Engage 2008

[JayTheGeek]

This is a little off topic, my apologies.

But I want to ask if the 'Gurus' on this board will be attending Engage in Las Vegas. There are a few here that I would like to shake hands with.

I plan to attend the whole thing and I have a thick binder of material to review. (If anyone is interested) I plan for a productive few days.

Perhaps we can arrange a meeting place.

 

[dgillz]

Jay,

I'll be there and I would be glad to see your binder.

Software Sales, Training, Implementation and Support for Macola, eSynergy, and Crystal Reports

http://www.gainfocus.biz

"What version of URGENT!!! are you using?

 

[abaldwin]

I will be there also.

Andy Baldwin

"Testing is the most overlooked programming language on the books!"

Ask a great question, get a great answer. Ask a vague question, get a vague answer.
Find out how to get great answers FAQ219-2884.

 

[NEmacGuy]

I will be at the blackjack table!

 

[crystalreporting]

Yep, I'll be there too

Peter Shirley
Macola Consultant, PA and surrounding states.

http://www.srhconsulting.com

 

[stravis]

I'll be there. I'm really looking forward to the binder thing.

Scott Travis

 

[dgillz]

Blackjack sounds good to me. I will actually be there on Saturday about noon and will be looking for a sports book to watch the final 4 and have an adult beverage or 2.

Software Sales, Training, Implementation and Support for Macola, eSynergy, and Crystal Reports

http://www.gainfocus.biz

"What version of URGENT!!! are you using?

 

[JayTheGeek]

Excellent, I look forward to meeting you all.

I'm still in poker mode today, but I will be right in the thick of things starting Noon on Sunday.

Good luck at the black jack tables.

 

[abaldwin]

So, What is the general feelings with Engage this year? I want the "This is not an Exact official survey" answers.



Andy Baldwin

"Testing is the most overlooked programming language on the books!"

Ask a great question, get a great answer. Ask a vague question, get a vague answer.
Find out how to get great answers FAQ219-2884.

 

[JayTheGeek]

Hey Andy,

I have an opinion and as usual I'm not hesitant to share. But keep in mind this was my first Engage.

Accessibility to people was probably the biggest issue for me. I went with that goal and I accomplished it. Some of the Exact folks I had hoped to meet were not there, someone has to keep the company running. But the people that were there were very accessible. There are many people at Exact Software and in the customer/partner mix that I made contact with. Hopefully some of those people will remember me.

I went to Engage with a significant amount of prepared material. That material was well received and the agreed up on follow up plan is in process. Only time will tell how successful that process will be, but the initial feedback is positive.

Many of the sessions that I attended were fairly technical in nature. A few of those had a staggering amount of valuable information provided. I found the presenters to be quite knowledgeable and mostly good at communicating to a group. (That’s not always easy for us geeks!)

My only real complaint of the whole thing was the lack of hand outs for a few of the sessions. Good material really increases the retention and value realised from these sessions. I don’t like that I have to wait a couple months to get my hands on some of that material. Other conferences that I have attended provide both paper handouts at each session and a CD of the full set of handouts on the last day of the conference.

What was really interesting to me was the mix in the customer base. When you looked around the room in one of the breakfast or lunch sessions and saw the 1200 or so people, I found myself analysing who was what. So there were a little less than 1100 actual customers. About a quarter of those were Macola customers, about 275. Then my gut says maybe 60% of those were Progression; so maybe 110 Macola ES customers. Given the ‘manufacturing’ focus of the product, maybe less than half were doing ‘distribution’; say 50. Of those how many were multi-location, binned and lotted? Maybe 10 or 15.

So all of a sudden I understand how seemingly obvious bugs and flaws have gone unnoticed.

Most of us that have careers supporting technology learn to leverage the accumulated knowledge of others. That is what drew me to this bulletin board. I always ask myself ‘has someone else encountered and resolved this issue’. I am not an early adopter, so I should never be the first to deal with an issue.

Now I understand that maybe I am sitting on the bleeding edge. That conclusion made the cost of attending engage worthwhile. Oddly enough it also contributes to the value that might be unlocked from that binder of material that I brought with me.

Oh yeah, and on leveraging some of the contacts… It was good to meet you Andy. I will let you know if I have any Flex questions!

 

[dgillz]

I would disagree with Jay's numbers on the # of Macola users there versus Jobboss, Max, etc. I think that Macola users were 3/4ths of the mix and certainly at least that much of the vendor showcase.

Does anyone actually have any hard numbers on this?

Software Sales, Training, Implementation and Support for Macola, eSynergy, and Crystal Reports

http://www.gainfocus.biz

"What version of URGENT!!! are you using?

 

[JayTheGeek]

Fair enough Don, I know my numbers are rough.

Analysis of the sessions offered during Engage does support your opinion. Albeit the following is not a fair analysis of the number of attendees, but does offer insight into the product focus of the vendor: Macola sessions were 37% compared to JBoss 27% and Max 26%. Globe and Alliance shared the last 10%. (I did remove Synergy and GPS from these calculations)

There are a lot of assumptions in the numbers that I crunched - maybe more assumptions than value.

My intent was to rationalize how it is that I appear to be one of the first to unwrap a host of IM transaction problems in a binned and lotted environment. I am still chasing problems related to physical inventory counts – that should be common practice.

So what about my conclusion? Am I on the bleeding edge?

 

[kstickler]

Seems there are very few Macola sites that push the software to the max. (or to the bleeding edge as Jay stated) I feel like we are one of those sites. At least that's the feeling I get from my BP. We are usually asking them for help on a process that none of their other customers are doing.

Also, I know that our site has submitted quite a few bug requests over the last few years, mostly in Barcode, WMS, and SF. Were we simply an early adopter of these modules? I'm not sure.

I've never been to Engage, I'm not sure what I would gain from it other than confirmation that we are at the higher utilization end of the customer base. (and some time away from work!)