Category: Uncategorized

Virtual Events / Conferences – some lessons learned (repost)

(originally posted on blogs.sap.com)

Due to the Coronavirus situation at the moment, we had a special exercise in flexibility today: An event which we had planned for some 40 attendees couldn’t happen physically in the same room since travel restrictions are in place.

So we saw two options: Cancel the event or use the opportunity to leverage all of the fancy collaboration tools we have in place to make it a virtual event as good as possible.

We know a physical event can’t be fully replaced by a virtual meeting, but we wanted to see to what extent we can stretch it, so we saw this as chance to collect first experiences with virtual conferencing with multiple companies.

In this blog, I will share some lessons learned about virtual conferences in the hope it can help you as reader if you are setting up your own virtual conference. (I don’t know at which point we talk about an event or a conference – but as stated above, our audience is some 40 attendees big from 20 different companies).

Photo by Jaime Lopes on Unsplash ( our conferences look very similar though 🙂 )

Preparation

In our case, preparation might have been a little special since we already had finished the invitation process for the planned physical event: We had a little of attendees who committed they are available on the specific day and willing to join on-site. We worked with this list, so I won’t cover the invitation process here. Continue reading “Virtual Events / Conferences – some lessons learned (repost)” →

Innovation Culture – first thoughts (repost)

(originally posted on blogs.sap.com)

If you work in the IT industry, you stumble upon the term innovation A LOT. Everyone wants to be innovative, innovations disrupt markets, innovative companies change our world, innovation is the key lalala…

But like some other hype buzzwords, this term is used so often that it doesn’t always seem to be clear what it means. Still, everyone seems to agree that innovation is an important aspect to be successful in today’s business world.

That’s why I’d like to collect some thoughts about what is Innovation and – you know that’s currently my area of interest – how can we create an innovation culture in companies / organisations / teams?

An attempt to define innovation

“Innovation is pain”

Ok, that’s not really a definition. This quote wants to adress the level of change that needs to happen for a true innovation to arise. Innovation wants to develop a creative solution, create something that didn’t exist before. The only way to get there is to challenge the status quo. If you don’t see the need for improvements or unsolved problems, why create something new? Continue reading “Innovation Culture – first thoughts (repost)” →

Project SURGE – hello world! (repost)

(this post was originally posted on blogs.sap.com)

Hey there!

With this post I would like to introduce you to an initiative we just started and that we would also like to share here on the SAP Community. To name it, we thought of “SURGE” because (according to my dictionary) it stands for a rise of the water level, of something that is swelling – because we would love to see more successful innovation projects as consequence of our joint efforts.

But who am I and why am I writing these words? I work as a Customer Engagement Executive for SAP Cloud Platform. As Customer Engagement team, we have the vision to enable our customer’s IT organisations to use our Cloud Platform as the new platform for Extension, Integration and Innovation. Besides explaining the technical capabilities of our offering, I think it’s at least as important to understand how the methods and processes of software design, development and operations change for the members of IT teams. I feel that the massive amount of emerging new topics and the immense speed in which they are changing is a key challenge to be answered by every team out there that is using IT to run their business.
While preparing, I stumbled upon the term VUCA to describe this level of transformation and I think it’s quite suitable.

VUCA stands for: Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity. Let me phrase my personal understanding based on several resources I went through: Continue reading “Project SURGE – hello world! (repost)” →

Apple Watch 3 LTE

Apple Watch 3 LTE

Let me say something about my first days with the new Apple Watch 3.

I was one of the early adopters when the first Apple Watch came out last year (yes, it was only 2016 when I bought Apple watch 1!) Back then, I was of course proud of my new gadget. At that time, you still felt like a Gadget-nerd when you had one of those smart watches. End of 2017, that kind of changed, no one is wondering why your watch is not showing the time anymore if you don’t raise your wrist, so your motivation to wear the watch should be another one. Continue reading “Apple Watch 3 LTE” →

Gute Produkte kommen von guten Menschen

(I write this article in German, because the information is probably only interesting for the local people 🙂 )

Sehr gute Freunde von mir sind Bauern.

Mag für manche vielleicht banal klingen, ist es aber gar nicht. Ich nennen sie mittlerweile auch meistens eher Landwirte, weil der Wirtschafts-Aspekt mir bei dem Wort “Bauer” einfach zu kurz kommt. Es ist wirklich sehr beeindruckend zu sehen, was Familie Dörr in Wiesbach auf dem Bauernhof vollbringt. Wahnsinn, wieviel Arbeit man in Anbau, Ernte, Vermarktung investieren muss, um erfolgreich zu Landwirten (oder heißt es landzuwirten?).

Continue reading “Gute Produkte kommen von guten Menschen” →