2007 Crystal Ball User Conference a Success
We are pleased to announce the completion of yet another enormously successful annual Crystal Ball User Conference (CBUC). This year's event, was held May 21-23, 2007 at the Westin Tabor Center in beautiful Denver, Colorado. The event was attended by a record 175 customers and partners from over 14 countries and 38 of the U.S. states.
> View the User Conference Press Release
Conference Overview
(click on any picture to view a larger version)
 The 2007 CBUC started Sunday evening with welcome reception of hors d'ouvres and cocktails. Monday morning opened with the keynote "Crystal Ball Applications at Johnson & Johnson," by Dr. Venky Gopalaswamy, Business Improvement Services Group Leader, Johnson & Johnson. The keynote address focused on the deployment history, successful applications, challenges, and lessons learned of Crystal Ball software at Johnson & Johnson, and covered the history of Crystal Ball software use at Johnson & Johnson.
 The remainder of the first day featured case studies in the morning and afternoon workshops. For the first time, in anticipation of the Crystal Ball Monte Carlo Awards (aka "The Monties"), Decisioneering held a morning and afternoon Monties track, where Monte finalists made short presentations describing their nominations. At the midday lunch sponsored by OptTek Systems Inc., makers of OptQuest software, Decisioneering CEO Jim Franklin presented the latest news and details on the state of the company.
 The Monday evening reception is best described as "glamorous fun." After cocktails and a plated dinner, dessert signaled the start of a lively Monties award ceremony. The audience showed appreciation and support for winners and finalists alike. The evening finished with the ever-popular Monte Carlo gambling night, where attendees had the chance to win at the tables and collect many excellent prizes, some of which had been donated by Microsoft Corporation.
 Tuesday began with "Making Logical Sense of Language," an inventive, humorous keynote by Dr. Deborah Bennett, Professor of Mathematics at New Jersey City University and author of Randomness and Logic Made Easy: How to Know When Language Deceives You. Dr. Bennett challenged the audience to rethink the way they use language to describe logical situations. Many of the attendees are likely still wondering how to solve the confounding THOG problem!
 The second day again featured morning case studies and afternoon workshops, and was followed by an open house at the Decisioneering headquarters just next door to the Westin.
On Wednesday morning, CTO Eric Wainwright and developer Moe Herbert jointly presented a few of the latest developments in Crystal Ball technology. The final half day of programming ended with a final set of case studies and workshops, the conference came to a successful close.
Papers and Workshops
Couldn't make the conference? You'll be happy to know that some of the materials are now available to the public from our Web site.
Thanks to the generosity of the conference speakers and workshop presenters, you can download all of the papers and most of the workshop PowerPoint presentations. case study presentations and additional workshop materials are not available to non-attendees.
> View the 2007 CBUC papers
> View the 2007 CBUC workshop presentations |
The 2007 Crystal Ball User Conference was held May 21-23, 2007, at the Westin Tabor Center, in beautiful Denver, Colorado.
