I had the opportunity of attending the second edition of SAP Inside Track(SIT) India held at Bangalore and Kolkata simultaneously on 03-Dec-2011. I was attending SIT Kolkata, held at IBM premises. This is the first time I attended any SAP community event and I was simply blown over by the exposure one gets in such SAP events.
I will start with brief description of day's events and then sum up with what I gained from attending the event. The agenda for SIT India had sessions by local and international contributors and that gave first time participants like me opportunities to listen to gurus from all over the world.
Jim Spath started his welcome message with an traditional Indian 'namaste' and showing off his SAP mentor jersey. He highlighted importance of SAP community network for all SAP consultants and how we all can enrich the community. He was followed by another welcome message by Marilyn Pratt where she welcomed all and wished great success for the event. Dipankar took over from Marilyn and he explained the agenda for the day, what to expect from the event, how SCN can transform our lives etc. This was followed by speed networking where all participants introduced themselves and areas they work on.
The second session was a very interesting one on Design Thinking by Dipankar where he, in very simple words, explained qualities of any good design and ended the session with team game of Spaghetti & Marshmallow Tower. Our team's tower could not stand upright even for a minute but many marshmallows ended up inside by stomach!
Sudipta took the next session on HANA where he spoke about HANA overview, its architecture, advantages. We saw glimpses of HANA in brief demo session followed by Q&A. In next session Sangeeth gave us overview of SAP Business Rule Framework (BRF) and discussed some case studies. He explained the journey of SAP BRF till date and future prospects.
Next was the most interactive of all sessions, on SAP skills and career development, by the SAP gurus Jon Reed,Leonardo De Araujo,Martin Gillet. They discussed about emerging trends like ByDesign, Mobility, HANA, BO and answered a barrage of questions from the participants. It was a session where there was something for everybody.
After lunch break Gregor Wolf explained about SAP code exchange platform and gave demo of 4 projects. Nilay took the next session on SAP Mobility Solutions where he gave overview of present and future of mobility solutions and ended with a interesting demo of shopping cart functionality using SAP mobility.
The audience got sneek preview of next generation ABAP in next session by Thomas Jung where he covered topics like NetWeaver Business Client (NWBC) 4.0, NetWeaver 7.0, Business Context Viewer (BCV). Some of the things mentioned are still in development stage and yet to hit market. The last technical session was on using Quality Gate Manager (QGM) on top of ChaRM by Jansi Rani where she explained some practical do's and dont's in implementing QGM.
SIT ended with wrapup of days events, distribution of SAP Press books to presenters and vote of thanks. It was an extremely successful event, surpassing the expectations of most participants. The sessions were brilliantly conducted by Dipankar and Somnath, the SIT co-ordinators for Kolkata and Bangalore respectively. Everybody left with the satisfaction of a day well spent in enriching ourselves with new information and making new friends. You can rewind the days happening in Twitter at #SITIND.
This was my first participation in SAP community events and I'm so impressed that I decide to write my first blog as my giveback to SCN! I would like to list down my takeways from the event.
- SAP events like TechEd carry a high participantion fee and for most of us its not possible to attend unless your employer sponsors you. SIT gives everyone an opportunity to catch up with latest happening in SAP ecosystem, almost for free.
- I got to see power of SAP community network and how it can contribute to my career development. I saw live examples in Dipankar and Jansi Rani who were first spotted from their contributions in SCN.
- I got opportunity to hear from SAP experts about latest SAP developments and also got sneek preview of some of them.
- What's there for me in future of SAP - I got replies to such and many other questions which will affect career of me and all other SAP consultants.
- I got to know many SAP experts and whom to contact for any help or guidance. I also know how to keep track of latest happening in SAP.
- The dedication of senior members of SCN impressed me beyond words - people waking up at 3 am on saturday morning in USA to present/attend sessions. Their actions showed how much they care for SAP community.
- I got interested and motivated to be more active participant in SCN (and as one participant said, open SCN first thing in office rather than facebook or orkut!)
My sincere thanks to SAP mentors and all participants for making my day.
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