Fabulous SAP TechEd Las Vegas Memories

Last week was awesome! SAP TechEd Las Vegas Rocked! Beginning with a strong Innojam, continuing with really interesting keynotes, followed by one of the most active clubhouses ever, it was round the clock energy! I’d like to briefly recap a few of my personal favorites.

Demo Jam was the best! Really interesting demos, many of which I’d want to use today. The middle school kids were awesome, kudos to John Astill for his supportive mentoring! If you missed them, check this clip out.

Clubhouse & Scouting: The SCN team was kept hopping from community members to potential members at our pod. Continuous visitors wanting to learn more about SCN, best practices and especially recommendations on how to navigate. Visitors were pleasantly surprised with all the recent improvements in search. Many took advantage of the professional head-shots and I’ve already seen many go up here and in FB

I loved having the fun come back to the clubhouse. The racetrack seemed to be a big hit and I personally visited the photo booth 3 times!

SCN Moderators & SAP Mentors: Both Moderators and Mentors are special people. Their community spirit enriches all of us. TechEd is the one time of year we get to meet up in person, en-mass. It’s wonderful! Sylvia Santelli was continuously surprised by the amount of people I was meeting for the first time in person Yes we’ve been virtually connected for years but finally getting to say hi in person was definitely one of the highlights of my visit! Moya Watson, Tammy Powlas, Gretchen Lindquist, Susan Keohan, Sascha Wenninger, Derek Loranca Gigi Read to name a few.

In addition, seeing new mentors receive their coveted shirts and dancing in a drum circle (awesome idea Marilyn Pratt) top the list of fun events! Check out Karin  Tillotson , Marilyn Pratt, Matthias Steiner and Mark Yolton jamming below!

TechEd is also a great opportunity to reconnect with the Moderator Team. Spending time with them is fun but also makes my job easier since since I can hear in person which issues require addressing first from a moderator’s perspective. I’d like to especially thank those that took the time out of their busy schedules to speak in depth with me; Henrique Pinto, Prateek Raj Srivastava, Ethan Jewett and Eduardo Rezende It was incredibly helpful!

Mark Yolton before Demo Jam sharing our truly ‘extraordinary people’! G Lakshmipathi Thomas Zloch Benny Schaich-Lebek among others.

Empathy in Design Thinking:

Once again Marilyn organized a thought provoking evening event. Speaker Seung Chan Lim (a.k.a. Slim) spoke powerfully of his personal path in understanding empathy.  Hester Hilbrecht spoke about Design Thinking briefly and then it was time to get to know those with us as well as hone our true listening skills.

Networking:

Always the highlight of an event, a common thread in almost all my favorites above. Interacting with attendees, getting to hear new perspectives and in some cases even bringing about change. I love this most of all and even held an expert networking session on the topic. There were so many I chatted with both new and old alike, too many to name here. Know though that it was connecting with you, which made my TechEd the best ever!

Replays can be found on TechEd Online, Please connect with me on twitter @gks