Are you an SAP Customer with a story to tell?

The ASUG Business Intelligence Community is looking for YOUR stories to be featured at the 2012 ASUG Annual Conference.  A lot of folks seem to have some misconceptions about public speaking, especially at ASUG conferences. There are two main ones that I’d like to get out of the way, right now: 

1. It’s hard to speak at a conference
   • Sure, I will admit that there might be some initial nervousness when you get up to the podium.  But to be honest, that will quickly fade as you start to go through your material and see that the audience is listening to you!  Try not to read from your slides too much and just present them.  Remember, the audience is in that room to hear your story.
2. I have nothing to speak about
   • BULL! Here are some things that people in the community love to hear about:
     • Upgrades. Have you upgraded to BI4 yet? Then there are lots of people who are trying to get their upgrade planned. If you’ve done it already, the community would love to hear how it went for you. 
     • Project Successes. Did you recently roll out WebIntelligence to a large user community? Build a universe on a new datasource and overcame some ‘challenges’? Use Crystal Reports to setup some really neat month end financial reports?  These kinds of success story is a GREAT candidate for ASUG Annual Conference
     • Lessons Learned/Business Challenges.  No one really likes to admit that their organization had some difficulties adopting new technology. It take a brave individual to speak up and say that they had to try a different approach.  But did that approach bring success and a happy ending?  Then that’s a story worthy of consideration at ASUG Annual Conference.

That’s the thing I love about ASUG Annual Conference: finding the customer stories that will help my company implement faster or overcome a challenge.  Sure, there are Partner and SAP presentation in the mix.  Heck, sometimes a Partner or SAP ‘pairs up’ with a customer to deliver a session.  If you worked with SAP or a Partner to help deliver your solution, it makes sense to work with them in the presentation, too!

So, think about your story and head to http://callforpresentations.asug.com/ and sign up. Submissions are open until 12/21/2011. Remember, if your abstract is accepted you get FREE admission to ASUG Annual Conference/Sapphire. And who doesn’t have an employer that would appreciate you saving them money! I hope to see you in Orlando in May- and hopefully on the ‘other side’ of the podium with a Yellow speaker badge.