It's July and that means it's time to submit your session ideas, however there are a couple of "catches" you need to be aware of and of course it's always good to understand the benefits behind submitting!
First I want to address this year's call for proprosals for the entire SAP TechEd event, it's slightly different than previous years as this year's call has a theme!
We are pleased to announce this exclusive opportunity for members of the SAP Community Network (SDN, BPX community, and SAP BusinessObjects community) to submit session proposals focused on sustainability and green ITfor SAP TechEd. Don't miss this chance to represent your community and help others learn how they also can incorporate more sustainable processes when working with SAP technology.
SAP is committed to improving its own operations to become more sustainable and to delivering customer solutions to improve sustainability on a grand scale, which inspired us to make sustainability one of our featured hot topics for SAP TechEd 2009. We will showcase your best sessions focused on sustainability and green IT in Phoenix, Vienna, and Bangalore.
The deadline (like for Demo Jam) is July 31st! So be sure to take this opportunity!
Now for those of you who may not be ready for such a big audience or perhaps you are simply not going to be able to make it to one o the SAP TechEd events this year, then we have of course another opportunity for you (actually it's open to EVERYONE!)
For the past several years we have held a "Community Day" the day before the SAP TechEd event in the US, EMEA and India. This year is no different - the format however has changed...
Last year we noticed the rise of the "SAP Inside Track", events organized by the community focusing on the "Session" aspect of the Community Day and also slightly on the "Networking" aspect of the Community Day. We began as a team to discuss what 2009 would look like since we very much enjoy seeing the community self organize their own "SAP Inside Tracks" and then also taking into account the concepts of sustainability, environment, carbon and of course green we began to formulate the following plan. We would of course continue to host both aspects, both pieces of our Community Day but we slightly alter the way in which we did so. This later changed into a complete alteration of the concept which we think will appeal to even more community members around the world and have a larger impact.
2009 will see the first ever "Virtual BoFs" to make up the first part of Community Day, the sessions. We will do a call for proposals in July followed by a voting in August and then we will host via SAP Connect 20 sessions (perhaps more or less depending on submissions) in September. We will invite each presenter (if present at a physical SAP TechEd event) to attend a "Networking" session together with SAP Mentors the evening before the event starts thus adding the second piece of the Community Day!
Remember BoF sessions at a Community Day are the perfect way of saying "here I am and I have something to share!"
So there you have it, 3 major ways to share with the entire community and SAP Ecosystem the cool stuff you are working on!
We can't stress enough the value that exists from participating and submitting to one, two or all of these areas nor can we express easily in words how doing so has changed the lives of so many in the community! If you ask them though I'm sure they would be willing to share their story!
I personally participated in a session submission to the "SDN Meets Labs" event in Walldorf back in 2005, my submission granted me the ability to bring someone else for free to the event, my status in the community and being so active granted me another seat. So 3 of us from (my old) company drove down to Walldorf and took part in the event. My management was amazed that my efforts granted all three of us a free pass to the event and were even more amazed at the amount of collective knowledge we returned with!
My presentation was about using integrating web content and you can SDN Meets Labs: Integrated Web Content. Well that was the plan, however right as I was about to do my presentation I discovered a problem our server folks had made several changes to the proxy at work and I was no longer able to actually do what I inteded to do - I quickly changed tact though and my presentation morphed into how to live debug your BSP applications with external web content.
The comments I received from folks afterwards and I mean there were some "heavy hitters" sitting in that room watching me made my day, actually better said it made me realize that the time and energy I put into learning about the technology was visible and those compliments have stayed with me ever since!
One small disclaimer, what I was showing that day I had also submitted as a BoF session at the BoF, TechEd Munich '04 - RSS, HTTP and BSP even, the session was selected by as you can see from the post this was one of those times that the planning of BoF sessions was actually at a less than ideal time and most of the BoF sessions for EMEA that year actually didn't take place.
What I find even more interesting though is that the content from my sessions is still in demand today despite the changes to technology and I still get a few comments and questions a month around it!
I'm so very glad that I took the opportunity way back when and I hope you do the same!
