After a long walk through Excel I arrived at the entrance to Oracle Open World. I had forgotten how big Excel is.
My first session was Tracey Edwards talking about her life and Maiden, the first all-female crewed yacht to compete in the Whitbread round the world yacht race. I was interested to learn the key role King Hussein I of Jordan played in funding the voyage. Tracey Edwards is obviously very competitive as she was disappointed at coming second in their division despite Maiden probably being older, heavier and less well fund than the competition.
I was amazed to find there was free tea and coffee all day and free sandwiches for lunch. Though they had almost all gone by 13:00.
Next I went to see a talk about the implementation of FCCS at Direct Line Group which was a bit sad as I built the HFM system it replaced. I was not surpised to see they were using Oracle Enterprise Data Management. Recently I have seen Master Data Management used very successfully. In the past I think it tended to be purchased and not implemented. If you do not have Master Data Management for all your financial systems it is probably a much better investment than trendy stuff like Robotic Process Automation and Machine Learning. After this session it was good to meet some of the Hyperion Professionals WhatsApp group in real life.
There was not much visual interest at OOW except for this Lego demonstration of machine learning. The camera on the tower could identify empty parking spaces, potholes and Minifig workers without safety hats! Tip to exhibitors give us something to look at and touch.
There was a keynote on the Oracle and Microsoft strategic partnership. The key buzzword was workloads.
Dara Ó Briain noted how far OOW was from the entrance to Excel and entertain us with a virtual reality story.
I was further amazed by the free drinks in the evening though they probably disappeared as fast as the sandwiches. All together a useful free day out. Though I might have been disappointed if I had paid hundreds and flown to San Francisco.