Microstrategy Blog

No…I’m not there.

I am, however, getting late night text messages about how awesome the bars are. Thanks guys.

MicroStrategy World

I’ll set aside my usual charming (and humorous) self in this post and get to the nitty-gritty of what I got out of MicroStrategy World 2009.

The event took place this year at the Wynn Resort/Casino/Behemoth over 3 or 4 days (depending on your role). The event centered around the release of MicroStrategy 9, otherwise knows as “Orion”. As an attendee, you have the option of attending a number of classes that were along different “tracks”, about 2/3 of which were showcasing/demoing/explaining the various new features and upgrades of 9, and the other 1/3 being industry or company led specialty presentations. Think along the lines of “this is how our processes work” or “this is what we learned as a company”.

I ended up focusing about 50/50 new/industry. The MicroStrategy 9 classes varied from Dashboards, to OLAP Services, to Advances Visualizations…and the presentation were entertainment centric, with the highlights being Disney Interactive and Paramount.

For the company presentations, the emphasis was (as always) on the struggles surrounding “One Version of the Truth”. My personal emphasis was on the fine art of dashboarding. Stephen Few was quoted more than once, and most live by the “less is more” philosophy, with most of the discussion being about the quality of data in the dashboard, not necessarily the flair of the design. Pie charts were especially ridiculed, as there’s little they can do, that a line graph can’t do better (see “Save the Pies For Dinner“). Whiter space, minimization of data-ink ratio, and an easily digestible color palate were all covered in the Disney Interactive Media Presentation by Michael Sandberg, which I walked away from with the most useful knowledge (as it was the least sales oriented class….not that sales was driving every class, but this guy really did seem to want to help you), and some of the various executive pitfalls to avoid, such as using MicroStrategy as an ETL tool for Microsoft Office Applications or infinite dashboard drilling.

Presentations from companies such as Target seemed to touch on some of the finer points of MicroStrategy as a tool, but most of the time, it was a generic gloss over, and a “check out who uses our tools” sales presentation for current and future products.

In general though, the whole conference left me feeling optimistic about where the BI industry is headed. Those people who deal in systems like I can see the true power of dynamic systems, and the capability of such systems for real, tangible, timely decision making…now if only we can convert everyone else.

See also Ajo’s post for some great insights.

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So Wednesday is over with. 3 hours of sleep the night before (it’s Vegas people) with 3 alarms (count ‘em…computer alarm, phone alarm, dresser alarm) strategically arranged around me, and a wakeup call as the chaser. No it wasn’t heavy drinking…it’s just all the shiny lights here distract me, and next thing I know 4 hours has passed, and I’ve been working away at the same $40 on Double Bonus Jacks or Better Video Poker. Long story short, I will miss that $40.

My big takeaway is that MicroStrategy 9 is a HUGE leap forward in the world of BI. There’s the little things that get me giddy (drillable dashboards, automatic everything, great new web functionality), and then the technical “stuff” that I won’t even pretend like I understand. I’m essentially sitting there, nodding along grunting “more better” and phasing in and out of consciousness when the heavy ROLAP presentation begins. I exaggerate a bit of course, but not by much.

I’ve been posting regularly on the Twitter feed (VIEW IT!), but most of my time has been spent sitting here with my jeans and chucks (those are Converse Chuck Taylor shoes for those of you not in the know) surrounded by people in suits with titles for job functions I didn’t even know existed, filling my head with dreams of future greatness, and an equally long functional title. I’m certainly not going to be able to respond to the question, “What do you do?” with simply “MicroStrategy” as I would at my usual haunts…these people are not easily impressed, and while you I can launch into pseudo tech speak when I hear a “What’s that” from the old college crew, that’s simply something you can’t get away with here. I mutter a muffled, “ETL, dashboards” from behind a quickly utilized coffee mug…and then promptly ask how their luck is going at the tables.

While I can get away with being a “Jack of all Trades” at my current job with regards to MicroStrategy, we’re dealing with segmented pros here; experts in their respective fields (at least from what I can gather, if they aren’t they’re doing a wonderful job of tech speaking themselves out of my realm of understanding) . My only complaint is that I can’t attend everything at the same time. Half of me wants to find better ways of doing things, the other half wants to dig into the administrative side, and still, my third half wants to hear from people who did things wrong…simply so I can avoid making such mistakes in the future. I, as a human being, retain the right to learn from other peoples’ mistakes…although I mostly refuse to and jump headlong and with relish into learning them for myself.

As an aside, how can sterling-silver-giant-chain-around-the-neck-too-much-visible-chest-hair-guy get into the club at the Wynn, but “Tennis Shoes” wearing little ‘ol me can’t? I see your game bouncer, call it what it is…a testicle tax. You saw the wedding ring and realized I would only be buying myself (or having various MicroStrategy representatives buying me) drinks. Well sir, I’m not playing that game; my tennis shoes are going elsewhere. I thought sexism was dead! Obviously, we still have a long way to go, and not until ladies night is outlawed in the name of equality will I be satisfied.

The SQL side of things has undergone some serious tweaking. Suffice to say, long reports will no longer be quite so long. Now this doesn’t mean you get to be sloppy with your ETL and “let it ride” with the hopes the respective engines will work it out, but it does mean that those managers (you know who you are) who don’t like the 2 minute report pulls, will now have to be content not liking the 45 second report pulls. The utilization of virtual memory to help achieve things like this is one of the more creative solutions to processing, as the 64 bit revolution (no thanks to Vista, who didn’t have my drivers for 4 months!) seems to be taking hold in a massive scale now.

Tonight I think I’ll have a drink, and watch Quarantine on pay per view.

…or there’s always PURE…

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It’s the week of…MicroStrategy 9 seems to be the theme.

Anyone going to be there?

2009, MicroStrategy World

I’m going to be live Twittering MicroStrategy World 2009.

You can become my Twitter friend here, or…for all those other bloggers out there who might be interested…(updated) MicroStrategy has proposed “#mstrworld” for Twitter search. If anyone wants to get involved…just send me a tweet, or email microstrategyblog -.at.- gmail.com.

2009, MicroStrategy World, Twitter