Three competitors in one podcast

I have been characterized by some (my coworkers, my friends, my family, me) as being a tad cynical.  Part of that cynicism is borne from experience, part of it is seemingly intrinsic to my nature.  I find that I am often not disappointed when it comes to a certain level of disbelief.

At the same time, I am beyond pleased and maybe just a little bit less jaded when I see people not behave in a...

Matt Bradley, SVP of Development at Oracle will likely be well known to listeners; he’s a familiar face to customers and partners and can often be found talking about Oracle’s EPM strategy at conferences and other events.

Matt has worked for Oracle not just once but twice, led a healthcare decision support company way back when we still called it decision support, and joined Hyperion as the development for Planning on Va...

Oh How The Tables Are Turned

I trust you’ve listened to Part the First of the interview with Gabby.  This episode is better.  Why?  Simply because Gabby starts interviewing us and we get a taste of what it’s like to be on the other side of the metaphorical table.

 I’m not going to reveal any more than that – it’s simply too good and if you don’t end up laughing at Gabby’s interrogation techniques and our squeamish answers, well,...

What’s past is prologue

I (and the rest of your EPM Conversations hosts) first knew Gabby from his time in Essbase product management, a role he has long left.  Celvin and I (50% of your host population) have been out of the Oracle space since 2017 so it’s difficult to remind ourselves that nothing stands still, and certainly not a dynamic personality like Gabby.  Forgive us two if some of our questions dwell overmuch on th...

This one is different

EPM Conversations has been lucky to have a variety of Performance Management guests:  vendors, people from other places and tongues, fantastic players in our little technological space, and of course the Women in EPM series.  All of them are great (even the ones where Yr. Obt. Svt. is a guest), insightful, interesting, and often quite funny.  In short, they are the stuff that technology podcasts dream ...

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A Portrait in Leadership:  Women in EPM with Oracle Barbie aka Kate Helmer

A doll by any other name

Kata Helmer, aka Oracle Barbie formerly known as Hyperion Barbie, Oracle Ace Director, and oh yes ODTUG board member is just one person, but oh my, what an accomplished one.  

 I’ve always been intrigued by Kate’s alias:  she’s quite obviously a professional of some import and yet names herself after a child’s dol...

Let’s not forget that it also sent Natalie’s kids to college

We (your EPM Conversations hosts) owe a lot – a financial kind of debt as well as a professional one  – to Shankar and Hyperion/Oracle on premises /PBCS/EPBCS/EPM Cloud Planning.  Seriously, I first set eyes on what was then Hyperion Planning Desktop (which alas I cannot find a screenshot of but know it’s out there somewhere), I thought, “Cameron, you idiot, this ...

Yr. Obt. Svt. finds broad cultural movements to be interesting both conceptually (what are they, why do they exist, how did they start, and the rest of the who, when, and where list) and in practice because of their broad outcomes and impact on individuals.

 My inveterate curiosity aside, women in STEM (STEAM) has been a current in social and professional change for roughly the past decade.  Various organizations and companies, e.g....

Ex Africa Semper Aliquid Novi

 Roger Cressy is a fascinating guest, unlike any other we’ve had.  His jobs have spanned from retail management (yup, a department store, a really nice one – I’ve been there – and not the one in the States or the UK) to our Beloved Performance Management.

Roger’s is also a geographical journey, from Malawi/Nyasaland (he just missed the Central African Federation) to Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, to So...

It’s a Book, It’s a Podcast Episode, It’s Kismet

A bunch of geeks (native born, immigrants; Americans all) interviewing an Australian and a New Zealander/Australian/American (it’s complicated) set Yr. Obt. Svt. to immediately think of the title of this podcast (eh, I need to get more than one hobby), who then looked up the phrase and found that…it’s a travelogue of a New Zealander’s view of the USA, circa 1888.  Seriously, what are ...

Why is Yr. Obt. Svt. not part of this podcast?  Aren’t you glad I’m not?

The Culture Clash series has – from the feedback we’ve heard – been well received.  Thus far it’s been Americans talking to our comrades in performance management arms about their experience in their home country and in North America.  What we’ve not had is someone from another country talking to his countrymen.  This podcast deviates from that model b...

Our guests, conferences, and we’re much the same but really quite different

The second in EPM Conversations’ Culture Clash series features two guests from Latin America:  David Blanco and Belen Ortiz.  I know both from conferences only.  Actually, all of my cohosts and all of our guests are, one way or another, part of EPM Conversations (and my life as well) because of conferences.  OneStream’s Splash is coming up in just o...

Culture Clash or 50 Million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong

The performance management world is broad.  Those who practice within it are wide in skills, dispersed in geography, deep in talent, and – in general – all jumbled together.   

Your hosts are all North Americans (Canadians and Mexicans rejoice for this American has finally figured out how not to use “America” as shorthand for that quarter-or-so of the globe above the equat...

Selectively extroverted

Celvin and Yr. Obt. Svt. struggled over recording this podcast in two ways.  Firstly, talking about ourselves:  no matter what you might think about geeks with blogs, presentations, books, and yes, this podcast, talking about other things is pretty easy; talking about yourself is hard.  Secondly, deciding to do so and then recording the podcast wasn’t particularly easy, even the technical bits (your ...

Many years ago (just over 10!), Yr. Obt. Svt. wrote a blog post on why he Hated and Loved Calculation Manager.  I even did it twice.  I am – oft times, still, it continues unabated – a complete smartass who pays little heed to what he says and writes and this was most definitely one of those times.  These posts were a continuation of not altogether terrifically awesome judgement as they were an expansion of a similarly-snarky two p...

Natalie Delemar and I – as with so many others in the performance management space – first met Elizabeth Ferrell at a conference, in this case ODTUG’s Kscope.

 Elizabeth’s path to her current job, focus, and professional interests evinces the typical path from school, to finance, not-at-all-usual hobby, and now to our beloved performance management community.

But to characterize Elizabeth as typical is to do her an injustice or perha...

As Everyone Knows, But Hardly Anyone Actually Does

One of my fondest recollections of Kscope (umm, one year or another, they all blend together after a while) is sitting in on Kumar’s introduction of Exalytics (remember that Wave Of The Future?).  As Kumar dived deeper and deeper into the hardware behind Essbase-on-Exalytics, he prefaced each increasingly (exponentially?) complex computer engineering concept and detail with...

Riding a rocket to the heavens

OneStream’s rise has been meteoric:  from a startup in a very small office in the not-particularly-well-known-tech-incubator Rochester, Michigan, to international powerhouse in the performance management space in less than a decade.  

Peter Fugere has been there from almost the very beginning and has an insider’s perspective on what makes OneStream tick, the product’s genesis, current initiativ...

We’re all wired to see patterns

We live in patterns:  seasonal, political, historical, and even atomic.  Many live a life blithely unaware of them, which is to their disadvantage, for understanding those patterns is key to what makes us human, drives culture and society, and informs economics.  We happy few in the performance management world figuratively live and die by the patterns in data.  If careful observation of clie...