What is Enterprise Geeks?
Well in short, it is a website representing a small group of tech geeks that happened to put the focus of their geeky desires into the enterprise software space. You can read more of the details on the Enterprise Geeks website About Page, but basically it all started with a group of likeminded people that meet and associated via the SAP Community and its events.
You might have seen us hanging out together at TechEd Las Vegas this year where the below picture was taken. In the picture from left to right you have me, Ed Herrmann (who works for Colgate), Dan McWeeney (who works for Adobe), Craig Cmehil (SAP), and Rich Heilman (SAP).
Although we walk different career paths today, we all got our start as developers (and all of us have worked in ABAP at one time or another) and as SAP customers. So technology and programming drives our interest, but always with a focus on the Enterprise and SAP space.
Our goal for starting Enterprise Geeks was to have a place to do all sorts of things - but all retaining that focus on technology in the Enterprise space. Given our backgrounds and current positions, we will naturally be drawn to the SAP and Adobe areas of Enterprise but we also want to touch on other aspects as well. We want to use the site as a place to share thoughts, learnings, work on projects, host podcasts and videos.
The ABAP Freak Show
Now I want to take a minute to explain some of the content that I am planning to work on for the Enterprise Geeks website. I've long been involved in creating formal eLearning videos for SCN. I love creating these materials and will continue to do so. However the effort required and lead time for host, limits how many of these can be created and how often you can post them.
For a while now, I've also wanted to do a less formal video podcast on the ABAP topic. I still want it to be informative, but I want it to be more frequent and less formal. The tone should be lighthearted and little more fun. This was always the plan for the ABAP Freak Show, but it was difficult to keep on schedule.
Now with the Enterprise Geek website and group, I'm bringing back these ideas and relaunching the ABAP Freak Show. I'm going to have a set schedule of releasing a new episode of the ABAP Freak Show on the first and third Wednesday of each month. The content will be hosted directly on the Enterprise Geeks website and of course you can subscribe to the RSS feed of Enterprise Geeks and never miss an episode.
I've already published the first episode of the ABAP Freak Show for the year and we talked about how to create dynamic context nodes and then do dynamic context mapping and binding in Web Dynpro ABAP. Next week we will look at how to fill default values into Select-Options in Web Dynpro ABAP. I will also talk about the history of the name of the ABAP Freak Show.
From week to week, I might pull a question from mail bag, focus on new functionality in NetWeaver Enhancement Package 1 or a little later in the year begin to preview new functionality in NetWeaver Enhancemenet Package 2. You will also see guest hosts of the ABAP Freak Show in upcoming weeks. Of course my mailbox is always open to suggestions for future topics.
Enterprise Geeks Podcast
One of the other mediums we want to use as part of Enterprise Geeks is a regularly scheduled podcast. Ed Herrmann and myself are going to host the main Enterprise Geeks podcast, but you can expect to find frequent appearances by the other Enterprise Geeks members as well as (hopefully) many other members of the SAP community.
The idea of the podcast is to once again be pretty informal. We want to try and capture and share some of the fun conversations we have when we are all together at SAP events. Our main topics will of course be Technology in the Enterprise, but you can also expect us to get off topic occasionally when we get distracted by any shiny object.
We want to release the podcast approximately by-weekly. We recorded the first episode a few days before Christmas at a mall in Louisville, Kentucky. In the future we promise we will find quieter surroundings. 🙂 The first episode covered topics that ranged from doing design documents on napkins to a 2008 year in review. You can expect an equally wide range in topics in future episodes.
The future of Enterprise Geeks
I've only touched on a couple of the things that I am involved with for Enterprise Geeks. Each of the other member have other things in mind as well. You can also expect to see special editions of our regular podcasts and videos when we are together participating in SAP events. We are also really interested in topics or formats that you would like to see us cover.
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