On behalf of the Segue Technologies Business Intelligence unit, I attended Kaleidoscope 2009, a conference organized by the Oracle Development Users Group (ODTUG, www.odtug.com), of which I happen to be a member. It was held during the third week of June at Monterey Bay California. This was the second consecutive ODTUG conference I’ve attended in addition to Kaleidoscope 2008, held in New-Orleans. Last year, a whole conference track dedicated to the Oracle Hyperion suite of products (with Essbase at the center focus of the track) was introduced, which saw a pretty good response. Also, the amount of knowledge transfer from industry experts last year was so valuable for real-world implementations, that this year’s overall conference attendees grew in number (much to my surprise given the current state of the economy). This is a true testimony of the word having spread far and wide that Kaleidoscope is a conference unmatched in its class by any other related technical conference in the Oracle Business Intelligence domain.

Kaleidoscope prides itself on maintaining a spotlight on developers, and that’s exactly what it achieved for a second year in a row. Attendees represented all walks of life and flew in from several different countries (UK, Germany, Belgium, and The Netherlands) either to present and speak about recommendations, or to just listen and learn. Company profiles varied from individual consultants, to mid-sized business intelligence vendor/consulting firms, to those as large as Wal-Mart, Google, and NATO even!

Kaleidoscope 2009 was held on the premises of the Hyatt Regency – Monterey Bay resort and most of us stayed on location in their luxurious and sprawling estate. There are many reasons why this might qualify as a great conference. Beyond the scrumptious food and drinks (it was manna indeed); the conference material, the delivery medium, the hands on classes and other aspects were all excellent. However, one of the most important factors for me personally was to know that all of the who’s-who in our respective industries attended, and for a week’s time allowed themselves to be riddled with questions, answering them all without the slightest twitch. Where else would you find midnight madness sessions where all the Oracle Ace Directors and other eminent personalities in the Oracle industry sit down after dinner and have a Q&A session extending past midnight!?! Being able to pick apart the brains of these mentors has only allowed me to bring back that much more value and insight into our own implementations at Segue – no other conference in this domain can claim this and then follow through at the same time!

Kaleidoscope 2009 boasted a hundred and fifty technical sessions + (yes, 150) and hands-on classes, spread over four different technologies viz. Oracle APEX, SOA, WEB and Oracle Hyperion. The first three tracks were under the Oracle Development Tools and Architecture category and the last one (the one I attended) was completely focused on Oracle Essbase, Hyperion Planning, and Financial Management, which also referenced a bit of Oracle OBIEE and BI technologies.

One thing that really sets Kaleidoscope apart from  other conferences, is that they dedicate the day prior to kickoff to *drum roll* community service! Yes, ODTUGGERS believe in giving back to the community. Last year at New Orleans, volunteers helped rebuild a school that was torn apart by Katrina, so that the community would get its school back. Work included everything from painting to actually building part of the school again. This year, the pure volunteer effort was given to a nature conservation effort. ODTUG volunteers joined forces with the Big Sur staff, and headed off into the Martin sand dunes by Monterey Bay to help clean up the weed and shrub infestation. Martin Dunes is California’s largest and most intact dune eco-system. The plants and animals living at Martin Dunes were being threatened by invasive plants that polluted the natural habitat.

The first day of the conference was more of a symposium with different eminent speakers talking about the future roadmap of the Oracle technologies that we use. This gave the Kaleidoscope attendees quite the insight into what we might expect in the near and long-term future. This provides an added advantage of knowing what to expect, allowing us to better equip our respective organizations to be ready when the changes come through, and be able to ride the wave out, maximizing our productivity and efficiency while remaining on the bleeding edge of the technology in our fields.

The rest of the conference was comprised of detailed presentations and hands-on classes exposing even some of the advanced folks in attendance to a new way of approaching things, such as better workarounds and small utilities built into the products and tools that we use that are often overlooked, but prove to be very powerful if used correctly.

If I let this blog go into the technical details of everything I learned at Kaleidoscope 2009 it would run forever. Therefore, I’ve focused on a high-level overview of what to expect from this conference, which is quite different – from the audience to the tone it sets right away from the word get go! All in all, Kaleidoscope is one extremely valuable conference that has helped me bring back a lot to Segue and the way we approach our work, and hopefully induce the right changes into our implementation methodologies, which in turn will result in better customer satisfaction. I highly recommend this conference for any reader who might see the content as relevant to their work, especially if their company budget allows them to attend only one over the coming year.

Go ODTUG! Go Kaleidoscope!