| Finally! The concept of ESOA is embedded into the very root of my brain and this all only thanks to the SAP TechEd 2007 in Munich. Before I let you know how did that eventually happend some quick intro words for those of you that haven't been there (definetly you missed quite a lot). So the SAP TechEd was broken down into 3 days + one day for registration and check-in. Well thank God that we went there on that extra day...why? well a bit later:)
So those remaining 3 days were quite well organised with fixed events from SAP (the topic of this blog) and events that each participant can choose from (Hands on, lectures, useability tests, certifications and so on). All nicely packed into the TechEd website, where you convinietnly can login with your badge id and register yourself for practically anything...well just practically. Now let me start the story... So as I wanted to take the most of TechEd back home with me, I think I registered to all possible Hands On Sessions that were not overlapping with each other and concequently had like 20 minutes of free time a day, which was occupied by checking mail, getting something to eat and eventually explaining to some other colleagues how to get from hall C1 to C2 without getting lost. Well no easy task you would say...but...let me skip that part... I printed my list of sessions. Happily stuck it somewhere in my laptop bag and on Tuesday evening me and a colleague of mine were on our way to Munich. Well never been there till this event, but I had a Navi-System so should have been no problem. Yeah right, shouldn't have been, but it was... Since the new congress center in Munich is probably rather new and my Navi-System rather old I couldn't manage to get a track on the location where we had to drive to, but that was very quickly corrected by calling the Congress Center hotline, where a very charmful voice instructed us: - Just drive to "An der Point". Well who would have thought that it could have been so simple. Anyway the Check-in times were from 5 to 8 P.M. and at 7:15 P.M. we entered a tremendous traffic jam even for a city like Munich. No matter all the crazy maneouvers that I tried to pull out, we ended up at 7:50 P.M. right infront of the Congress Center Ground. Check-in was still open, rather empty, no queue, we checked in and enjoyed a beer or two at the reception. Good job I would say. Back to the hotel room and the morning comes... Back at Congress Center Ground for the first event of the day - The Keynote. As I mentioned earlier - thank God we were there for the check-in on the day before. There were hundreds of people waiting to check-in and I'm sure some of them didn't made it to the keynote in time. Those that did were very excited and there was a reason why. They all hoped to really understand what ESOA is all about and what interesting info would eventually come up on the TechEd 2007 in Munich. So Henning Kagermann steps on the stage and get a decent applause. Oh i almost forgot, just before he got on stage, there was a really cool ESOA animation running on the screen. Well respect to the one that created it. Great idea, great realization. So Henning did his job, impressed everybody in the hall and handed it over to Klaus Kreplin, who unfortunately didn't have a day that day. First he presented us with the new Development Environment that is so small that it fits on a 700 GB CD?? Heheh now ain't that cool:) Then probably somebody told him something on the earphone that there is no such thing and he corrected himself by changing to the 700 MB CD, well so far so good, but then he just decided to ignore all that he heard before and concluded: - Well I always mix those MB and GB, and actually in that case it should have been a 700 GB CD:) Ok I definetely want it, our IT too:)
After the hype around all that was gone he called on stage someone ot help him get a demo running, which was supposed to be live, but the guy was sometimes a bit too slow with the mouse or the video recording was a bit too fast and he never managed to sync it so that at least it looks half way real (live). Well in any case it wasn't live, but then suddenly on one refresh of a Web Dynpro application shown on the screen - BAAAM! Some pretty RED and pretty BIG exception popped up, maked everyone laugh and laughing is good, so...the logical outcome was that exceptions are good too:) Bless Klaus for making us see that:) Next SAP Event on the list was the DEMO JAM. This was one hell of a show. Participants had to show there cool new inveted solutions in 6 munites and the crowd gets to decide who wins. Well I tell you, although I had a good backup of some beers my voice was gone at the end.....and the widget plugin for NetWeaver Developer Studio won...hehe although I think the Flex renderer for Web Dynpro was way cooler:)
The evening was over...back to bed and the morning comes... No SAP Events in the morning, but one big one in the evening, speaking of the SAP TechEd Evening Event. Starts at 7 PM, I was there at 6.30:) No doubt very well organised and decorations were also very neat. Additionally the fun factor was enchanced by two remotely controlled race areas - one for boats and one for cars that were always occupied and after an hour almost empty, because the batteries were empty. Well as one of the girls overseeing the whole thing said: - Who would have though that men are such children.... Hmmm.
The hall started to fill slowly up and the event was about to begin. At its very end I though to myself. Well we didn't get a live performance from the Goo Goo Dolls (as it was in the US TechEd), nor did we get Go Go Girls, but we had a very good Go Go Band and a hell of a good soul singer that made the night an unforgetable one. The event ended around 00:00 and we were about to leave, when we heard that there is an SAP After Party in Munich. Where was it? Well of course P1. I never heard of it before, but obviously it seemed to be the cream of the night scene in Munich. So we picked some SAP colleagues and were on our way to P1, P2, P3....well whatever:)
So there we were staying at the entrance of the "famous" P1, which to me from the outside, looked like an average mid-age country bar...the only thing missing were the horses outside. At the entrance we were very "politely" welcomed by two massive guards, maybe twice as high as I am *1.83 and for sure 3 times as wide... Our chances were really low, I mean 5 men go to a club? So the guard spoke to us: - Do you have reservations? Ahmmm...we were like...no. And just before he opened his mouth to send us away. One colleague of us was faster and said: - But we're from SAP. Suddenly the guard lost his grim face, which changed to a light smile and gently asked us to come in. WOW....I'm impressed. SAP YOU KNOW ME:))
Inside the interior was also nothing special. The whole exclusiveness of that place was attached to its prices and the people that visit it. And I agree that it's most important with who do you go somewhere, rather than where do you go.
Taxi -> back to the room -> sleep and the next morning comes... The third day was kind of relaxed, maybe because all of the people were a bit tired from the party on the day before, but never-the-less also very informative, when speaking of the Hands On Sessions that I visited. The time was 16:30 and closing time was announced. Goodbye TechEd. Goodbye Munich. It was nice. It was informative and it was entertaining. I think I'll do it again:) P.S. A very short notice on how I eventually anticipated the concept of ESOA with the TechEd itself. So if you think of the TechEd as a repository of people that give sessions. This would be then our Enterprise Service Repository. Each of those presenters were binded to more than one session and even giving some sessions twice. So reusability and flexibility is present, we have a repository...well welcome to SAP ESOA....Enjoy:) | |
