Saluting SAP & Oracle Communities
This is a fascinating big enterprise week in the US, with Oracle Open World dominating downtown San Francisco (and making the taxi drivers very happy), and SAP TechEd running concurrently in Phoenix.
Oracle do a good job of putting Open World online and I attended last year, so this year I'm currently in Phoenix with the SAP community, while keeping an eye on Oracle news online.
Next week is the unveiling of Sharepoint 2010 in Las Vegas, and there are interesting parallels to that launch also.
Where Open World is the biggest yearly event for the Oracle community, combining product announcements with extensive training and sessions on a broad variety of topics, Tech Ed is all about the practical application of SAP technology and some philosophizing about the future. It is also one of several global TechEd events with the next one in Vienna Austria next month.
The video above is of SAP mentor and community advocate Marilyn Pratt, someone many SAP'ers will be very familiar with thanks to her great work with their communities. Prior to shooting this video I spent an hour with a group gathered to prep presenting a 'BPX process design slam' the following evening. The promo video they made and uploaded to You Tube below explains in a couple of minutes their project to help communities create sustainable power generation.
The broader group with complimentary skill sets have been collaborating internationally for months on this, as have many other groups, both SAP users and employees, presenting at the 'Demo Jam'.
I'm one of the SAP blogger community invited to participate in this event and be briefed by senior executives, but it's important to point out the vitality and innovation of groups like these. I heard several stories of SAP mentors flying long distances to pitch in and help colleagues, and of technical discoveries made through participating in collaborative projects which really helped SAP users back at their work installations.
As with Oracle Open World, no real revelations from the big guns, who typically say all the right things but are reluctant to get into specifics. This post is intended to salute the life blood of the software industry - the developers -whose spirit, innovation and ingenuity is being celebrated this week in San Francisco, Phoenix and next week in Las Vegas.