If you're a veteran of SAP TechEd conferences, you know that the above icon can be a sign of a hard fought victory to stake your place in a virtual line for the session "of your dreams."
| Shock: @thomas_jung @ewH @RichHeilman your early 4 hour hands on is full already 2:03 PM Sep 14th via Echofon |
I will admit (pun intended) that my dreams are not always the same as many others, and I'm also fortunate to be good friends with Tom, Eddie, and Rich, so when I'm trying to build my agenda getting up close and personal with the ABAP masters is not a requirement. I know, however, that one does need to get started close to the opening bell for many, if not all, of the hands-on sessions to get the pass. The TechEd EMEA curtain rose extra early (3 AM for me I think), so I was not the very first person in line. And, to make it more challenging, I had heard from a fellow SAP Mentor that there may be issues with registration. Getting the admission badge of a specific color (Speaker, Vendor, etc.) is important in that not all of them allow access to all events. At least once I've gotten a complimentary pass that did not allow hand-on session registration without extra cost, or negotiating.
When I was able to get into the system, I had no problem reserving the sessions I wanted - the main problem was trying to choose among all of the possibilities. Unless a presentation is particularly compelling, I've learned to avoid the 4 hour classes. There are just so many other things going on, as well as people to meet, to sit still for that long. And then there are the time conflicts to contend with. I had to abandon one session that I really wanted to attend (ALM105 - Why Sustainability is IT's Next Big Thing) to get a hands-on session (ALM276 - How to Find Waste in Custom Code) that I also really wanted to attend.
I'll post my complete agenda, in case anyone is interested, after one or two more passes through the schedule. I typically look first for speakers that I want to meet, or have met and know will share something useful to me(e.g., Dieter Krieger, Timo Stelzer, Irene Hopf). Many, though not all, speakers have a thumbnail photo on one of the search pages (like: www.sapteched.com/emea/edu_sessions/speaker.htm)
Now for the agenda tool bad news. On the plus side, the Expert Lounge sessions are better integrated than in the past. On the minus side, they still are somewhat distinct, a bit tricky to search through, and show up separate on the reports. The worst news is the Excel download. I will say it functions better than the version that was running during the ASUG Annual Conference / Sapphire Now, which did not download to Excel at all, but this one still needs a tweak.
Example:
| Day | Start Time |
|---|---|
| Tuesday, October 12, 2010 | 9:00 a.m. |
| Tuesday, October 12, 2010 | * 11:00 a.m. |
| Tuesday, October 12, 2010 | * 11:00 a.m. |
| Thursday, October 14, 2010 | * 8:45 a.m. |
| Thursday, October 14, 2010 | 11:00 a.m. |
| Thursday, October 14, 2010 | 3:30 p.m. |
| Wednesday, October 13, 2010 | 10:30 a.m. |
| Wednesday, October 13, 2010 | 4:30 p.m. |
Excel does not recognize the date fields at all, so sorting puts Wednesday at the end, and the flags to show "overlap" confuse the fact that the time fields are what they are. The spreadsheet maintains the separations among education sessions / pod sessions and expert lounge, and sorting them together by time is required in order to make useful decisions about "where am I now" and "where am I next?"
I have reserved an Expert Lounge session:
| EXP447 | When the lights go out, is your data center still humming? | Wednesday, October 13, 2010 | 1:30 p.m. | 2:00 p.m. | Expert Networking Session |
It was a bit tricky to find a time to do this when I didn't also want to be somewhere else. I will say that the reservation tool for these times was awesome, showing all the lounges at one time, and who else is already booked. I don't have the same audience as Thomas Jung, but I don't want to compete with their noise level either.
Here's a view zoomed in on my grid session:
And here is one day's worth of sessions for the 8 lounges in Berlin. You can see that not many sessions are vacant. I would recommend checking back, as speakers and other experts may find times in their schedule to set up another reservation.
What am I going to cover in my 30 minutes? I'm going to try to jam in as much as possible about our experiences with virtualization, as well as more general commentary about the SAP Sustainability projects. As a moderator of the SCN discussion forum on Sustainability, I know there is a lot of hype, a lot of expectations, but maybe not a lot of substance yet. I expect to bring in several other experts, once I'm sure of their schedules. You will get a lot from the half-hour.
Timo Stelzer informed me there is a new "blog category" for Green IT:
http://weblogs.sdn.sap.com/weblogs/topic/138
I had been aware of a discussion forum on that topic, though as I'm not a moderator there (yet) I have not spent much time viewing it. Perhaps soon though.
There's lots more to share on what's happening before and during TechEd. I now have my German Rail Pass (5 days this time) and will join the Clue Train on Saturday, as a precursor to the Innovation Weekend. On the latter, we had a planning session yesterday. I'll list a few of the names I noted during that session, and fill in roles and responsibilities, and maybe references, as time permits.
Host:
Marilyn Pratt
Attendees:
(g)
me (@JSpath55)
Alexander Grobe
clint nelsen
Dick Hirsch
Graham Robbo
Harald Reiter
Krishna Moorthy
Leonardo De Araujo
Matt Harding
Michelle Crapo
Philip Kisloff
Sue Keohan
NOT (g)
Christian Janiesch
Craig Cmehil
Greg Chase
Jason Cao
John Astill
Kirby Leong
Matthias Steiner
Oliver Kohl
Steve Williams
The "(g)" means they are a guest in the SAP connect system, or most likely, non-SAP employees. That would be "customer", "consultant", etc. Here's a link to the top level wiki page. It's going to be an awesome pre-conference network-a-ganza.
http://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/display/events/Innovation+Weekend
And a totally gratuitous video clip:
Not yet an official SCNotties submission, but perhaps soon!
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