I have enjoyed watching the evolution of this pre-TechEd event, now known as InnoJam. The challenge of working on a team of people who you may not have previously met, developing an application overnight, using new and largely unknown technologies, sounds pretty crazy, but I have always had a good time, learned something about new SAP solutions, and made some new friends in the process.
When I arrived at InnoJam on Sunday evening, teams had already started forming up, so I took the opportunity to roam around and look for a team that was a good fit to my experience. I quickly joined a table with a group of my SAP Mentor colleagues, including Vijay Vijayasankar, Vitaliy Rudnytskiy, Greg Myers, Derek Loranca, Karin Tillotson, Jon Reed, Eric Vallo, and Jamie Oswald. Team PUKR used HANA, BusinessObjects Explorer, BusinessObjects Enterprise, and Dashboard Design for our innovative gamified enterprise app, PuppiesUnicornsKittensandRainbows.
I did take a few quick breaks from the action to attend to other happenings today. I slipped away at noon to attend the ASUG Volunteer Appreciation Luncheon, where we were visited by ASUG CEO Bridgette Chambers. I also broke away to attend the Speaker Reception. Traditionally this event is a good spot to reconnect with some of my fellow speakers, and this year was no exception. I enjoyed chatting with Harald Reiter, Larry Justice, Greg Chase, Alvaro "Blag" Tejada, and Ginger Gatling, among others.
Besides working on data for our app, I also created a Facebook page, which quickly gained fans:
On Monday evening, InnoJam took a break for the guest keynote by Jane McGonigal, who spoke on gamification. I had spent some time on the plane reading her book, Reality is Broken: Why Games Make us Better and How They Change the World.
Soon it was time for the InnoJam presentation. Team PUKR did great job presenting our application. We did not win, but we had a lot of fun and learned a lot from each other.
After the InnoJam presentation, I attended the SAP Mentors meeting, where I reconnected with more Mentor colleagues who I'd met at past events and met some of our new Mentor cubs.
All in all, an action packed first day in Las Vegas, and SAP TechEd has not even started yet. After this exciting start, I am even more excited about the rest of the week ahead.
