Introducing Oracle Barbie! Celebrating 10 Years!

It was ten years ago today that I mustered up the courage to press “Post” on the very first blog I’d written for Hyperion Barbie. It has been an incredible decade of learning, connecting, networking.

While Oracle announced its plan to acquire Hyperion Solutions in 2007, my journey started a few years later in 2010 – starting into a new hire role at Hallmark Cards and I was mailed a hard copy of the Essbase 6 administrator guide. I learned the ins-and-outs of a mature EPM deployment and earned experience in administration, development, and most importantly, how to serve our user base.

Moving into consulting let me spread my wings and solve new and exciting problems; and allowed me to understand that there was an entire community of Oracle users and partners that actually understood my language. I went to my first Oracle User Group conference in April 2012. It was incredible. Since then, I’ve spoken at over 20 Oracle conferences.

The Oracle community is its lifeblood; where users, product development, partners, and decision makers come together to talk about the real problems the software is solving. And the community itself thrives on sharing this information freely. I have learned so much from listening to conference sessions and webinars, reading blog posts and tweets (still refusing to call it ‘X’), and platforms like OTN and Cloud Customer Connect.

I (semi-reluctantly) started Hyperion Barbie in 2014 without knowing where it would take me – I was in my mid 20’s and didn’t think anyone would want to read what I had to say. Since then, if I had a $1 for every time I was recognized as Hyperion Barbie in a meeting with a prospective customer, or at a conference, or on a webinar, I’d probably have at least $50 bucks! Which is mind blowing that a hot pink blog about Oracle MDM and integration has that kind of reach.

Oracle started its department from Hyperion with the introduction of PBCS in 2014 – back when most of the customers were still implementing on-premises – and is the same year I started this blog. At the time, Oracle’s Hyperion was still the most popular and preferred software; only new adopters were gambling on the cloud. A decade later, I find myself explaining to most of my clients that “Hyperion” was “the old word for Oracle EPM”. Which brings me to today’s post.

It’s time for me to retire the “Hyperion” moniker and enter my “Oracle” era. Today I rebrand as Oracle Barbie – giving me more freedom to explore other Oracle products outside of traditional EPM and celebrating ten years of giving back to the Oracle community.

Thank you for joining me and being a part of my community! Cheers to another 10 years! Below are some of my favorite photos from Oracle events over the years.

Oracle Open World 2015 San Francisco