Mastering SAP BusinessObjects 2012 in Pictures. Kind of.

[Former Member]

If you've been following me at all, you know that I've just finished attending the Mastering SAP BusinessObjects 2012 event in Melbourne. I gave you a preview of what I was going to do, I thought I owed you all a recap of what actually happened. And I'm gonna try to do it in pictures. And all of those pictures are going to include the bird I won for winning a twitter contest with the following tweet.

Making New Friends

The Eventful Group does a great job bringing people from around the world together to provide a very diverse skillset to the problems that attendees face. Here chris.paine (a current Melbournian of English origin) and Ryan Goodman (of San Diego, which is nothing like Melbourne or England as far as I can tell) are discussing... something.

Networking

You'd think a Twitter bird would be up-to-speed on all types of Social Media, but this was first experiencing podcasting (here with Eric Vallo and Josh Fletcher). He was late to the party for Day 1, and remained pretty quiet throughout the Day 2 recap.

Popularity

Found this sign in a little bakery in Sydney, and it really goes to show that what is new and popular may not always be the best thing for you. Whether it's Justin Bieber or Tableau, going with what is new and hot may not end up satisfying you nearly as much as having an integrated stack of BI solutions.

New Skills

The core of any conference is learning new skills. Lots of people came away from the event with new ways to succeed with their SAP BusinessObjects deployments by learning how to successfully add Explorer, Analysis, or Dashboarding skills to their repetoire. Here Ollie taught me to drive on the wrong side of the road from the wrong side of the car.

Size Doesn't Always Matter

It's a person's natural inclination to benchmark their success by looking to other organizations of similar size and business model, but let's not forget that some of the most interesting innovation comes when we look outside of our comfort zone. Ollie found some interesting tidbits (and some protection) from looking outside of his weight-class. What could your company learn from looking at the success of a much smaller (or larger) firm operating in a completely different industry?

Always Save Room for Dessert

Ollie knows that at the end of the day we're all here to enjoy ourselves. Conferences like Mastering BOBJ are great at letting you find success in the things that will help you with your job -- increasing skills, networking with other professionals, getting new ideas -- but hopefully you want to be successful at your job because you love the work.