I decided to ask some of the most influential analytics community members who I follow regularly the following question:

What is your #1 tip for SAPPHIRE NOW & ASUG ANNUAL attendees to get the most out of the conference?.

Here are their brilliant replies:

Jamie Oswald (oswaldxxl)

“Take the time for the people. It’s very easy to get caught up in demos and educational sessions, which are great, but the most important thing you’ll take away are people you can call when you forgot what you learned at the conference.”

Jamie Oswald  LinkedIn

Diversified Semantic Layer

Mico Yuk (MicoYuk)

“Put a top 10 list of folks you have to meet and set up per meetings with as many as you can.  Tackle then first as it will take at least 1.5 days and the enjoy the rest of the conference! If not, you’ll never see them and you’ll get lost. ”

Mico Yuk on LinkedIn

BI Dashboard Formula & EverythingXcelsius.com

Tammy Powlas (tpowlas)

“The number one tip I have for attending ASUG Annual Conference for the first time is to attend/check out the ASUG customer presentations – take notes via paper or your mobile device and report it back to your company when you return.”

Tammy Powlas on LinkedIn

Gabriel Orthous (orthous)

“Pick top 10 vendors and spend some time with them.  Also engage with the community in the ASUG lounge.  Smoke cigars.”

Gabriel Orthous on LinkedIn

SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence: The Comprehensive Guide (2nd Edition)

 My Advice…

Ryan Goodman (rmgoodm)

“Plan to be everywhere 15 minutes ahead of time because it takes time to navigate from one end of the floor to the other. To help point you in the right direction, bookmark PrizeFinder on your phone so when you show up and find yourself lost on the show floor you can orient yourself and have the app point you in the right direction.”

Ryan Goodman | LinkedIn

Where to find me at  SAPPHIRE NOW

WHAT IS YOUR #1 TIP FOR SAPPHIRE NOW?

“Could not save to SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise. For more information, contact your administrator or customer service representative.”

John was directed use the “Refresh” button in the query browser. This parses the queries against the source.

When he parsed, one of the data providers was bad. In this case it was an Oracle source. John had to delete and re-create the query before it would allow him to export

Thanks for sharing the solution!

Step 1 To Building and App is Identifying a Problem before the Solution

Before you start coding, printing T-Shirts, and hiring logo designers, you need to find a legitimate problem worth solving. In my 10 day app development adventure, I had one problem…

THE PROBLEM

How can I add value to the attendee and exhibitor interaction at a trade show?

If you have ever been to a trade show, especially one like SAPPHIRE NOW + ASUG Annual Conference you know that it is sensory overload. Looking at what people do at trade shows:

• Learn
• Sit in presentations
• Drink alcohol
• Network
• Visit exhibitor booths
• Absorb a lot of marketing

While I wish I could invent an app that would cure hangovers, instead I focused on the attendee to exhibitor experience and how I could try to improve how exhibitors can reach attendees.

DEFINE SUCCESS CRITERIA:

In our case the goal for solving this problem was simply to drive more traffic to exhibitor booths, including our own. The only way to do that is to put the app in the hands of attendees, which is easier said than done.

If you want something to go viral it needs to be one of three things:

1. Very funny or entertaining

2. Stir up lots of controversy

3. Extremely useful

SOLUTION:

With a legitimate problem to be solved, now finding a solution is the next challenge. The solution has nothing to do with apps, technology, or the nuts and bolts.. Sometimes the solution is obvious but other times it is not. The solution to your problem should be simple and clear enough that you can summarize it in one or two sentences…

Knowing my solution needed to provide value to two groups of people with opposite needs (exhibitors and attendees), my solution was ultimately to give access to something that most attendees want… FREE PRIZES AND GIVEAWAYS. Exhibitors are generally happy to raffle off prizes to reel exhibitors to the booth, so the solution is provide a hook in the form of an app? The concept of “PrizeFinder” is born!

HAS SOMEONE SOLVED THE PROBLEM YET?

You have a real problem, you have a sound solution, and a million ideas of how to make it the greatest app since Angry Birds. Has someone already beaten you to the punch? “There’s an App for that” exists for a reason, meaning there are other smart individuals like yourself who are hungry to solve similar problems.

Now you need to put yourself in the shoes of someone looking for your app and hit Google thoroughly  If you find something similar to your solution, can you should ask your self:

Can you do a better job building the app?
Can you do a better job putting your app into the hands of those people you are solving the problem for?

In my case, I originally hoped there was some technology that I could plug and play for the event, but I found nothing.. Time to put my ideas on paper..

DAY 2 COMING SOON: Putting your ideas on Paper

In the next post in this series, I will talk about putting your idea on paper to assess if you should still build your app.

There are plenty of clever interview questions that invoke deep thought, put interviewees under pressure, and try to reveal someone’s ability to handle curve balls. For skilled labor, all of those questions come second to finding out what happens when the rubber meets the road.

Testing is the fastest way to weed out talent from those who will fake it until they make it. For software engineers, we found this fantastic tool to setup a simple testing program:

http://www.interviewzen.com

Within our interview process, we ask candidates to take simple engineering problems and code a solution, communicate abstract processes back to us, and interpret specialized problems that are specific to our business. The goal is not to stump them, but evaluate their approach even if they have Google at their disposal.

So far it has proven extremely useful for our team to use InterviewZen.com as a baseline to control who gets through the front door at Centigon Solutions.

What tools do you use for hiring?

Assuming I reach my original 10 day deadline this week, I will share with you my 10 steps from conception to release. Together, we will release an App into the wild and see together how it sinks or swims over the next 3 months!

In two weeks I will begin my 10 part series where I will show you some of the tricks and shortcuts transforming your app idea into a reality.