It's sunday afternoon. I just finished my open.sap homework, brewed myself a nice coffee and put my youngest boy to bed. Time to do my writeup off #InnoJamNL (use that hashtag to find some great tweets and pictures).
For me it was a special event. It was my first (community) event as a SAP Mentor. Without the shirt, but with the pride of knowing I was building solutions with guys and galls from the SCN community who nominated me into this great role.
So what is so impressive about an InnoJam? For me it is the competition within teams to build the best solution, without real competition. InnoJam teams consist of SAP nuts (apologies for lack of finding a better word). And do you know what drives a SAP nut? Wanting to build the best solution regardless of the team he is assigned to. Everybody helps everybody. True community spirit
So is it all good? My personal reflection:
The good
1. Work with the latest technology: HANA Cloud, SAPUI5, OData, Business Objects. We've seen and used it all
2. Get a hands on Design Thinking training. Great concept with one thing in mind: build the best solution for your customer (persona) keeping in mind what is most important for him when doing his job
3. An endless supply of Food!
The "could be better"
1. Food. Well, less of it that is. I gained two kilos in 30 hours. I am still hyper from a sugar rush, cannot believe how great that Jägermeister from Fred Verheul tasted in the middle of the night and you lady, you know who you are, I cannot stop thinking about your Indian food!
2. Our solution. It hit me like a bolt of lightning yesterday. Our team build the most (I dare to say best, sorry Leo van Hengel, you know you rock) technical solution using a wide variety of technologies (HANA, Dashboard Builder, Lumira, SAPUI5), but did not finish in the top 3. We had Geographical information in Lumira, dashboards designed by the paulvanalst .... and to top it off a UI5 based HTML5 app able to search through data in real time, presenting the results in graphs and tables! It was magic!
So why didnt we win I asked myself? In my opinion, we stepped into the one trap an SAP nut needs to watch out for: wanting to build the most technically advanced solution possible, without re-checking if this still is the best solution for the end-user. And there lies a great learning point. It is not about using all technologies at hand, it is it is about building the best solution possible for your persona. Bob Ross, our teams persona, I know your out there and would agree ;-).
And with that ladies and gentlemen we come back to one of the most important things of an InnoJam: to learn new skills. Surprisingly enough, for me it was not about learning new technical tricks this time.
So that leaves me with some final well deserved thank you's: thank you awesome teams, thank you InnoJam and Design Thinking teams, thank you VNSG and last but not least, thank you beautiful wife and 3 kids for letting me do what I do best: learn new skills, even on a free Saturday, even when they are not technical.
Take care and till next time,
Ronald
