Mastering SAP Technologies 2012 – field report
Last week I was in Sydney Australia at the Mastering SAP Technologies event, hunting out innovation among our brothers and sisters at that end of the world. It was a great event, reminiscent of the ‘good old days’ when SAP events were smaller, more intimate, less marketing focused and intensely engaging. Not that current day events are not spectacular in their own way. It was just that I got to enjoy once again the sense of belonging to a group of very special, passionate people in a setting that made it easy to meet everyone.
I’ve written a public report over on ZDNet entitled Mastering SAP shows the way user conferences should be run. I said:
… the event content is second to none. Every session included a demo track, some of which crashed, there was open and frank discussion from the stage by customers about what works and what doesn’t. The moment when Shane McCauley from Royal New Zealand Airforce stood up and said that his functional counterpart kicked off thinking he was ‘an arse’ is a classic that lives in the memory. This is the kind of thing that while apparently crude, lends full credibility to presentations.
For me, the team that presented represent SAP at its finest, ably assisted by the Eventful Group.
The above video gives you a flavour of what I saw. The pic below shows me with a rare broad smile so it must have been good – at least for me.
There is more, much more which I will post on SCN over the coming days and weeks. Enjoy.
Disclosure: SAP paid for my T&E as part of a larger project designed to find community innovation around the world. Eventful Group comp’d my entrance fee.
Australia is wonderful for SAP conferences. The Eventful Mangement ones are simply stunning (I may be biased as I have presented at one myself) and the Australian SAP User Group annual conference is pretty good as well.
You get one conference per area of interest e.g. technology, financials, supply chain, BI etc. Focus groups are held beforehand where you get invited to vote on what areas are interesting.
As a speaker, the Eventful Group even gave me a free training session on how to be successful in public speaking. Some speakers at SAPPHIRE or whatever it is called now could do with this.
Instead of being a series of thinly disguised adverts to try and convince people to buy software, the "Mastering" events are a series of case studies as to how to use SAP technology to solve problems, and after I gave my speech I got loads of people coming up to me afterwards asking questions, and we even had a conference call with BHP two weeks afterwards to answer their queries on the subject.
I also like the fact I have met loads of people from that video. Oh dear - that makes me sound like a famous American SAP blogger. I am coming back to live in Australia soon, and I wikll be back in the high life again.