What you missed at the #Vision2015 TM1 JAM!

#Vision2015  just wrapped up last week, and as usual, provided a great opportunity for TM1 customers and business partners to interact with IBM's TM1 product management and development teams.  As a product manager, this week is one of the most demanding and most rewarding weeks of the year.  It is the culmination of months of planning, presentation preparation, and hands-on lab development.  Our conferences are a great opportunity for us to gather direct feedback from customers on both the successes and challenges they're experiencing with TM1.

We kicked off the week on Sunday afternoon with the TM1 customer "JAM".  This session was formerly referred to as a "Customer Advisory Board" or CAB, but the name recently changed (last year, I think?)   We had great attendance with over 100 customers kicking off Vision by meeting with us to learn about and discuss the latest TM1 topics.

We kicked off this year's JAM with a bit of fun, in the form of a pseudo-game show, TM1 Family Feud:

Prior to the conference we asked our customers to fill out a brief survey and used the results of the surveys as the source of our Family Feud questions.

The first question for our contestants was "For what type of business application does your company primarily utilize TM1?" And the survey said:

Round two, "Name the Top Capabilities/Features of TM1." The survey said:

Round three, "I can't believe after all these years, Applix / Cognos / IBM has never enhanced TM1 with this feature." T survey said:

Of course, we didn't play the entire time : )  Dave Corbett delivered the TM1 road map, and provided attendees with a detailed look at all the great work underway, and highlighted the future direction of our product.

We ended the JAM with breakout sessions for various topics including The Future of TM1 Model Development, TM1 Cloud, and The Conversion from Perspectives to CAFE.  These sessions are extremely valuable to the product management team, as we're able to glean all sorts of feedback directly from multiple customers simultaneously.

And the grand finale of the TM1 JAM was customer presentations, modeled after the show Shark Tank.  Two teams presented their proposals, hoping to gain favor with the "sharks" and ensure their idea is incorporated in a future release of TM1.

The first team, led by Mark Woell of MDC Holdings, proposed a TM1 Usage Tracker, that would allow TM1 administrators to manage what end users are doing, provide info on user licenses by usage, and allow them track their own activities and changes.

The second team, let by Matt Hopkins of Applied Analytics, identified the "inability to easily synchronize product and test environments and other TI-based processes in an intuitive, documented and controlled way" as their primary opportunity.  Their proposal:

After a very close vote by the "Sharks" (our TM1 JAM attendees) chose the second team's proposal, and as a product management team,  we're now on the hook for delivering these capabilities! <GULP!>

As you can probably tell, the TM1 JAM was the highlight of Vision 2015 for many who attended.  We hope to see you at our next TM1 JAM in October, on Sunday, October 25.  Are you ready to JAM with us at Insight? Register for Insight now!