SAP TechEd Bangalore 2012

Dear Diary,

Three weeks ago I took off on an adventure heading for my first visit to India and for my first SAP TechEd. I was very excited to meet so many new people and to get together with old SCN friends. I was especially looking forward to meeting the members of my extended family, the BIFers.

Innojam

My first interaction with the local SAP community was at the SAP Innojam, a pre-Teched event that is all about innovation, community and jointly created SAP based applications. You can read more about my experiences in my Innojam blog.

SAP Employee day

The SAP employee day was a perfect preparation for me for Teched itself. It was a real pleasure to finally meet in-person the Indian SAP colleagues who are well known for their great contribution and wealth of knowledge to SCN. I really enjoyed introducing them to the new SCN and hearing their feedback. Some people missed the old SCN but after we reviewed together the new features on SCN more and more people showed interest in further exploring the new platform. We mainly discussed how they can benefit from it in better finding content, establishing strong reputation and engage with other community members.

The first day of TechEd

To be honest, I was a bit nervous the first day of SAP TechEd Bangalore. I heard that this was the biggest TechEd event this year and didn’t really know what to expect. But as soon as people started to approach the SCN booth, asked questions, introduce themselves and reminded me of our previous Email encounters I started feeling at home. Even though I explained the new SCN hundreds of times I always added something new to keep it interesting for me and for the visitors at our booth.

Meeting the BIFers

You all know I’m totally obsessed 🙂 about the blog it forward challenge. But when I started to meet the Indian BIFers I felt even stronger about BIF. It was heartwarming to listen to their excitement about it and to see that the character that was reflected in their BIF was genuine. It especially made me proud that Blog It Forward was featured in the Demojam opening presentation by Chip Rodgers.

The Empathy workshop

My beloved colleague and a highly inspirational persona, Marilyn Pratt organized a special event that was all about empathy and design thinking. Marilyn invited 3 fascinating speakers:  Seung Chan (Slim) an empathy evangelist and Hester Hilbrecht and Lakshman (Luckey)  Pachineela Seshadri a design thinking experts. The evening started with an inspirational talk by Slim about  how to implement empathy in different aspects of life such as arts, friendship etc. Following Slim’s talk, we had a presentation by Hester about design thinking. Now we were all ready to start the empathic design thinking workshop by Luckey. We were asked to look into the wallet of the person who sat next to us. This together with a short interview provided us with enough information to create a prototype of an imaginary wallet that could have any features we like. It was emphasized that the most important thing in the process of design thinking is that it will serve the needs of our neighbors.

The Moderator Meet-Up

TechEd is a unique opportunity for us to interact with the local influential SCN team. The purpose of the moderator meet-up is to enable a discussion between moderators, community members and the SCN Team and enable them to learn from each other.The session was hosted by Marilyn Pratt, Leon Limson (SCN Top contributor) and by me

The following topics were discussed:

• Reporting
• Reputation program
• Navigation
• Registration
• Abuse reports
• Increasing traffic and more

I can summarize my experience as incredible, exactly like India. The food, the people and their SCN enthusiasm really made this an unforgettable adventure which I hope to have again soon.