Meet up with fellow attendees “unconference style” at SAP TechEd Las Vegas

If you’re headed to SAP TechEd in Las Vegas next week, you’re probably already looking forward to the learning opportunities you’ll have there, be it through attending lectures and hands-on sessions, visiting booths on the show floor, or attending the Community Talks.

But even at a conference as chock-full of content as SAP TechEd, there may be something you’d like to discuss or share learnings about that isn’t already covered. The “unconference” meetups happening on the show floor will give you a way to connect with SAP customers, partners, and employees at the conference — to discuss these topics.

“Unconference style”? What’s that?

If you’re not familiar with the unconference format, it’s pretty simple: it gives you, the attendee, a chance to suggest a topic that you’d like to discuss with other attendees, suggest a time that you’re available to discuss the topic, and then meet up with any other attendees who’d like to discuss that topic too. Anyone who wants to initiate a discussion on a topic can claim a time and a space, and over the course of the event, a schedule of meetup topics takes shape.

Where will these meetups take place, and how can attendees see what’s available?

We will have 4 tables available in the SAP Community Lounge area of the show floor to host these 30-minute, unconference-style meetups. Each table will accommodate about 6 attendees. The map below shows the location of these meetup tables, right next to the Conference Guidance booth. (Meetup Lounges 1 through 3 are reserved for speaker meetups; the unconference meetup lounges are 4, 5, 6, and 7.)

There will be several Community team members (myself and Moshe Naveh among others) available to field your suggestions for topics and time slots (more on that below), and once a topic is scheduled, we will add it to the SAP TechEd agenda builder (SAP TechEd login required) so that other conference attendees can see it and add it to their agenda. We’ll also tweet about it and promote it other ways at the conference.

You’ll find the agenda builder (My Agenda) on the SAP TechEd 2019 Las Vegas website, under Learn. It will also be available in the SAP TechEd mobile app.

Note that you don’t have to sign up to attend any of these meetups; you only have to sign up if you want to schedule a discussion topic.

What kind of topics can attendees schedule?

Topics can range from technical discussions such as “Architecting with SAP Cloud Platform and AWS: seamlessly combine best of breed SAP services with Hyperscaler capability” to soft-skill-oriented subjects such as “Open forum to discuss SAP Community with the head of the community” to eclectic topics such as “the last SAP-related book I read and what I learned from it.” If you have an experience to share or want to hear how other attendees may have addressed a challenge, suggest a meetup topic and time for it, and there are probably others at the conference who are also interested and will join you for the discussion.

I like this idea. How can I suggest a topic for a meetup?

To begin with, in the days leading up to the conference, we will accept topic and time-slot suggestions here, in the comments on this blog post. Alternatively, you can ask me in the comments to follow you, and then you can send me your suggestion via direct message.

Once a topic is accepted for the schedule, I’ll add it to the schedule table here in my blog post, so others can see which meetups are already planned and know which tables and time slots are still open for scheduling.

Once I’m able to begin adding the meetups to the conference agenda builder, I will start transferring any scheduled meetups from the table into the agenda builder.

(If you don’t see a topic scheduled and you don’t want to lead a discussion, you can also stop by the Conference Guidance booth in the Community Lounge and speak with one of our SAP Technology Ambassadors to see where you might find opportunities to learn more about that topic elsewhere at the conference.)

Suggesting topics during the conference

I’ll continue to monitor the comments on this blog post during the conference for topic and time suggestions to add to the schedule.

In addition, there will be opportunities to suggest meetup topics on site, in person. Every morning, shortly after the show floor opens, we’ll be available at the meetup area by the Conference Guidance booth at the Community Lounge for half an hour to accept meetup topics and add them to the schedule. Come by during that time, and we’ll get your topic added!

Times for meetup topic signup in person at the conference:
Tuesday 11:00-11:30 am
Wednesday 9:00-9:30 am
Thursday 9:00-9:30 am

Join in! Meet up!

This is your chance to raise that burning topic you’re eager to hear others’ perspectives on, so don’t miss this opportunity. Get your meetup on the schedule now! Post your topic and time proposal in the comments, and follow this blog post to be notified when new meetup topics are added.