Devtoberfest 2022: Return of the Developer

That’s right. As you might have heard, Devtoberfest is back again this year. And once again it’s a celebration for the SAP developer community. We are super excited to announce that Devtoberfest returns this year running from October 1st – 31st 2022. It’s a fantastic opportunity to learn, have fun, connect with fellow SAP developers and an excellent way to get ready for SAP TechEd. If you weren’t around for Devtoberfest in 2020 or 2021, here’s a quick video overview of the event:

Or for those that prefer a text overview:

Devtoberfest is an attempt to capture the experience of the pre-conference events, like SAP InnoJam of years’ past. It’s an event which kicks off the SAP TechEd season. Devtoberfest takes some of the best aspects of the traditional hackathon type event, such as learning by building something, but opens the experience to the entire community and spreads across multiple weeks to better accommodate everyone’s busy schedules. It’s an event that is also designed for you to be able to participate asynchronously and on your own time schedule. As the idea formed, we’ve seen an opportunity here to really build something that is truly a festival for developers.

Devtoberfest from SAP – An open celebration of what makes us developers – Coding and Collaboration!

If you are returning from a previous year and already convinced that you are ready to participate in Devtoberfest, then don’t keep reading on my account. You can head directly to the Devtoberfest Community Group and join the group to enter the contest and be a part of all the festivities.

What’s New This Year

The biggest overall change to Devtoberfest will be the new home for the event: the SAP Community Groups. We’ve created a dedicated Community Group for Devtoberfest and all the individual events will be listed in the SAP Community Events.

This means no more registration on a third-party event site or having to manually link to your SAP Community account. You register for Devtoberfest by reviewing the legal terms and conditions and then just joining the Devtoberfest group.

So you just navigate to the SAP Community Group for Devtoberfest.

Make sure that you are logged into the SAP Community Groups.  If not press the silhouette icon in the upper corner.

If this is the first time you have ever logged into the SAP Community Groups, then you will be asked to choose your Groups username.

Once logged into the SAP Community Groups, you can click the Join Group button.

This will automatically link to your SAP Community account and enter you into the Devtoberfest contest.

What Hasn’t Changed

Continuing with a similar overall approach as the last two years, this Devtoberfest will be caulk full of educational and enablement sessions, opportunities to get hands-on with new and evolving developer tools, and a great way to get you ready for the upcoming SAP TechEd event.

Educational Content

The backbone of Devtoberfest remains the educational content sessions. Devtoberfest is still an event designed for asynchronous consumption. While we will release content every day of the month during Devtoberfest, it’s all intended that you consume the content on your own schedule.

On that subject here is an example from Devtoberfest 2020. The session in question had forty-four live viewers originally. But over the last two years it’s received over eighteen thousand views. We want more of the kind of content that you find valuable during the event but can come back to repeatedly over the coming years.

This year’s theme is: Beginners. Whether you are new to the SAP developer eco system or want to expand your knowledge and learn a new topic, there will be something for everyone. We hear you say that as a developer, it can be difficult to break into a new topic area. There’s so much content, it’s hard to know where to start sometimes. But with Devtoberfest, we have collected content specifically designed to help people get started.

This year we have changed the structure of the content slightly.  We heard that you wanted shorter sessions and more flexibility to spread the learning out. We have five major topics this year but instead of focusing a single week on a specific topic, we will do a topic per day and then repeat that structure week after week. So, if you are an ABAP developer, for example, you can return to Devtoberfest every Monday in October and find content for you.

The topics we plan are:

As you can see from this calendar view, we will repeat that same structure with new content for each topic in each week of Devtoberfest.

All the session content is listed directly in the special Community Events Devtoberfest area. You can see all the sessions in the calendar or list view and drill in and see the content details.  As we get closer to October, we will technical connection details such as URLs for joining the sessions or watching the recordings.  But even now you can already get an overview of dates and times for all the great educational content to come.

One tip for using the SAP Community Events area: when your profile is created, everyone is automatically set to the US Pacific time zone. We strongly recommend that you go to your SAP Community Settings and change the Preference for the Time zone to your correct value.  Then all events in the SAP Community area will be displayed in the correct date and time for your location.

For all the information on the Educational Content, please see this document.

Getting the Most Out of TechEd

We have TechEd quickly approaching with two days of intensive expert content. But it can be difficult to absorb all the new features and details that come out of TechEd.  But you can start preparing for TechEd by participating in Devtoberfest. Devtoberfest will give you the basic introduction to many of these topics which you can then build upon with the deeper and intensive experience that will be TechEd.

If you are planning to participate in hands-on workshops at TechEd, then Devtoberfest is also an excellent opportunity to get setup in trial and free tier environments and perform basic tutorials so that don’t waste any setup time on basic steps during TechEd.

Fun Activities

This is a celebration so the Fun Friday activities will return. We saw the greatest amount of participation last year in the activities that didn’t require you to show up at a specific time, so we will expand those kinds of activities this year.

For example, Dogtoberfest was a huge hit last year. This year we will expand the special day for pet parents of all types.  Dogtoberfest becomes Petoberfest! As our pet friends will take over Devtoberfest, we will encourage you to post pictures of your pets with you in a work, coding, or general office setting.  We will ask that you post these in the SAP Community Groups or in social media with the hash tag: #petoberfest, so the community can easily find all the content.

This is just one of the several fun activities we have planned for Fridays in October, so keep an eye on the Community Group for full upcoming details.

For all the information on the Fun Activities, please see this document.

The Contest

By popular demand, we will once again have a contest aspect to Devtoberfest.  Last year we introduced the idea of earning points from a variety of different activities. This expanded the contest to a much greater number of community members.  Therefore, this year’s Devtoberfest contest will again use the same basic structure.

It will be a points-based contest.  Points are awarded for things like attending one of the educational sessions, completing certain developer tutorials tied to the topic weeks, or other activities that contribute to the SAP Developer Community. Prizes are awarded based upon SAP Community badges which you earn and you must have a public Community profile to participate.

For the listing of activities, points, and other contest details, we will update those closer to the start of Devtoberfest on this page.

But the fun doesn’t end there.  We brought back the animated Contest Gameboard to help you track your progress through the contest.  Just add your SAP Community Profile ID to the end of the following URL: https://devrel-tools-prod-scn-badges-srv.cfapps.eu10.hana.ondemand.com/devtoberfestContest/scnId.Here

And if you are curious how we built the animated gameboard, we have also released the whole thing as a Sample Code repository here.

We also have prizes that you can win this year. We have badges, beanie caps, stadium scarfs, and digital images. But most exciting, we have a genuinely great grand prize this year. It’s an all-expense paid trip (see details below) to SAP’s Newport Beach office in California to meet with SAP leaders, product experts and an VIP experience at one of SAP’s major customers that just so happens to also be one of the most magical places on earth. This grand prize includes:

• Economy round-trip airfare during event specific dates
• Single Occupancy Hotel Room during event specific dates
• Airport transfer fees to and from major gateway airports during event specific dates
• Meals during event specific dates
• Theme Park ticket, meals, and transportation on specific date

You will need to earn points to qualify for a prize tier and then to be as fair as possible we will perform a random drawing amongst everyone that qualified for that level.  And as always be sure to review the legal terms and conditions for the contest as well.

As we get closer to the official start date of the contest on October 1st, we will post all the possible points earning activities and value of each activity here in this group.

Complete tutorials, attend sessions, and solve code challenges you might be sporting a nice pair of mouse ears on your VIP prize trip!

For all the information on the Contest, please see this document.

Questions, Comments, or Feedback

Questions about the event? Or the judging? Or maybe you have a follow up question after participating in one of the educational enablement sessions? For any question or comment related to Devtoberfest we ask that you please use the dedicated Devtoberfest Discussions board available here.

Legal Stuff

It wouldn’t be any kind of event or contest without some legal content that I’m sure everyone will read in full detail. The legal terms and conditions for this event are detailed here.