I can only afford 1 conference per year. We use Business Objects BI Platform, Webi, Crystal, Dashboard Design, and Data Services (no other SAP applications). We have historically gone to the BOBJ dedicated conferences (BO Insight, GBN, SBOUC, SABOC), but have seen a significant decrease in the scope of these in recent years.
So the main question is “Should we begin looking to Sapphire instead of SABOC in 2015?” Are there more or same number of BOBJ specific breakout sessions?
I have wondered about this for the past few years as well. the BO only version seems to shrink in attendance and vendor participation every year. if the content can be close enough I would think the switch may be considered but I don’t have any real information… hopefully someone answers.
I would really like your input on this. I am basically a one-person Webi Shop for a college in NY. I manage the ETL process, build and document the universes and build most of the standard reports. I work with IT on the upgrades to the system, so I don’t run the servers themselves, but I do manage the CMC.
I am looking for a conference where I might find some great sessions about maximizing my WebI experience and broadening out into some Dashboarding or Lumira, but if I can get the most out of Webi that would be best.
I don’t see any new dates for #SABOUC on Twitter yet, but I found the site and I will look at some sessions and videos from this past fall. I see Sapphire is this may in Orlando and I was wondering if that will be too big for me or just right?
I strongly recommend looking at the agenda for each conference before committing to one.
Historically, SAPPHIRE/ASUG Annual Conference often isn’t very technical and will have a BI track, but there will be a lot of sessions that won’t apply to you because they’ll focus on SAP’s legacy BI technologies. SAP TechEd (in October) is more technical but again won’t have a track dedicated to the BusinessObjects toolset and it doesn’t usually have too many customer case studies. SABOC is probably the best conference for you (it will offer you multiple relevant sessions each hour ranging from technical to case study across the portfolio), but has had some varying experiences over the last couple years in terms of size, location, actually being scheduled, etc. There are also IBIS, and SAP Insider will probably host a couple of BI 2015 or Reporting 2015 conferences which usually offer really good content if the nightlife is a bit “slow”.
Thanks for the feedback Jamie, just finding the names of all these groups and figuring out which might apply to me is a daunting task. You have given me some avenues to follow.
So many of the sessions and workshops I see online are thinly veiled sales presentations, not real user groups or pay-it-forward kinds of workshops that I am used to seeing in other parts of IT, especially working at the school level.
Nightlife is not a big issue for me, so that would be less of a consideration, although May in Orlando does sound heavenly.
(BOB member since 2006-10-10)