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SAP Teched Memories

mmcisme1
Active Contributor

What memories do you have of previous Techeds?   Is this your first one?  What are you looking forward to?

Past Teched:

Meeting people while sitting out in the "waiting" line.  I met more people that way.  They were all interesting.  I may not have kept up with them.  But it was interesting to hear where they came from, what they were thinking about.

Specific Memory

Meeting the person who inspired me - It was after hours teched.  I had to pick one of two fun things to do.  One focused on development (Hacker's night). I honestly don't remember what the other one was.  I met Marilyn Pratt and Craig in the hall.  I had signed up for Hacker's night; Marilyn convinced me to go with her night "session".   She is an amazing person.  Positive, happy, and so very supportive.   I had a blast.  She was/still is the person who had inspired me to write more blogs.  She was (I believe) the first person to comment on my very first blog.  It made the evening special.  And brought home, yet again, why this community is so amazing.

59 REPLIES 59

tbroek
Product and Topic Expert
Product and Topic Expert

Hah, SAP Mentor 87 - that's me 🙂 

jiteshmehta
Active Contributor

I remember SAP TechEd Bangalore 2012,  It was great event , huge crowd , it was like stadium full of sap enthusiasts.

Some Good Memories 

1) Visha Sikka - I think CTO at that time explained what HANA is all about , I am not sure if I digested all of it but can relate to that experience now. 

2) VVS Laxman -  I was wondering what a Sportsperson (Cricketer) has to do with teched, but he shared his professional experience and it was all worth it and very relatable. 

3)  Demo Jam was really fun, can see lot of innovative ideas implemented in SAP Ecosystem.

4)  Fun & Party - Anu Kapoor hosting Antakshri- Indian Film Song based game.  

Virtual Teched is good but it will stay in my memory only for 1-2 years. What I like about virtual is flexibility to do hands-on at our own pace and time. 

Karen
Active Participant

Wow, I like your proposal here! 

A wonderful memory it was my first time at techEd. There are so many options for sessions at the event, I didn't know what to watch. It was the event that I took the most pictures....some photos are with SAP mentors 🙂

JimSpath
Active Contributor

I dug up my memento from the only year I was an official speaker (as opposed to community tracks and other out-of-band performances). The fabric is partly bamboo, for a kind of sustainability posture. Not greenwashing, as such.

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JimSpath
Active Contributor
0 Kudos

Um, badges, though. There's a famous movie line about badges, and there's also a Weird Al version that references badgers, instead. For those who missed this clip before, here's a little review of conference souvenirs, not just TechEd though. The sound track is mostly cold call voice mails, and a little tabla drum from public domain clips.

JimSpath
Active Contributor

Another "Tech Ed" memory - from 1999.

twitter.com/jspath55/status/1334497894959886337 

Back when "saplabs.com" was the URL to have!

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Dan_Wroblewski
Developer Advocate
Developer Advocate

I remember going to the Munich TechEd in maybe 2008(?) and a day before trying to rent a BMW to go to the Neuschwanstein castle but not being able to drive the car out of the rental parking lot because I had forgotten how to drive a shift (my father taught me to drive on a shift car and we bought only shift cars at first). So they changed me to Mercedes, which has so much power, which was good when you get stuck behind a truck on a 2-lane road in the countryside.

Anyway, I remember going because I was the point-leader for the Enterprise Portal category on SDN and got a free pass-- well, actually, Detlev Beutner was far and away the leader, but he was so far out front that he got a free pass for being the overall leader, leaving me to take the Enterprise Portal prize. All the point leaders went on stage and to be honest I didn't know what was happening, it was all a blur.

And the last thing I remember was the SDN Days before the main TechEd, and trying to get the Enterprise Portal to run on my laptop. Not a good idea!! 




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See all my blogs and connect with me on Twitter / LinkedIn

sunny_13
Participant

Being a SAP techie with partner organizations for many years, what I mention below would resonate with lot of consultants from India, though they may or may not be able to admit it.

The earliest memories of Tech-ED, from when I heard about it, it was a sort of career milestone if you could attend. The fees, even for Bangalore, was  very expensive. So the only way was, get somehow noticed by your managers with work ( maybe extra stretch on weekends, multi-tasking, double shifts), pat-on-the-back from overseas clients, and maybe you get to the list of people from whom that year's TechEd participants would be chosen. And of course, the unwritten rules of paying back conference fees if you are leaving the org within a year of attendance. Usually senior consultants/managers would get selected for this huge privilege, and for a couple of months after the TechEd, quite a few would strut around campuses like the "Chosen Rambo" 😂.  And its not just who attended, managers would jostle for influencing who could attend, and beam like the Sun-God if their candidates were selected, it added to their show of strength in internal office politics.

I finally got to attend TechEd when I was not part of this carrot-stick rat race any more - whether I was not good enough for my managers or not just good enough to attend previously, I don't know.  TechEd itself was great , a very relaxing atmosphere, quite fun to roam around the Bangalore conference center, and with awesome sessions to learn technical things, do hands-on, ask questions, fill- up knowledge gaps. Bumping into old colleagues was an extra perk😊.

But that privileged feeling was hard to shake off, because the way the privilege was marketed, the ROI did not make sense. So, yes,  I am happy that for last 2 times, I am attending TechEd on my own, in the virtual world, no depending on my employer or anyone else. And to all the newbies in SAP world in India, I would think its a relief for them as well, one less item in FOMO list. 

Colin_Brain
Discoverer

I first attended in 2015 at Barcelona and made the mistake of staying at the Hotel Porta Fira (the big red one) near to the conference centre thinking that I could just roll out of bed and be at the conference five minutes later, not realising that it was nearly a mile walk to the entrance at the other side!  It's a lovely hotel, but there's NOTHING to do in the evenings!  

I've been lucky enought to attend every year since (and have stopped in the city centre and commuted) and really miss the chance to have those random, ad-hoc conversations with other customers and product experts that you will never have either through trying to arrange off-line or through these social chanels. 

Let's hope that we can all be back in sunny Barca next year and build some more great memories, including the TechEd band (2017/18??), the wonderful Celebration Nights and those random encounters that can change your thinking about your next project or your entire strategy.

 

 

JuerMueller
Advisor
Advisor

Missing on site interactions a lot...

JuerMueller_0-1637140990163.png

Take good care, everyone!

qmacro
Developer Advocate
Developer Advocate

Here's a pic of me* and my partner in crime Piers Harding at SAP TechEd in 2000. 

*wearing a home-made SAP-on-Linux tshirt.

DSC00126.JPG

Miss that guy 🙂



raeijpe
Contributor
0 Kudos

This year will be my 25th SAP TechEd. I join my first Teched in 1999 in Karlsruhe. My best Teched party was in Hamburg (2000) and first presentation on the Teched was in 2013.  And since 2014, I'm a SAP Mentor.

My list:

  • SAP Teched Online (2021)
  • SAP Teched Online (2020)
  • Barcelona (2019)
  • Barcelona (2018)
  • Barcelona (2017)
  • Barcelona (2016)
  • Las Vegas (2016)
  • Barcelona (2015)
  • Las Vegas (2015)
  • Berlijn (2014),
  • Amsterdam (2013),
  • Madrid (2012),
  • Madrid (2011),
  • Las Vegas (2010),
  • Wenen (2009),
  • Berlijn (2008),
  • München (2007),
  • Amsterdam (2006),
  • Wenen (2005),
  • München (2004),
  • Basel (2003),
  • Bremen (2002),
  • Wenen (2001),
  • Hamburg (2000),
  • Karlsruhe (1999)

0 Kudos

raeijpe_0-1637176781533.png

My first presentation

keohanster
Active Contributor

Puppies with a Purpose!   To make SAPTechEd even more fun!Puppies with a Purpose! To make SAPTechEd even more fun!

keohanster
Active Contributor

Oh, and we really had fun with the #SCNotties!    Originally proposed by Craig Cmehil, I think, as a 30 seconds of fame contest, many people got very creative with their video submissions.  

Here's just one of my favorites (very high production values, which my entries definitely did not have!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLT6TDYEkmc

 

Thanks for the reminder of the @#SCNotties. I think the most Monthy Python thing we ever did. Thanks Jim Spath for spearheading it. 🙂 

Here are all the glory ones from 2010:  https://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/display/Community/30+seconds+of+recognition+-+2010+edition
Check them out today, I hear the wiki is going away 😞 


P.S. Low production value was a requirement to win in the contest. It was glorious! 

tbroek
Product and Topic Expert
Product and Topic Expert

IMG_48A2E71D2E56-1.jpeg

SAP TechEd 2005, Vienna

My first SAP TechEd. It was an amazing experience. So many community folks to meet in the SDN clubhouse. Next to all the knowledge the DemoJam made a huge impact on me. Build great stuff with SAP Technology and show that to the SAP community. I really wanted to be on stage once. Happy that I made it there with Leo van Hengel (2012), Andreas Proftlich, Christian Braukmuller and others (2013), Leo van Hengel (2014) and Jan Penninkhof in 2015.

JimSpath
Active Contributor

Cleaning up old e-mail archives I found my "Welcome to the SAP Community" account set up. Doesn't look TechEd time (February 2009) though. I wonder how many of these links might still work?sdn001.jpg

craigcmehil
Community Manager
Community Manager


My newest SAP TechEd memory just arrived. 🙂

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