SAP TechEd InnoJam Amsterdam 2013 - My experience

[lusine_stepanyan]

This was the first time that I was at InnoJam . It was a great experience for me as an intern at DevEx team to support and help my team in the organization of InnoJam at TechEd Amsterdam 2013. And I am happy to share my experience with you.

Before coming to InnoJam when my friends were asking me “What is InnoJam?”, I was replying “Oh… It’s a competition between several teams who needs to create the best application within 30 hours using SAP technologies”.

But what I have learned from InnoJam is that it’s NOT just about making the best application using SAP products. It’s more about creating a story, understanding what actually the users need and creating a solution that will help them to achieve their needs.

I would like to mention several things that I really liked at InnoJam

• Design thinking
  It was so interesting to follow how the teams were working on each step of DT. Although for many of the participants this was something completely new, the teams with the help of their coaches reached really great results (bravo to all coaches of the teams. They did a great job).
  I can’t not to mention how much enthusiasm the team members had while working on the DT tasks. One of the DT steps was to interview the users to understand who are the users and what they want to do, and some of the team members even went out to find their users outside, although it was raining heavily (yes, I have to admit that Amsterdam was not that much welcoming with it’s weather :sad: )
• Team work
  Another thing that impressed me was the collaboration between developers and non-developers. It was amazing to see how people who had never met each other before were working so organized together as if they were a team for a long time.
  
  
  
• Tech Sessions:
  In between there were small sessions where SAP tech. experts were introducing the technologies that participants could use for building their applications. I also used the opportunity to watch some of the sessions that were very interesting for me and got an idea of the technologies which I hadn’t used before.

    

• Atmosphere
  I was awake the whole night so I could follow the whole progress of the teams. Around 3-4 AM, although many of the team members were already tired, there were people who were still full of energy working hard  on their solutions (coffee, Red Bull, drinks and snacks helped a lot :smile:   ).
  
  
  
  Of course, some of the team members didn’t manage to stay awake the whole night (It’s hard not to fall asleep once you sit on those comfortable ‘Fat Boys’ :grin: ).
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

It’s hard for me to write about all my impressions (and I am not that good at writing) so I will stop here. :smile:

This was the best tech. event I have ever been so far. I really enjoyed it and I am looking forward for the next InnoJam to be there again (this time maybe as a participant :smile: ).

Thanks a lot to all those who gave me this opportunity to be at  TechEd InnoJam in Amsterdam.

I hope to see you all at the next InnoJam,

Lusine