BME HE Qlik User Conference Edinburgh 16-17 May 2019
Edinburgh bathed in sunshine! Who’d believe it?
Yet this is what greeted the 45 delegates from 20 universities who attended the BME HE Qlik Conference at The Place hotel, ideally situated in Edinburgh’s New Town. Being on home soil, the event was well-supported by Scottish universities, yet we also welcomed delegates from as far south as Southampton.
Following on from the format first trialled in Barcelona, we held the conference over two days, with attendees meeting for a leisurely lunch on the Thursday. After, it was down to business and we were treated to the first of many impressive presentations. Having fortified our minds, we retreated to the hotel terrace for an hour of catching up with old acquaintances and meeting new friends. An informative, enjoyable and somewhat claustrophobic walking tour of Edinburgh and its notorious Blair Street underground vaults had been organised and was led by the highly-regarded Mercat Tours. Our guide, Nicky, was a font of encyclopaedic knowledge and we returned enlightened (and hungry) to a BBQ on the terrace.
On Friday morning, we had the pleasure of a thought-provoking talk from our keynote speaker, Andy Youell. As a vastly experienced data professional who has been at the leading edge of data developments in UK HE data for over 25 years, Andy’s presentation on ‘Data, data everywhere’ was a timely reminder of the challenges faced and opportunities offered by an ever-evolving data landscape. His beautifully poetic analogy to Coleridge’s ‘Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ was an intellectual high point!
Peter Black from the University of Strathclyde was voted as the ‘Most Beneficial’ presentation of the ten sessions that were delivered over the 2 days. Peter’s message was around implementing Qlikview as a business improvement service. More specifically around realising the long-term, transformative value of leveraging analytics within the admissions cycle.
It was also good to see more and more Qlik Sense content coming into the presentations. The University of St Andrews delivered a presentation around getting started with Qlik Sense and BME provided a session about the ease of converting Qlikview apps into Qlik Sense apps and the Qlik Dual Use licensing model.
The consensus was that the quality and relevance of all the presentations was extremely high this year. It proved, yet again, that the conference is an excellent forum to share best practice, create healthy discussion and explore ways to utilise all that Qlik can offer. You can have a closer look at the sessions delivered on the agenda below.
Many delegates were already discussing where BME intend to host the 20th BME HE Qlik Conference; many implausible yet wonderfully exotic destinations were proffered. Let’s see what happens!
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Download full detailed conference agenda
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