In his day job, stephenlofthouseis SAP Programme Manager, Course Leader MSc Big Data Analytics, and Senior Lecturer in Business Computing & SAP with Sheffield Hallam University. But at SAP TechEd Amsterdam 2013, Steve was wearing another hat - - as well as a jersey. Steve is a newly minted SAP Mentor, and he kindly donated a few minutes of his time on day two of the event to share his thoughts on joining the program and experiencing his first SAP TechEd in light of this new status.
“The SAP Mentors represent the wider SAP community: the users, the companies that use SAP software…so to be able to relate our experiences to the SAP Board members and SAP product teams is fantastic.” Access to SAP leaders was a key highlight for Steve at the event. “We had a meeting with Bernd Leukert, and it was fantastic: he walked off the keynote stage having just given the keynote speech, and he walked straight into the SAP Mentor room. He sat with us for an hour to get the mentor’s feedback and opinions, which are the opinions of the community.”
I spotted Steve engrossed in conversations with more seasoned SAP Mentors on the show floor. When asked what advice they’d given him so far, Steve said: “Community engagement: getting onto the Twittersphere and blogosphere, and engaging with the community. Also taking advantage of the connections you get as an SAP Mentor to dive into the product teams, and talking to the people who actually write the code. So from a Mentor point of view it’s about access, and linking the community to the core of SAP.”
