So lets do some good....

Yes, yes.  I know, I have not kept up with blogging at least once a week.  What can I say, we are all busy.  There is a bunch of wrong happenings taking place in the world in the past couple of days and many things I can not yet comprehend.  So lets talk about something good for a change.  I just wanted to drop a line and plug the FMR(Friday Morning Report) initiative for "Doctors without Borders".  Craig Cmehil started this initiative and has already raised enough money to surpass his initial goal, even before doing the 24 hour marathon. But tune in for the event, and help Craig raise even more money for the cause.  For those of you who have already donated, thanks for your support, and pass the word along to your friends.  Stay tuned for more information about this event, and when it will be rescheduled. 

2009 Blogging Resolution

So I've been lacking in my blog entries as of late, well for the last several months, and I made a new year's resolution to start blogging more( at least one a week ), even if that means the blogs are short, personal, or simply trivial lines of drivel.  Well, here it is mid-January, and I this is my first blog entry of the year, so already not doing so good on my resolution.  Back when I first created this blog, my intension was to blog about stuff that I would not post on my SDN blog.  I would write about things that are interesting to me, but not necessarily interesting to the technical SAP world.  I managed to write a couple entries, mostly about my experiences with SAP conferences, ASUG and TechEds.  This year, however, I want to expand my topics on this blog.  Maybe giving more thoughts on what is going on in the world, including technology news.   Some technology related topics I will post on the enterpriseGeeks blog as well.  We just launched the enterpriseGeeks site this month, and I'm really excited about being apart of this group.  These guys have a lot of insight to offer to the technology world, and I am honored to be included in the group.  A few of them are affiliated with the enterprise irregulars group and all of us are SAP Mentors. You can read up on this group here.  Happy 2009!

SAP TechEd 2008 - Berlin

So I am in Berlin this week attending SAP TechEd Berlin 2008.  This was my first time traveling to Europe, so there was some adjustment, like having no alarm clock in my hotel room, and never getting any ice in my glass when asking for a coke or sprite.  On Monday, we did the Mentor's Hands-On track again, and it went pretty well I think, the turnout was more than I expected since no one signed up on the wiki.   On Tuesday was Demo Jam, which was really a repeat of the Las Vegas Demo Jam, but the only one that was new, ended up being the winner, and they did a good job.  They did a code-less application builder for the iPhone.  The ESME team presented well, and we cheered for them, but unfortunately, they didn't make the top three.  Good job and congratulations to them anyway.  They should be very proud of what they have accomplished in the past 4 months or so.  After that was RIA Hacker night, where Dan McWeeney, from Adobe Systems,  presented Adobe's project Genesis, and came baring gifts, free Flex Builder 3 licenses, and books!  Thomas Jung, from SAP NetWeaver Product Management,  presented what SAP is doing in the RIA space, and showed the Flash Islands technology in Web Dynpro ABAP which is delivered with NetWeaver 7.0 Enhancement Pack 1.  The rest of the evening was spent sitting around chatting about technologies, SDN, and doing Jager shots.  Craig Cmehil taught Mike Prosceno, from SAP Global Communications, how to code an iPhone application. Mike is responsible for the "Blogger's Corner" at the various SAP events, he and Stacey Fish really do a great job with it.  This afternoon, the SAP Mentor's had a meeting with the new head of NetWeaver development at SAP, Herve Couturier. He really seemed to understand where the Mentor's were coming from with their issues and concerns.  Tonight, is the Steve Winwood concert, and I have to say I am not really a fan, but its entertainment none the less, and much better than watching German television.  Tomorrow evening, I plan to actually explore the city a bit, and take in some of the historical sites, like the Holocaust Memorial, and the Brandenburg Gate which are right down the street from my hotel.  When walking to the train station from the hotel each morning, I could just feel the history around me, you can feel it in your feet as you walk on the stone-like streets, and look at the architecture.  Really amazing city, I must say.

Mentor Hands-On Sessions at Community Day in Berlin

So as I said before, we did a mentor hands-on track at the Community Day in Las Vegas a couple weeks ago and it was a complete success.  The room was overflowing, and we could not accommodate everyone, which for me is one of the key factors when measuring success. :)  It was still undetermined if we would repeat the track in Berlin as well, but I know that a few people showed interest via Twitter.  So now I am pleased to announce that we will be doing the mentor hands-on track at Community Day in Berlin, on October 13th, the day before TechEd Berlin.  Unfortunately, one of us, Ed Herrmann, will not be able to make it to Berlin due to a major project go-live that week.  Good luck Eddie!  We'll miss ya.  Thomas Jung has graciously accepted the task of taking over Eddie's session, so that the track content can stay intact.  If you haven't seen the track content yet, go to the wiki page and  check it out(sessions 18-21). Thomas, Dan McWeeney, and myself, are all doing sessions in this track.  You may also download the session materials ahead of time from the google code site.  If you haven't signed up for Community Day yet, you can add it as a pre-conference session on your TechEd registration at any time. Then make sure to sign up for the mentor hands-on track by adding your name next to the sessions in the space provided on the wiki.  This is the only way to guarantee your spot in the sessions.  We are really excited about doing the track, and hope to see you at the Berlin Community Day. 

SAP TechEd 2008 Wrap-UP

So I just got home late last night from TechEd in Las Vegas.  After having some time to reflect,  I think this TechEd was pretty good compared to previous events.  On Tuesday, I attended a couple sessions and ended up hanging out in the Community Clubhouse a little.  I sat in on an Speaker-meets-Mentor roundtable discussion on ABAP, and actually got a chance to meet Horst Keller for the first time.  I had know of him for years from his best selling ABAP Objects books, and had hoped to meet the man who had opened my eyes to the world of ABAP.  I thanked him for what he has done over the years in ABAP, and mentioned that he is a hero to many, including me.  He then exclaimed, "I'm just a documentation writer!!".  I said, "I don't care what they call you, you're awesome".   He is truly a great, and humble man.  Glad that I had a chance to shake his hand.

On Wednesday, Thomas Jung and I did the first COMP277 session.  It is always nice to see a huge line waiting outside the door to get into a hands-on session.  I understand that we had to turn people away.  Basically I was there to simply help people with their exercises, Thomas presented all of the material.  Even though I was just helping out, I realized that these sessions do really give tremendous value to the attendees.  I overheard one person telling Thomas, that the session was recommended to him from another colleague, and that this session alone was worth the price of the entire TechEd.  I was really taken back by that statement.  Others told me that they really liked the session and would recommend to others for next year.  So I guess we will be doing an updated version of this session again next year as well.  :)   That night, we all went to the RIA Hacker Night sponsored by Adobe.  Pretty good pizza and ice cream, but was a little disappointed that there was no rum, only beer. :( That's alright though, we had a good time anyway.  After the presentations, we broke out, and some talked tech, some updated their ABAP sneak preview systems, and some played Rock Band.  By the end of the night, I was exhausted and had laid down for a nap while Gregor Wolf was finishing up his NSP update. 

On Thursday, Thomas and I did two instances of the COMP277, again both were sold out and had very long stand-by lines.  That night, we had to follow tradition, and have a group dinner at an "All-you-can-eat" buffet.  I was charged with finding one for all of us to go to, and quickly decided to choose the buffet at the Wynn hotel.  It came highly recommended from the concierge desk at the Palazzo, and she mentioned that they have the best seafood, so I was sold.  So the eleven of us had a great meal, and a lot of laughs. Some of us had too much to eat, including me.  Then we were off to the Black Crows concert, which again, was lacking in rum, but had a good time anyway.  Most of us had special seating, which put me about 8-10 rows back from the stage.  After the concert we walked up/down the strip for a while and then called it a night, bringing this years TechEd to a close.

So to summarize, the community day sessions were a complete success, the COMP277 sessions were a complete success, managed to meet Horst Keller, hung out with a lot of friends, lost only 20 bucks, and now have some great memories.  As for the Berlin TechEd, I am still looking into ways to get myself there, so that we can do the Mentor Hands-On track at Community Day, and I can meet up with online friends from across the pond.  We shall see.....

Community Day 2008 Las Vegas

So yesterday was community day at SAP TechEd Las Vegas.  The day started with a little over 300 people finding out that Mark Finnern can play the hell out of a harmonica.  He then announced that the "Points for Food" initiative has passed the first milestone of 2,500,000 points, which translates to a 100,000 EUR donation from SAP.  Mark Yolton then came up and added some comments and gave us a warm welcome.  Each speaker for community day was then given 30 seconds to promote their session. Not sure that I was able to articulate the essence of my session in the amount of time, but oh well.

As for the mentor hands-on track, hosted by Thomas Jung, Dan McWeeney, Ed Herrmann, and myself,  I think it was a complete success.  We had people waiting outside the door for a chance to get in.  I understand that we had to turn people away because we ran out of chairs.  I think a lot of the attendees were happy with this track and thought that it added a lot of value to the day.  For example in my session, when I was showing new features in ABAP, the attendees seemed to be really excited about such things as: method chaining and code completion in ABAP. 

Lastly, I actually got invited to the SAP Global Communications Blogger Dinner which took place at a very nice restaurant in the Palazzo Hotel.  I had the spaghetti with lobster and scallops.  It was quite good.  It was pretty cool to hang with all the enterprise bloggers.  That's it for now.

Learning Adobe Flex

So for those that don't follow me on twitter, I have been learning Adobe Flex 3 for the past couple of months, and I am really having fun with it.  My past experience with developing web applications was limited to JSPs in a portal environment using HTMLB, so I'm really liking the look and feel of Flex based applications a lot better.  I've been reading and doing exercises from the book, "Adobe Flex 3: Training from the Source" and I would highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to start learning Flex from the ground up.  Before reading this book, I really had only limited exposure to Flex.  I don't pretend to be a Flex expert, by any sense of the word, but I think I could now contribute intelligently to a discussion on the subject.  The main reason for learning Flex now is that I am currently working on a project involving Flex at SAP.  I can't really talk about it at the moment, but rest assure, that as soon as I have the go ahead, I will be blogging about it.  Till then, I am going to keep moving forward with Flex and learning as much as I can.  So if anyone has any good recommendations for books on advanced topics of Flex development,  I'm really looking for some direction.

Since learning the basic foundations of Flex, I thought that I would also test out the new Flash Islands functionality delivered in NetWeaver 7.0 Enhancement Pack 1.  SAP now provides a way for you to embed Flex based applications into your Web Dynpro ABAP components in NetWeaver.  Basically you use a SAP delivered library in your Flex component, and call a method to register the Flex component with Web Dynpro.  There are also other methods provided which handle the interaction between the Flex component and the Web Dynpro application, such as firing events back and forth.  You then upload your Flex component to the Web Dynpro ABAP component, set the root container as a Flash Islands container, map the SWF, set a few context mappings to the data sources used in the Flex component, and that's pretty much it.  Ok, so maybe I'm making it sound too easy, but I was actually really surprised how easy it was to get working. 

Lastly, for those of you that are attending TechEd this year, you will get a chance to use the new Flash Islands functionality in the COMP277 - ABAP Development: Update Your Skills to SAP NetWeaver 7.0 hands-on session that Thomas Jung and myself are giving.  The first two occurrences of this session are currently sold out, but there is one on Thursday afternoon which is still open.