After arriving at our hotel near the SAP Netherlands headquarters and meeting our Design Thinking colleagues yesterday evening, things got off to an early start this morning to make sure everything was in place for our Innojam attendees. We didn't need to work too hard however as Mientje Paais, our VNSG contact, and Jan Koster made our life much easier with all the preparations they had already put in place. If you haven't visited the location, and you're in the neighbourhood, then I can certainly recommend a detour to check out the wonderful building here. The coffee is good, the interior is very comfortable, and the welcome is warm.
Many of our (nearly 50) attendees arrived well in advance of the 9.30 registration, which was a good thing considering the big increase compared to last year's very successful event, which had 31 participants. The proportion of attendees with a business background was also up compared to last year's event, with a 60:40 split of developers to non-developers. After a welcome breakfast of donut bouquets, we were welcomed to the event by the master of ceremonies Jan Penninkhof. Pieter Schoehuijs, CIO of Akzo Nobel provided an interesting introduction to the history and innovations of the company, and the Design Thinking coaches were introduced to the participants before everyone moved upstairs to the atrium to get started with the Innojam itself.
Hester Hilbrecht, our lead Design Thinking coach, provided the participants with an overview of the process and Alex Graebe divided them into teams so that they could then start collaborating. The 7 teams engaged with their coaches (Karen Detken, Susanne Benz, Mauro Rego, Marion Froehlich, Gloria Matos da Costa, and Alex Graebe, along with Jan Koster from SAP Netherlands) to learn more about the Design Thinking process and to prepare themselves to interview the experts who would provide them with more information on the challenges they had been set to solve by Akzo Nobel.
After lunch, the teams went back to their hard work for the afternoon, and then presented their prototypes before some SAP technical experts provided a 6 minute overview of some of the technologies available to the teams. Niels van Noort gave a quick primer on HANA modeling (and also provided support for SAP UI5 once the coding started); Matthias Vach delivered a very entertaining preview of the possibilities provided by SAP NetWeaver Cloud; Giel Janssen Lok spoke about the Sybase Unwired Platform and mobile technology; and Robert Eijpe demonstrated the flexibility of the NetWeaver Gateway. Mauro Rego also informed the participants about the additional Design Thinking services that SAP offers to our customers and partner.
These 'teaser' sessions were expanded later for all the participants who wanted to incorporate them into their work, but not before an eagerly-anticipated (and delicious) Indian meal prepared by Haseenah Penninkhof. If anyone is considering attending an Innojam in the Netherlands in 2014, then register early, because it's likely to sell out if Haseenah cooks again next year :smile:
Despite the delicious meal, there was a lot of work to be done, and as soon as the groups settled down in their breakout rooms it was all hands to the pumps, providing laptops, software, technical support, and licence keys (thanks Uwe!). What had started as a dull morning had turned out to be a very productive and rewarding day, and a beautiful sunny evening...
As I write this, it's now quarter before midnight, and things look like they'll run long into the night. I can hear music in the corridor, the energy drinks have been stockpiled, and the sleeping bags have been laid out for when some hard-earned rest is finally called for...the impressions from day 2, and some additional photographs are available here.
- SAP Managed Tags:
2 Comments
