It was the best of times,
it was the worst of times,
it was the age of wisdom,
it was the age of foolishness,
it was the epoch of belief,
it was the epoch of incredulity,
it was the season of Light,
it was the season of Darkness,
it was the spring of hope,
it was the winter of despair,
we had everything before us,
we had nothing before us,
we were all going direct to Heaven,
we were all going direct the other way…from A Tale of Two Cities
by Charles Dickens
Howard Dresener.
Wayne Eckerson.
Claudia Imhoff.
William McKnight.
Neil Raden.
What do these names have in common? They are all thought leaders for analytics and business intelligence. And last week, all were at the 2013 Tableau Customer Conference (#TCC13) in Washington, D.C.- not the 2013 ASUG SAP BusinessObjects User Conference (#SBOUC2013) in Anaheim, California.
#FF & great to see this week at #TCC13 @Claudia_Imhoff @NeilRaden @johnlmyers44 @williammcknight @BIScorecard @weckerson @tonycosentinovr
— Lyndsay Wise (@wiseanalytics) September 13, 2013
Was gr8 to see gr8 ppl in #TCC13 @Claudia_Imhoff @wiseanalytics @howarddresner @weckerson @johnlmyers44 @NeilRaden @williammcknight @tunvall — Jorge García (@jgptec) September 13, 2013
Cindy Howson (@BIScorecard) gets extra credit for spending time at both conferences, including a book signing at #SBOUC2013.
Thank you @sapanalytics @Aundrea_Lacy @ASUG_BI for great book signing #asug2013 pic.twitter.com/U5IrhyEbsE
— Cindi Howson (@BIScorecard) September 11, 2013
Ms. Howson estimated around 4,000 attendees at #TCC13.
My notes on Tableau user conf growth 2010/700, 2011/1400, 2012/2200, and 2013 supposedly 4000+ (unofficial). Nice trend #tcc13 — Cindi Howson (@BIScorecard) September 9, 2013
Tableau estimated around 3,000 attendees at #TCC13.
There’s 3000 new potential friends at TCC13, how many do people make? #tcc13 Find out here: http://t.co/kXox79AwR0
— Tableau Software (@tableau) September 11, 2013
George Peck the Crystal Reports guru is now George Peck the Tableau guru.
#Tableau8TheOfficialGuide sold out at #TCC13 store! Get it on http://t.co/WRR8nAKgmk. First 5 retweets get signed copy at Booth 106!!!
— George Peck (@GeorgeEPeck) September 11, 2013
Let’s not mention Tableau for the Mac.
#tcc13 standing ovation here #Tableau for the Apple Mac
— Jen Underwood (@idigdata) September 9, 2013
Tableau natively on Mac. Room goes crazy. #TCC13
— Fredrik Tunvall (@tunvall) September 9, 2013
And don’t even get me started on Nate Silver and Walter Isaacson, just two of the keynote speakers at #TCC13. Don’t tease me with “Nate Silver is coming to SAP TechEd” next month in Las Vegas because I- like many SAP BusinessObjects customers- cannot justify the expense of two back-to-back conferences.
Really jazzed to have the amazing Nate Silver guest keynote #SAPTechEd LV! http://t.co/aFZ8Q2ZSHk
— Chip Rodgers (@chiprodgers) September 11, 2013
ASUG keeps a tight lid on conference attendance statistics, but the guestimates floating around the #SBOUC2013 conference were between 1,000 and 1,200 attendees. Is conference attendance a leading indicator or a lagging indicator of a software vendor’s fortunes? Any way you look at it, the current momentum is clearly in Tableau’s favor.
Many at #SBOUC2013 referred to this year’s conference as a family reunion. And it truly is a tight-knit family of analytics professionals. But while the number of new faces at this year’s speaker reception was impressive, the family clearly isn’t taking any cues from the reality TV Dugger family.
With the recent release of the BI 4.1 platform, in-memory technology platforms like Sybase IQ and HANA, the forthcoming SAP Lumira 1.12 (Mac edition, anyone?), and an energized and reorganized leadership team under Steve Lucas, the situation at SAP isn’t all gloom and doom. To be clear, there are a lot of initiatives under way that won’t be visible to the public until next year. But any decision making about future conferences should be sober and fact-based. Conference attendance figures clearly qualify as facts. As a new member of the ASUG BusinessObjects Advisory Council, I hope I’ll have the opportunity to work with both ASUG and SAP in 2014 to reach what is still the largest community of business intelligence users.
What are your thoughts on this year’s ASUG SBOUC conference and its attendance numbers?
Typical leapfrog game going on … just surprising because it’s from a new player
Chris, I’m not sure I remember a BOBJ conference attracting between 3,000 and 4,000 participants, but my earliest attendance was only 2005. Thoughts?
I think we may be comparing apples to oranges. I always think of the old Insight conference as BOBJ’s version of SAP’s Sapphire Now. And if your compare Sapphire to TCC, the numbers flip. But if you combine the ‘analytics’ of Sapphire/ASUG Annual Conference and SAP TechEd with SBOUC, I think that gives a much better picture of the current state of the BOBJ community.
I agree with you 100%, we’ve got some work ahead of us in the next few months!!
I agree with Golaselle. Technically speaking the the event in Anaheim was hosted by ASUG not SAP. If you are an SAP customer you are more likely to go to Sapphire. But very interesting how Tableau changed dates!