2010 December

My 2010 Review

Posted on December 29, 2010 by Ryan Goodman

First, I wanted to wish my readership a happy and safe new year. As I wrap up 2010 and take a few days off, I wanted to take some time to reflect on some of the key themes that directly impacted my work and personal life.

Starting with personal life, I believe that I spent more time in front of my laptop screen than all other activities combined including sleep. That is a scary thought and one that I will remedy in 2011 as I try some new organizational techniques that I have been reading about. My team is getting bigger in January so that will also hopefully leave me with more time to do other things away from my computer.

Maps, Maps, and more Maps- In 2010, my #1 focus were maps for business intelligence. With 2 major releases in 2010, we added significant value to our GMaps Plugin offering and just wrapped up version 3 for early Q1 2011 release. Next year you can plan on lots of innovative mapping capabilities from Centigon Solutions.

Xcelsius Slipped- This year, we got a handful of hotfix releases from SAP BusinessObjects with no new functionality other than Windows 7 support. Hopefully the 4.0 and 4.1 release in 2011 will illustrate that SAP can in-fact develop compelling new technology from the BusinessObjects portfolio.

Mobile Exploded- We know mobility is critical to our future as consumers and will play an important role in Business Intelligence. Roambi has clearly demonstrated their thought leadership in this area so I look forward to personally using and promoting this technology in 2011, while investing more of my time developing our own mobile capabilities.

Adobe Flash Black Eye- The Adobe Flash drama continued as a delayed Flash Player 10.1 finally made its way onto Android devices. I believe that 2011 is the make it or break it year for Adobe and Flash as we get closer to realizing the potential of HTML5.

Thanks again to everyone for an amazing 2010, and I look forward to writing and continuing to push the envelope in 2011!

Original post blogged on b2evolution.

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Google Charts Generator with Xcelsius

Posted on December 27, 2010 by Ryan Goodman

One of the technologies that I discovered earlier this year is Google Charts. The API is brilliant allowing web developers to have a free charting framework at their disposal without a lot of work.

I used Google Charts in an older GMaps Plugin sales demo where I nested Google Charts inside of a map Info Window. I started down the path developing a simple Xcelsius model for generating the URL syntax. I stopped this process when I showed this to my development team who advised that this goes against all of the work we have done to lock down GMaps Plugin to meet the strictest security standards.

While we have made a conscious decision not to formally promote Google Charts for use with GMaps Plugin, I wanted to share the work I did through my blog. I advise that you review the Google Charts API docs and investigate if your corporate security policies will allow you to use this technologies. If so, you can couple this with GMaps Plugin or any other HTML compliant framework.

Download Source Files

This example provides a working example of the Google map, a URL that you can plug and play into the Google Map label, or just the chart URL by itself. I also provided the source files for the tool itself in case if you are interested in learning how I put this together.

Original post blogged on b2evolution.

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Posted in Creative Workarounds, Other | 20 Comments

Walking a Fine Line Between Information and a Sales Pitch

Posted on December 13, 2010 by Ryan Goodman

This week I received the qualitative feedback from my recent presentation at the ASUG BOBJ conference. I have been fortunate to present for the last 4 years to a packed crowd of individuals interested in learning about various Xcelsius topics. This year I chose to present about GMaps Plugin, but took a careful approach to ensure I provided good information rather than a product plug. 90% of the comments were positive but I wanted to pick out a few of the negative ones to get some feedback.

 Should have been clearer that this was a specific 3rd party tool. That it was about a 3rd party tool that had to be purchased was disappointing
 Demo can be improved to show better way.
 Demo time is especially interesting to see how things are built. Would be nice if example was more relevant

As an attendee myself, I hate sitting in a sales pitches so I spent my time explaining how and why maps are important in BI, outlined the available technologies to fill in the gaps, and illustrated how I have approached the problem with GMaps Plugin. Since I am an Xcelsius end user, I attempt to outline content that I would want to know as a developer and not as a purchaser.

My rules of thumb for presenting:
No pricing or licensing talk
No value proposition slides
Explain how the technology works
Live demonstration (no slideware)
Provide real world use cases
Inform audience of something they didn’t know before attending
Only discuss features that exists in current product

I am curious from my readers, many whom are Xcelsius developers and customers, how do you differentiate between an informative presentation and a sales pitch? Do I need to add more rules to consider for my presentations?

The other portion area that I am re-evaluating is my approach to product demonstrations… I do live product demonstrations on stage to illustrate exactly how to use the solution. With multiple negative remarks on my earthquake tracker demo is there a specific kind of demo that audiences find more relevant to address a wide range of industries and lines of business with 10 minutes? I know that I personally hate sitting through generic “Sales” or “Finance” demos because they tell the same story. What do you think?

Original post blogged on b2evolution.

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