Tuesday morning, I am up early again. Today I co-present '10 Tips for Debugging Workflow' with Ginger Gatling (did you know I am a big fan of Ginger's?). Alas, I had to miss a 'Women in Technology' breakfast because of the timing. I want my coffee and I want to get across the street to the convention center in time to dry off. Plus, I have copies of 'Practical Workflow for SAP (v2)' as a giveaway for anyone who stays to the end of a WF/BPM SIG Session. All attendees had to do was drop their card into a bag, and they stood a chance of taking home this book - which I had the honor of making minor contributions to.
So off to the OCCC with my backpack laden with books. Heavy reading. Our session begins at 8:00 and Ginger and I are a little skeptical that we will have many attendees. But sure enough, people are there, even a little early! The room seems to be filling nicely, so off we go.
One thing I love about doing a presentation (and I am not being sarcastic here) is that if the material is something I feel strongly about, and know well, I am not nervous at all! I really enjoy when people in the audience react, or ask questions. It shows me they are engaged too.
I think the presentation went well. I know that someone was very happy to 'win' the book. I think it was Mark Piersol, ofTexas State University.
Next up, a meeting with Doug Hay, of Mastering SAP Technologies. You may know that this event, held in February of this year, was a huge success - in part due to the SAP Mentors - Graham Robbo, Karin Tillotson, Gretchen Lindquist, Ingo Hilgefort, Tony DeThomasis, and Thomas Jung (ABAP_Freak). Also on hand was fellow ASUG'er Rao Subbarao - who heads up the Business Process Architecture group for ASUG.
Doug and I had met last year at TechEd PHX, and this was a good chance to get caught up with him, and we had a nice time in the ASUG lounge. Tables and chairs and quiet(-ish) pods away from the hustle of the vendor floor.
Another Usability Session - this time on Streamworks, which is a relatively new collaborative tool - to allow you to set up decisions, activities, agendas and share documents. I've used it previously, when it was 12Sprints - but it's always good to get an inside look at what SAP is going to do next, and provide some helpful feedback (I hope).
A meeting up with Marge Breya, executive vice president and general manager of the Solutions Group at SAP AG. You can see a clip from the Women in Technology breakfast earlier this day, courtesy of Breakfast With Marge Breya at SapphireNow.
There were a few other meetings and a presentation by Dominicus Van Asten, of Coca Cola on 'Best Practices for moving Workflow from Development to Production' and Justin Snyder of Union Pacific, on'Simplifying the Approval Process'. My ASUG colleague, Tammy Powlas, was glad to moderate these sessions.
The ASUG Volunteer reception was next, at the Peabody Hotel. Fellow BITI volunteer Gretchen Lindquist received an award, as did the ever-vigilant Jim Spath. Both these people work very hard, and not just at their day jobs. They are models of what I aspire to.
And to wrap the day off, the SAP Mentors were invited to a reception at Timpano's Chop House. It was here that the Certification 5 (or a part of them) presented a placque to Bill McDermott - as noted by Breakfast With Marge Breya at SapphireNow in his blog. I'll take the liberty of showing you a nice photo, stolen from Dennis, of Bill receiving his 'Quality' placque.
L to R: Jon Reed, Bill McDermott, Martin Gillet, and Dennis Howlett
That wrapped up a busy day. Talking with some of the folks at the reception, this was a real goose-bump moment. The Certification 5 has worked very hard to bring their real-world experience into a discussion of what Certification really means, and they were heard. Pretty amazing stuff.
And the wave? Oh, we are riding the crest... Wait, is that a hurricane?
1 Comment
