Your summary is comparable to my experience, especially the sub-zero Roman rooms!
I took the BPM class on Sunday morning, and my teeth were chattering, no joke.
I also suffered a mild heart attack when the confetti burst from the ceiling for the guy who came in to push "Number 9"
Would have loved to have print outs for many of the labs, so that I could write notes that didn't involve first copying what the power point presentation said, in order for the note to have any reference or meaning when I reviewed it a week later!
I am very interested in version 9, though not jumping on it immediately. We are looking to set up our test labs in Q2, and if all looks well, live by end of 2009.
The two people (man and woman) who gave a set of classes starting with "Fundamentals of..." could have used much longer (at least 2 hour) presentations. Way too much great information and no time to actually explore or even remember much of it. I have this page of cryptic MRP and Scheduling notes to myself that don't mean much to me now, a week
All in all, the trip was worth it.
From: Todd Caughey <caugheyt@...>
To: "vantage@yahoogroups.com" <vantage@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, October 29, 2008 9:56:59 AM
Subject: RE: [Vantage] Anyone go to Perspectives 2008 ?
Yes. Actually the presentations I got were on a jump drive and on the last day I had heard that 1/3 of them were corrupt and would have to be replaced. Mine seems to work OK when I tried it this morning. I really doubt they will get posted on EpicWeb or even the EUG site because they are a benefit of attending (and paying to attend) the conference. The trouble I have with the electronic media form (rather than printed) is all the "good stuff" that is said between the bullet points. The CDs were bad enough but the jump drive is just too darned small to write notes on. ;)
There was actually less of the rah-rah corporate promotion, stock pumping, feel good sort of thing than past years. There was a short hand-off from George Klaus to Tom Kelly as CEO and the usual self congratulation for support survey scores but the main focus was on the future merging of the products into Epicor 9. Basically Vantage/Vista renamed (with some interesting financial updates from iScala) and a migration path to it from the other products. There was some promotion of the technology leadership represented in Epicor 9 but from what I saw it is probably legitimately well ahead of other products. The web client interface looked very interesting.
It's funny but after several years of attending 8.x sessions and preparing to eventually migrate it is finally starting to sink in and the sessions this year seemed very much more relevant to things I am doing. Perhaps finally having a test server running 8.03.4xx helps. The Sunday mini-education sessions (extra $$) were worth every cent (Service Connect & BAQ for Reports). EUG had a lot more "user presented" sessions with some real-world tips and tricks so it was not all Epicor driven. I was still dismayed though that in the migration sessions the emphasis was still on "hire Epicor consultants" rather than on providing tools for self migration. Making the upgrade process so daunting that you have to hire their consultants to accomplish it is a subterfuge for charging for an upgrade that should be covered by the maintenance payments.
There was a pretty good Vantage Forum where the Epicor people got a good earful of feedback. Also an EUG Vantage session where the Vantage Leadership Council got exposed and explained to quite a few attendees. I got to meet several Yahoo Group people in person for the first time which was nice.
Downsides & Disappointments: Some of the rooms were very cold...especially Roman III which I started calling the "meat locker". Also, the new expansion at Caesars with the Octavius Tower now blocks most sunlight from the pool area...especially with low sun angle in October....so my wife was not too pleased about that. Then again at least it did not rain the whole time and the temps were perfect (outside anyway).
All in all it was very worthwhile and definitely the best education bang for the buck there is.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
I took the BPM class on Sunday morning, and my teeth were chattering, no joke.
I also suffered a mild heart attack when the confetti burst from the ceiling for the guy who came in to push "Number 9"
Would have loved to have print outs for many of the labs, so that I could write notes that didn't involve first copying what the power point presentation said, in order for the note to have any reference or meaning when I reviewed it a week later!
I am very interested in version 9, though not jumping on it immediately. We are looking to set up our test labs in Q2, and if all looks well, live by end of 2009.
The two people (man and woman) who gave a set of classes starting with "Fundamentals of..." could have used much longer (at least 2 hour) presentations. Way too much great information and no time to actually explore or even remember much of it. I have this page of cryptic MRP and Scheduling notes to myself that don't mean much to me now, a week
All in all, the trip was worth it.
From: Todd Caughey <caugheyt@...>
To: "vantage@yahoogroups.com" <vantage@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, October 29, 2008 9:56:59 AM
Subject: RE: [Vantage] Anyone go to Perspectives 2008 ?
Yes. Actually the presentations I got were on a jump drive and on the last day I had heard that 1/3 of them were corrupt and would have to be replaced. Mine seems to work OK when I tried it this morning. I really doubt they will get posted on EpicWeb or even the EUG site because they are a benefit of attending (and paying to attend) the conference. The trouble I have with the electronic media form (rather than printed) is all the "good stuff" that is said between the bullet points. The CDs were bad enough but the jump drive is just too darned small to write notes on. ;)
There was actually less of the rah-rah corporate promotion, stock pumping, feel good sort of thing than past years. There was a short hand-off from George Klaus to Tom Kelly as CEO and the usual self congratulation for support survey scores but the main focus was on the future merging of the products into Epicor 9. Basically Vantage/Vista renamed (with some interesting financial updates from iScala) and a migration path to it from the other products. There was some promotion of the technology leadership represented in Epicor 9 but from what I saw it is probably legitimately well ahead of other products. The web client interface looked very interesting.
It's funny but after several years of attending 8.x sessions and preparing to eventually migrate it is finally starting to sink in and the sessions this year seemed very much more relevant to things I am doing. Perhaps finally having a test server running 8.03.4xx helps. The Sunday mini-education sessions (extra $$) were worth every cent (Service Connect & BAQ for Reports). EUG had a lot more "user presented" sessions with some real-world tips and tricks so it was not all Epicor driven. I was still dismayed though that in the migration sessions the emphasis was still on "hire Epicor consultants" rather than on providing tools for self migration. Making the upgrade process so daunting that you have to hire their consultants to accomplish it is a subterfuge for charging for an upgrade that should be covered by the maintenance payments.
There was a pretty good Vantage Forum where the Epicor people got a good earful of feedback. Also an EUG Vantage session where the Vantage Leadership Council got exposed and explained to quite a few attendees. I got to meet several Yahoo Group people in person for the first time which was nice.
Downsides & Disappointments: Some of the rooms were very cold...especially Roman III which I started calling the "meat locker". Also, the new expansion at Caesars with the Octavius Tower now blocks most sunlight from the pool area...especially with low sun angle in October....so my wife was not too pleased about that. Then again at least it did not rain the whole time and the temps were perfect (outside anyway).
All in all it was very worthwhile and definitely the best education bang for the buck there is.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]