If I had gone for the sole purpose of attending breakout sessions with Crystal Reports content (I didn't), I would have been sorely disappointed. That being said, I did attend some sessions I found valuable.
Please note,however, that for attendees like Ido, Brian, Bruce and myself, we are longtime experts with the tool and there wouldn't be that much at any conference or user group that we could glean from a technical perspective (in general - I always say I learn new things everyday from forums like this).
Overall, there was less of a BOBJ bias than in previous years. I suppose this is due to the fact that Enterprise is the web-based platform for all BOBJ products from this point forward. There is still, however, a very heavy bias towards large clients than small clients. The conference did include ~30% more Crystal Content than last year, but it could have been improved in the following ways:
1) Identify the technical level of the sessions in both the mini and full-sized agendas. This would have helped tremendously, since most technical sessions seemed to be for novice - to - intermediate level attendees.
2) Identify whether the content was specific to Crystal or Business Objects software. There were many sessions that looked interesting, based upon their descriptions, but didn't actually apply to Crystal attendees.
3) Business Objects should more closely audit the content of the sessions so that they actually resemble the descriptions. The worst offender I attended (for about 10 minutes) was something called 'How do I do that in Enterprise XI). The session was basically a remedial breakdown of CR features (paramters, dynamic parameters, etc...) without actually addressing 'How to' like issues indicated by the description of the session. I know Ido walked out of this one, too, as did several other expert-level attendees.
What were other things that I felt could have enhanced the conference?
1) Hold industry-specific and product-specific breakout sessions for the purpose of networking. It would have been great, for example, if there were Healthcare Industry or Enterprise-specific networking breakout sessions with specifically scheduled times. I was able to network, of course, but typically it was only by accident as I overheard other conversations or questions posed during breakout sessions. Networking, in my opinion, is one of the best reasons to attend a conference like this.
2) It's not over until it's over. As silly as this sounds, the quality of the food declined day-by-day until we were given sack-lunches on the last day. Additionally, there should be drinks (coffee, tea, water, etc...) available all day, not just at certain times.
3) Make it easier for small vendors, especially education partners, to attend. I didn't see a single primarily education partner that I recognized from previous conferences (either CDUGNA or BOBJ). All of the vendors appeared to be primarly technical parters from larger companies.
4) Swag - seriously. Once again, as silly as this sounds, most attendees look forward to getting chintzy little freebies at vendor fairs and conferences. I remember bringing home stess-reliever squishies, calculators, pens, balls, etc... from previous conferences. This year, there was virtually no swag, however, there were at least five raffles for iPods (proving the dominance of that entertainment platform)). Granted, this is up to the vendors, not BOBJ. I do have the same beef with BOBJ, however. Two years ago, in Scottsdale, every recipient received a great, high-quality convertible (messenger bag to backpack) laptop backpack with embroidered logos from the major fair partners. I still use this bag today, because it is that good. Last year, BOBJ gave out 128MB pen drives. This year? Nothing (unless you count the sucky canvas bag, which they also gave out last year)...
~Kurt
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