SAP Insider Conference on Reporting and BI - April 20-22, 2009

[Former Member]

The first of five SAP Insider Conference semiars will be held next week, don't forget to register for the one closest to you!

SAP Insider Conference on Reporting and Business Intelligence with SAP and BusinessObjects

April 20-22, 2009 in Las Vegas, USA.

Other dates and locations include Orlando, Chicago, Boston and Frankfurt.

Registration and additional information including agendas and speakers can be found [here|http://www.biseminar.com/homepage.cfm?usergroup=us].

[Former Member]

Hi

I have access to nearly 10,000 SAP related industry presentations from various sources which I have been collecting over the years. I intend to provide links to the BI related presentations which are freely available. I have started with a post to this forum.

In regards to user group information in Australia I have been on the SAP Australian User Group executive for a number of years. SAP University Alliance members pay approximately $AUD500 annual membership for the user group. We have created best ERP student prizes ($500) for these university members so the membership dues are indirectly returned to the universities. It is up to each university to determine how they award these prizes. The best students are listed on the user group web site (www.saug.com.au). This encourages university membership in the user group and raises the profile of the user group with students. Approximately 50% of the university alliance members in Australia are members of the user group.

In addition I facilitate staff and students contact with member companies for the purpose of research. This tends to be in the format of interviews at our events rather than surveys.

We also utilise university staff at the user group events to conduct education sessions as a foundation to some of SAP's solutions. For example data mining 101, business process modelling 101, MRP 101. This brings academia and industry closer in the SAP ecosystem.

I hope this provides some ideas for the ASUG collaboration

Regards

Paul Hawking

SAP Academic Program Director

Victoria University

Australia

[Former Member]

Hi

Thankyou for advertising your upcoming conference through this forum. Obviously your event would be of value to academics but it has been primarily designed for industry which is reflected by the registration of nearly $2000. It would be much appreciated if you could consider a discount for academics which would bring it to a level similiar to academic conferemces. This would enable far more academics to attend.

I have seen the presentations from some of your previous events and have found them informative maybe you could offer a copy of these to universities at a reduced rate. This would enable academics to become better informed and intoduce students to your organisation and the role it plays in the SAP ecosystem.

As you are probably aware that many of the SAP User Groups around the world are encouraging universities to become members through a discounted membership fee. They can then access many of the BI presentations and web casts free of charge.

Regards

Paul Hawking

SAP Academic Program Director

Victoria University

Australia

[Former Member]

Hi Paul,

Thanks for your note! We do have a relationship with the SAP Insider folks. You have some very good suggestions on the academic discounts and access to presentations! We'll check into it and then repost an answer.

Also, on the Users Groups... We are part of the team that set-up the ASUG University Connections program (view here). If you know of a similar arrangement in ANZ or other parts of Asia Pacific or the world we would value any URLs or contact information!

Liz

[RichBlumberg]

Paul,

Hi! As a follow-up to your suggestion on university access to SAP Insider Conferences (such as SAP Reporting and BI - April 20-22, 2009) and access to presentation materials we spoke to them directly...

*In brief...*

• They greatly value the participation of professors, lecturers, and students

• At this time their are no plans to provide an academic discount (though it's a "very" worthwhile idea).

• The presentations are directly aligned to the conferences so there's no plans to offer them unless a person attends the event

*In summary...*

• There are opportunities for professors and lecturers to submit presentation proposals

• We see great synergy to build awareness for their events as well as publications and books (SAP Press)

• Interesting...if a presenter is selected by the SAP Insider (Note: they area a separate company team - WIS Publications) then they of course go for free...

Great idea. You raised some good thoughts! We will keep this topic and related ideas in mind!

Best regards,

Richard

-- SAP UAC Team Member --