SDN Meets Labs Impressions – Walldorf
Introduction
The following are my impressions and thoughts from SDN Meets Labs Walldorf Conference:
Wow! I was speachless (that doesn’t happen often). I don’t have anything to say because I wasn’t able to attend. I guess I am little disappointed because I got up at 2:00am, local time, yesterday and logged on hoping to see some last minute information about a webcast. But unfortunetely nothing came.
Disappointed
There have been some nice weblogs that give those you didn’t attend just a little taste of what was seen. However all this really did is make the rest of us hungry for more. I thought about logging onto the chat room that was setup for the SDN Meets Labs Palo Alto Event, but even if anyone was logged on; I wouldn’t have a context to discuss what was going on.
I certainly do hope that many of the sessions were video taped and will be available online shortly. At the very least I would expect to see the session slides on SDN. But after being at Palo Alto and seeing people participate via chat and webcast, I had really hoped to do the same for the Walldorf event.
It appears that I am not the only person who is really excited about the thought of an updated ABAP editor. That alone makes me jealous of the Walldorf attendees. I wonder how and when the rest of the SDN world might get a sneak peak at such a thing?
I know that nothing can ever replace meeting face to face at an event like this. However I hope that the kind of on-line participation that was available at the Palo Alto event might start a trend among SAP conferences (I hope the people from ASUG and Tech ED are listening as well). I think it sends an important message that the organizers of the event are willing to reach out to a wider audience; one that might not be able to travel to every event. Perhaps for such events there needs to be a nominal fee for such remote access. This could help cover the costs of the access and make it fair to those who paid to attend.
Closing
In the end I want to thank everyone who did take the time to most their notes right away. I know how difficult this can be after a long day at a conference. These notes and insights are very useful to those who didn’t get to attend. In just a week and a half the big ASUG spring conference begins. Of course there will not be any webcasting of this event and you must be a ASUG attendee to view the slide presentations. I plan to blog about the experience on SDN to share with those who can’t attend. I would encourage other SDN members in attendance to do the same.
Unfortunately, it seems that streaming video has not reached the "Old World" yet. And to really highten you disappointment, it seems that very few sessions was actually video taped. Even for those of us participating, this is a big hit. Unfortunately all the BSP interesting sessions were scheduled in parallel in exactly the same slots. And they were not taped. So one had to dispatch a colleague to each room. It was raining!
But that is all the negatives in one paragraph. The rest is just absolutely excellent. The biggest aspect was meeting people (again!). Just talking to people and building that feeling of community. Organization was good, food excellent, and those presentations I attended really enjoyed. Especially having external presentations (versus SAP only) really gives different views. In the end I was forced to scribble notes for new ideas to implement (like a unit test for Web Dynpro ABAP:).
bye, brian
Yes I dropped the ball regarding the webcasting. I had email correspondence with a colleague in Walldorf and thought we are rolling, but I didn't follow through. Once I was in Walldorf, I got an out of the office for this week responds from his email. I talked to some of his colleagues, but then we were running out of time.
It hurts even more to realize that we didn't tape all the sessions 🙁 Some miscommunication happened. I knew we were taping, didn't realize that we didn't tape them all.
So there is room for improvement. I think we should have 2 weeks in between Palo Alto and Walldorf.
My apologies, would have love to read your comments on the chat session and yes I was thinking about doing it anyway too, but without video the chat is not worth it.
All the best, Mark.
Maximilian Moder took a lot pictures of the improved editor I do not know when or if he will post them. So I would just sent him an e-mail. Btw the presenter said that there will be a free upgrade available in two weeks (I suppose only the simple client side stuff like different colors in the editor, codefolding,...). But do not get too excited perhaps the presenter said 2 years 😉
regards
Thomas
two weeks was also what I've heard. But the code completion will come in another release.
Regards
Gregor