It’s been a while… this is my second “I was at an SAP Inside Track”-report after the pandemic. It’s true, one is getting lazy when it comes to travel after such a long time of staying at home or working from home. So I was still a bit hesitant, when @Tsovinar invited me some weeks ago to join the SAP Inside Track in Yerevan, capital city of Armenia, to talk about SAP Community. I checked my private calendar – you know these community driven events are mostly on Saturdays – and was still doubting if I should do it. But I took the chance and what shall I say: Lucky me! 😊
Armenia, Armenia – first of all I needed to look it up to locate it exactly. East from Turkey. Very far away from Central Europe. I checked the travel conditions, and they were a bit crazy. Flying from Germany means arriving early morning there (3:30 am local time) and flying back is at the same time (3:30 am local time). No worries, I can do that. 😅
I arrived on Friday June 2 at 4:00 am with a slight delay at the Armenian Airport and had only a couple of hours of sleep before @Narek, my SAP colleague in Yerevan, picked me up at my hotel for a sightseeing tour, together with my colleague @Mahin (and her daughter) from Germany. That’s the beauty of SAP Inside Tracks – you can always also explore the city, the surroundings, the people.
We visited the Garni Temple and the Geghard monastery, had lunch with a fabulous view, and enjoyed the beautiful rocks out of whinstone. Beautiful pictures, right?
In the evening there was an SAP Stammtisch at the vine festival directly in Yerevan planned, where the “wine days” were taking place. I think it was the first walking SAP Stammtisch ever 😉
It was so nice to meet other community members who are keen about SAP topics and know each other really well like a little family. Thank you so much for your great hospitality @former_member142566 @hterminasyan @Elenmg @GoharGeorgyan Gevorg Gorgisyan @Tsovinar @Narek !
The next day the SAP Inside Track was scheduled. It took place in a hotel nearby the Republic Square directly in the city center. As it started only in the afternoon, I was able to visit the Cascade in the morning, a giant stairway made of limestone. All in walking distance, thanks for that, but the Cascade had a lot of steps as you can see, so exhausting 563 stairs later, I could enjoy the stunning view after all. 😅
In the afternoon the SAP Inside Track started with a warm welcome by @Tsovinar from SAP and EvgeniKanoplich from EPAM. They were also appreciating everyone participating again after their first SAP Inside Track in 2021 and thanked the organizer Lilit (lkarapetyan) and team for the great set-up of this event.
After that, my session about SAP Community was next. During my preparation for this presentation, I was contemplating a lot about the title of my presentation “community at its best” which has been used for years. But after the great evening with the walking SAP Stammtisch, it was clear that the title fits: it really is community at its best with all the wonderful people around me here in Yerevan/Armenia. 😃
After my session, my colleague Mahin talked about the Cultures@SAP Initiative. Mahin is from Iran and she in highly involved in Cultures@SAP activities, where she shared some of the recent events and experiences.
Next was a shared presentation about SAP Cloud Solutions by Michael Dorn (michaeldorn), Director for SAP Fioneer Alliance Global, who tuned in virtually, Harut Ter-Minasyan (@hterminasyan), Solution Expert, Platform Adoption & Advisory as well as Gohar Georgyan (@GoharGeorgyan), Associate Development Architect at SAP Signavio.
As you might know, also a fun part may not be missed at SAP Inside Tracks. After the coffee break Lillit (lkarapetyan) opened the second part of the day with a funny game about who knows SAP best. I was at the peak of the virtual kohoot scoreboard for a long time, but as the question became too technical, I dropped down to Rank 4 and needed to release the winner pedestal. 😅 Congratulations to all the winners of an SAP book! 👏
image is not the final one! 😉
In the next presentation, insights about different customer success stories have been shared by Emile Seferian (eseferian), Sales Director for Consumer, Services and FSI industries at SAP, who also tuned in virtually, Shahen Khachpanyan, Coca Cola HBCA, Digital & Technology Platform Lead, Levon Kazaryan, Business solution architect at EPAM and Hripsime Pepanyan, Head of Reporting at Acba bank OJSC. It’s great to see how customers implemented SAP successfully.
Next Vahagn Vardanyan (vah13), who is the CTO at RedRays, was talking about “Safeguarding Your SAP System” and explained, how they work with SAP together to strengthen their systems and avoid virtual attacks from outside. I especially liked that session as it’s always a great reminder to be attentive and careful with your technical devices, and your incoming messages, no matter if these are emails, Whats Apps or even text messages.
The last session was a panel discussion about SAP's educational and innovation programs in Armenia, moderated by @Tsovinar. Panel discussion members were Sos Khachikyan, Head of the Macroeconomics Department at the Armenian State University of Economics and Arman Darbinyan, Head of Department Mathematical and Mathematical Modeling at Russian - Armenian University. Both shared and discussed their projects and initiatives and their endeavor to reach younger people for future projects. Great work to start educating talented younger generation.
And not to miss: the (temporary) family pic 😊
Get to know the people
I hope you liked my little wrap up. What I would like to emphasize on is that you should please check out the upcoming list of SAP Inside Tracks and find the one you are interested in. It’s not only a great chance to increase your knowledge or to share your expertise, but to get in contact with other community members from all over the world and get to know the local people and the country. Do it! It’s no better time than now! 😊
(For travel preparations, read the recent post by my colleague @mynynachau ! 😊)
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