Impressions from the SAP Inside Track in Walldorf 2017 Part II
On January 13 – 14, 2017 the second SIT took place at the SAP at the international training center (WDF05) of the SAP headquarter in Walldorf. The snowfalls in Germany didn’t prevent the SIT fans and techies from attending this event, so about 100 people came to follow the fully-packed agenda featuring IoT topics. On day 2 also kids were welcome to join their Learn, Hack & Play Day enabling them to build their own IoT triggered devices. The main organizers Kati Fischer and Daniel Koller, well experienced moderators, guided the attendees through the two day event. (Day 2) Day 1
The second SIT day, Saturday, started with a motivating keynote by Malin Liden (VP at SAP), Success Factors for Innovation, pointing out that innovation needs an investment of confidence and courage: “Believe in the new idea, convince others to follow” and that it requires also to take the risk of feeling stupid being together with experts: “Every time I am feeling stupid, I learnt something new.”
The following agenda was split into two main program parts: lecture sessions (4 tracks in parallel: Dev; Data & Analytics/UI; Security/Mobile; New Stuff) with marketplace sessions after lunch and a Learn, Hack & Play Day for Kids to get a kick-start in computer science. With the engaged support of Helmut Fischer, a lot of parents and helpful people of the community the kids could build, play around and test different IoT devices. So, 7 workshop groups were created and worked f. ex. with SAPOIS Flag Game, EV3-Sumo Robots and the Lego Mindstorms Programming.
As the lectures were well mixed, containing both topics for deep-dive techies and all-rounders, I attended session the morning Business Sketching with Johanna Wittig to refresh my design capabilities for flips.
My next focus topic was Cultures @SAP and “Über den Tellerrand (Kochen)” with Masoumeh (Mahin) Moghaddam. I learned all about the actual activities of Cultures@SAP (a voluntary initiative from SAP employees for SAP employees, founded 10 years ago) where a lot of different nationalities are engaged to drive the cultural info exchange at SAP. Additionally Mahin herself is engaged in a cooking together initiative for refugees in Kaiserslautern, Germany.
After lunch, which was served outdoor by a street food truck …
I switched to technical topics, How to build an Amazon Alexa Skill, demonstrated by Daniel Koller. There, I learned how to get access to the Amazon Dev Console, what sort of skills you can create ´(e. g.: Alexa, ask HANA what are the figures?”, that the invocation name is necessary to communicate with the device and how to stop Alexa, hidden in a black slim box, when she is talking too much: “Alexa, stop!”, like in the real live.
And as a good summary of the entire IoT topic I attended the News from the IoT Unit with Karol Kalisz, who started with a demonstration on what was delivered in 2016. It featured also the latest IoT Services (storage IoT senior data) and the scalability options in the HANA Cloud platform. And sure, you should get knowledge from Karol, our engaged SIT promoter from Poland, and of Wroclaw (Breslau) where will take place one of the next SITs this year.
The second SIT day was closed by the amazing presentation of the kids IoT devices and the SIT reward certificate to the kids already wearing prowdly SIT “member” shirts (sponsored by SALT Solutions).
IoT robots and Makey Makey to build up a banana audio control and a banana piano
Last but not least I would like to mention the SIT organizers – it is a big effort to organize such an event. As it is a low-cost event, sponsors are needed, and additionally it is also informal: everyone who is interested may take part.
Video Interview with Kati
Finally, not to forget to mention, the next SIT events coming this year are: Hannover, February 25, #sitHVR; Frankfurt, March 24 & 25, #sitFR; Wroclaw, May 27 (don’t miss!), #sitWRO; Brussels, June 3, #sitBRU; Hamburg in June, #sitHH; Bern, September 9, #sitBERN, and Munich, October 7, #sitMuc. To keep you up to date about the actual SITs you may follow SIT on Twitter.
Art Sculptures in the International Training Center: Waiting for the next SIT Event :-).
See you at one of the next SITs.
Disclaimer: This blog series content is based on my view/perspective and has only the intention of giving something back to our SAP community. I can’t mention all SITs or people engaged in it.