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Film trailers are a genre on their own. A good trailer bears the sheer magic of driving your imagination to the moon or to the screen, without making stops in between. Usually, trailers thrive on the independent moments from the movie, a gasp here, some suspense there, a fashionably powerful quote from your favorite actor among other colorful additions. It is a diverse mixture of excellent work from an otherwise longer piece, delivered with radical brevity. It is worth the fuss, seeing as good cinema in the digital age is nothing without a good trailer. You get the preview, with enough information to keep you wanting more. It is a modest way to discover something you are interested in, with a touch of art and class. I have always wondered if such trailers could go beyond cinema. I mean, even rain starts with a bit of cloud cover. Even more daring, would it be possible to preview something important at SAP, allowing your colleagues to peek behind the curtain and see about enough of what you are working on?
Enter ‘Discover SAP’ series’ opening session: I was part of the team that breathed life into the first session, which aired live on May 16th, 2024. You can watch the recording here. The “Discover SAP” series is a joint event by SAP’s IT and SAP Global User Groups Organization. It tells the stories of how we at SAP eat our own food, i.e. use our own technology and empower SAP's workforce with innovative solutions. Crafted and presented by SAP IT experts themselves, the series gives the inside scoop, guaranteeing real, in-depth insights into the inner workings of the digital landscape. We shine a light on SAP’s uniqueness, highlighting the capabilities and possibilities of our technology and solutions. We leverage the power of storytelling and show how we work at SAP.
You learn a lot about an organisation through the people you work with. The culture at SAP certainly came alive while working on this. I know my way around words and letters, I could never get lost in a maze of words. So I worked on a script for the opening session alongside Zoe Angelova and Britta Lehn. The prevailing mood was, ‘together’. All hands-on deck, writing and rewriting, going through SAP runs SAP content repositories and libraries and getting the right information and the correct data. Michaela Gaertner, the project manager, is a neat planner. She is meticulous to a fault, with an eye that can spot an ant walking on a grass field. She always planned and kept her word. She sees pieces of the puzzle like an artist looking at paint on a canvas. I do believe sometimes that Michaela has a secret Rubik’s Cube talent she has either not discovered, or that she just has not told us about. And then, came the visual genius of Anja Rosker, who can shoot videos, edit videos, add the cinematic graphics, and balance the lighting on stage. Gabriel Tomescu a video specialist, has a magic wand somewhere in his possesion: Remotely, he put together all elements of the session and put it on a single screen like you see it on the recording. It was the truest reflection of building bridges and not silos, working across teams, skills, roles and borders.
Then came Dr. Oliver Gutzeit, who did the first session, a TechTalk. When I grow up, I want to have Oliver’s charisma (Never mind that I am well into my early 30s. Growing never stops, does it...). Oliver tells it like it is. His session was a treat of what is in store at SAP Sapphire 2024, where Discover SAP will take center stage. The next sessions will continue after SAP Sapphire 2024 giving you the opportunity to dive into topics surrounding Strategy & Innovation, AI, Finance, Analytics, HR, and more. His is an expert commentary about what happens behind the scenes of SAP’s IT unit, a modern organization of thought leaders, strategists and experts who not only execute our corporate strategy, but also guide our own business transformation. One thing I learned was that SAP’s IT proactively bought Apple iPads upon their first release, as the unit recognized the evolutionary power that this technology would bring to mobile work: A proactive stance to technology, which carries forth. Take the Apple Vision Pro as another proof point. SAP had apps available for download on the day of release.
It was a wonderful preview, and it was fun working on this project. You can also visit the Discover SAP webpage, to register for the series, join the upcoming sessions, and come along for the ride. The next Discover SAP session will take place on June 19th at 3pm CET with Christian Freytag, the Chief Data & Technology Officer within SAP IT.
