After much speculation as to the date, we finally moved out of the WTC last Saturday. This was the most methodical shifting process I have ever been involved in. Well actually I just packed my stuff into a box Friday evening and unpacked it Monday morning in the new office. Well the new office is super, with great facilities which few organizations could boast of I guess. So I figure we should accordingly increase our productivity barring the fact that there is an Xbox 360 connected to a plasma TV and home theatre system in the lunch roomJ.

As for the location, it is the hub of activity with high profile offices and Crescat :) right within walking distance. At least our partners and customers don’t have to guess which road may suddenly close when they are about to reach WTC to visit us.

 

 

A few years back BI was a buzz word in Sri Lanka with solution providers excited at the prospect of selling this new concept while corporate IT managers and CTO's wanting to showcase their organization as the pioneer in cutting edge technology. Fast Forward today, are we actually delivering on what was expected or are we just being content with a few glorified MIS reports?

 

BI vendors tend to oversell the concept to the top management who buy into the fancy demos, acronyms, jargon and surface prototypes depicting digital dashboards, KPI ect.... Well in theory it’s all fine but in fact extracting this data is the biggest issue. When I say extracting it’s not about having a powerful ETL tool, it’s where you get the source data from. BI vendors tend to patch up the data (eg. From temporary worksheets or dummy databases) when developing a prototype. The outcome is a weak implementation due to the fact that the numerous sources of data required to generate the relevant BI reports are not available. This is a key issue in local organizations where data is either not captured or ambiguous. The end result is the BI solution been underutilized, not updated with new data sources and finally become obsolete due to inaccuracies and/or availability of the same information in MIS systems.

 

Customers need to understand what they actually require from BI and not just what looks good. They also need to avoid getting carried away by theories and concepts which result in highly theoretical requirement specifications being submitted to vendors.

 

Vendors need to set expectations and not overkill the potential of BI within an organization. This means understanding the limitations of the customer in regard to data sources and more importantly identifying where BI would be actually required.

 

The key to a successful BI deployment would be a sound business study which involves identifying the correct personnel who have expert knowledge in their respective area within the organization.  This is the basis for identifying where the required data resides and in what form. Based on these findings we could correctly asses the deliverables. Well the rest, will hopefully fit into provided we have the right tools and technical expertise, but thats another blog entry. J

 

 

 

And then I jump onto the Gamming Bandwagon. Enticed by our DPE who was also getting one I got myself  a xbox 360 core system. Well since I could play only one game I had to get a memory card. Actually it detects a USB storage device but dosent let me to utilize its (Crafty Devils) storage.

 

Well in my quest to become a gamer I get Manzil to get me 4 original games ( No Im not gonna crack my console) from the US. Well when  I did try them out I found out that three of of them were region coded and the other gave me a deceptive message that it needed an update patch for <360 games. So I download the patch and burned a CD. On attempting to update the console I find out that I require a hard disk for the update to install. 

 

Since I had come so far I just couldnt give up, so I go and buy a hard disk. Lo and behold the update patch gets installed BUT only 1 more game works. Well for the one month of owning a xbox 360, Iv spent over double my original budget, spent hours on xbox sites and forums trying to find a remedies while I would have clocked in only around a total of 5 hours of gaming.

 

The quest continues....

Yes we were able to pull off a very successful Tech Ed. The number of participants exceeded expectations. There were repeated queries from participants as well those who had missed out, as as to when the next event would be held. Even the foreign speakers were impressed with the organization of the Sri Lankan Tech Ed.

 

Next time its gonna be even bigger. The only problem was when the booze ran out. I told marketing that IT gusy consume a lot but he didnt belive me. Fortunately we were able to get a few more bottles in a short time. I was also wondering who scared off the Red Bull girls.

 

Hope everyone had fun !

 

Hi Guys,

 

Tech Ed is now in Sri Lanka. I'v been to Tech ED Malaysia and its a great event. It's not just about the super technical sessions, partner stalls & games but the concept itself where IT guys could meet up and have a fun. Hope to see you all there !

 

www.teched.lk