My SAP TechEd 2020 – what I’m looking forward to

SAP TechEd 2020 is fast approaching, and in many ways it will be a different experience for all of us. Then again, there’s one thing that will remain – and that’s the dedication of those folks producing content for us to share & enjoy. Here’s what I’m looking forward to in the rich array of sessions offered.

I’ve looked through every session and I guess I can divide up my personal picks into categories: baseline technologies with interesting aspects and immediate application, sessions from folks that I know will be engaging and inspirational, Channel 1 content, and what appeals to my sense of what’s important generally. In no particular order, here we go!

Channel 1 content

As well as more regular sessions this year, SAP TechEd features “Channel 1” (find it on your Attendee Dashboard), with a rolling flow of different content items. The Channel 1 hosts include some of my advocate colleagues, and for that reason alone I’m interested, but in particular, there are these sessions that I’m looking forward to:

Presenting the Devtoberfest Finalists [GS201] – presumably you’ve been following our Devtoberfest 2020 event, right? In any case, why not check out this post from Tom to catch up and get voting: Devtoberfest Contest Voting and then you’re ready to join this Channel 1 session to check out all the finalists.

Developer Keynote: All Developers Welcome [DK100] (with Kevin Muessig, Rich Heilman and me, and background work from all the developer advocates) – this for me is the most exciting session of them all because I think it represents very well where we are from a technology standpoint with SAP Cloud Platform, with different tools, languages, runtimes and more. Additionally, everything you see in this session is available for you to try out for free in your trial accounts.

☞ There’s a short overview of the keynote that I’d urge you to read now – it will give you the background story and context to what goes on in the session: SAP TechEd Developer Keynote DK100 – The Story.

I think there’s something for everyone in this session – including a cameo Vim appearance (see if you can spot it) and some Bash scripting. All developers welcome! (Rich also has other sessions including one below – check them all out here.)

My sense of what’s important generally

Actually I made this category up just so I could include what is I know going to be a session where I geek out the most.

Explore the New Capabilities of SAP Cloud Platform – Open API and CLI [DEV360] (an expert workshop by Michal Keidar and Segev Lev) – I’ve been known to say, on occasion, “The Future Is Terminal!” and I mean it. Then again, I’ve also been referred to as “that crazy TTY guy”, and often simply “that idiot”. So what do I know?

Anyway, as we move forward further into the 21st century, one thing is clear, that some technologies and approaches become more important than ever, regardless of their age. In fact, longevity is a sign of stability, reliability and suitability for the job. And for that reason, this session on APIs and command line interface possibilities for SAP Cloud Platform hits the bullseye for me. This session gets my special “>_” badge that I just invented while writing this paragraph.

Engaging and inspirational

I have the privilege of working alongside some wonderful people in the Developer Advocates team, and interacting with equally wonderful people in the wider ecosphere. I’ve attended sessions from all these folks before and know that their TechEd sessions will not only be interesting and important but also engaging.

Beyond SAPUI5 and SAP Fiori Elements [IIS114] (a beginner breakout session by Marius Obert) – I can’t deny, I’m a big fan of UI5, and since my time digging in, the world of UI5 and SAP UI in general has grown. In this session we’ll learn from Marius what there is, and when to use what.

Build Data Pipelines with SAP Data Intelligence [INT105] (a beginner lecture by Witalij Rudnicki) – Witalij is my go-to person for all things data, and this session is going to be no exception. Just like asynchronous processes are the life blood of the application level, the data pipeline is the life blood of what supports those applications. (Witalij also has another couple of sessions – check them all out here.)

Cloud-Native Development with SAP HANA [DAT160] (a beginner workshop by Thomas Jung and Rich Heilman) – SAP Cloud Application Programming Model (another love of mine), SAP HANA cloud services and the SAP Business Application Studio? What’s missing? Nothing … all that’s needed is perhaps a dynamic duo to run the workshop. Oh, wait! All sorted! (Thomas also has other sessions, check them all out here.)

Transitioning from ABAP Programmer to Developer [CM105] (a Channel 1 Talk by Nabheet Madan) – Nabheet has being putting out some great content on his YouTube channel, helping ABAP programmers gain new skills. While ABAP is still a key skill, there are plenty of other skills out there that are worth learning … but how? That’s what this session is about.

Baseline technologies

There’s a lot of SAP tech we advocates have covered in the Hands-on SAP Dev show over on the SAP Developers YouTube channel, and what’s resonated with me is what the SAP Cloud Platform (SCP) represents, plus the breadth of facilities available. For that reason, I’m listing some TechEd sessions here in this context:

Architecture Vision and Strategy Behind SAP’s Business Technology Platform [ST100] (a beginner strategy talk by Michael Ameling) – Starting off with a nice high level overview of what I see as a functional layer atop of SCP, important when we think of the intelligent suite as a whole.

Craft and Execute Your Enterprise API Strategy [DEV114] (a beginner breakout session by Deep Ganguly) – in various Hands-on SAP Dev show sessions, we’ve come across and embraced all kinds of APIs on SCP, plus made good use of the SAP API Business Hub. As we start to properly understand and embrace the multiple components of the intelligent enterprise it’s important to have a good understanding of how to use and manage their most fundamental and important assets – their programming interfaces.

Event-Driven Integrations Using SAP Cloud Platform Integration Suite [DEV216] (an advanced breakout session by Sunny Kapoor) – the author William Gibson once said “The future is here, it’s just not evenly distributed”. In a way, that reminds me of our future, which to a large extent is also uneven, at least in a time context. In other words, our future is asynchronous. Event-driven systems have been around for decades, and the concepts are now being applied to the enterprise in a big way. We have seen some of that in our Diving into messaging on SAP Cloud Platform series.

Wrapping up

Actually, I do have one more session that I’m definitely putting into my agenda, and that’s this one:

SAP TechEd Wrap-Up and Live Q&A [EQA101] (an executive Q&A session with Juergen Mueller, Thomas Grassl and Thomas Jung). Three big thinkers together in one place, helping us to digest SAP TechEd 2020, with the bonus of us being able to ask questions. What’s not to like?

So there you go – that’s what I’m looking forward to at SAP TechEd 2020. How about you?

Update 17 Nov 2020: See the collection of our recommendations via links in Thomas Jung‘s post My SAP TechEd 2020 – An Agenda From the Viewpoint of a Developer Manager.