Hello everyone. I would like to share some exciting news about the SAP Community Day at SAP TechEd in Las Vegas. SAP Community day is about bringing everyone together to network, share idea’s and challenges and brainstorm solutions. This year the SAP Community Day Community Day at a Glance will be expanded to include content from the ASUG community.
For those of you who are not familiar with the America’s SAP User’s Group (ASUG) http://www.asug.com/ – it is the world’s largest customer-run SAP user’s group and is comprised of more than 45,000 SAP customers and 200+ volunteers. Our goals are to continuously educate our members, facilitate networking among colleagues and SAP professionals and influence future SAP product and service direction. My first ASUG experience was as a speaker in the Data Archiving SIG (Special Interest Group)at the 2002 ASUG Fall Forum in Phoenix. This led to another speaking opportunity at the ASUG 2003 Annual Conference in New Orleans. After that conference I was asked to become an ASUG Volunteer – the Data Archiving Program Chair. This volunteer role is responsible for scheduling the content for the ASUG Conferences. Being a part of this community has provided me an amazing group of contacts/friends that have helped me through many archiving related issues. I have also had the pleasure of being part of a very successful Influence Council where ASUG and SAP collaborated to come up with new archiving functionality such as Archive Routing and the newest initiative – a product that SAP is offering for retention management. This brand new tool will be released sometime this year. I was in Chicago this past weekend at an ASUG Volunteer Meeting and met the most amazing woman - Marilyn Pratt, who gave a fascinating presentation touching on the SAP BPX Community, YouTube, Web 2.0, Flickr, and Twitter. Some of the subjects I was familiar with, some not. I found out that the word that would describe me is a "NØØB". So, after her presentation, I introduced myself to Marilyn as a NØØB. This led to a discussion on how ASUG and the SAP Communities could work together. This discussion went on for some time and continued on into the evening while a group of us went downtown Chicago to an establishment named Howl at the Moon. Covering that event would lead to a whole different blog :-). Some pictures from Chicago can be viewed at: Photos.
If any of you participated in the SDN Day at TechEd last year, you may remember the presentation I gave with another ASUG volunteer, Gretchen Lindquist, on "The Technical Communities Within ASUG". This collaboration will be a continuation of that initiative. Many people associate ASUG with more of a "functional" aspect. There are communities within ASUG that are technical, functional and business process specific. This is why we think there would be such a great connection between the members within the ASUG communities and SAP Communities. There are many members that share the same interests and needs and could benefit greatly from sharing experiences and knowledge. If there are any particular topics you would like to hear about, please add them in a comment to this blog. For example, we could provide subject matter relevant for various Business Process Experts, Unicode, ABAP, Workflow Tips and Tricks, Technical Aspects of SAP Security for Developers, Building Good Controls into your SAP Security Process, etc. This will also be the third year in a row where SAP TechEd and ASUG are Partners in Education binging customer-driven and customer-led content to the SAP TechEd attendee’s. These ASUG-powered sessions will expand the learning to include real-world experiences that can only be shared by SAP customers. So, at the SAP Community Day, we could also provide a "Roadmap" for all of the ASUG sessions that will be offered this year at TechEd. \ \ Working with Marilyn and others within ASUG and SAP brings to mind the most memorable exit line in movie history:"I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship." That is how I think of this collaboration between the SAP Communities and the ASUG Communities. I hope you feel this way as well. I am looking forward to meeting everyone at this years SAP Community Day in Las Vegas.
