For an event that is focussed on the new and innovative, SAP TechEd does at the same time have its traditions, including starting the event with a keynote by Vishal Sikka, a member of SAP's Executive Board and SAP's Chief Technology Officer. The theme of his remarks was "A Simplyifying Renewal;" the messages I took away concerned his emphasis on HANA bringing about a "radical reshaping of our world," the value being created by dissolving of layers and structures, and separating capabilities from their containers. I am looking forward to spending some time getting familiar with SAP HANA on their new web site:
https://www.experiencesaphana.com/welcome
Following the keynote, I was happy to able to attend an executive Q&A with Vishal, where he took questions to follow up on the themes of his earlier remarks. I enjoyed hearing more about the intellectual renewal at SAP coming about via design thinking, since we will be having a design thinking event tomorrow night here at TechEd.
Following the Executive Q&A, Vishal held a private discussion with the SAP Mentors. We are very fortunate that he is so supportive in the SAP Mentors initiative and eager to engage with us.
I grabbed a quick lunch on the go and headed over to the Clubhouse to attend an Expert Networking session with Kristian Lehment from SAP AG. He took questions on a wide variety of security-related topics, and he spoke about SAP NetWeaver Single Sign On, a new product recently purchased from Secude. I had to slip away a few minutes early to attend the SAP Mentor's meeting with Oliver Bussman, SAP CIO. He took questions about his role as SAP's CIO and his vision of where the CIO role is headed. I found it interesting to hear that his vision of the increasing importance of process and emphasis on process KPIs.
I stepped out of my comfort zone and attended an education session on a topic entirely new to me, PMC104, A Comprehensive Introduction to Process Modeling and Business Process Blueprinting, presented by Wulff-Heinrich Knapp - SAP.
My afternoon education session was followed by an interview for SAP TechEd Live. I really enjoyed being interviewed by Anne Hardy on my experiences at InnoJam.
The recording will be posted on the SAP TechEd Live website:
http://www.sapvirtualevents.com/teched/sessiondetails.aspx?sId=46
Then I was on to the evening's networking events, followed by Demo Jam to cap off the day.
I was glad to be able to spend time in sessions with a few more of my SAP Mentor colleagues today besides those I worked with on the InnoJam team, including Thorsten Franz, John Appleby, Sue Keohan, Srini Tanikella, Dave Rathbun, Matthias Steiner, and Paul Kurchina.
