EPM Conversations Episode 32 – A Conversation with Tim Tow, The Coolest Guy in EPM, Part 2

 30 Years in the Making and Oh Yes, Can I Borrow Your Belt?

I first met Tim when he worked for (I think this is the name – it’s so long ago it is outside of the ken of the World Wobly Web) Lex Software who had built, with Microsoft, an Executive Information System (EPM/CPM in today’s language) toolkit that married Excel to what was then Arbor’s Essbase (at least I think this is what it was). Tim was the teacher and we (my fellow J&J Executive Information Systems colleagues) were learning about the new client/server paradigm. For any J&Jers out there, this was at 410 George Street, right across the street from Corporate; I believe it is still a J&J office.

That is exactly everything I remember about that training session, other than this: Tim forgot his belt, felt self-conscious, sized me up as being (probably) nice and generally the same size, and asked if he could borrow a belt. With me as recent(ish) college graduate, I had exactly one black belt to go with my suit (everyone wore suits), that left my one other belt which, alas, you cannot see because of Buzzsprout's limitations.  Think brown braided belt with a brass buckle.  Truly, an artefact of the 1990s.

I think Tim felt he was underdressed for J&J – at the time (and maybe still is – it’s been 29 years since I last set foot in a J&J office) a very conservative and buttoned down place.

The Past is a Foreign Country, They Do Things Differently There

What was it like, boys and girls, when all and sundry wore a suit to work? Kind of like this:

( Wow, again, you can't see it.  Buzzsprout, either you need to add graphics or poor old Cameron needs to get a clue.  Maybe both.  Try this link back to EPM Conversations.)

No, that is not me (you are over on the website, right?), but in fact Tony Randall (Who knew I hobnobbed with Hollywood royalty?  I didn't, of course. AI can be a wondrous thing; I have no idea who the woman is.) What is accurate is this is how people dressed. I cannot speak for the woman, but that is a fine example of a charcoal grey sack suit and a repp tie -- my Ivy Style exemplar. Work environments are so different now, it’s almost inconceivable. Such is the passage of time and through time reputations are made – Tim’s is stellar as is this second part of his interview.

Join us, won’t you?

Episode Transcript

UNKNOWN (00:00):
Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 (00:41):
Thank you for coming back to EPM Conversations to
hear part two of the Tim Toeepisode.
It was so good and so longbecause we had so much to talk
about.
This was, in fact, a two-hourlong recording session.
That's actually the recordedtime edited down by Selvin, but
there was simply no way we weregoing to put it into one
episode.

(01:02):
So thank you for joining usagain and enjoy the show.
You've been around for longerthan all of them.
Almost all of them.

SPEAKER_01 (01:13):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (01:14):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (01:16):
Yeah, 26 years.
Are you saying I'm old, Cameron?

SPEAKER_03 (01:19):
Well,

SPEAKER_01 (01:20):
I've

SPEAKER_03 (01:20):
been around for most of Dodeca's history, so

SPEAKER_01 (01:23):
it's quite a long history.
I have this saying that ifyou're lucky, you get old,
right?

SPEAKER_03 (01:29):
It's like paying lots of taxes, right?
You're lucky if you pay lots oftaxes because that means you're
making lots of money.
You don't know that.
That's what you're saying.

SPEAKER_01 (01:39):
That's right.
The thing is, I like what we do.
I just don't like things the wayI don't like the way things are
built by some other companies,maybe.
Maybe I'm just satisfied unlessthat's the way I like it.

SPEAKER_03 (01:54):
I can tell you that stopping working for myself and
working for a software companyis one stream.
The relinquishment of control isnot fun.
You learn to live with it, butit is not a pleasant experience.
Well, it wasn't a pleasantexperience for me.

SPEAKER_01 (02:15):
Even

SPEAKER_03 (02:16):
if the area of control is very, very small,
when you don't have it anylonger, it's quite noticeable.

SPEAKER_01 (02:23):
It's kind of a different thing, actually.
That's kind of like, for me,being an employee, I'm not very
good as an employee.
I mean, that's the thing, too.
But more in the software side, Imean, more...
I think one of my favoritequotes is derived from George
Bernard Shaw.
It says something like, thereasonable man shapes himself to

(02:45):
the world around him, whereasthe unreasonable man shapes the
world around him to suithimself.
Therefore, all progress dependson the unreasonable man.
I'm really unreasonable.
I mean, I kind of look at itfrom the user point of view.
So, you know, there are somegood things out there in the
world.
There are good products in ourarea.
I mean, you know, Cloud EPM isreally great.

(03:05):
Cool.
It's got some really coolfeatures.
All the IPM and those types ofthings that they're doing these
days, that stuff is really,really cool.
But, you know, sometimes peoplejust don't use those interfaces
that well, right?
And it wasn't really meant forthe UI.
So people want Excel.
So we're trying to provide thatability for people to use the
Excel-like interface in acontrolled manner and benefit

(03:27):
from those.
That's one of the reasons we'reworking so hard to do everything
we can around the Cloud EPM,right?
and make sure we can connect tothose environments and do
everything that people want todo in that environment, be able
to give them the best of bothworlds.
So I kind of come at this fromthe user point of view.
Speaking

SPEAKER_03 (03:45):
of user experience, does the Dodeca add-in still
exist?
So for our audience, for thoseof you who do not have truly a
pleasure of using the originalS-Base add-in, you know, Tim,
That product was invented in1992.
I saw S-Base in 1994.
Version 3.01, I think, is thereal one.

(04:09):
I don't know why that sticks inmy head, but anyway, it does.
I have never used...
The first time.

SPEAKER_01 (04:16):
What's that?
Dave Farnsworth showed me

SPEAKER_03 (04:18):
S-Base for the first time.
Oh, there we go.
Right.
In

SPEAKER_01 (04:20):
Philadelphia, by the way.
In

SPEAKER_03 (04:22):
Philadelphia.
Yeah.
That is where he also was withme when I first saw S-Base.
He created us monsters, I guess.
Yeah.
I'm trying to get him onto thepodcast, but he just says he
would want to listen to myboring stories.
I don't agree with him, but Ihaven't given up on him as a

(04:42):
guest.
That spreadsheet query UI, Ihave never used anything as
intuitive as that.
It astonishes me.
Across multiple softwareplatforms, decades, we're
talking decades of A time whereyou'd think someone would do it
better.
They'll come up with a betterway of doing it.

(05:02):
Query by example.
Yeah.
It's just so

SPEAKER_01 (05:06):
intuitive.
Doing it the same, even.
I mean, I think there's someother vendors.
I think SAS has a similar typeof capability, I think.
Somebody told me that they do.
I mean, OneStream has an Excel

SPEAKER_03 (05:18):
add-in, but it's not the same.

SPEAKER_01 (05:19):
Is

SPEAKER_03 (05:19):
it?
It doesn't feel the same.
Yes, you can do query byexample.
As someone who...
who lived in the S-Base worldfor a very long time.
It's different.
I don't know about better, Idon't know about worse, but it
is not the same.

SPEAKER_01 (05:35):
All right, yeah.
You know, we saw, I love thatinterface as well.
I mean, that's just the magic,right?
That's the magic of S-Base.
And the thing about it that'snot magic, though, is it doesn't
dynamically update and buildrows and columns for you
automatically when thingschange.
And so Dedeca addresses a lot ofthat stuff as well, right?

(05:56):
So that's the...

SPEAKER_03 (05:59):
You mentioned that Dodeca is largely a low-code
effort tool.
You now seem to be living in aworld of high-code effort tools.

SPEAKER_01 (06:08):
How does...
Low-code and no-code are kind ofthe keywords that we hear out
there a lot these days.
I mean, you know, we've gotactually three different levels
of extensibility in Dodeca,right?
So Dodeca itself, the framework,Dodeca framework was built on an
extensible interface.
So essentially, we built thisplatform where we can plug
functionality in.
So when you think about Dodeca,people think about Dodeca and

(06:30):
S-Base, right?
S-Base functionality in Dodecais actually a plugin on top of
our framework.
So literally, if we delete a fewXML files and some DLLs, Dodeca
knows nothing about S-Basewhatsoever.
And it can run perfectly.
It doesn't have to berecompiled.
It just runs, right?
Likewise, if you go the otherway, you plug in new
functionalities.
For example, Aura Player.

(06:50):
Aura Player is a, and you knowMia Ehrman, right?
Mia was on the board with us.
So they have a kind of REST APImiddle tier.
We have a connector for thatthat we deliver as a module.
So you can essentially importcode into Dodeca.
We can send you a code throughemail.
You can import it.
And all of a sudden, shazam, itknows about we're a player.

(07:12):
And it can then talk to thingslike Oracle CloudGL and EBS
through REST and Oracle HCM andOracle Integration Manager and
all those types of things,right?
So you can bring that in, whichis pretty cool.
It's a cool thing.
But then we have the low-codeenvironment.
So the low-code is what we callworkbook scripting.
It's an event-driven model.
Essentially, we've taken a lookat what people do with

(07:33):
spreadsheets.
And we've made it easy.
So I mentioned the use case ofexpanding rows and columns based
on what's in the S base outline,right?
With our low code environment,you can do that with literally,
I think you can do it with oneline of code if you want.
So we've written a whole bunchof lines under the coverage,
right?
Essentially, we have anenvironment where you can say,

(07:54):
build this range dynamically anduse this MDX script.
It'll plug in the parameters youselect automatically, right?
It's what we call tokenizationin the MDX script.
Bring back member names, it'llexpand the range automatically
and retrieve the data fromS-Base, which is pretty cool,
right?
That's a low-code environment.

(08:15):
A no-code environment isbasically the Dodeca reports or
the views, as we call them,because they can be reports or
forms.
They kind of mix and match inDodeca.
You can have a report that'salso a form and new input.
In that environment, you canselect from literally, depending
on the type of view, could behundreds of different properties

(08:35):
that you can configure withpoint and click.
That's a note code environment.
So we see that as well.

SPEAKER_03 (08:41):
You can basically support either, depending on the
use case and the level ofcustomization.
Your implementation can span thegamut.

SPEAKER_01 (08:51):
Yeah.
Yep.
So one of our customers builtsomething so they could import,
and this is Prior to oursupporting it out of the box,
they wanted to import theability to attach worksheets to
a single cell.
So they wanted to have like abackup worksheet.
Just for a bank that does, asWells Fargo, they actually do
their stress test reporting tothe government using, what's it

(09:11):
called?
CCAR, I think is the name of thereport that they have to submit.
It uses Dodeca to gather theinformation, review it,
summarize it.
The workflow goes through fromDodeca into SharePoint to do all
that.
But they wrote their own moduleto store Excel files.
We have that functionality builtin now.
They're now using that.
But it's kind of a coolfunctionality to be able to code
at all those different levels ifyou really need to and plug

(09:34):
things in.
So anyway, I think it's part ofwhat we're doing to make sure we
have longevity in this productbecause obviously S-Base is not
as prominent as it once was.
Best APIs are out there, buteveryone's different.
So having this pluggabilitymakes it really big.
So something I want to mentionabout S-Base, by the way.

(09:55):
So I was listening to some ofyour podcasts earlier about
S-Base and the relevance of it.
One of the things that we heardat Kscope during the S-Base
symposium, we don't know if thisis actually going to happen for
sure, but I think it would bereally cool if it does, is this.
You know, Oracle Database shipswith Application Express, right,

(10:17):
or Apex.
So it's one of the built-in userinterfaces for Oracle, right?

UNKNOWN (10:22):
Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 (10:23):
One thing that was mentioned, the Oracle person
doing the S-Base symposium, andmost of us know who it is.
I'll not say his name to protecthis identity just in case this
doesn't come to pass.
But what he said was, they'relooking at the idea.
I thought he said they decidedto do this, to ship S-Base with
Oracle Autonomous Database aspart of the database.

(10:47):
So basically, if you have ADW,S-Base is there.
Tim, have you heard that too?
Have you heard anything before?

SPEAKER_00 (10:53):
Like a tile or an option, yeah, within one of the
options within ADW, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (10:58):
That would be awesome.

SPEAKER_00 (11:00):
I would

SPEAKER_01 (11:00):
love that.
I'd love that a lot, actually.

SPEAKER_00 (11:03):
It would expose it to a bigger audience, yeah.
It would expose it to newpeople,

SPEAKER_01 (11:07):
yeah.
The thing is, it's this generalpurpose use case.
It was originally targeted justin finance, but there's a lot of
different things you could useit for.
If you have imagination, youhave the data, right?
With ADW, you've got the datathere already.
So it just sounds like a reallycool match made in heaven,
potentially.
And I think Dodeca fits in thatworld very well.

(11:29):
So I did, by the way, think ofthat company name.
And also, you know, it kind ofties in with the idea of, you
mentioned we've been around fora long time, for 26 years.
So I have a story about thatcompany.
So I remember the name of it.
So I was at this place in SanFrancisco.
And at the time, there was onlytwo of us in the whole company,

(11:51):
right?
And I remember very clearly thatwe're at this company.
It was a parts manufacturer forcomputers.
And we're building thisbudgeting application in a
predecessor to what I had withActiVolap.
It was all DB code, I think.
No, it might have beenActiVolap.
I think it was ActiVolap,actually.

(12:12):
It was.
I was building this reallycomplex thing where they had
like 60,000 rows of data, right?
Or 60,000 cells maybe of data intheir forecast in each sheet,
right?
So it was like bringing databack from S-Base and putting
data back to S-Base.
I mean, it was pretty cool andpretty big, right?
And there was this other companyI was talking about.

(12:34):
They were still independent, butthey were out there and we were
competing against them, right?
That company had$130 million inventure capital.
They're well-funded.
They have very nice offices, Itell you, in California.
But the thing is, on theirwebsite, they had their tech
support stuff on their website,and they just bought this HTML

(12:57):
spreadsheet capabilities.
It was pretty new back in thetime.
It was a company called HalfGrain.
And we knew them because theyliterally, their office was two
blocks Places down from theplace I used to eat lunch every
day in San Francisco.
So we'd see them in there allthe time, right?
But this company, thishalf-breed company, they talked
about how their spreadsheetscaled pretty well until you got

(13:18):
to 3,000 cells.
But then you needed to add CPUand processing power to make it
scale.
The company we're at had 60,000cell need, right?
So we knew that we kind of hadan in.
But what's amazing is you flashforward years from then, right?
So this was probably about 2001timeframe, maybe.

(13:38):
So the company that, thatheffering company, they had just
been acquired by a companycalled Alpha Blocks.

SPEAKER_03 (13:44):
That's the name.
Sorry.

SPEAKER_01 (13:46):
Sorry.

SPEAKER_03 (13:46):
Yes.

SPEAKER_01 (13:47):
So Alpha Blocks, they burned through that 130
million in venture capital andthey were acquired by IBM for
pennies on the dollar.
So where software goes to die,she said, Cameron, right?
The company that wasrepresenting them there and
pushing their, the software,they, they pointed to us and
said, Look at these guys.
They're two guys.

(14:07):
Where are they going to be fiveyears from now?
We're still here.
Alpha Blocks is gone.
Now you want the punchline?
The company that's representingthem there?
Arthur Anderson.

SPEAKER_02 (14:22):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (14:23):
They were basically unfathomable at that time that
that would happen, right?
And they came down because ofspreadsheets, right?
Yeah, they're not.
Yeah, so anyway.

SPEAKER_00 (14:36):
I've got a question for you about the company and
running the company.
Obviously, you've stuck around along time, but also grown.
I think user count in the fivefigures, right?
Yeah.
Way more than that.
Okay.
Yeah.
Maybe even more.

(14:56):
Yeah.
And from hearing you talk aboutit, you're really close to some
of the technical working of it.
But you mentioned earlier,Taxes.
I leave that all to somebodyelse.
So all the things– you're thepresident, right?
All the different pieces ofrunning the company, marketing,
sales, I've seen you give demosto customers.

(15:18):
You obviously talk to thetechnology.
How have you decided over theyears what it is you personally
focus on and spend your time on?

SPEAKER_01 (15:27):
Good question.
Some of it– Well, early on, Iwas kind of like, I felt like I
was the, how do I positionmyself?
It was full entrepreneurialexperience is what I called it.
That's what it was.
The full entrepreneurialexperience.
So at one point in the company,I mean, this is back when we had
like four employees or so.

(15:48):
I mean, I did everything.
I did the payroll.
I did the billing.
I paid the payments.
I did all the sales demos.
I lined up all the sales demos.
I wrote up all the sales stuff.
I wrote code.
I managed everybody and Icleaned the bathroom.
I literally cleaned thebathrooms.
I mean, I got my developerswriting code, right?

(16:09):
And at that point, I only hadtwo developers.
It was kind of like, and when Ibrought them in, it was kind of
like the rules were either Iwrote the code or it looked like
I wrote the code.
I found out I hired people a lotsmarter than me.
So that rule kind of went by thewayside a little bit, but
Because especially one of thepeople was even more meticulous
than me.
I mean, Amelia, her code, whenyou look at her code in C-sharp,

(16:33):
it's organized into sections.
So there's private methods,public methods, private,
private, public properties.
And then within that, each oneis alphabetized.
So they're all in the code inalphabetic order.
I mean, it's like a little bitmore than what I did, right?
And the rule was also, you know,you basically, you comment the
code.

(16:53):
So even if you're not aprogrammer, you can understand
what the heck it's doing, right?
So that was kind of the rules wehad.
At some point, though, I mean,it got to be too much.
So you guys may remember, and Iremember very well, Kscope 14,
2014 in Seattle.
I remember parts of it prettywell, I should say, because I

(17:16):
was so exhausted there because Iwas doing all these different
things.
I mean, literally...
I remember walking around thatconference at one point, and I
was on the board.
I think, Cameron, you were stillon the board then,

SPEAKER_02 (17:28):
right?
We were.

SPEAKER_01 (17:29):
I don't think you were on the board yet, but we
had board meetings before, and Iwas so exhausted.
I remember walking around thatconference, and people are
saying, hey, Tim.
Hi, Tim.
How are you doing, Tim?
I'm like, this is the TrumanShow.
You know that movie, that JimCarrey movie, The Truman Show?
I'm like, these people are justbeing nice to me.
I don't know why, becauseeverybody knew who I was.
I didn't remember any names.

(17:50):
I was like, toast, right?
So I set out and I, I hired abunch of people after that.
So that's when we finally wentout and got, you know, since
that time I brought in, youknow, some sales.
I got Julie Jacobs on my team todo sales.
I have Tim Fache on my team.
He does pre-sales.
He does training.
I've got, um, A couple of peopledoing accounting work and admin.

(18:12):
I've hired a bunch of people.
I've hired a few moredevelopers, people doing
support.
So I still get involved in thosea little bit, right?
I mean, I sign the checks.
That's all the accounting part Iget in these days.
They need to be signed.
Although I have other checksigners now, too.
So I've got on the sales side,though, I still do the sales
calls.
I really love doing the salescalls.

(18:35):
pitches to customers.
The demos, I like to find outwhat people's issues are because
I'm the product manager too,right?
So I'm kind of that standardproduct manager now where I talk
to customers and I talk topotential customers and I want
to find out what's causing youpain.
How can we fix your pain?
So I spend a lot of time tryingto figure that out, talk to

(18:57):
customers, figure out what'scausing pain and how we can fix
it.
How can we address that?
How can we make your lifeeasier?
And that's what I really enjoynow.
And I also get to do likethought stuff.
I'm even thinking about doingblogs and writing a little bit,
right?
I was so burned out at somepoint, I couldn't.
And of course, you know, I hadsome, a period of time as well

(19:18):
from about 2019 until about ayear ago where I was a
caregiver.
So that was pretty tough.
It was pretty tough to do anywork during that time because it
was like, My focus was ongetting groceries and getting
meals on and stuff like that.
So that part.
So I'm kind of recovering fromall that now.

(19:39):
Pretty much recovered and readyto move forward and do some
other stuff.
So yeah.
So hopefully I get to beinvolved a bit more.
But yeah, I really love to writecode.
I mean, I just don't get to doit much.

SPEAKER_03 (19:55):
You're going to wind down Dodeca when you're in the
coffin.
That's going to be your lastthought.
Yeah, I hope so.
It's not your involvement.
This is just a prediction.
It may be a very long time fromnow.

SPEAKER_01 (20:09):
My involvement will wind down.
It'll live without me.
I mean, that's one of thereasons when I hired these
people, I was like, I need tobring people in to do all these
things.
You know, it lives on withoutme, right?
Succession planning.
Yeah, one of the things Ibrought Julian, right?
I hired Julian.
She's like, yeah, we need tomarket your name.

(20:29):
I'm like, no, no, no, no, no,no, no, no.
Don't mention me at all.
This company has to stand alonewithout me.
And the company can stand alonewithout me.
I'm confident now that thiscompany, you know, is a lot of
value without me being there,right?
And I still do the hardcoresales calls.
I mean, my other people could dothose too.
I mean, Tim and Julia can handlethose.

(20:49):
I don't have to.
I just love doing it, you know?

SPEAKER_03 (20:53):
I just enjoy the food and your labor.
I mean,

SPEAKER_01 (20:56):
why not?
It's fun.
It's fun.
It's fun like matching up whatpeople's issues are with what
the things that Dodeca doesbecause it does so many things.
It's sometimes hard tounderstand all the things it
does, right?
Unless you hear an issue and go,that addresses that.
I'll just give you an example.
The last few days, I was talkingto a customer and they're

(21:18):
talking about doing entry into arelational database.
We have a lot of customers doentry into relational databases.
We have a customer in Europethat's a couple of thousand
users.
They only do relational.
They don't do anything withS-based.
It's all SQL Server, everything.
And they do a lot of data entrywith it, right?
And it's like, we have thisfunctionality called
autocomplete.

(21:38):
I completely forgot about it.
So you can actually have a listsource from any one of our
typical data sources, like arelational database, or you can
do an S-based MDX query orsomething, get a list of members
or whatever.
And when somebody types in, Intoa cell, you can enforce that one
of those values is the truevalue that goes into the cell.

(22:01):
And you can even have a picklist that pops up and that kind
of stuff.
So right into the spreadsheet,right?
So I forgot about that function.
There's just so many differentthings we put in that make it
easier for end users to do whatthey need to do with their
business, right?

SPEAKER_03 (22:16):
Do you have a vision from a product management
perspective?
Your product's been around for along time.
The products grow organically.
That's just natural.
That's just like people groworganically.
Do you have a kind of anoverarching vision of we will do
that?
Dodeca will do the followingfive things, ten things really,

(22:38):
really well.
And these other three things, wecan see a market for those
things.
And again, I have no idea whatthis might be.
It's just hypothetical.
We're not going to do that.
That's for other people.
That's not part of the vision ofwhat Dodeca is.
We've got some weirdo, maybeclient that wants to have this,
but we don't see this asanything but an edge use case.

(23:00):
Do you have those kinds of

SPEAKER_01 (23:02):
discussions or thoughts?
We get requests from time totime and things we say, no,
we're not going to do that.
I mean, it's sometimes hard forus to say that, but I'll tell
you the biggest one we get, andI've had this multiple times.
I remember the last time it wasreally forceful.
I was in a CIO office of a acompany that you guys would
recognize the name of orcustomer today, probably at

(23:23):
least five or seven years sinceI was in this guy's office.
He's like, when are you guysgoing to do visualization like
Tableau?
I'm like, all right.
So why would we do visualizationlike Tableau?
Just because you can use thesame data sources with that,
right?
The thing is, you know, and thething I asked him back, I said,
you know, Tableau, and I knowone of the founders of Tableau.

(23:48):
I remember when they had threepeople in our company, and they
were sitting in the R&D lab atthe Hyperion conferences, right?
And that guy is probably now abillionaire.
He might be a billionaire.
I don't know.
But anyway, they had three PhDsfrom Stanford.
They concentrated on getting theright type of chart based on the

(24:08):
data, doing a really good job ofwhat they did, right?
So I was very much focused onthat functionality.
We're kind of the same wayfocused on spreadsheets.
Nobody else is focused onspreadsheets.
We're focusing on thatspreadsheet functionality.
So my question back to that CIOis, when is Tableau going to put
in spreadsheet functionalitylike we have, right?

(24:30):
They're not.
I mean, it's two differentthings.
You take a car when you need togo on land.
You take an airplane when youneed to go in the air, right?
They're two different things.
They might be similar in thefact that you travel someplace,
right?
Same thing with theseapplications.
You get data through them, butthey're just different.
I mean, you know, lightweightvisualization, better charting

(24:51):
from the Excel engine, that kindof stuff.
Yeah, I can understand that.
But the things like, you know,doing these things that they do
with Tableau with thesethousands or millions of points
and charting a lot of stuff andclicking and drilling in on that
kind of stuff.
Yeah, I don't see that stuff.
Not for us.
Oracle as a product does that,right?
Why would it compete againstOracle?

(25:13):
We kind of fit in a niche whereOracle doesn't have a product.
That's kind of our strategy.

SPEAKER_03 (25:19):
That's a very

SPEAKER_01 (25:20):
powerful one.

SPEAKER_03 (25:21):
When you're chasing other companies, you're no
longer playing by your ownrules.
Yeah,

SPEAKER_01 (25:27):
yeah, yeah.
I think we serve a good purposefor the target market that we
have.
I mean, I think it's a differentmarket than anybody else's in
there, right?
It's a different market from thesoftware standpoint, but it's in
a market where everybody usesthe product.
So the problem is matching uppeople with, you know, when is

(25:49):
Dodeca a good fit?
So because it does so manythings, one thing we learned
when we brought the marketingconsultant in, marketing
consultant said that weshouldn't use spreadsheets in
our marketing.
He also said, you know, Dodecais not one of those products
that you're going to just buyanywhere.
on a whim.
It's not like gum at the cashregister when you go up and you

(26:10):
go, oh, I need that, right?
You're just going to grab a packof gum and put it down and pay
for it.
Nobody's going to buy Dodecalike that, right?
You're going to have to go outand you have to find out what
the pain points are and match upthe pain points with how you
solve those pain points.
And then you probably have toprove it, right?
So we do that very well.
We do that every day.
I mean, our sales programchanged significantly after we

(26:34):
Talked to them about a yearafter we met with him, we came
up with this idea of, and heactually suggested something
like this, but it's like, yeah,why don't we do this thing
called the Dodeca Challenge?
You know, we give Dodeca tocustomers for free.
You get three months.
We'll help you install it.
You can use it in production.
We don't care.
So what we want to do is helpyou find value, right?
Once you find the value inDodeca in one place, then you

(26:56):
tend to keep it.
You tend to keep it for a longtime.
You also tend to expand it.
So that's how we get tocustomers like Kroger, where I
think Elizabeth said in herwebcast, they have like 33,000
S-based users using Dodeca,right?
We didn't start with 33,000.
We started with 250 and justexpanded from there.

(27:17):
While they're getting benefitout of it, then that's where
we're happy.
We're helping them make moremoney, essentially.
Run their operations moreefficiently.
Get them done faster.

SPEAKER_03 (27:30):
I do not want to say it becomes less important
because you just talked aboutthe autonomous radiation as
basically part of it, as it isless

SPEAKER_01 (27:39):
common.
Don't worry.
What's that?
I remember you've been preachingthat to me for a long time.
I remember the conversation wehad when they merged the EPM and
the ERP sales reps.
And you said, space and planetgone.
You're not going to see itanymore.
It's like, really?
Did I say that?
Yeah.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (27:57):
It may have been the inner cynic in me.

SPEAKER_01 (27:59):
Yeah, but it's like, you know, S-Base is still there.
I mean, there's still, you know,thousands and thousands of
standalone S-Base customers.
There are Cloud EPM customersthat all have S-Base under it.
Cloud ERP has S-Base under it,although we can't get to that
yet at all.
We are working with Shankar andthe team to get better, you
know, Cloud EPM access.

(28:20):
I don't know if you know thatMDX is now on the official
roadmap for that.
So MDX is on the roadmap forCloud EPM.
That

SPEAKER_03 (28:29):
was actually what I was curious about.
I don't know if non-traditionalis the right word for it.
A obfuscated S-based server orserver.
You do that today with theDECAs.
That's correct, right?
To do what?
I'm sorry?
You point to the EPM cloud, notnecessarily to S-based directly.

SPEAKER_01 (28:49):
Correct, correct.
We have connectors to S-based.
We have connectors to EPM cloud.
So essentially what happens isthe connector for EPM cloud
takes a request that comes inand rewrites it as Cloud EPM
REST API calls and thentranslates it back to the XML
that we need in the client.
So it does that automatically.
So,

SPEAKER_03 (29:09):
yeah.
So from a client perspective,there's really no difference.

SPEAKER_01 (29:13):
No difference, no.
You're right in the same way.
I mean, there's more limitation.
I kind of feel like Cloud EPM,to me, when I first started
working with our connector, justdue to the...
relative weakness of the RESTAPIs.
And we're working with Oracle tomake them make more things
available, right?
It kind of felt to me like I waslike I was getting in an

(29:36):
elevator that's small.
Airspace was a big elevator,right?
You go to a big building in abig city, big elevators, right?
You got a lot of room to work.
You got a lot of options whereyou can stand in an elevator,
that kind of stuff, right?
Have you ever been to likeEurope where they have those
little tiny elevators where theysend you up first and they send
your luggage up?

SPEAKER_03 (29:54):
In 400-year-old buildings?
Yes, I know.

SPEAKER_01 (29:59):
No, I can't move very much here, right?
But, you know, the things thatthe REST API doesn't support,
things like having blank rowsand columns in a retrieve,
that's kind of a standard thingfor Espace, right?
The APIs we have to use don'thave those, but we've written
around all that stuff now, soit's a lot better now.
Yeah.

(30:19):
We've got a lot morecapabilities, and we're working
with them to get even more.
I mentioned MDX as a result of aworking group we put together.
It actually is a result of anIdea Lab.
I don't know if you saw the IdeaLab submission, if all of you
saw that.

SPEAKER_00 (30:34):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (30:35):
And read the entertaining comments that came
along.
Some people were warned toremove their comments or else.
But Shankar, we met with him atKscope in Denver.
He said, you know, I can't justexpose the APIs to you, but tell
me what you need and help mewrite something that I can give

(30:57):
to the developers so that we canget you the functionality you
need.
Don't tell me how to do it, butwhat you need, right?
Worked with him over the pastyear and a half now.
And after the first year, MDXdid show up on the official
roadmap for Cloud EPM.
So, yeah.
I think they realize they needto do that internally as well.

(31:17):
My understanding is they firsthave to get S-Base 21c under
CloudATM, which I think thathappens sometime probably
earlier this calendar year.
Don't know for sure.
I'm not inside around any ofthat.
And then the other thing youneed to do is push the planning
security down to the S-Baselevel so that MDX doesn't have
to worry about security issues.

(31:38):
Is S-Base

SPEAKER_03 (31:40):
being absorbed back into ETM?
You've got to remember, I'm outof this space.
No, no, no.
I was confused.

SPEAKER_00 (31:48):
But it typically takes, yeah, well, I was just
going to say, it typically takesa little while for EPM to
consume the latest versions ofS-Base and feature.
Right now,

SPEAKER_01 (31:57):
they're still on 11.1.2.4.
So, but, you know, they aregoing to 21C shortly.
I think, yeah, no, they're goingto shortly.
I don't think they've done ityet.
Yeah, it takes a while.
Yeah,

SPEAKER_00 (32:12):
they're filming with that.
The story speaks to kind of thefact that you're enabling
consumption of the Oracleproducts, not competing with
them, that you have a partnerrelationship with them, not
competition.

SPEAKER_01 (32:26):
Yeah, also one of the things we asked for is for
retrieval type operations.
So being able to do zoom in andpivot and that type of thing.
And what they told us thatthey'll give us the smart view
REST APIs.
So SmartView has a new set ofREST APIs for things like, you
know, the Google Sheetsinterface, the Google Sheets
version of SmartView, I shouldsay.

(32:46):
And there's the Microsoft WebExcel version, version of
SmartView, whatever.
So they're still working ongetting those to us, but we're
so hopeful we'll get those APIsshortly.
So we'll just keep up with whatwe can and make it function as
much, as closely as possible aswe can to S-Base itself.
And then, you know, we'reworking on other things too.
I mean, there's, It's not justthose databases, but obviously

(33:10):
we've had relational for a longtime.
So read, write, and capabilityfor JDBC sources.
We are in our next versioncoming out pretty shortly, our
8.5 version.
We're going to do a very shortdevelopment cycle on that to
enable client-side SQLconnections.
And the reason for that is moreof the integrated security type
of thing.
So like Microsoft SQL Serverintegrated security and Oracle

(33:32):
has SSO type security as wellthat we can Leverage, if we do
that.
We have a new connector adapterstrategy with the Dodeca 8.4,
really kind of promoted a bunchof that, our 8.4 version.
Connectors, as I mentioned, forAura Player.
We have a connector forDrillbridge now.
We have a connector for CloudEPM EDM.
So we have a customer needed toconnect to EDM and bring that in

(33:52):
live to Dodeca.
So we have a connector for that.
With the architecture we've puttogether for that, for us, it's
that deeper level of coding.
But it took less than a day towrite that connector, which is
kind of cool.
You are diversifying away fromS-Base.
Obviously, you just said it.
Well, we love S-Base.
I mean, I still have the S-Baselicense plate here in Alabama,

(34:13):
right?
That's right.
You do.
I've seen it.
That's true.
That's true.
But, you know...
I love S-Base as well.
But, you know, there's othersources too.
So it's not just...
We want to be able to connect towhatever it is and automate,
standardize those spreadsheets.
It doesn't matter where yourdata is.
So, I mean, other things are...
Looking at, I mean, I heard onestream has a REST API.

(34:35):
We could potentially connect tothat.
Now, you just mentioned theyhave a query by example.
Who knows?
Maybe there's some opportunitiesthere.
I don't know.
I mean, it's just, you know, theidea that we can connect to just
about anything is prettycompelling now.
It's a lot of fun connecting tonew data sources, too, and
seeing people, you know, see thevision for how they can leverage

(34:59):
what we do.
And going further out in thefuture, you ask about roadmap a
little bit.
We are working on a version ofDodeca that will work in
console.
So a console only version.
So think about the idea of, youknow, generating, you know,
batch and burst type reportingusing Excel templates with all
the flexibility, all thefunctionality of these, this

(35:20):
extensibility that Dodeca hasbringing data in from many
different data sources.
And we've got, we just put a newfunctionality in for doing pivot
tables in Excel.
So you can run any of those datasources we have like S base or,
More likely, like relationalsources or REST data sources,
maybe some REST data source outon the Internet, bring that in
and pop it to a pivot table.

(35:41):
We're looking at a REST API, soa REST API for Dodeca, so
somebody could call Dodeca froma web page, for example, and
have it run a Dodeca view.
Bring up in the background inthis console version, generate a
report, and take essentially theequivalent of a screenshot of an
area of a range and pop it intoa dashboard, right?

(36:04):
So the idea that people have,you know, multiple different
data sources combined togethercoming into the spreadsheet in
Dodeca with some charting,maybe, who knows what it is,
they get a graphic in theirdashboard and then, you know, a
link, a hot link to link back toour running instance of Dodeca
potentially on their desktopwhere it passes primers back and
fires up a live analytic link towhatever database it happens to

(36:26):
be.
So those are some of the thingswe're working on for the future.
Excellent.
So, yeah, it isn't just S-Base.
We love S-Base.
We always will.
But, you know, anyway.
Understood.

SPEAKER_03 (36:41):
Maybe you could talk a little bit about your
involvement with Odie Tug andreally the seminal role that you
played in having S-Base andHyperion, really.
I'm helping Hyperion have a homebecause I remember going to

(37:02):
Solutions 2008.
Would that have been in thespring?
I think so.
And then Oracle bought them.
Maybe Oracle had bought them andthen Solutions happened.
I don't remember the order anylonger.
And then I guess you calling meup and saying, have you heard
about ODTusk?
Have you heard aboutKaleidoscope?
No.
Well, it's really cool.
Can I have my name?
You ought to come.
I did.

(37:22):
It was amazing.

SPEAKER_01 (37:24):
How did that all come about?
Even going further back thanthat, it was a partner event in
Napa Valley when we all gotphone calls from the East Coast
early morning in 2007 one day.
I was like, did you hear thatOracle bought Hyperion?
We're like, what?
That's why the executives didn'tshow up yesterday.
They were supposed to show up atthe meeting and some of the

(37:46):
execs didn't show, right?

SPEAKER_02 (37:48):
So,

SPEAKER_01 (37:48):
yeah, what happened after that was, I don't remember
the exact order of whathappened.
I know at one point, I got acall from somebody at Oracle,
and they said, we want you to bean Oracle ace.
I'm like, what's that?
They're like, you're active inthe community.
You're out there posting onNetwork 54 all the time, and we
have this whole organization forsupporting the marketing

(38:08):
organization.
I'm like, yeah, sure, whatever.
So I nominated a bunch ofpeople.
I think I nominated you, infact, Cameron, if I'm not
mistaken.
I think so.
Yeah.
Yes, you did.
I think I actually became an acedirector once.
I think that's when I became ACEDirector right away.
Ed Broski and I became ACEDirectors basically right away.
And then Mike Riley called us.

(38:28):
I don't know if it was beforethis happened or after.
Mike Riley called me.
I think he called me, actually,and said, I'm representing this
organization, ODTUG.
We do these conferences, andwe'd love to have a
high-performance community, andwe understand you guys have a
big user group.
So I talked to him about what wehad as solutions, and We decided
to put something together and wehad like 60 days to put together

(38:50):
the first, you know, miniconference that we had at
Kscope, Kaleidoscope back thenit was called.
Kaleidoscope 2008 in NewOrleans.
And so got Ed Roski involved.
Ed actually put together thepresentation schedule.
I recruited some speakers, somespeakers from Oracle and that

(39:10):
type of thing.
And then it was prettysuccessful.
I think we had 150 people thatfirst year.
So, which was probably doubledthe size of that conference, at
least.
So, I think they saw that as abig opportunity.
And, you know, having been onthe board, I know it was a, it
probably was one of the thingsthat helps that, probably helped

(39:30):
that user group exist to thisday.
Because I'm not sure if theywould exist if it wasn't for my
favorite role coming in astreasurer.
So, I could probably say that's.
Pretty confident.
After that conference, by theway, they said, they invited me
to the boardroom.
They said, we'd like to appointyou to the board.
I'm like, sure, whatever.

(39:52):
So I didn't realize how muchwork it was going to be.
So that's why I ended up being atreasurer because a treasurer
did not that much work.
They just had to understand thestatements and I was a CPA.
So like, okay, I can do that.
It's funny that

SPEAKER_03 (40:04):
you mentioned the ACE program.
This phone call, this recordinghas four ACE directors on it,
three directors.
former ACE directors when stillan ACE director, but that's a
pretty high concentration ofbelievers in the

SPEAKER_01 (40:18):
system.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, it was awesome.
I did some cool presentations,took some cool trips, Australia,
New Zealand tour.
That was kind of cool.
Right.
But it got to be too muchtowards the marketing side for
me.
So, and they like, well, youneed to do points.
You have to put your time into atime reporting system.
Now the time you spendvolunteering, I'm like, no, no,

(40:38):
thanks.
Yeah, there was quite theexodus, wasn't there?
I remember the person thatrepresents the program going,
you know, you can get a freeadmission to OpenWorld if you
stay a nice director, just dothese things.
I'm like, you know what?
I'll just pay for my admissionto OpenWorld.
$1,500, are you kidding me, forall the time I spent?
That's nothing.

(41:00):
Yeah.
So I remember I talked about thecool New Zealand and Australia
trips, right?

UNKNOWN (41:06):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (41:06):
But I realized, you know, we flew to New Zealand,
right?
And I got to go tour.
New Zealand was awesome.
We went to it around a bit forthe weekend before the
presentations.
My first presentation, I had sixpeople there.
So I flew halfway around theworld to present to six people.
I'm like, yeah, not doing thisone again.
Yep.
New Zealand is a small country.
Yeah.

(41:26):
Yeah.
Australia, there was more, butnot that much more.
No,

SPEAKER_03 (41:29):
it's also, relatively speaking, quite
small, despite its land mass.

SPEAKER_01 (41:34):
It was an awesome place to visit.
I mean, I want to go back.
I probably will go back at somepoint and visit when I have more
time.
But, you know, it just wasn'tworth the time for me to go
there for the ACE program justto do that.
I mean, I know they're tryingand stuff, but it was just, I

(41:57):
don't know.
And I bailed on, I declined togo to some of the other
countries.
They had China.
a few other places on the list.
I'm like, I don't have time.
I couldn't go for that manyweeks.
That was way back when I wasstill doing all the payroll
stuff.
Nobody would get paid at mycompany if I went for that long.
So I couldn't do it.
So anyway.

SPEAKER_03 (42:16):
So Tim, has the ACE program changed?
I mean, I haven't been in itfor, I don't know, seven years
or something.
Tim probably, Tim To probably aslong.
You're still an ACE, right?
Yeah, you are still an ACE,

SPEAKER_00 (42:33):
right?

UNKNOWN (42:34):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (42:34):
It's, yeah, I mean, it still has a fairly, I guess
the nice way to put it isobjective scoring system.
So it still has the concept ofpoints and all those kinds of
things.
I mean, the thing I always sayto people about the program is
like, it's a great program.
I like the people that run it.
I like a lot of the people init.
Not that I dislike any of them.
I just don't know all of them.

(42:56):
But what I tell people is like,do the stuff you were going to
do anyway.
And if that gets you into theACE program, then that's
awesome.
But I don't think people shouldgo chasing a particular ACE
status just to have it if theydidn't want to do those things
in the first place.
It's usually what I tell people.

SPEAKER_01 (43:17):
I agree.
I mean, I didn't do the ACEprogram to get stuff.
I did the ACE program as abenefit for all the stuff I was
doing previously, right?
So all the blogging and thatkind of stuff.
I mean, I met somebody in thelast probably couple weeks.
I think I was in Cincinnati at auser group meeting and somebody

(43:37):
was like, yeah, I used to hityour blog a lot.
I'm like, that's cool.
I haven't blogged in five years.
I haven't had a new blog post infive years.
People still hit it, by the way.
There's still relevantinformation out there.
So

SPEAKER_03 (43:51):
that's the cool thing.
Blogging seems to have kind of,I don't want to use the word
died, but its impact, itspopularity seems to be less.
And I'm not entirely sure why.

SPEAKER_01 (44:03):
I'd love to do it, but I just don't have time now.
I mean, I have less time thananybody I know personally.
It's been like that for a long

SPEAKER_03 (44:12):
time.
You're spending time with us.
We appreciate

SPEAKER_01 (44:14):
it.
Our audience appreciates it,too.
Well, I do a lot of things.
So, I mean, I'm always doingthings.
So, I mean, I didn't talk aboutthat kind of stuff and what I am
and what I do, right?
But I'm like...
I talk about being passionateabout things.
I'm a rock climber, so I climbat least three days a week.
When I was going through thosetough times with caregiving, I

(44:36):
was climbing like 40 climbs aday, which is absurd.
Most rock climbers do like, theygo to the climbing gym, they do
like eight or 10 climbs or atoast.
I was doing like 40, right?
I still fly my airplane.
I flew my airplane on businesslast week.
I went to Charlotte.
to see a customer.
I'm instrument rated, so I haveto do training and that kind of
stuff.

(44:56):
But I do so many differentthings.
I ride my bike occasionally.
I'm a skier.
I'm getting ready to go ski in acouple of months.
I'll be running my company outof Colorado.
Last year, I managed to get in71 days in a row skiing while I
ran my company.
People ask when I'm going toretire.
I'm like, why would I retire?

(45:19):
As long as you

SPEAKER_03 (45:20):
do the things you want to do.

SPEAKER_01 (45:23):
But, you know, I work hard.
Believe me, I work hard.
But it's like, you know, I tryto take time to enjoy what I do
as well.
You know, trying to move on withmy life after the caregiving
thing is done.
I've met somebody and I'm, youknow, happy.
So I'm doing that kind of stuff.

(45:45):
I just don't have a lot of extratime.

SPEAKER_03 (45:48):
Well, we have some extra time questions for you.
I'll bet you these are one ofthe ones that you prepared for
this.
Excellent.

SPEAKER_01 (45:56):
These are the ones I had to prepare for.
The other ones I can just talkabout.
Well, I don't know.
Whether we're

SPEAKER_03 (46:00):
getting the ad hoc Tim or the carefully prepared
and curated Tim, I don't know.
But as with all of our guests,we like to understand really a
little bit about the mind,right?
We hear a lot about theprofessional and the personal.
In your case, Tim, I think youshared a lot more than that.
Some of our guests do, not allof them, but some of them.
But this is really sort of thebits about the mind.
These

SPEAKER_01 (46:21):
are really scary, you mean, right?
No, Tim, no, I don't thinkanything can be scary.
I thought

SPEAKER_03 (46:30):
it wasn't scary in this one, so don't worry.
Okay, well, books, movies, orpeople, which would you like to
choose?
You have to name three of these.

SPEAKER_01 (46:38):
Okay, we'll go down the list.
So, people and history, right?
Actually, let's start withbooks.
Let's start with the...
Hardest one first and whatpeople like to meet.
So I don't read many books.
It was easy.
I think I've read one novel inthe last 40 years.
I mean, I got really good atreading reference books, right?
And looking things upinformation was, you know, build

(47:00):
my career, I could findinformation, I go to bookstores
and look stuff up and things,you know, I make it find all
kinds of stuff.
So that's kind of what I do withbooks.
But the one novel I read, and itwas riveting for me, was The Da
Vinci Code.
It's like I read it.
It was like I couldn't put itdown.
I read it in like a day, right?
I've never found another bookthat was like that.
The other book that I read, bythe way, that was pretty

(47:21):
interesting, is a book that yougave me, Cameron, about the guys
who flew the Spitfires in WorldWar II, the early pilots from
America.
So I think I saw that booksomeplace in my– It's the Eagle
Squadron is what you're thinkingabout, I think.

SPEAKER_03 (47:37):
That's the group of men that did that.
Yeah, I knew that book was foryou when I saw

SPEAKER_01 (47:44):
it.
Yeah, so for people on thepodcast who may not know,
Cameron is an airplane buff.
I think he mentioned that, ifnot earlier in this podcast, one
of the ones I listened topreparing for this.
His favorite movie is TheSpitfire.

SPEAKER_03 (47:58):
It's true.
It's true.
On my computer, I know this isnot the Cameron episode, but the
Tim To one.
I have a folder, it's in mydownloads folder, but it's a
subfolder called Airplane Picks.
And all it is is just selectionsof airplanes.
I would never want to be afighter pilot.
It is something I would neverever want to do.
But to look at them and to seethem, amazing.

(48:21):
And the Spitfire to me is themost beautiful one of all of
them.
Just a graceful, inspired pieceof engineering.
And a great, obviously, a greatrole in history as well.
And a great model too, right?
I happen to have that in my testroom as a matter of fact.
A gigantic silver spitfire.
That's absolutely great.

SPEAKER_01 (48:41):
Yes.

SPEAKER_03 (48:42):
I do appreciate

SPEAKER_01 (48:44):
that.
I was with my grandkids one dayin Michigan.
My daughter wanted to go into astore and so I stood outside and
I think with my grandson on myshoulders and I saw this
spitfire, right?
It was made out of metal.
I'm like, Cameron would lovethat.
You've just written one of yourbooks.
You wrote a chapter in Dodeca.

(49:05):
You just completed that, right?
I'm buying that for Cameron.
It cost a fortune.
It's beautiful.
I

SPEAKER_03 (49:15):
have a house that's worthy of that airplane.
I don't know.
I've got to get a bigger

SPEAKER_01 (49:21):
house, I think.
It's beautiful.
I've flown in a P-51.
That was awesome.

UNKNOWN (49:26):
Oh.

SPEAKER_01 (49:27):
I would like to have one.
Yeah, definitely.
My Cessna 210 is not a P-51, butit still scoots along at 200
miles an hour in the flats,which is pretty awesome.
So I think that covered– do wecover books?
Do we cover enough books here?
Yes.
All right.
So I was listening to one of thepodcasts today, and I think it

(49:48):
was– it might have been Shankarthat said– he took my choice.
Shawshank Redemption, I think,is one of my top picks.
movies.
It's one of those ones where Ican sit down and stop and look
at it and understand it.
Yeah, that's ChargingCondemption.
Yeah, definitely.
Number two on that list, TopGun.
Because I'm one of those pilotguys that really would have
loved to fly.

(50:08):
I actually came pretty close toflying in the Navy, by the way.
I actually got a letter fromAOCS.
I applied to Aviation OfficerCandidate School.
It said, you've been selected togo to Pensacola, the Aviation
Officer Candidate School.
That was right around the timeTop Gun came out.
When I saw that movie, they hada flood of recruits, and all of
a sudden they changed the age,and I was too old to actually go

(50:31):
in.
Yeah.
So now I fly my own plane, whichhas its own benefits because I
can fly where I want to go, andwhen I get there, I don't have
to kill anybody.
So it's nice.
You don't have to.
At that point.
The third one is kind of more ofa corny movie, but...
I like comedies, by the way.
I like watching rom-coms, even.

(50:53):
I mean, I like movies thataren't that heavy a lot of
times.
Something I watch everyChristmas is The Family Man.
It's Nicolas Cage.
And I don't know if you've seenthat movie.
It's about a guy who's a verysuccessful Wall Street guy.
And he gets reminded abouthis...

(51:15):
Former girlfriend.
And he wakes up and all of asudden he's in this dream where
he's married to her and he haskids.
And he's like trying to get outof it.
And then by the time the movie'sover, he realizes that's what he
really wanted all along anyway.
So it's kind of a cool movie.
I

SPEAKER_03 (51:30):
thought you were going to say Die Hard, Tim.
I was really waiting for that.
Okay.

SPEAKER_01 (51:36):
No, but I was actually in New York one time.
To remind you of Die Hard, I wasin New York one time in the
wintertime.
I flew there on a Sunday.
And we're working down by theWorld Trade Center.
I was working with Ron Moore.
All of us know he used to have atraining room at New York City.
We were at a company doing someExcel S-based work.
Flew in on Sunday, started at2.30.
We walked out at like 3 in themorning, and it snowed 36

(51:57):
inches, right?
And it was dead quiet in NewYork.
So we're walking down the streetin New York, and I'm expecting
at any moment that somebody'sgoing to crash out a window and
start shooting.
It's going to be in the middleof a Bruce Willis movie.
It was like very, very eeriethere.
That's great.
Yeah.
So those are the movies.
People in history I like tomeet.

(52:18):
So at least one other person onyour podcast mentioned Da Vinci.
So that would be the personprobably I'd want to meet
overall.
When I was a kid, I learned howto write backwards because Da
Vinci wrote backwards.
Did you really?
Yeah.
So I learned how to writebackwards.
I was a senior in high school.
So what I wanted to invent waslike an artificial lung that you

(52:42):
could use underwater.
It would just use water togather oxygen.
I think they have that now.
Obviously, I didn't go into deepenough tech to invent something
like that.
I'm not smart enough for that.
But anyway, spreadsheets aremore my speed, right?
So DaVinci would be one,obviously.
Both the two reasons.
Some other names I came up with,Martin Luther King, obviously,

(53:03):
one of the heroes.
I used to have, when I was atDeloitte, a quote from him that
was in their company newsletter.
Justice anywhere is a threat tojustice everywhere.
It's one of the quotes I kind ofcarry with me all the time.
Another person kind of off thebeaten path you might not expect
is Gerald Ford.
So I almost got the chance tomeet Gerald Ford one time.
I was in Willow Run Airport nearDetroit.

(53:27):
I'd flown in for a Michigangame, and there was this big
Gulfstream 5 jet sitting there.
I'm like, who came in on that?
Gerald Ford?
Awesome.
I was thinking, if I get back tothe airport at the right time,
maybe I can say hello to him.
The reason it would be importantto me is that my grandfather
went to high school with GeraldFord.
So I wanted to see if he had anymemories of my grandfather.
That would be cool.

(53:48):
Ford played for Michigan, right?
He was a quarterback.
No, he was, I think he was acenter.
But he did play for, I mean, hewas a college football hero,
right?
He played for Michigan, yeah.
So Michigan's my team, right?
Anyway, and then there was onedark one that I...
I met and a dark reason, aperson that I met that I'd like
to meet.
And I thought, I kind of thoughtabout who would I want to meet?

(54:10):
I had to look up lists of peoplewho other people would want to
meet and had a hard time dealingwith, you know, who don't want
to meet other than Da Vinci,right?
So I came up with this one.
This is dark.
You might end up cutting thisone.
Nope.
You'd be surprised.
Go for it.
Get off Hitler.
I'm not surprised.
I'd want to get off Hitler whenhe was like 10 years old so I

(54:31):
could kill him and preventmillions of people from dying.

SPEAKER_03 (54:35):
The Great Man Theory of History.

SPEAKER_01 (54:38):
I could help the world, right?
I think I'd only go back intime.
So, I'm cutting now.
I'm not sure.
Nope.

SPEAKER_03 (54:46):
Nope.
Absolutely not.
I gotta tell you, if you thinkabout the historic figures that
have seen the past couple ofcenturies, and, you know, unless
anyone thinks I'm an admirer ofhis, that's not the truth.
But he's an absolutelyfascinating figure.
He's absolutely pivotal and, youknow, just about destroyed the

(55:07):
world.
He is.
There have been an untold numberof books written about it.
To say that people aren'tinterested in a monster like
that is not true.
Would he be interesting at a farremoved to observe?
Probably.
I'd like to kill him.
If there was some sort of magicthat could prevent almost the
extermination of the world,yeah, that would be a good

SPEAKER_01 (55:28):
idea.
Yeah, and there are other issuesthat if I could help and by
doing something similar to otherpeople i would do that i'd even
sacrifice myself to do that imean right now you know what's
happening in ukraine is awfulyou know my my girlfriend is
from ukraine and i hear thestories directly from her

(55:51):
brother the experiences of herbrother it's like it's just like
heartbreaking what's going onthere and you know we don't hear
the real story here We don'thear all of it, let's put it
that way.
Because there are so many otherterrible things happening in
other places in the world.

(56:13):
We can only control what we cancontrol, but if I could control
anything, I would probably causethat conflict to not happen
somehow.
It affects people a lot everyday.
It's awful.

SPEAKER_03 (56:27):
We're in it.
Thank you so much, Tim, forspending your time with us.
It was fantastic.
We have so much material,

SPEAKER_01 (56:38):
I'll tell this for us.
This thing's usually like anhour and three minutes.

SPEAKER_03 (56:43):
We've had extraordinary guests.
We'll just have two episodes.

SPEAKER_00 (56:48):
Yeah, we might split it into two, yeah.
Yeah, two months.
You were a great

SPEAKER_01 (56:56):
guest.
I'll interview you guys, that'sit.

SPEAKER_03 (57:00):
Gabby did that to us.
There's no reason you couldn'tdo the same.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, I very much hope I'll seeyou guys at KSCO.
I'd like to outrage theone-string community by going to
KSCO every year.
But just for the part, it's abit of a conference not to go
to.
I do miss all of you.
That's my little way of keepingin touch.

(57:22):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (57:23):
You can come to our party, too.
Ours is on Tuesday, so come inearly.
Maybe I will.
We have to figure out where itis first,

SPEAKER_03 (57:34):
but yeah.
I will be in contact, Tim.
That would actually be a lot offun.
Just for our audience and forme, too, where is Kscope?

SPEAKER_01 (57:44):
Kscope this year is at the Gaylord in Grapevine,
Texas.
Again, it was there a coupleyears ago.
It's awesome.
My hints for Kscope, so let meput this plug in.
Tim, you're probably...
would do this anyway if Ididn't.
But if you come in for K-Scope,absolutely make sure you get
there in time for the symposiumson Sunday.

(58:06):
So the symposiums, whetheryou're just into the straight
EPM products, if you're intoS-Base, if you're into Dodeca,
you want to know about Dodeca,we're actually doing, we're
planning to probably have asix-hour symposium this year,
including hands-on training.
If you want to do a hands-ontraining lab at Dodeca, you can
even do that.
So There's a deck for beginnersession and that.

(58:26):
That'd be one thing.
So Sunday, get there early,right?
And be there Sunday morning.
So stay Saturday night.
The other thing is it ends onThursday, right?
And Thursday, I think they'replanning on some better content
this year for Thursday.
So definitely a reason to stay.
But what we always do in mycompany, we try to stay that day
because it's so much that youhave going on.

(58:49):
If you can, take the afternoonoff and stay and hang out.
And they have a lazy riverthere.
Last time I was there, I justfloated around that lazy river
for a couple of hours and had acouple of margaritas and just
relaxed.
And it was just awesome.
It's just a great place.
So, I mean, besides the cooleducation content and all that

(59:14):
kind of stuff, I mean,definitely spend that Thursday
afternoon just relaxing.
And that goes for all you guys.
I expect to be buying you guys

SPEAKER_00 (59:23):
margaritas.
It is really nice to justdecompress that Thursday
afternoon and not race home.
I know everyone is kind ofthinking about getting home, but
it is well worthwhile.

SPEAKER_01 (59:32):
Exactly, exactly.
If it wasn't so crowded there,I'd offer to take people for
airplane rides too.
But it's really crowded there.
I'm planning to fly myself into,what's the name of the, there's
a little airport not too farfrom there.
I can't remember the name of thetown.
Anyway.

(59:53):
You guys, I'll come toHuntsville.
I'll take you for a ride.
You guys heard about Natalie's,right?
Sorry?
You heard about Natalie's,right?
I heard you guys talked aboutthe ride when you interviewed
Natalie, so I heard that.
You said you love my plane,Cameron.
What's the deal?

SPEAKER_03 (01:00:09):
Tim, remember how I told you I love Looking at
airplanes, seeing them flying,even hearing them, you know, the
force that a really low-flyingplane does as long as you don't
go down.
You don't actually like flying.
I don't hear other guys thatlike airplanes, but a guy that
doesn't like to fly.
You can sit at the front window,man.
That's great.

(01:00:30):
I've been in single-engineplanes

SPEAKER_02 (01:00:33):
for years.

SPEAKER_03 (01:00:34):
I have even held the yoke for 30 seconds and not
crashed the airplane.
And, you know, that was great,but it's just not my, isn't that
ironic?
I mean, it's crazy,

SPEAKER_01 (01:00:43):
right?
It's for you guys too.
I mean, come on down.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
Well, thank you all

SPEAKER_03 (01:00:51):
so much

SPEAKER_01 (01:00:53):
for 40.
I haven't licensed for 42 years.
Never crashed yet.
Not yet.

SPEAKER_03 (01:01:01):
So working on my first.
Yeah.

UNKNOWN (01:01:04):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (01:01:04):
Okay.
Well, thank you so much.
Thank you very much to ourguests.