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JimSpath
Active Contributor
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Last year's SAP TechEd was my first foray to Las Vegas, and hopefully my last.  As they say in the airline industry, you have a lot of choices. There are several reasons I'll miss seeing a lot of friends in Nevada, mainly my personal choice, but also driven by economic factors that I'm sure many in other companies are facing.  ASUG and SAP have worked on plans to deliver content virtually, as well as locally, and we'll continue finding ways to keep peoples travel expenses manageable.

I was also going to report a month or so ago about the SAP Tech Tour that stopped by Maryland to visit our local chapter.  However, none of the attendees who went to the full session have given me anything to share other than a few photographs, so that blog will stay in the draft column a bit longer.  Perhaps at the end of this year I'll simply delete the outline I started.

I'm working with marilyn.pratt/blog on a ideas for Community Day (my virtual contribution), including some environmental awareness promotions.  You might be thinking, what's with SAP an the environment?  There is a Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability Sustainability & CSR, and a blog category, and a wiki, although the traffic to them makes me think they aren't there sometimes (12 threads?!?).  I offered *free* reusable Going to Sapphire / ASUG 08 in Orlando?  Want a cool reusable water bottle? of Sapphire/ASUG, and got fewer responses than I expected.

In Las Vegas, which as you probably know, is a manufactured city of gigantic proportions, water is delivered in several ways.  As you likely will fly in, keep a look out for the reservoirs that supply drinking water and electricity, such as Mead Reservoir and Powell Reservoir.  I've been reading the late Colin Fletcher's book "River: One Man's Journey Down the Colorado, Source to Sea" about his solo raft trip on a raft (thousands of miles) and it makes me sad to think about the lost treasures beneath those sinking artificial bodies of water.  For a more sobering analysis, read "Lake Mead Could Be Dry by 2021" by researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego.

Though I'm skipping the desert, I will be in Nashville in September, at an ASUG conference, talking about our SCM project, how we used QuickSizer, and meeting a diverse set of people.  Then Kathy and I have a very short vacation to the Smoky Mountains in East Tennessee.  My slides are due on 12-Aug; we have a first rehearsal today and I need to get cracking on final polish and continuity.

On August 18th, I'll be hosting an ASUG webcast previewing the fall events, and will be joined by ASUG volunteers going to TechEd, several of whom are SAP Mentors.  If you are an ASUG member, go to our site to register. 

After Las Vegas, SAP TechEd will be in Berlin Germany.  Although travel is challenging this year, I'm digging into my own pocket for part of the expenses and expect to take my first trip to Germany,  Time to start working on that list of people to meet, such as the other SAP Mentors I've chatted with electronically and on conference calls. 

Auf Wiedersehen? (did I say that right?)