Last year in June, we had an e-mail from Marilyn Pratt encouraging us to organize an Inside Track in Turkey. It was always an idea in our minds but we hadn't done anything to make it happen up until that point. And again Marilyn was the person to change the world. She facilitated the movement and we managed to gather forces to make the very first Inside Track happen in Turkey . And the second one did follow. With great joy, we managed to have the third Inside Track in Turkey yesterday with more awareness : SAP Inside Track Istanbul 2011 was held on December 3rd, 2011 with considerable efforts of Abdulbasit Gulsen - Thanks !
We had very interesting sessions in the event. Firstly, Ibrahim Gunduz made an introductory presentation on how a high speed the technology was evolving and how much planning mattered to keep up with this pace. Then Huseyin Bilgen came to stage and shared the lessons he and his team learned from a Sybase Mobile Sales Project. Next, we had a virtual speaker : Thomas Jung. Although it was very early in the morning for his time zone and he had just completed a virtual session in Inside Track India; he didn't hurt our feelings and shared some very interesting knowledge on next year's version of Netweaver Business Client. The next session was mine. I had prepared a less technical, more social presentation, which was about sharing the insights from Teched Madrid with the ones who missed it. Additionally, I tried to conduct some key benefits of new SCN to be on air on Dec 12th. Following my session, there was another very interesting one : Next Generation Database Machine by Ugur Candan. He mentioned how DBs were evolving and what SAP was doing to keep up with this evolution. Then Huseyin Dereli came to stage and shared his experience on how to program RESTful web services in ABAP and how to appeal more programmers to SAP with the use of Gateway. The last but not the least presentation was Abdulbasit Gulsen's : The Gamification for Enterprises. In his session, he shared the knowledge he gained in TechEd Las Vegas on how to make use of Gamification towards more effective processes within organizations. He also announced a project he had just kicked off in Code Exchange to create a brand new Gamification Application. Me and some of the attendees gave our words to him that we would be doing our best to make this project happen.
Sessions were not the only activity of the event, of course. In breaks, we had great food and drinks to taste -Thanks to Ugur Candan and Ibrahim Gunduz-. And at the end, we had a breathtaking drawing for SAP Press books. Other than these, we had fun, we had chat and we made plans for the future.
It was a great feeling to see the community spirit in action again, listening to people who were there just to share their knowledge voluntarily and meeting others who were there spending a sunny Saturday afternoon to listen to these sessions probably at the cost of rejecting some outdoor activities. In short, it was a wonderful event with wonderful people and wonderful hosting. I can't wait to meet again in the upcoming event to be held in Spring in Ankara.
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