Microsoft BI Conference - Day 3 - 8th October 2008
The last day of the conference came round quickly and due to my relatively early flight I only attended a couple of sessions and spent most of the day meeting more people in and around the BI community. Shout out to Peter Eberhardy (PeterEb), a real highlight. Barry Tousley, Test Dev on the PPS Server; thanks for listening to my grumbles about the PPS Data Migration Tool and explaining why it does what it does. Norm Warren of NormBI fame. Patrick Husting, who I actually met on Day 2 and Brian Berry of BlumShapiro, who I met on Day 1 and reportedly follows this blog !
I thought the conference was great. The organisation was slick and right on the button, from registration, meals, session offerings right up to the party. I think last year, the main criticism was the sessions were not technical enough, they appear to have raised the technical level of some of the sessions but I still found most of them to be a bit dated and apart from a couple of choice sessions most BI people wouldn't have learnt a great deal - Nothing official at all about PPS v2 :o( Also, a couple of the sessions I wanted to attend clashed so I'll have to find the time to watch them on the reported DVD containing a video of every session. However, I did the feel the standard of presentation was excellent, well practiced, clear, funny and engaging.
I'll definitely be vying for a place at next years, where they really should have lots to show off!