Community Voices at SAP TechEd Barcelona 2016
For the first time, 10 Community Sessions have been added to the SAP TechEd Educational Sessions in EMEA (Barcelona, Spain from November 8-10). Community Sessions are like other 1-hour lecture sessions that will educate and inform you. However, the flavor of these sessions are outside the ‘standard’ topics, and session speakers come from the external SAP community (not SAP employees).
When Katarina Fischer announced the call for submissions, our community responded! Together with Katarina and SAP Mentor Peter Langner, we had the privilege of reviewing over 100 submissions to fill 10 Community Session slots. I’m very glad to share a complete list of the 10 Community Sessions at SAP TechEd Barcelona this year. We hope you’ll agree these topics are relevant and valued by our community. Please take time to read through some of these experts’ blogs for more insight into their sessions. I will update this list with links of new blogs as they are posted by speakers.
Attending SAP TechEd in Barcelona? Make sure to add their sessions to your TechEd agenda, and follow them on Twitter (if available)
Related blog posts worth reading:
Moya Watson ‘s Embrace The Magic: The Must-See Community Sessions of TechEd Las Vegas
Peter Langner ‘s interview with SAP TechEd Community Speakers 2016
Hi folks, if you're attending TechEd Barcelona, please stop by the Expert Networking Lounge 7 on Tuesday Nov 8, 2:30-3:00pm for the "Gathering with Community Session Speakers" (link provided so you can easily add to your Agenda Builder).
Use the opportunity and time to get to know these SAP experts from the SAP Community, and hear them introduce their sessions and why the topic is important to our community.
Are there any plans to add more community sessions in the future?
I checked, and if I just look at the number of sessions by independent community, TechEd barcelona 2016 had only 45 out 946 session by non-SAP speakers. 8 of those were sponsors/exhibitors, and 10 of those these eeny-teeny-ten-minute sessions.
This is, IMO, an embarassingly low number. Wouldn't TechED be much more interesting and valueable of voices of independent speakers would be heard? I think so.
Hi Roland, apologies for the delay in getting back to you! Your questions come at a good time, as I'm about to announce the speakers and topics of Community Sessions to TechEd Barcelona 2017. This will be the second year that we will have Community Sessions in European location of TechEd, and remains at 10 sessions. I would also love to see more of these Community Sessions as well - for a couple of reasons, they are the 'independent' voices you speak of, and as they are voices from the community they bring a different perspective that everyone (including SAP) can benefit from listening to.
While I understand the need by SAP and user-attendees to hear from SAP speakers to share official content (just like we need this SAP-authored content in our community), what I think you're saying is if we have more non-SAP speakers at TechEd, there may not be a need for more Community Sessions? I would agree with a more balanced representation of speakers at TechEd - what that ratio or balance is may require some further study.
” what I think you’re saying is if we have more non-SAP speakers at TechEd, there may not be a need for more Community Sessions?”
Nah, what I’m really saying is that the call for speakers to the community (https://blogs.sap.com/2017/05/30/barcelona-wants-you-call-for-speakers-from-the-sapcommunity-for-sapteched-barcelona-2017/) just looks and feels like windowdressing to me – i.e. pretending to ask for outside input, but not actually, genuinely being interested in that kind of participation.
You might wonder, how do I arrive at this conclusion?
Well, there is the actual number of community sessions which I mentioned is embarrasingly low. But apart from that, if you look at the call for speakers, there is simply zero transparency. There is some talk about a “steering committee” and “SAP TechEd Track leads” but who these people are, and what process they follow – who knows?
Another hint that SAP isn’t really interested in community talks is the statement that even if you do get to speak, no expenses for travel or lodgings will be covered. Sounds inviting? I think not.
So in summary, to me the signal is that SAP doesn’t actually want to have independent community speakers at their conference. That in itself is fine, but then it’d be nice if SAP would be more frank about it.
Perhaps the title for Cfp would be more accurate when stated as:
“Barcelona wants you! But not your talks.”
Hope that helps.
Best regards,
Roland.