Yr. Obt. Svt. has been to many conferences for long time, far longer than I care to contemplate, and although I enjoy them, I’ve become more demanding. Better content, better focus, better presentations, and oh yeah better information which I suppose is better content.
Wave 2022 was the first technical OneStream conference. There is an element of technical content at Splash, but a geek fest is not its purpose. What I want, what we Happy Few OneStream Implementors need, is the deep technical concept that makes our life easier, solves business problems, and lets us do cool stuff along the way.
Blogs are an excellent source of technical information (ahem), OneCommunity is as well, but surely at the apogee of technical knowledge, sits OneStream. Wave promises (or promised) to be that technical conference. Is it?
It is.
I cannot replicate the experience of being at Wave, but I can give you a feel and some of the slides. Not many, as I’d like to not incur the (moderately understandable) Wrath of OneStream, but enough to give you a flavor.
A note about what I’m going to share: this is all safe harbored. What does that mean? Here’s OneStream’s version:
How is that? Your non-lawyer author takes this to mean: it may happen, we might like it to happen, it also may not happen – who can tell, we may change our mind, who knows when any of this will happen, don’t count on when it might happen, etc. It’s not a fairy tale, but OneStream will not be pinned down by anything they (and I suppose me) say. Such is the nature of software. Seriously, don’t bet your company’s future on what you read. You Have Been Warned.
Day 0
Just before the keynote, we have a pretty packed room:
That’s a lot of people/geeks.
Here is Tom Shea getting his geek (are you picking up the theme?) on at the keynote.
Numbers, Numbers, Numbers
Are there more people here than 2022? Yup. The number I heard but cannot substantiate is over 600 attendees up from 200 last year. Think about that – that’s a lot of geeks in one location and a lot of growth. OneStream is to be congratulated.
More content? Yes. Perhaps we should congratulate them again?
Workspaces, Workspaces, Workspaces
Browser UX or OMG I Could Have a Mac Again
BrowserUX is not a complete (yet, soon, maybe, never?) replacement for the OS client for presentation, but OMG, content can now be consumed on Macintosh. Awesome. Yeah, yeah, browsers on Windoze, but iOS….
Btw, if your goal is to wind up your coworkers, ask them why they aren’t using a Unix OS, like, erm, Macintosh. And, erm, Microsoft on its cloud platform. Having enraged or at least annoyed most of your coworkers, if you’d like to salvage a few work relationships, sidle up to the devs in your world and extoll the advantages of a real OS. As it happens, OneStream is moving (soon, maybe, never?, go read that Safe Harbor statement) their cloud instances to a Linux on Azure platform. I should note that I’ve worked with CP/M, IBM DOS, MS DOS, Compaq DOS (yes, there were slightly incompatible versions of DOS – lots of them, although Compaq could run MS DOS), OS/2, Windows 2.0, 3.1, 95, 98, 7, 10, 11, Windows NT 3.5, 3.51, 4, Windows 2000, 2005, 2008, 2012, and who knows what else. I’ve been on Macs since…I’m not going to admit it but almost as long and I will note that my first was a Fat Mac. I don’t know if I’ve learnt anything at all in my so-called career – many would say look at the evidence and state not a whit – but I have at least become incredibly opinionated along the way. And, unusually, perhaps right on this subject.
That enormous and deeply satisfying rant aside, the fact that OneStream are moving to a multiplatform world is exciting stuff. There’s not a thing wrong with Microsoft and many advantages, but choice, even of a limited nature is a great not good thing.
Aw Com’on, Do You Really Expect Me to Regurgitate the Whole Conference?
There was more, much more, but I’m not going to, as I noted before, get OneStream riled up by stealing their thunder and really you ought to be here if you want to hear the geeky gory detail.
Roadmap.
Go have a read of the Safe Harbor bit before you read the below. I’ll wait. Good, I know you, Gentle Reader, understand the speculative/hopeful/unknown nature of the next few slides.
Expanding Solutions
I (ahem) wrote an article on software ecosystems and their importance. OneStream has one, and it’s expanding. It is important that the platform is now open yet curated – that’s what real software companies do or at least ones that want to get to the next level of maturity and value to customers. Exciting and important stuff.
Want proof? Look at the numbers:
I’m somehow – perhaps on the part of my employer, foolishly – on a product team and understand some of the effort that goes into developing a product for PartnerPlace on both the OneStream and partner side. It’s not for the faint of heart but the promise is immense.
AI Because Heaven Knows There’s Not a Lot of Natural Intelligence on This Planet
No, not a dig at anyone, just an observation that humans are fallible and become less so with tools wielded, erm, intelligently. These tools (fire, agriculture, multidimensional modelling) have become more sophisticated over time. Those who do not embrace them are at a disadvantage, perhaps irrecoverably so. AI has come to EPM/CPM and history suggests that we all explore, understand, and finally exploit its power.
Also, have you had a looky-loo at the insanity on this Pale Blue Dot and I mean all of humanity? Anything, anything at all that improves human decision making is to be embraced because look at how we’re doing as a race. CPM is somewhat less universal in impact but it is hard, and the problems it tries to solve are hard and haven’t appeared to get easier with time. AI in OneStream is one of those improving tools and so we are compelled to use it.
I will not pretend that I know much of anything more about AI although I do follow Reddit’s ChatGPT forum.
It’s here:
I love the reference to hallucinations. There are fascinating/scary anecdotes around it, and I’m glad to hear that OneStream understands and is managing the risk:
I’ll leave AI with this:
More, Much More
In no particular order, more infrastructure detail than any reasonable person might imagine, .Net 6, new data storage models (ooooooh), solution expansion, new ways of debugging, etc., etc., etc. If you want more, well, I’d ask OneStream.
The People
Knowledge is great, but conferences are also all about meeting and talking to your peers. Here are my BDA comrades in arms.
One of my dearest and longest friends (I’ve know him since 7th grade), recently noted that I have Resting Cameron Face. Ouch. And yet here it is:
Everyone else is smiling. Why not me? I plead the exhaustion of a conference that started on the very first day. I am working on four hours of sleep.
I’ll have another post on the conference before it’s all over, so check back tomorrow.
Be seeing you.
