First of all thanks to Mahesh for organizing this event, Padma and Ranju in making the event happen and Special thanks to TCS team for hosting this event.
I was one among the expert team from SAP traveled to Hyderabad for this codejam. It was not a regular weekend with late morning coffee and brunch for me on this particular day of the event. There was a bit of hastiness in catching the flight, so woke up even earlier than I thought. Got the cab and reached airport with my other colleague. The flight was prompt and we reached TCS campus at 8.30 AM and had ample time to get ready for the Event.
First look at Hyderabad TCS campus, simply awesome, not sure whether is it because of weekend, the empty lawns, nicely constructed buildings, park style benches and monumental rocks everything reminded me of my college days. Next to SAP this is one of the best well-constructed campuses I have seen amidst match box style buildings rocketing the sky.
Bigger surprise was Nilesh sitting there at campus even before us. He greeted us and showed us the way to the rooms where the event was destined to happen. Now we are all set to start with the session. We expected more people since it was a weekend and that was the expectations of the organizers as well. Slowly clock was ticking and we had our preliminary checks done for the event and could see people coming in slowly one by one. Finally seeing the whole bunch we decided to go to a bigger room and we kind of started the Event.
This particular event was very special to us atleast for the BW on HANA team since it is happening for the first time outside SAP Labs and also this is the first time it is planned to happen for one full day. The event kick started with short introduction from Padma. Then it was Ranju who gave us a nice Overview on the topic and also touched upon customer value propositions. As soon as Ranju was reaching end of her slide deck, butterflies started flying in my stomach because it is me who is next and need to give technical perspectives on the topic.
I should say, I somehow completed my slide deck. I tried to convey as much as information about the topic but was able to accomplish only 60 to 70% for the benefit of time, nevertheless all important details were shared. Then the real game started the “Codejam”. Though there is not much of coding to offer from BW on HANA, the jam (collaboration) part happened well. We had a wonderful bunch of participants who were very much interested in the topic, kept asking meaningful questions and showed focus in completing the task given.
It would be a crime, if I din’t mention about the lunch that was provided for the day. Thanks Padma for arranging this and TCS for providing the gala experience. It was sumptuous and utter delicious. On the funnier note, the heavy lunch slowed us a bit in completing our task post lunch.
There were mixed comments about the content we had for the day, some said the technical deep dive covered more of HANA and some felt they needed even modeling of HANA artifacts as part of the codejam exercise. All feedback taken, we had our own concerns and limitations in formulating the content and because of licensing and other issues we were not able to showcase Design Studio’s ability and HANA modeling. But in the next codejam we will try to address all the feedback given by the participants. But apart from this, all the other comments and blogs by participants nearly floored us. The indications said that the event was a success. Thanks everyone for that.
Finally the day came to an end, we jointly took a snap to make the event even more memorable and we bid adieu to the participants. It turned out to be a well spent day with energetic and super interested participants. We are waiting to have more such events to thrill and get thrilled. Thanks all for this experience.
Kudos to all!!!
