My SAP TechEd 2020 – An Agenda From the Viewpoint of a Developer Manager

SAP TechEd 2020 is just a few weeks away.  Like so much this year, TechEd is going to be a different kind of experience than what most of us are used to. On the plus side, it’s all online and completely free this year.

But a large event like TechEd can be overwhelming to navigate in any conditions.  At an in person event you can at least wonder around until something catches your eye or have a chat with someone and get a personal recommendation of a session or two to attend.  An online event can make this aspect more challenging.

To that end, the SAP Developer Advocates thought we would share our personal agendas and suggestions with the community.  This isn’t our list of “SAP Says You Must Attend These Sessions!”, but instead really what we are looking forward to attending ourselves from the perspective of our own individual interests and backgrounds.

Here is the list of their blog posts so far.  I will update this post as each publishes theirs:

• DJ Adams My SAP TechEd 2020 – what I’m looking forward to
• Josh Bentley – SAP TechEd 2020 – Here’s a look at my agenda. No badges, No bags, No problem.
• Rich Heilman – SAP TechEd 2020 – Session Recommendations for the ABAPers!
• Kevin Muessig – My SAP TechEd 2020 – What my Agenda will look like
• Marius Obert – Marius’ SAP TechEd 2020 Guide for UI Folks
• Witalij Rudnicki – SAP TechEd 2020 for Data Professionals — my 3×3 picks
• Max Streifeneder – Max’ SAP TechEd 2020 Guide: Get outta your comfort zone!

And so you have faces to put with the names: here is a virtual group picture of the SAP Developer Advocates – at least partially taken from SAP TechEd 2019.

My Agenda

And now that I’ve put my team on the spot to write their own blog posts ?, I have to come through with sharing my own agenda.  In past years it would have been easy as a product manager (first in ABAP and then in HANA) to tick off a quick agenda of every session for the topic which I was responsible.

But being a manager of a team now, means I can still specialize in a few topics but need to have some knowledge of all kinds of topics. I’m sure this is a problem that development managers all over face.  You can’t possibly keep pace with the learning of each member of your team; but how to you stay ahold of the big picture and even help guide the learning of each of your team members?  Therefore this list for me this year is my most eclectic ever. I’m going to try and pick just one session from each topic area of my team and some general items as well.

Developer Advocate Sessions

But I would be remiss if I didn’t start by listing all the sessions of my team. Of course I’m going to attend and support them.

Beyond SAPUI5 and SAP Fiori Elements [IIS114] (a beginner breakout session by Marius Obert)

Translytical Data Processing with SAP HANA Cloud [DAT108] (a beginner breakout session by Witalij Rudnicki)

Build Data Pipelines with SAP Data Intelligence [INT105] (a beginner lecture by Witalij Rudnicki)

Do-It-Yourself Machine Learning [INT200] (a beginner lecture by Witalij Rudnicki)

Expert Q&A on Developing with ABAP in the Cloud [DEV928] (An Expert Q&A with Rich Heilman)

Cloud-Native Development with SAP HANA [DAT160] (a two hour hands-on workshop with Rich Heilman and myself) — I’m aware this session is full but we did design it so anyone can perform the exercises on the SAP Cloud Platform free trial. We will release the complete exercises to GitHub for anyone to use and will take questions as issues in the GitHub repo.

And last but not least we have:

Developer Keynote: All Developers Welcome [DK100]

This keynote was a huge effort by the entire team and I think something that will appeal to developers from all backgrounds. Here is a blog post by DJ Adams that details more about the business requirements and architecture of the solution which we will show during this keynote session. I can say now its nearly all code — absolutely no slides. Its developers walking you through the code, sharing their architectural decisions and insights. And it’s all real running code which we will release to GitHub as well.

ABAP

To pick just one session from each category turned out to be more challenging that I expected. In the ABAP category I was tempted by the S/4 extensibility sessions or the enabling Fiori UI development. The strategy and roadmap sessions are also always good choices.  Ultimately I end up choosing:

Major Updates on ABAP RESTful Application Programming Model [DEV102] (an Advanced lecture by Marcel Hermanns)

RAP (ABAP RESTful Application Programming Model) is quickly emerging as a critical tool for ABAP developers. In addition I find the potential for EML as an API layer fascinating. I think I’m going to get some great insights around these topics from this session

Cloud Application Programming Model

From ABAP/RAP right over to its “sister” programming model of CAP (Cloud Application Programming Model). For this topic I decide to set aside time for the What’s New session. With its monthly updates, CAP is a quickly evolving environment and I look forward to see latest and greatest on the topic in this session. I was also particularly in by the advanced domain modeling and extensibility features which were teased in the session description.

SAP Cloud Application Programming Model Evolution – What’s New [DEV103] (a Beginner lecture by Christian Georgi)

HANA

For me personally, I still sleep, eat and breath HANA every day. I could have picked one of several sessions on migration or getting started with HANA Cloud. I was even tempted by a Data Warehouse Cloud session instead as that’s a topic I’d very much like to learn more about.  However I ultimately ended up with the Road Map session. For a topic I’m already deeply invested in, knowing what’s in the pipeline ended up being the most important aspect.

Road Map: SAP HANA Cloud [DAT807] (A Beginner road map by Joerg Latza)

UI Development

As you might have guessed from my terrible photoshop work on the virtual team photo, I don’t have much of a designer’s eye. So for me the UI topic is always much more about the code and technology behind the user interface than the user experience aspects. Still there’s much technology in this area – UI5, Fiori, Essentials, Personals, Launch Pad.  So many options. But this session on Fiori with OData V4 really caught my eye:

Simplify Development of SAP Fiori Apps with OData v4 [IIS360] (An Expert workshop by Christian Kolbowski)

Admittedly I’m cheating a little. Its a hands-on work shop. So I technically didn’t put it in my agenda (unlike everything else I’ve listed here) as I wouldn’t want to take up a spot that a customer or partner might otherwise have. But I absolutely plan to go through the exercises on my own. In fact I cheated a little more here as well. I have access to the hands-on exercises already (the perks of being SAP internal) and have already gone through this exercise!

Cloud Native

Always looking to get outside my comfort zone and learn something new, I wanted to pick a topic from the emerging list among Cloud Native. Something Kubernetes, Kyma or Gardener. My first instinct was to list DEV261, but its a two hands-on workshop and I’ve already cheated once and put a workshop on the list. Still this is another that I plan to hunt down the content for after TechEd.

Ultimately I decide to go even deeper into the Kubernetes world and pickup a Project Gardener session; an area I want to expand my personal knowledge.

Universal Kubernetes Clusters at Scale with Project “Gardener” [DEV205] (An Advanced Lecture by Dirk Marwinski)

General

Although I’m beginning to run out of time in my agenda, I want to leave some slots for more general content that will appear in Channel 1. Of course the Executive Keynotes and Devtoberfest content in Channel 1 is a must. But here are a few other key sessions I’m going to be sure not to miss.

Free Tools to Support a Move to SAP S/4HANA [CM101] – (A Beginner Channel 1 Talk by Tammy Powlas).

I had the pleasure of seeing Tammy present this topic to ASUG a few weeks ago. She has such a command of the topic and a great depth of experience to share. And she does it all so naturally. Everyone planning a move to S/4 should certainly join this session.

Hitting a Moving Target: How to Keep Your SAP Skills Up-to-Date [CM107] – (A Beginner Channel 1 Talk by Mike Doyle)

Keeping your skills up to date is a conversation I have with community members on a regular basis. I have my thoughts and suggestions but I look forward to seeing Mike’s take on the subject. I’m always looking for new ideas in this area.

My final wish for this year’s TechEd is that I get to interact with many of readers/viewers of my content directly. Its going to be more difficult this year since we can’t just meet on the show floor and have a chat. But via TechEd platform Q&A or even via social media during the event I hope to still have some great interactions. I look forward to “seeing” so many of our developer community!