Category: Events

  • Finance Forum – EMEA v1.0

    Just a quick hello from the road. It’s one of those very exciting yet extremely busy weeks. The IBM Finance Forum events finally kicked off in Europe. The first event was held on Wednesday in the beautiful town of Wiesbaden in Germany.

    Which door would you take?

    Wiesbaden is known for three things: It is the capital of Hessen, there are some natural springs that have healing effects and there is one of the few well known casinos in Germany. It is the beautiful casino building in the heart of Wiesbaden where the first Finance Forum for the season kicked off. We had a great crowd of well over 250 finance & IT professionals. I had the honor to deliver the IBM keynote. Delivering the keynote at these events is always exciting. But it is especially exciting this year: there are so many great and game-changing things to show.

    Apart from many interesting customer & IBM speakers, we also have a few really interesting external keynote speakers. In the US, David Axson will be delighting the audiences. He is a true performance management visionary and inspirational speaker. Make sure to check out his latest book called ‘The Management Myth Buster’. In Europe, Steve Morlidge (author of the book ‘Future Ready’) will be sharing interesting insights about how to improve your forecasting processes. And there are some other speakers as well. Stay tuned for updates. Check out this link to find out about all the dates.

    Below are some impressions from the day. I really hope to see many of you at our upcoming events. My personal schedule is update on this website.

    Soundcheck at 7:30am
    How cool is that? Multi-touch planning powered by TM1.
    The Kurhaus in Wiesbaden…how nice is that?
  • Two days @ the Gartner BI Summit

    London Heathrow, Terminal 5. 6pm GMT. I am tired. Really tired. Museum visits, shopping trips and conference whirlwinds belong to a category of highly rewarding and fun activities, yet they also belong to the category of activities that can only be classified as “Holy smokes, why am I so exhausted?” type of things.

    THE GARTNER BI SUMMIT

    Gartner does a fine job of producing highly relevant and engaging events. The 2011 EMEA Summit was no different. Over 700 people attended the well organized event at the Westminster Plaza hotel in London.

    OPENING DAY

    The opening day offered some great presentations. I liked the Gartner keynote which highlighted some of the key themes that are happening in the market. A few interesting things that came up include:

    • 62% of all EMEA organizations have a BI strategy. That is a positive change from the prior years.
    • BUT…only 1/3 of all organizations have a real BICC. But Gartner highlighted that a BICC is somewhat of a ‘secret sauce’ for success in BI.
    • Organizations are very interested in Predictive Analytics, In-Memory, Master Data Management & Dashboarding
    • Success means going for BIG BI: not just platform but rather a complete view of people, process & technology.

    PANEL DISCUSSION

    Nigel Rayner hosted a great and fun panel session with participants from the main BI vendors. Peter Griffiths represented our IBM Cognos team. Nigel did a great job with the panel and he got the audience actively involved by voting on certain topics. A few interesting points:

    • iPads everywhere

      A big majority of the participants believe mobile BI will play a huge role in the future. Not a big surprise.

      Collaboration & social media will change the game for BI

      Many people believe that a large portion of BI spending will go SIs instead of software vendors.

    • 90% of the audience members believed that predictive analytics will become accessible to a broader user spectrum
    • Many delegates are unsure whether BI hardware & software should be bundled

    OUR KEYNOTE & WORKSHOPS

    On the second day of the conference, Leah Macmillian and I delivered the IBM keynote. It was great to see so many people in the room. We spent almost 50% of our allocated time on showing Cognos 10. Many people in the audience seemed surprised as we were the only vendor to show product. A bit of a surprise to me. Why would you spend so much time talking about future direction instead of showing what you can do now? Everybody has great ideas but at the end of the day we need to deliver value now. Right? No surprise: We did get a ton of questions following our presentation.

    CONCLUSION

    Kudos to Gartner. It was a great event. Excellent content and excellent participants. I really enjoyed the networking with so many great people. It was cool to see that our IBM portfolio pretty much covers all the main trends that were discussed at the Summit: Mobile, Collaboration, In-Memory, Predictive Analytics etc.. Cognos 10 is a great platform. Gartner’s assessment of IBM’s position in the market clearly highlighted this.

  • Behind the scenes – Middle East Cognos 10 launch

    Snow. Massive amounts of snow. And it’s really cold. Hmm…Do I really want to leave here? Greetings from Dubai airport. My colleague and I are stuck here right now. Most flights to Europe are delayed due to winter weather. Oh well….the joys of traveling. But this trip was really worth it. We just finished a three-country tour through the Middle East for the Cognos 10 launch. Three days, three cities. Three amazing launch events in Dubai, Qatar and Kuwait. Some of the customers I talked to were wondering what it was like to execute such an event series. Well, here is a little peak behind the scenes.

    The amount of work that goes into these large customer events is crazy. Our great marketing teams spend a lot of time arranging locations, speakers, food, drinks and inviting customers etc.. Luckily, I hardly ever get involved in these activities. But let me say that much: I admire my colleagues for consistently doing an amazing job. It really makes a difference. I get to focus on the content and the presentation delivery.

    For this particular event series, we had to leave Munich on Saturday evening to get to Dubai in time. The first event started on Monday. Getting up in a new time-zone always hurts on the first day. And so day after day we rush out to the event location early in the morning to setup the room, prepare the laptop, make sure that all the demos are working, check the microphones, upload additional presentations from other speakers etc.. I am always amazed at how much can go wrong with these type of events: The demo that worked in the morning suddenly stops working. The laptop shuts down without notice. The beamer does not receive a signal. Murphy’s Law?

    The event in Dubai was a success but I am tired after delivering three presentations. Right after lunch, our team of close to ten people rushed to break down all the banners, pack up brochures, badges, lists etc.. Then off to the airport with a ton of extra luggage in hand. A few hours later, we sit down in Qatar for a quick debrief and discussion of the next event. There is always some tweaking that needs or should happen. Every country is different. Cultures are different. Audiences are different. There is no one-size fits all. Each and every presentation needs to be customized.

    The next morning looks similar. Setup at the hotel around 8am, preparations and then another round of three presentations with a few breaks between. Before heading off to the airport with all our extra luggage, a journalist from the Qatar Tribune comes over for a quick interview about the launch. We finally arrive at our hotel in Kuwait around 9pm. Quick shower than out for a quick team dinner at a local place. Back at the hotel I can’t remember my room number and head back down to the reception. Long day.

    The 7am wake up call feels like a scene from the movie Groundhog Day. Shower, pack, quick breakfast, taxi to event location, setup the laptop, discussions with the local team and a quick cup of java. As much as most of this is really busy routine work, I always get excited when the event finally starts. Presenting our products and talking to customers is a privilege and it is a lot of fun. Luckily, the Kuwait event was very special again. The audiences in all three countries were great. Unfortunately, I had to leave for Dubai right after the final presentation. On the way to the airport, my colleague noticed that the cab driver was falling asleep. So we engaged him in a discussion even though he did not speak a word of English. The surprises never end. Check-in at the Air Kuwait counter and then a quick snooze on the plane.

    Waiting for the flight

    8pm…I am checking into my hotel room in Dubai. 8:01pm….I am checking out my mind but I am very grateful for four special days with amazing colleagues & customers. But everything seems like a blur now. Too many impressions to process at this point. But it feels good.

    Some final statistics:
    Days: 4.5
    Total travel time: 32h
    Presentations: 8
    Tired: Yes!

  • Postcard from Moscow

    Greetings from Moscow! We just finished an incredible IBM Cognos Performance event. Over 450 customers spent the day to discuss the latest news in Business Analytics. It was a busy day for me up on stage: keynote presentation, two technical sessions and a press conference.
    The Cognos fans in Moscow

    Before I start repacking my bags for the next trip on Sunday, I wanted to share one interesting fact with you. The biggest discussion topic on Moscow was Collaboration. Facebook and Twitter have changed the way we communicate. Email did that about 20 years ago. People are now demanding the ability to collaborate and communicate in business just like we do in our personal lives. More about that in a few weeks. Off to Tel Aviv, Vienna and Madrid this week. Hope to see you there!