In prior blogs about going to TechEd, and particularly the 2008 one in Berlin, I've written about how I'm physically getting ready. Here is more background on the network motivators and personal goals (beyond traveling and arriving home in one piece).
Goals for TechEd
When I write or review a presentation, I'm often looking for around three key take-aways I expect to give or to get. Here is my short list for this trip:
- Supply Chain Management
- R/3 Upgrade
- BI-BO-BW
What is a little odd to me is that the SDN blogging space, as well as the TechEd keyword list, don't have SCM on them. No matter, I had a wonderful chat yesterday with Somnath Mannath, a fellow SAP Mentor, so I have already fulfilled part of goal #1 before even getting on the plane.
For upgrades, I'm not too worried as I we've been through upgrades before, and with input from peer ASUG companies have gone through a business case justification for going from 4.7 to whatever it's called by the time we're ready. What I want to hear about are people's experience upgrading more complex landscapes. The last upgrades we did for R/3 and for BW only had those systems online; now we have SCM which adds another dimension to the provisioning, testing and validation challenges.
For Business Objects and the Business Warehouse/Business intelligence labyrinth, we're endebted to the ASUG Business Intelligence Community, who have rolled out webcast after webcast getting experts in front of customers virtually, so we're getting our hands around the roadmap, such as it is. If you're facing this dilemma, drop me a line.
People at TechEd
The main reason I keep pushing is a community organizer is the people I meet. While I am happy to curl up with a good book, a stimulating conversation about the condition of the world is very satisfying (as long as we stay away from the topic of what countriy has the best/worst drivers; if you know me you know car culture isn't my idea of fun).
Speakers I've met and/or know
Looking at the SAP TechEd Agenda builder, you can view by speaker name. There are a lot of speakers I don't know yet; here are a few I do know (and twitter IDs):
- Georg Fischer SAP AG
- rich.heilman/blog SAP Labs
- thomas.jung/blog SAP Labs @thomas_jung
- dieter.krieger/blog SAP AG
- peter.mcnulty/blog SAP Labs
- Marc Oliver Schäfer SAP AG
- gunther.schmalzhaf/blog SAP AG
- Michaela See SAP AG
- marco.tenvaanholt/blog SAP
- https://weblogs.sdn.sap.com/pub/u/251720051 [original link is broken] [original link is broken] [original link is broken] [original link is broken] [original link is broken] [original link is broken] SAP Labs
Most of these I have met at ASUG conferences, the remainder at prior SAP TechEd events (i.e., Michaela See at TechEd in Boston).
SAP Mentors
Mark Finnern published a wiki page on Mentors going to TechEd Berlin, though there was already a column on another Wiki page showing all Mentors and which events they planned to attend. So, the next list is definitely out of synch with others
matthias.zeller2/blog. I want to reach 400 by 20-Oct-2008. Help me!
