As an UX professional I am always interesting about hearing new methodologies and practicing those methodologies. During InnoJam we were walked thru the design thinking methodology or "Design Thinking" as they call it. While they explain their process very quick and try to provide some guidance on how to execute each steps they fail at some level to account for nearly 75% of the participants have no experience/exposure to any UX process. I would suggest that they visualize the process more... say each team have a very large wall with panels labelled with the process so you can literally see you journey down the process and help more context information. Also during each step I might play helpful hints on the main stage like during ideation display tips like "If I am <persona name> would I use this... why... how would this help me?"
Another interesting observation, when checking in they ask if you are front end or back end? When I mentioned UX and front end they were excited because I was front end, I guess we can assume there is still a large shortage of front end devs (or at least in this small subset of the SAP community).
Another observation, give challenges where SAP is not trying to create a product or market product or research product. This year one of the challenges was very similar to a problem the Innojam keynote speak spoke to and something SAP was actively working on. Given the short time period you definitely need challenges to narrow scope why not take InnoJam and try to tackle problems that are something you never would expect to be solved with SAP technologies. (Trying to think of an example but I can not think of any right now)
Another interesting observation at least on my team and it looked like the same thing feeling everywhere, no ego-s. Everyone was there to learn and have a good time. It was a very positive environment.
Final observation, GOOD beer was served at night. Goose Island, Dog Fish Head, ShinerBock, Sam Adams... a nice surprise.
Overall I found the InnoJam a very good experience and would recommend it to anyone that would like to learn about various SAP technologies and "Design Thinking" or just to experience something new.
