Welcome to the first day of summer! Although, if you were at Kscope this year you would’ve already felt it with the highs in the 90s down here in Dallas-Ft. worth. It was a sizzling event and a nice do over from the last one in Grapevine back in 2022.

Monday

I was disappointed to miss the Sunday Symposiums and events (and Henry Robin’s surprise cameo appearance), but some things can’t be helped. Grapevine is only across town from me, but “town” is quite large here in Texas. Bright and early Monday morning, I started my trek to Kscope25. I was too excited so I arrived earlier than expected, which meant I was able to get in a full day of sessions.

There were some subtle changes at this year’s Kscope, which I’ll sprinkle throughout this post. For instance, it felt like there were more sessions overall. When I compared this year’s schedule to last year’s, I noticed that might actually be true. There were more 30-minute session slots this year (double?). Personally, I’m a fan of shorter sessions. It forces presenters to be more concise and efficient.

In addition, the community breakfast was completely rehauled. Instead of having a buffet breakfast in the exhibitor hall, Kscope handed out vouchers that could be used at the various Gaylord eateries. Four-$25 vouchers were given with each full registration and they could be used Sunday-Wednesday. I personally loved this idea. I know it probably helped Kscope’s budget, but it’s also perfect for people like me who are always on the go and just want to grab a coffee and breakfast bar and get to sessions. However, I don’t think the vendors appreciated the change. Less reasons to go to the exhibitor hall means less overall foot traffic to their booths. And a couple of customers missed the community spirit that came with the previous format.

I attended a handful of sessions, including one where I learned how Caesar’s Entertainment is using Reports with Pipelines to automate bursting by users. Fascinating stuff!

I also attended the one session I really wanted to see all week, Oracle’s “What’s New with Narrative Reporting?”. Dave Roberts, the Oracle product manager for Reports, presented the reporting sessions this year. He’s always thorough with content and patient with questions. It was good to see him after a multi-year hiatus from Kscope.

After a couple of sessions, I attended the WIT luncheon and was proud to be a table moderator again. The WIT luncheon had a substantially large space this year, being held in one of the ballrooms. It was quite a different format and our table’s guests used the time effectively to share their stories.

Kellyn Gorman made a surprise appearance! It was good to catch up with her and see what she and her husband Tim have been up to. I think it’s been years since she’s attended a Kscope.

The general session was moved to the afternoon this year, to after lunch. I appreciated that. I enjoy hearing the updates from the board and conference committee.

ICYMI, Sara Beth Good will be the new Kscope Executive Officer, replacing Monty. And Kscope26 will be back at the Gaylord Rockies, in Denver, CO.

Joe Aultman and Peter Koutroubis earned their Oracle ACE Associate designations. Jayson Hanes won the ODTUG Joel Kallman Oracle Contributor of the Year award. Karen Cannell won the ODTUG Volunteer of the Year award. Way to go, everyone!

One of the biggest updates, however, was the announcement of a new community at ODTUG. This created a positive stir that continued through the rest of the week. OCI is joining EPM, APEX, Database, and Analytics as a 5th community. Basheer Khan is leading the charge to help develop it and they already had a number of volunteers sign up to assist, including some of my friends. Exciting stuff!

The keynote was an illusionist, which was quite entertaining, although a bit long. I’m happy to see the keynote event focused on entertainment again.

After attending more sessions, I went out to dinner with one of my besties offsite at one of our favorite restaurants, Malai Kitchen. Then I returned to the hotel and got ready for the after hours events.

I attended a couple of the Monday night events, Trivia and Silent Disco. Trivia was a pure accident. I was catching up with my friends on the Dodeca team at a table in the back when someone sat down next to me. We became a team of two. Then Tim Tow and his girlfriend Anna joined us. If it weren’t for them, we would’ve never come in second place. Ha!

The Monday night events seemed a bit subdued this year, not sure why. I heard the APEX open mic night was awesome as usual, but Trivia was small this year. And Silent Disco didn’t really get started until about 10pm.

I had a lot of fun. It was a very long day.

Tuesday

With yet another night of no sleep (here we go again), I got up super early and prepared for my personal day of sessions.

One other change this year was the addition of keynote sessions by community. The EPM keynote was Tuesday morning and it ended up being a customer panel led by Tracy McMullen, with Tim German assisting with the live polling. It was quite insightful. The panel questions were good and the customers didn’t hold back on their thoughts about project challenges.

After, I attended other technical sessions and caught up with more of my Kscope friends.

I had 2 sessions to present at this year’s conference. Luckily, mine were well spaced out, with one before lunch and one at the end of the day.

My first session, a 30-minute presentation on the top lessons learned from Narrative Reporting projects, was very well attended and ended up being standing room only. I was quite surprised at the response I received. It’s always rewarding to be passionate and controversial about reporting topics and still get customers fired up. 😂

I also went to my first lunch at Kscope. For anyone with dietary restrictions/preferences, we were told to request our special plates from a server. I enjoyed the vegan dishes! They tasted great and there were other side options on the buffet if you wanted to add more to your meal. On one of the days, the server even placed a little vegan dessert on my plate.

On Tuesday afternoon, I also finally walked around the exhibitor hallway. I have to say, some folks really went all out this year. Look at what Donyati and Applied OLAP brought! I loved the “fashion” concept behind Donyati’s booth. That’s what you get when Danielle and John are running your conference marketing. And Google Cloud made an appearance?

Kscope also had fun little things like a fortune teller and carnival games to raise money for the community event partner. I really liked the move to having carnival games to raise money this year. I just wish I could have participated more. There was an authentic dunking booth and members of the board were the victims.

My second session was in the last slot of the day. I found out earlier in the week that the topic I presented on was represented 3 times this year in the 4pm time slot, Mon-Wed! The session premise was how to choose between all the various Oracle EPM/ERP reporting tools. Mike Killeen did the Monday session. I did the Tuesday session. Kelliann Hoelscher did the Wednesday session. We might have been able to coordinate if we had known in advance. Customers had the opportunity to get 3 different perspectives on choosing the proper reporting tools! Win!

After a long day, I had dinner with two of my friends onsite at the Gaylord. Then I went back to my room, attempting to turn in early to get some sleep.

Wednesday

Yep, no sleep again. Oh well.

I spent most of Wednesday attending sessions, overthinking my EPM Lightning chat presentation, and catching up with all of my conference friends. It’s always a thrill knowing the Special Event is looming.

Pop culture blessed a block of sessions on Wednesday. There were 4 presentations in the same time slot that had a Star Wars theme. Jake Turrell went all out and he and his customer co-presenter decided to give out fancy light sabers as prizes for their session, which of course we had to play with right before.

After the last session of the day, we returned to our rooms to prep for the Special Event. This year, the theme was something like “under the Texas stars” and it took place at a food hall a few miles away. There were food stations from various vendors, gambling (which I never got around to seeing), a whiskey tasting, a live band karaoke room, cigar smoking, dancing outside on the patio, and a drone show. I was really happy with the vegan options – that hummus was divine!

Monty, why you hatin’ on us dancers? 😂 Last year’s dancing situation on the boat had to be rectified after Natalie and I made a fuss. And of course, Natalie and I had to drag poor Jackie on stage this year to announce the DJ to make sure everyone knew where to cut a rug. Hahahahhaa.

At this year’s event, it was 90 degrees out and we were all sweating as we boogied to the DJ on the outside patio. However, with the fountain there, we made it work. Eventually, we just started dancing in the fountain. 😂 No one was going to stop us! A huge crowd gathered after karaoke finished to join us or watch us.

The after party seemed to be an afterthought. However, being in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area, I understand. It’s not really an “after party” kind of town. There were 2 after parties, one across the street at a bar, and one in Jackie’s suite, although both seemed to be last-minute decisions. I chose not to attend either and, instead, hung out at one of the bars at the Gaylord to decompress with a bunch of friends. We spent close to an hour arguing which TV show was the best. The final tally ended with Ted Lasso, Seinfeld, NCIS, The Office, and Sex & The City getting top honors.

Although I didn’t attend any formal after party, I stayed up until nearly 2 am. No sleep again!

Thursday

I finally stopped overthinking my EPM Lightning chat presentation and decided to present on my favorite topic, my dog. Safe bet. 😂

I had 3 different presentations ready (although my husband vetoed one, claiming it would be too “offensive” #killjoy). So I finalized the narrative of the one focused on my dog, entitled “Top Life Lessons I Learned from My Dog”, then packed up and left for the final day of the conference.

We had 5 fun chats that covered tame Australian wildlife, avocados, F1 racer George Russell, and project management tips. It was fun and I loved that we had over 100 people show up. Thanks to all of you who stopped me afterward to show me pictures of your dogs and tell me your dog stories.

Then we had a quick EPM town hall with some of the ODTUG board members. People were very honest in their feedback and I hope the board considers some of the points and makes some changes, especially with the Kscope web app and membership benefits.

Next, it was onto the closing ceremony where a bajillion awards were presented. The closing ceremony used to exist at Kscope but was phased out. It was brought back this year and, honestly, it was a blast. There were a ton of awards given out, including fun ones like “Social Media Butterfly” and “Night Owl.”

One of the most meaningful awards was the ODTUG Lifetime Achievement Award. This is a rare award that is not presented every year. It was presented to Edward Roske, who is long overdue for it. Mike Riley championed it, which made it even more of an honor.

I didn’t realize until this year that he’d never gotten this award before. Given that Edward announced this was his final Kscope, I’m glad that he’s ending his ODTUG Kscope days on a high note.

In case you aren’t aware of the history of ODTUG, the only reason why EPM is even a community at Kscope is because of Edward and Tim Tow. They lobbied for it nearly 20 years ago and now it’s one of the strongest communities at ODTUG.

I know people fall into 1 of 2 camps: either you love or hate Edward. As a past employee of his, I get it. He can be controversial at times. He’s well deserving of this award, however. And I personally want to thank him for finding the very best home for EPM.

The ODTUG Kscope conference is THE BEST conference for EPM practitioners. You absolutely cannot get this kind of content anywhere else. I hear at every single Kscope from both customers and partners how much they learn at Kscope.

Bravo, Edward! I’m glad you’ve finally been recognized.

A ton of people won awards this year. There were the usual top speaker awards. I won’t go into all of them here and have linked them below. There were so many awards that it all kind of went by quickly and I missed taking the pictures.

https://www.odtug.com/awards

After the closing ceremony, I said my final goodbyes and then discreetly left to go back home.

I will sleep a million hours tonight.

Summary Thoughts

Overall, this was a much better Kscope than the one that preceded it in Texas. Of course, it’s not fair to compare since the first Grapevine Kscope was the one that immediately followed the global pandemic. Those were different times with very different dollars.

Many people have been saying “Kscope is back.” I’ve felt this for a couple of years now, but I also know that not everyone can attend every Kscope. Kscope IS back. The content felt strong this year. It was dominated by the EPM and APEX communities, and there were so many sessions on AI. The spectrum of EPM customers is much broader now since technology keeps advancing at a rapid pace, and there were sessions to accommodate all of the different types of customers…those still on-prem who are now finally moving to Cloud, to those who are already using AI. I also saw a spike in Essbase content. Overall, it seemed decently balanced. Tim German, great job!

There were also a number of subtle changes at Kscope this year. To stay relevant in these times, you have to be able to try new things. Monty and several people on the Board don’t shy away from change. We need those people. To be perfectly honest, I don’t have complaints about any of the changes except the lack of priority for the dance crowd at the Special Event. Sara Beth, hint hint! I know Sara Beth will do her best as she formally steps into her KEO (Kscope Executive Officer) role for Kscope26 and Kscope27. Monty, great job overall for the past 2 years and I hope you can finally relax!

Sweet Partings

Ooof, we’re now at the end of this blog post and the part that I’ve been dreading writing. Most of my closest friends at Kscope already know this news since I was very open about it onsite at the conference.

Kscope25 is my final Kscope.

Some of you may be wondering what’s in the water since Edward also announced this was his final Kscope. It’s not a conspiracy and we didn’t group plan it. The truth is, it’s not even just us 2. I know others in EPM who also decided this. We don’t have anything against ODTUG or Kscope. As of this month, I’ve been in the EPM world for 25 years. That’s a long time. With age, travel takes a lot out of you, especially on top of conference days that last 16+ hours. Some of us are aging out. And, in the case of Edward, some of us are moving on.

I quietly retired from the ACE program a few weeks ago. You may have noticed that I blog a lot less now. I stopped presenting anywhere else. There will be a future post that will go more into all the reasoning behind it. I just have…less time now.

But don’t worry – I’m not disappearing. You’ll see an uptick in blog posts from me in future months. I may even present at local events here in Dallas. You just won’t see me at future conferences.

Thank you to the ODTUG community for everything you have blessed me with. I’ve been presenting at ODTUG Kscope since Kscope12. I worked on the conference committee for years, then was promoted to Kscope Conference Chair for the Kscope18 & 19 conferences. I also served on the ODTUG Board and was recognized as an Oracle ACE Director at Kscope18. The ODTUG world has been front and center for me throughout the second half of my career. I would not be the same person without this awesome user group. ♥️

Also, thank you to the Oracle ACE program for allowing me to be part of your wonderful world of amazing nerds. It’s extraordinary how many friends I’ve made not in EPM, because of ACE. There are dozens of strong and empowered women in that program who have inspired me over the years. Mia, Heli, and Debra – I’ll miss seeing you every year. Jennifer and Oana – thank you for the wonders you’ve done with the ACE program. I’m proud to have been a part of it. Finally, thank you to all of those that sponsored me in the past for every level of ACE! Special shoutouts to Glenn Schwartzberg, Edward Roske, Tracy McMullen, Gabby Rubin, and Al Marciante. I’m so thankful I was able to advocate for customers for years and do what I love best, sharing knowledge. ♥️

And a heartfelt shoutout to the tireless Oracle EPM Product Management/Development teams who have been supporting me for years! You’ve put up with a lot! Hahaha! I’m glad I got to say thank you to so many of you this week and I am so fortunate you were there for me for so many years in the ACE program. ♥️

To all the folks I got to sit down with this past week to have a real chat, I will remember those conversations. And to my Kscope buddies who I normally hang out with and couldn’t attend this year, Matt G., Trey D., and Mike Durran, I’m sad we couldn’t spend my last Kscope together. But I have hope we’ll cross paths again one day! ♥️

And finally, to those who have continually supported me at the Kscope conference, attended my sessions, and looked forward to seeing me every year, I appreciate you. Don’t fear – I have confidence there will be tremendous people to fill the gaps I’ve left behind. It will be ok. ♥️

So long, Kscope peeps. I wish you all the best at Kscope26 and beyond. Thanks for the memories and don’t be a stranger!