My journey to attend SAP TechEd && dcode 2014

[Former Member]

Back in May 2014 I was approached by moya.watson, Technology Evangelist and Communications Lead at SAP, explaining that I had been nominated by SAP Mentor tim.guest to present a community session at SAP d-code in Las Vegas this year.

My initial thought was fantastic, then it quickly turned to "What Me, Really?".

My journey to get to this point came by way of a step change in my views on sharing knowledge. Throughout my career in BI I had always considered knowledge something to be kept as it gave you a competitive advantage and you could also say 'made you look clever', something that I'm certainly not.  This opinion changed (for the positive) when I started reading articles on SCN and was able to interact with the authors and realised that people were 'putting themselves out' to share their knowledge and then the penny dropped about the SCN community within SAP.

I wrote my first blog on SCN in 2012 and since then I have not looked back. To my surprise when writing this blog I realised that I have now published 25 SCN blogs with 35,000 page views. One thing I have learned about posting blogs on SCN is that you should share topics that are of interest to you and will be surprised that what seams the simplest concept to you the author will often strike a chord with other community members. An example of this is a simple "How To" blog I wrote that took me no more than an hour to put together has had nearly 6000 page views and an discussion thread of 30 replies.

How can I not mention the SCN Data Geek Challenge #DATAGEEK. This challenge is now in its 3rd year and I was lucky enough to be a finalist in 2012. Again another great way of bringing a subset of the whole SCN community together for fun and learning. Data Geek III has now started with a fun theme based on "The Game of Thrones" why not start your own journey here.

My journey in the SAP community moved on again getting involved with the SAP Inside Track Events, these are local grassroots community organized event where SAP Community Network members come together to share knowledge, expertise and network. Last year I offered to deliver a session on Business Objects Analytics at SIT Manchester and this was snapped up. It appears to me that the SAP SIT events have focused on the deeper technical concepts in SAP and as I understand it Analytics has not had a great presence thus far. I must have done something right as I've was invited back to give an update on what's new in SAP Analytics at SIT Sheffield a month ago and SIT??? 2015 planning is under-way and I've offered to run a full track on SAP Analytics.

These SIT events link me right back to where I started as Tim Guest is one of the organising team for these events in the UK and I thank him for nominating me to present at SAP TechEd && d-code 2014 in Las Vegas.

Finally, I have dreamed of attending a US SAP Conference for a number of years not because the content is better then the European event but to meet personally members of the SAP community who I engage with via social media and now consider friends. A great example of this is a blog by dallas.marks titled "What does the fox say" where he writes "With an ocean in between us, I've never met Andrew Fox in person. But it's on my bucket list to do so".  So thanks to the support from Andy Steer and Itelligence UK hopefully I will meet up with Dallas and many others in just a few weeks.

My SAP TechEd && d-code 2014 Las Vegas session topic is around real life experiences with SAP Lumira from the community and if you can drop by the session it would be great to meet up.

EA119    SAP Lumira – Tips, Tricks, and Community Experiences from the Real World    Tue  04:30 p.m. - 05:30 p.m.