Huge change is coming this year and this blog post is the beginning of multiple pieces to help explain and describe this evolution. We wanted to start off with basically a blunt and direct to the point piece to explain that major evolution and change is happening, sneaky on our part because we want your attention as we describe this more and more going forward!
What is SAP InnoJam? SAP InnoJam was formally started in 2010 as the SAP Innovation Weekend and was the combination of the SAP Hackers' Night, BPX Process Design Slam and the BOBJ Insight Night which attracted a total of 200+ attendees in their final year in 2009. The idea was to combine the technical experts with the dashboarding wizards and the business know how to create an innovative solution using SAP technology in a single weekend.
What is DemoJam at SAP TechEd? DemoJam was originally designed to give employees and opportunity in a large customer facing event to showcase their innovative ideas on SAP NetWeaver and over the past 10 years grew to include partners and customers showcasing their own innovations. It was billed as the "American Idol for Geeks" by industry analysts and over the past couple of years has included the winning team from the SAP InnoJam event. These are 6 minute demos live on stage using real working code and no mockups.
The following describes the evolution of the SAP InnoJam and DemoJam at SAP TechEd events from 2015 onwards.
2015 is the year for change (keep in mind this does not effect the SAP TechEd event in Bangalore this coming March) and evolution and our intent is to alter both of these events to create the next generation of opportunities for customers, partners and employees. Moving forward the SAP InnoJam will remain a registration (pay event) where individuals or teams may register in advance knowing nothing more than what technologies will be focused on (SAP HANA, OPENUI5, SAP HANA Cloud Platform, SAP Mobile Platform*, SAP Lumira*) as well as the overall theme (general area of interest, e.g. Public Sector, Areospace, etc) leading up to the events (8 weeks, 6 weeks, 4 weeks, 2 weeks, 1 week, 48 hours) they will receive more and more information about the topic, theme and challenge as well as the technologies.
So there will no longer be a submission process for the DemoJam but rather you will have to compete first in the SAP InnoJam live on site for a chance to grace the DemoJam stage!
Upon arrival to the event the teams will be assigned their working spaces and a challenge (a solution to create); these challenges will be chosen by a select group of internal and externals. They will then be given the 30 to 36 hours to work on their solution. Near the end of the event a judging committee will review each team and "short list" 6 teams to proceed to the DemoJam at SAP TechEd event live on stage.
I think this is enough to get hit you with at the moment but more will come and more information about this year's theme as well. This is a major change for us and we expect some confusion, concern and perhaps even some disappointment. We will be hosting some public webinars to share more thoughts as well as several more pieces of content to dive into more detail. Until then feel free to email "sapinnojam@sap.com", myself or even comment here if you have questions.
** UPDATE **
I guess we left off the main reason for "why" we are doing this. It's very simple we want to get to a challenge culture and event and pit everyone against each other with the same starting point. A level playing field for everyone competing against each other.
