 3.1 and Desktop Intelligence migration (April 10 – 13, 2017)
  Charlotte, North Carolina
• ASUG Kentucky Summer 2017 meeting (June 8, 2017)
  Louisville, Kentucky
• ASUG/Eventful Group BI+A Conference (August 6-9, 2017)
  Nashville, Tennesee
• ASUG Kentucky Fall 2017 meeting (September 14, 2017)
  Highland Heights, Kentucky
• SAP Insider Reporting and Analytics INTERACTIVE 2017 (November 27 – December 2, 2017)
  Las Vegas, Nevada
• ASUG Developer Tools Day 2017 (December 7, 2017)
  Highland Heights, Kentucky

Books Read and Reviewed

I must admit that with a busy schedule and now the need for reading glasses that I’m not reading as much as I should. I’ll try to do better in 2018.

Presenting Data Effectively, Second Edition, by Stephanie Evergreen

The Big Book of Dashboards by Steve Wexler, Jeffrey Shaffer, and Andy Cotgreave