Folks,
Before we start on Day 2 of SAPPHIRE I have a quick public service announcement (should’ve done it yesterday). Ahem.
PEOPLE!!! WHEN YOU ARE ATTENDING PRESENTATIONS MUTE YOUR BLEEPING (literally) ELECTRONIC DEVICES!
Put your precious phones on vibrate and mute the sound on your laptops. Seriously – it’s extremely annoying (and also rude) to hear constant bings, beeps, ding-dongs and even obnoxious ring tones while trying to learn something. Special shout-out to the weird whistling noises and extremely loud camera shutter sounds. Have some respect and keep it down!
Gosh. Glad we got this out of the way.
Today I bailed out of the Keynote 3 out of 4 (will watch the recording later to feed my inner Beavis) and casually waltzed in at 11 am for the session BT1423 ’SAP Data Archiving and Image Archiving 101’ led by karin.tillotson. Most of the session was about the tools that are already available to the SAP customers without mentioning of HANA, Cloud, IoT and, oh, Mobility (did I forget anything?). What a breathe of fresh air! I've dealt with some "light" archiving before but found the session to be quite enlightening. Wish it was a bit longer since there were actually several co-presenters. I needed to plug in some questions but instead generously yielded time to other participants. Gracious Mentor mission accomplished!
The presentation should be available on the ASUG web site (I have yet to get to it – don’t even get me started on the ASUG website). If you’re in any way interested in archiving SAP data I highly recommend taking a look.
During the break I notice many ladies in the restroom using 3-4 paper towels to dry their hands. I’m not a tree-hugger by any means, but this Ted Talk was almost life-changing for me and I can attest that just one paper towel dries your hands perfectly well with the “shake-fold-dry” technique. Let's save some trees, folks!
I had extremely low expectations for the next session RM2389 ‘Road Map: SAP S/4HANA - the Next-Generation Business Suite’ and loaded up on coffee in advance but rudolf.hois actually did great job presenting and keeping the flow, so overall it turned out to be a very pleasant surprise. Hopefully the slides for this session will also be available online (or maybe Rudolf would kindly post them on SCN). I thought that the presentation was more clear than other SAP content on the subject. Rudolf wisely took a cue from Futurama’s Dr.Zoidberg and escaped quickly after the session ended. Woop, woop, woop, woop! But I got his business card, hehe. :smile:
After lunch (food is in the Top 5 worst things at SAPPHIRE right behind the constant badge-scanning) I reluctantly joined session PO460 ‘Learn How Johnson and Johnson Redesigned Its Global SAP Enterprise Portal Component’ by Aravinda Boyapati. We don’t use Portal currently and personally I don’t like it, so what am I even doing here? But events like SAPPHIRE are somewhat like “all you can eat” buffet at a restaurant – a good occasion to try some new food without any commitment. And even though there is no chance we could implement anything close to what J&J did (really awesome, well done), it got me thinking how we can improve our own, much simpler, applications. Sparkling creativity and innovation (bleh, can’t believe I used that word!) is exactly what great sessions are about.
For BT458 session on Fiori I arrive 5 minutes late (got delayed talking to a vendor) to find ‘Session full’ sign. I bet there are at least 10 empty chairs in that room, sigh… Oh well. So I schlep half a mile back to the showroom floor in search of a potential “cutest swag of the day” candidate. Hmm, this is clearly no TechEd – anything other than pens is guarded like Fort Knox. So instead I’d like to present the 'Most Fun Booth' award to Infosys for their car ride simulator. And I didn’t even get a pen from these guys, so rest assured this is a totally unbiased nomination.
You’re welcome, Infosys.
The last event of the day is Mentor wrap-up meeting where I once again get a chance to dispense some hugs and say good byes (we’re leaving on Thursday afternoon). The event was graced by the presence of dashing applebyj himself (who wisely replaced Mentor t-shirt with a suit), so I get a chance to shake hands with the fellow HANA top contributor.
Tomorrow is a big day – we get to see Hasso ‘Papa Bear’ Plattner in the flash. There are also rumors that he might be signing his new book. Please make mine “To an ASUG member who does know something about HANA". Maybe just a tiny bit less than John Appleby. :smile:
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