I thought it was a good idea to start a blog about my first experience in TechEd as an SAP Consultant. This might be useful for others who also will be having this experience by the first time.
And i could start saying that, if you want to save some money, you can come on Monday in the morning and leave Las Vegas by Friday night. Because the reality is that, TechEd is just a 3 day event, Networking Sessions starts on Tuesday and they end up on Friday at Noon. Friday there is no really much stuff, just pending educational sessions, but actually the event is planned to be finish on Thursday after the concert at night.
My perspective starts even before Day 1, as i came to Vegas on Sunday waiting to join the Conferences on Monday. But if you are a Developer and you want to participate in the InnoJam contest, then you start since Saturday, as you will be coding preparing your demo to show it later on during the TechEd.
But, you need to subscribe earlier and you pay an extra fee, you have to hurry to do this because apparently is too much demanded.
GET Prepared on time
Download the App SAP offers for the event. Normally, when you register for the event, they sent you a bunch of emails to get you informed about the event details. One of these details is the App you can get and you configure so you take your daily agenda with you. This app is kind of awesome because allows you to manage your schedule during the event, networking with other colleagues who are interested in the same topics than you, it has some floor maps and you can interact by notes and messages directly with other attendees. Oh, and also it has an interesting feature that tells you who of the attendees is near by you (i tested it only with Iphone, don't really know if its available for Android too)
You need to make sure you subscribe to the Hands-On Workshops before you come the event. There are many Workshops, hundreds of them, They could last from 2 to 4 hours, all of them are very interesting, but, the reality is that you can only reserve two of them with your registration. You can assist to other workshops, but the preference is for the registered ones, you can get a spot if person who reserve it doesn't show up that day. But, as i said, make your reservations on time, because the post popular full up very quickly and at the end, you might found yourself in workshops that are not related with your activity, or even worse, without any. Make sure those reserved workshops appear in your agenda.
Hanging Out
Las vegas is a city where there are a lot of things to do, but if you don't want to spend too much money, i recommend to take a long walk thru Las Vegas Boulevard (The Strip) during the day or early at night just to familiarise with the environment and where the stores, the shows and the best restaurants are located. So you can easily decide where to eat and what shows to see. Normally Cirque du Soleil are the most expensive ones, but, it is a must in Las Vegas. On the other hand there are few shows that its worth to try as the way they are presenting in Las Vegas is very different when they are out on tour. You can get discount vouchers at the Airport or the hotel, it depends, but you will normally spent around $100 us on each (at least)
DAY 1
No conferences this day. There will be just Key-note open act from Steve Lucas and some ASUG pre-conferences and Seminars.
Keynote:
Steve was very funny and took the lead for today's keynote. Mainly the idea was to talk about what SAP is working now and how it is being oriented to the cloud using HCP. This will be a new era where SAP will become digital. Software Analitycs based on the cloud. Have the suite on the cloud and how HANA can interact with hadoop and Vora.
DAY 2
We start the day with the keynote from Bernard Lukert, a member of the managing board who introduced us more about Cloud Analytics through a couple of live demos at 9:00 am. Also there was a presentation on how to develop an application on SAP HCP which is very easy by the way, at least, in the begining :razz: . Even he showed how the SAP Managing board is running SAP Cloud Analytics in the Managing board room. No doubt SAP runs SAP.
After this keynote introduction you jump into the networking sessions at the show room. First impression is "what a hec" is enormous, big space, lot of booths, i don't know where to go first, like a kind in a candy store :grin: . Anyway, it's kind of confusing to understand where to go or what the logistic is, so i recommend you to approach to one of the many information kiosk in the room where nice people can direct you. After a couple of minutes you will feel confortable with the logistics.
After going to the information kiosk i took a quick walk around the place to understand and see where each boot and area is located. Always have the Event App handy, as it will remind you about the upcoming events. Pay attention to the roof signs, these will indicate you the area you are going to. there are several of them. There are signs for Explore, Hang Out, Learn, Build.
Explore Area
It's the area where the SAP Partners are located, you can get important information about how those partners intagrates with the new technology of SAP. I stopped by for some of these booths such as:
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Learn Area:
This is an area dedicated for Networking Sessions, Code Review & Q&A sessions, some sessions are around 1 hour (Q&A), but most of them are 30 min based. These sessions are made for you to get the introduction of the technology but also to ask questions, and you will get an answer directly from the most experience people in SAP.
I stopped by for some of these networking sessions today, such as:
- All things SAP Fiori: Best Practices and lessons learned for implementing and troubleshooting (10:30 - 11:00)
- Create Cool SAP Lumira visualization Extensions with SAP Web IDE (11:00 - 11:30)
- [Code Review] Getting SAP Workflows in outlook 2010 & 2013 (11:45 - 12:15)
- [Q&A Session] Roadmap SAP S/4 HANA (12:15 - 13:15)
- [Code Review] Navigate from Web DynPro ABAP to SAPUI5 in the SAP Fiori Launchpad (13:15 - 14:15)
- SAP Fiori Launchpad: Overview and Recommendations (16:00 - 16:30)
- How to Plan and Execute a Migration to SAP HANA (16:30 to 17:00)
DAY 3
I dedicated this day to the breakout sessions. These are 2hr or 4hr workshops (100% hands-on experience). As regular attendee you are allowed to register 2 workshops for the whole event, but, that doesn't mean you can't join others, you just need to be at the workout session front door 30 min earlier and get into the waiting list. If class is not full, then you can get a spot.
10:30 to 12:30 - [DMM260] Big Data with SAP HANA including Apache Hadoop and Spark
14:15 to 18:15 - [DEV265] Building an E2E App from SAP HANA to SAP Fiori via ABAP
Link to Slides: Pending
DAY 4
Continuing with the breakout sessions i started earlier today:
08:00 to 10:00 [DEV164] Send your sensor data to SAP HANA Cloud Platorm with IoT Services
14:00 to 16:00 [ITM360] SAP Hana Migration with DMO in action: Minimize downtime, Best Practices
16:30 to 18:30 [DMM161] SAP Hana Multitenant Database Containers
Link to Slides : Pending
DAY 5
08:00 to 10:00 [ITM361] SAP HANA Operations - Advanced
10:30 to 12:·0 [ITM262] ZERO Downtime for Updates, Upgrades and Customer Releases
Link to Slides: Pending
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