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TOPIC OF THIS ISSUE:

Gamification of the Enterprise:An Insider’s Story

NOT TO BE MISSED!!!

Q3 issue 2011

Continue reading the article by Jarret Pazahanick on page 8

This year’s SAP TechEd in Las Vegas was all about Gamification. We saw Jane McGoni-gal giving a captivating guest key-note on the topic, the participants of SAP InnoJam spent 30 hours developing apps around the theme, yet for most attendees “Knowledge Quest” was probably the most tangible experience in regards to gamification of the enterprise. As such, we sat down with Julie Barrier, Senior Director, SAP Marketing to talk about this shining example.

Continue reading the article by Matthias Steiner on page 14

How Twitter Helped Me Become a SAP MentorJarret is one the new SAP Mentors this year. His article describes his experience with

Twitter and recommendations how to use it. He is the strong believer in the benefits of social media saying that Twitter helped him a lot in becoming one of the Mentors.

Read how to use Twitter to improve you communication skills, get in touch with other professionals around you and benefit from the Community life.

Read reports from recent Community

eventsSeveral Mentors and

a huge Community re-union meet to spend time at SAP Inside Track Milan. It was the first time the IT event took place in Milan and from the Community rumors it was a huge success.

You can read the full report from one of the new professionals joining the Mentor Pack - Ivan Femia - on page 7.

Nice contribution ar-rived from Dilek Adak - new Mentor from Tur-key. Welcome! She de-scribes the new feeling and experience she got from SAP Forum 2011 Istanbul. She attended the event for six consec-utive times, but this time with the new perspec-tive. She tells us how was the event and how is it to become a social media and networking catalyst.

Read on page 10

SAP HANA Hands-onBY BLAG, PAGE 2

Becoming SCN Topic LeaderBY TAMMY POWLAS, PAGE 20

While I was at TechEdBY MICHELLE CRAPO, PAGE 4

InnoJam BangaloreBY SOMNATH MANNA, PAGE 12

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SAP HANA HANDS-ON #SAPMQ3 2011

SAP HANA Development: Blag’s perspective

I read and read and begin to understand that HANA is a combi-nation of hardware and software that allows us to perform ana-lytical operations on a really fast time. Also that it used SQLScript instead of plain SQL. So far so good…a lot of theory, but nothing of practice…I was getting hungry for more.

As part of a, let’s call it “Ramp-up”, the SAP Mentors got access to the SAP HANA Developer Access Beta program…in other words…I could take the theory to practice…awe-some…

So, basically, we got granted an access to Cloudshare.com where we have an image with a HANA server and HANA Editor installed and ready to be exploited by us “SAP Mentor Hackers”.

The SAP HANA studio is an

Eclipse editor connected to a HANA Server backend, so it’s really easy and straightforward to get used to it. I created both Column and Row

When I first heard about HANA, I didn’t have a clue of what they were talking about…columnar tables, In-Memory, SQLScript? So I decided to give myself a push up and start reading about this new technology.

based tables (even using SQL, which is awesome after so many years of SE11), views, attributes views and analytical views. Every-thing was smooth and painless.

When it comes to speed, I have to admit that I haven’t been able

to run a good benchmark, because I don’t have enough resources (yet) to connect HANA to ABAP…but…as I create an Analytic View from tables SBOOK, SPFLI and SCARR, I selected the first 2000 records in 8,391 milliseconds. So good so far.

Also, we can do some charts right on the spot, which is something I really appreciate.

Would love to show you more about HANA, like the SQLScript syntax, the Store Procedures, the Calculation views, etc…but you should wait until I get authorized to do so -;)

To finish, I think that SAP HANA is a great technology, that would deliver a lot of greatness, but also it’s a huge monster that we would need to command and conquer.

Alvaro Tejada Galindo

SAP HANA perspective on favorite demonstrational data SFLIGHT known from its many ALV demo reports

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MENTORS´ MENTORS#SAPMQ3 2011

I am involved with SAP systems for several years now, but comparing to how long one`s career lasts, I am still a “kid”. So I can use any advice I can get, right? The soon-er you know what to do, the fewer mistakes you do. The better vision you have (and the confidence to go for it!), you see the steps, the more you can achieve in the given time. All these things I got from Martin Lang, currently fel-low SAP mentor.

More than a year ago, he was just another name on SAP Community Net-work to me. He was the name with the tiny SAP flag next to it saying that he is a SAP employee to be precise (that makes difference). I was a pas-sionate dreamer about new features of SCN en-gine and a cheeky critic at that time. I am pretty sure that was also the opin-ion people on SCN had (have?) about me.

Then one day, out of the blue, Martin offered a meeting in Walldorf so we can talk about SCN, ideas how to make that better and “stuff”. I once read an article saying that if you trust people too much or too little, it will block your development. I trusted him enough to drive several hundred ki-lometers to see him.

Doing something nice for a strangerI would like to tell you a story about a man, without whom I would not live the life I live. That person is already one of the Mentors, so I don`t have to ask for promotion for him. That tells that others recognize him as a nice person and the subject matter expert too, it`s not just me.

Walldorf felt like “Alice in Wonderland”. And Mar-tin told me his story. If I ask him today (I will ask at TechEd Madrid next week), he might remem-ber the story differently. But that is not important. Advice was given and fol-lowed.

He moved to US years ago. Hm, so it is pos-sible to move, live and work in another country, if one feels adventurous. Checked.

Although he is not a na-tive English speaker )I think), he is obviously doing pretty well. He also said he recently saw his friend moving to Germa-ny (from Brazil? Spain? I don`t remember), who can survive in the German speaking environment without any useful knowl-edge of the language from previous times. Sounds like me. Checked.

The best thing about his job is that he likes it and he does what is good at. Cool, same thinking here. The next important thing is to think that your boss is The Man to work for. Checked.

All I learnt at that time I will remember all my life. But I must emphasize the most important detail about the whole thing. He was nice to a stranger. I tried the same approach on SCN and it worked

again! I now have friends all over the world because they needed help and I offered one without ask-ing for anything in return.

I have never meet most of them face two face, but if feels nice, it was worth doing something extra.

Otto Gold

Martin Lang receiving his Mentor shirt. So far I only saw Mentors wearing double digit num-bers on their backs so far. #221 is special.

Photo SAP

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#SAPMQ3 2011

Strange, common, or not – I don’t know what you would consider my marriage. Just know that it works for us. My husband is a stay at home dad. Between the two of us, my husband works longer hours and harder than I do. Honestly. It’s really nice that I have him at home when I get the opportunity to go to special events like Teched!

So how does it work?Early in the morning – 4:00 AM

both of our days start. We both get up, and he cooks me break-fast while I watch TV, and then we have some time when we can just talk together, and watch the news. (Breakfast is usually microwaved oatmeal. And yes, I prefer it.) Then he and my three dogs walk me out to the car, and say goodbye. On those cold snowy days, he clears off my car and starts it before I have to go outside.

So I’m off driving to work. Scott, my husband continues his daily routine. He feeds and waters the horses. Then he wakes up our son, gets him breakfast, and drives him to school.

I’m at work, if I’m early, read-ing blogs and catching up on SCN. If I’m not early, my day has started, and probably looks a lot like yours. I start with actually programming. It’s nicer to do this when no one is around. People start arriving around 7:00 AM. (I’m usually at work around 6:00 AM.) Then the meetings that I have to go to are usually scheduled after 9:00 AM. A normal work day I would program, talk with people, write requirement, write unit tests, and/or change control documents. If it is a project and getting towards the end. It is crunch time. I stay late. Sometimes working until 8 – 9 PM. Luckily that is a rare occasion.

BUT on that occasion, I have my husband at home, and he can take care of everything for me.

Scott’s day starts with getting me around. Feeding / watering the horses, getting our son around, and driving him to school. He then has the dogs to walk, and they need a long walk. They are active dogs. We do have a fenced in backyard. He has house chores that he does in the morning. Outdoor chores when it isn’t raining. Fences to paint, the 8 acres to mow, and horse houses to fix. Then usually another walk with the dogs. Then back inside for some more work. If he is lucky he has time for a quick nap.

Now it’s time for my son and I to get home. Nate usually arrives about the same time that I do. My son is a growing boy, and he wants his food yesterday. So Scott has it ready for around the time we get

While I was at Teched......we talked about diversityHow it was harder for women to get away from the household than men. They had household chores, children, and a billion of other things to do. As people talked, I really found out how great I have it!

TECHED

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TECHED#SAPMQ3 2011

home. Sometimes I eat differently than Scott and Nate. (I can’t do things like hamburgers all the time anymore. I would grow outward not upward like Nate.) So I usu-ally cook for myself. But sometimes I eat what they do.

Scott clears the table, washes the dishes, feeds the dogs, and then goes out to feed and water the hors-es. While he is out there he takes a walk with our dogs. Sometimes I join him, and sometimes I lounge around. Playing on SCN, E-bay, read-ing a book, or watching TV. When Nate wasn’t hurt, he and I went to the YMCA (gym). I haven’t been do-ing it that much lately.

THEN finally he can sit down? No not really the dogs want in and out. We have three. The cats want feed. We have three. One cat is an indoor / outdoor cat, and he – you guessed it – wants in and out a lot. Do Nate and I help? Of course. But

the animals are used to asking Scott for things. Plus if it’s been a long day I just don’t want to do anything. Fair to Scott? Not always.

On the weekends – we both play, but Scott has the animals to take care of. He doesn’t mind – or at least that’s my story.

A long time ago before Nate was born, Scott and I talked. I didn’t want our children (We thought we would have more than one) left for someone else to raise. Personal opinion, and I was lucky enough to find a job that allowed us to do that. Remember, most of the people I know both parents work. Some-time the mom gets to stay home. Scott’s job just didn’t pay enough to allow me to stay home. Mine did. And for awhile there after we went down to one paycheck instead of two it was hard.

So we worked this out, and never looked back. Am I spoiled? Yes.

Does he do more than me? Yes. Does he get a sick day? Not very often. He can’t be sick when I have to go to work. There are still animals to feed and a child to get ready.

So have flipped jobs / there was a movie about that at one time Mr. Mom. But the goal of that movie was for the man to get back to work. Our goal is for Scott to be a stay at home dad until Nate is grown. After that we’ll talk about changes. Is that normal? I think it’s getting to be more normal. Whichever of the two parents that can find work, that’s the one that works. The oth-er one stays at home.

Now I start to think about di-versity. Think about him going to games or school events. He is the odd man out. He usually is hang-ing out with a gaggle of women. Sometimes the stray dad will join. So diversity in his case, he is the mi-nority. He is usually one of the few

SAP Innojam at SAP TechED Biz Fire session

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men around for those immediately after school events. (Like football practice. Most of the husbands / or wives like me are still working when the practices are going on.)

How does he handle it? Well you would have to know my husband. He is easy going, and laid back. He is an extrovert, but is my rock. Steady, enduring, and I honestly don’t think he notices the strange looks he gets from the new Moms. If he does, it doesn’t bother him.

So how has that changed the dynamics of the afterschool Mom. I think my husband brings the “man” side to the table. We have a son that plays American football. Sometimes the Mom’s think, well like moms. We want our kids to play. Period. It doesn’t matter if they win or lose. It’s just that they get their turn. OK – Moms – hear this, the kids care if they win or lose. So they were talking about splitting our rocket football team into two teams. That sounded good to the Moms. All the kids would get to play. My husband rose to the occa-sion. Maybe all the kids would play, but we would have to split our good players on two different teams. We would never win. Yes, that is what the coach was saying too. But it was nice to have backup in my hus-band. Scott talked with all of the Moms, he knew them 1:1, he knew which would be open to one team and which would not. He railed the troops. And yes, that year we had one football team. The dynamics had changed for the better.

That’s a nice story, right? But Scott and I never had to work against pre-conceived stereotypes, so it doesn’t

count. I smile. We do all of the time. Scott has it worse than I do. When we first started our journey of me working and him staying home, I heard comments from my parents “Lazy, doesn’t want to work, lives off of you…” I heard comments from his parents “She is holding Scott back, he should be able to work if he wants, why doesn’t he want to work…” Now that was our families. Families, you know the ones who support you. Since then both of our families have learned that what we have works for us, and they are OK with that. But introducing a change like that required a shift in mindset. That shift didn’t happen for a long time. It took years. So the change in roles was somehow threaten them? Possibly. I know his Mom loves to talk about what her children do. And she receives bad feedback sometimes when she talks about Scott. Wow! In this day and in this age. So when you think about diversity again – does that mean that I consider that along di-verse? No but it makes me think of the barriers against a diverse group and what those could be.

TECHED #SAPMQ3 2011

Now back to diversity – how do we achieve it? Once we achieve it how do we keep it? Then, I think about my own situation. Scott in-troduces diversity with his group of parents when he is with mostly Moms. Me – well – I add diversity where I can too. I would never have had the time to become a Mentor. I believe I add a diverse element to our mentor group. The mentor group is representative of our larger community. But it still has limited women members. So I add diversity there. It was made possible for me by Scott’s agreement to stay home and work there. I try to add my voice to different things on SCN. That is diverse. How do we keep it? Well for Scott and I it’s easy. We don’t even notice the flipped roles any-more. And except for that stray new couple in the school district, they don’t even notice it anymore either. So how do we keep it? Easy for us, we just keep doing the things we do, and everything else will take care of itself.

Michelle Crapo

All the gaming made this year`s TechEd in Vegas much more fun than fulfilling the stereotypes at home.

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The event was hosted by SAP Italia in its headquarter in Vim-ercate and it had a great echo by SCN community: more than 50 at-tendees across the Europe in per-son and several remote attendees even from the Americas, 16 ses-sions and 14 different speakers.

This Inside Track launched a new format: no longer classical sessions of 45 minutes but a more competi-tive format with a sequence of short sessions of 6 or 12 mins in succes-sion in the morning and a slot in the afternoon for networking deep diving and round table. This format is very close to the format used by SAP dur-ing its DemoJam or InnoJam event and guarantees that users maintains their attention span (the amount of time that a person can concentrate on a task without becoming distract-ed cit. Wikipedia) for all the event.

In this inside track we also used a new approach with the SAP Con-nect that reduced the speaker switch time and maintained the same audio video format for all the sessions: one PC shared the video of the speaker and, connected to the projector, shared the presenta-tion in full screen mode to the au-dience, another PC was used for admin activities like granting and revoking user rights and managing chat rooms and finally the speaker’s PC that shared only his desktop.

As already said we had 16 inter-esting sessions but some of these were very interesting: Tzanko Ste-fanov show the latest extensibility features in CRM 7.0 EhP1, it was an incredible session, he was able to make CRM so simple even to people not focused in this module; Gregor Wolf presented his incredible proj-ects and a huge success had the Selenium ABAP that most of the attendees hadn’t seen yet; then session on HTML5 & ABAP, Twitter & SAP integration, QRCodes and

my famous Code Exchange project abap2xlsx. Interesting and fresh technologies were coming one after the other.

This kind of event allows people to meet each other and consolidate the virtual connections made on SCN; this was the case of my great friend and colleague the ABAP Ninja Andrea Olivieri who during a break was interviewed by Rui Nogueira about his Code Exchange project ABAPSloc. Even more the possibility to leave the afternoon for network-ing activities gave people the pos-sibility to discuss each other about their interesting topic and exchange impressions and ideas, round table was also the possibility for Gregor, Tzanko and me to share some in-teresting technologies to others.

At the end, me and Sergio col-lected feedbacks from the platea in order to understand if such kind of event, organized in this format, could have more appeal and interest for the community members and, with great satisfaction, we noticed

that 97% of the attendees appreci-ated this format because it gave the possibility to discuss different top-ics without losing the interest and giving a stimulus for personal de-velopments and researches. More feedbacks are collected in SCN blog “SAP Inside Track Milan 2011 Ques-tionnaire” by Sergio Ferrari.

Finally I can say that these events are an opportunity to exchange knowledge between valuable SCN members and create new profes-sional connections. Many attendees asked if there will be a new SAP Inside Track in Italy and I can say that SAP Inside Track 2012 is still on working.

If you hadn’t the possibility to fol-low all the sessions live you can re-vive that magic moments listening to recorded session on event wiki page, reviewing the Twitter stream line or scrolling our photo gallery.

See you on next SAP Inside Track.

Ivan Femia

For the first time ever, on October 8th 2011 we presented SAP Inside Track in Italy

Collage of the moments to remember from IT Milan.

INSIDE TRACK MILAN#SAPMQ3 2011

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SOCIAL MEDIA #SAPMQ3 2011

Last month Tom Cenens asked Mark Finnern on Twitter “Does SAP look at social media influence when discussing new SAP Mentors” and Mark’s response was “New SAP Men-tors: Nominations + check trusted sources + community activity level + expertise need. Social media is a small part.” The response gave me a chance to reflect and in my case I believe that social media, specifi-cally twitter, played an important role in me recently being selected to the SAP Mentor Program.

On the SAP Mentor Initiative FAQ’s there is a question “Who is

an SAP Mentor?” and listed below is the criteria as well as how I believe being active on twitter helped me which each of them.

Hands-on expert in an SAP product or service – Twitter gave me a platform to share my expertise with a broad audience of followers and influencers. With a combina-tion of providing SAP industry in-formation, commentary and view-points on a consistent basis, I was able to build up my credibility and showcase my overall expertise. It is important to note that Twitter is

just a small piece of what goes into being an SAP expert and I provided my views on this topic in a recent article called “10 Ways to tell if you are an SAP expert” .

Collaborative attitude - Twit-ter allowed me to meet new in-dividuals, strengthened existing friendships and industry connec-tions. This process helped increase my SAP network which I used to collaborate when the opportuni-ties presented themselves. People will be surprised that several of the mentor nominations that I received came from people who I only have a twitter relationship with.

Good communicator - When you are communicating within a 140 character limitation it forces you to showcase your communica-tion skills. There are many ways to communicate within the SAP com-munity and Twitter can be a great tool once you have built up your followers.

Preferably working at a part-ner or customer of SAP – Twit-ter helped me provide information about my background and experi-ence which included working at an SAP consulting company.

Interested in improving prod-ucts and services of SAP as well as the relationship of SAP with its customers, partners and prospects - Twitter allowed me to

How Twitter Helped Me Become a SAP MentorI am a strong believer in the benefits that social media can have for SAP professionals and think it played an important role in helping me become an SAP mentor. My goal in this article is share the ways twitter assisted me in becoming a SAP Mentor as well as provide some insight into the value it can provide for individuals within the SAP community.

SAP recognizes the power of Twitter for a long time now, that`s why most of the Mentors have their Twitter handle on their backs. Photo by Gregor Wolf

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#SAPMQ3 2011 SOCIAL MEDIA

provide my views and insights on a daily basis into what I felt SAP was doing right and wrong. It also allowed me to occasionally pro-mote my SAP Community Network blogs to a wider audience and get more exposure especially the ones on SAP Certification and Workday which were geared towards help-ing SAP improve.

Proactive engagement - My insight on specific topics on twit-ter often resulted in follow up calls with SAP to discuss them in more depth. Twitter is one of the vehicles I used to communicate with SAP management and it helped show-case proactive engagement.

It is very difficult to become an SAP mentor given the rigorous se-lection process and as Mark men-tioned social media plays a “small part” but if fully utilized it can also be a very valuable part as it was for me.

Value of Using TwitterAs I have become more active on

Twitter over the past 18 months it has become very clear that a lot of SAP professionals either don’t use twitter or aren’t utilizing it effective-ly. Some common questions I get asked are ‘why should I waste my time on twitter” or “What’s in it for me”. Listed below are three impor-tant ways that Twitter can provide value to any SAP professional.

Networking/Industry Contacts

There is something unique about twitter and the method of com-munication that you have to expe-rience for yourself before you will begin to understand it’s incredible networking possibilities. I have per-sonally met new individuals as well as strengthened existing friendships and industry connections by using twitter. I often get asked what type

of people use twitter as they must have a lot of spare time on their hands but I think it would surprise you that most of SAP Senior Man-agement, ASUG Leadership, SAP Mentors, Industry Analysts, senior consultants and SAP Clients are ac-tively posting information and their views on SAP on a daily basis.

Twitter is a great tool for networking as well as com-municating with SAP indus-try experts, SAP Mentors, SAP management, User groups, Industry contacts, Colleagues and Friends.

Information, News and Insight

Regardless of your SAP role, hav-ing access relevant news, informa-tion and insight is a key piece to being successful. While I personally use Google Reader (RSS) as my main tool to stay current on SAP in-formation and there is an excel-lent article from Jon Reed in an earlier Mentors Quarterly, Twit-ter is another tool you can use so you don’t miss anything relevant. Important news is often first re-ported on Twitter and shortly after key insights from industry experts.

I am a big believer that infor-mation one of the most impor-tant aspects for SAP profes-sional and there is an incredible amount of SAP news, informa-tion and insight exchanged daily on Twitter.

Industry Events All SAP industry events are now

well covered real time via twitter with SAP monitoring and in some cases even reacting to the “tweets” during the presentations. There is an unbelievable amount of free

information, links, replays to ses-sions, insider information, pictures, and commentary within each con-ferences twitter stream which we just experienced with SAP Teched 2011 . I will admit that it is a very unique experience following a con-ference via Twitter but it can almost feel like you were actually there. I don’t want to discount the value of attending SAP events but Twitter is a great vehicle if you can’t attend in person.

Twitter can be a valuable tool to stay current on SAP events when you are unable to attend in person.

It doesn’t surprise me that most of the SAP Mentors

are very active on Twitter providing valuable SAP insight on a daily ba-sis. You can follow the SAP Mentor account or get a list of all the SAP Mentors on Twitter if you would like to follow any of them individu-ally. I am a big believer that social media for SAP professionals is only in its infancy and that twitter and other platforms such as G+, Linke-din and Facebook are only going to continue to grow in popularity and importance. I hope that everyone reading this article can see the value these bring and start to take advantage of it.

Jarret Pazahanick

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SAP FORUM ISTANBUL #SAPMQ3 2011

This year, however, was a bit more exciting as it was my first SAP Forum with my "SAP Mentor" badge. And I was on the way to be a real social content generator. So, this time, Ihad the reponsibility to communicate the event's wealth of content to as much people as possible.

Thus, to meet this purpose I spent considerable time on spreading the word via Twitter. Some of my tweets on 23rd of September you can see below.

The slogan of this year’s event was "The Best Move" - calling chess

game to mindThis was no coincidence : World-

famous chess master Garry Kasparov was the honor guest and keynote speaker of the event. And maybe with the facilitating effect of Kasp-arov's presence, this year's event was the most crowded one I've ever seen : There was a long queue in front of the registration desk con-sisting of SAP Forum enthusiasts.

Thanks to on-line registration, I managed to get into the event site without joining that queue.

When I am in the event site, I al-ways run across old friends; this was no different this year. After some quick-chatting, I managed to get to keynote session auditorium and luckily found a place at the front rows.

At first, Serdar Kuzuloğlu -a well-known Turkish journalist and TV programmer- came to stage and triggered a joyful atmosphere. Within this atmosphere, Cem Yeker - General Manager of SAP Turkey- was invited to the stage. Right after that point, keynote speech turned into a chat session where SAP Tur-key's activites and future targets were communicated to the audi-ence in an informal and sincere way. Some key points mentioned by Cem Yeker were:

• SAP Turkey’s 10th anniversary • SAP's evolution from ERP to

HCM,SCM,PLM,SRM,CRM packages and then to SAP Netweaver Enter-prise Portal, Business Objects and now to mobility, HANA and Cloud computing

• HANA to be the layer bringing all data warehouses into memory which makes data retrieval 350 times faster than before

Impressions on SAP Forum Istanbul: Was it “the best move” really?SAP Worldtour events in Turkey are so-called “SAP Forum” and attending SAP Forum events is a ritual for me for the last six years; I’ve never missed one!

Guest speaker Garry Kasparov mentioned Gamification as one of the topics. See dedicated article about it in this Quarterly!

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SAP FORUM ISTANBUL#SAPMQ3 2011

And then came the Moment...

Garry Kasparov appeared on the stage receiving loud applause from the audience. Mainly, his speech was about gamification and in-memory computing where Kasparov tried to express his feelings on in-memory computing using chess terms. He stated that although computer pow-er was an important driver for suc-cess in this game, advanced chess levels -which resembles HANA tech-nology- can not be achieved unless a smart human interacts and collab-orates with this powerful computer. In other words, speed -provided by computers- is essestial as long as you know how to make maximum out of it using processes -provided by human beings-. Kasparov men-tioned that seeing into the future re-fers to the "Big picture" and "Big pic-ture" refers to HANA in SAP-terms. Garry Kasparov ended the speech with a quote from Mustafa Kemal Atatürk -founder of Turkish Repub-lic- which led to a storm of applause in the auditorium : "A nation which does not meet the demands of sci-ence and technology deserves no place on the path towards develop-ment."

Following the keynote speech, thanks to my mentorship position, I was invited to join press conder-ence of Garry Kasparov -This was my first press conference presence and I was full of excitement and joy-. After a short intro provided by SAP Turkey officials, questions&answers part started. There were a lot of questions asked to Kasparov. In one of them, he was asked what, he believed, the reason was for the economic crisis in some European countries and answer was : "As Euro lacks innovation engine, problems are experienced in some European countries". Yet in answer to another

question, Kasparov explained in de-tail the Kasparov Chess Foundation's activities all over the world and how chess was utilized to facilitate suc-cess in children's education.

After a morning being exposed to many great ideas and knowledge, I ran out of fuel and made myself to the dining hall to get some. Dining hall was overcrowded as expected, but the meal was delicious.

News sessionsWhen lunch time was over, the af-

ternoon sessions started. There were fifteen parallel sessions focusing on subjects including mobility, technol-ogy, business intelligence, HANA, Turkish Commercial Law, banking, SCM, HCM, CRM and industry suc-cess stories. When I checked the session agenda I felt disappointed that cloning technology is not yet usable in everyday life; there were many interesting sessions but only one physical myself. So I picked up the sessions that drew my attention the most and had great time during all of the sessions. The sessions I've attended were:

-E-Recruitment - leassons learned from implementation projects

-IS-Utility solution project details and success story for an electric dis-tribution company

-Storage virtualization solution to manage large volumes of data effectively

-A HANA solution example from banking industry

-Lessons learned on how should SAP systems be operated in a cloud environment

In this year's event, there were also TechEd-like Demo Jam ses-sions where SAP solutions could be examined on mobil devices by the patricipants (Although I could not participate -due to my single physical being- I believe it has been a great experience for the ones who attended these sessions)

In brief, another SAP Forum is over with a lot of knowledge in the bag from diverse topics including in-memory computing, business inteligence and mobility. And I felt myself satisfied to see the power of community again in action with this wonderful organization. Finally, it was a great joy to receive appre-ciation tweets on my involvement. Great to be in this community!

Dilek Adak

Kasparov seeing the future to depth of information and depth of information to speed of accessing information which refers to HANA in today's SAP terms.

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TECHED BANGALORE #SAPMQ3 2011

The theme was developing a Mo-bile solution leveraging SAP technol-ogy around Sybase Unwired Plat-form (SUP 2.1), Netweaver Gateway (version 2.1 having OData Channel support) and HANA. Gigi Read wel-comed all just after lunch time on Saturday October 15. Then Anne Hardy (VP Platform Evangelism and Developer Adoption) kicked off the event - interestingly she mentioned there were 350 signups with an-other 80 on waitlist. But 71 brave souls finally landed up physically at SAP Labs for the event. Then Tech-Fire where experts from Gateway - Yaad Oren, SUP - Venugopal N and HANA - Arvind Devalla gave teasers of the new technology in short pre-

sentations. Next was BizFire where people presented their ideas some of which were already posted in Idea Place for the event.

Over a timely team/coffee break

teams were getting formed based on the ideas presented. Some had come prepared as teams with an idea already laid out and were itch-ing to get hands on the 50 laptops around the venue with the cool SAP Technologies pre-installed and ready to take on a ride. In all 10 teams were formed some plan-ning to build Enterprise Application related solution while others with more Social / Collaborative solu-tion. Ideas were varied with one

team planning to integrate Micro-soft XBOX Kinect device with Busi-ness Objects Analytics, another trying to do predictive analysis to support decision making for renew-able energy projects, another using Twitter feeds to derive insights to support CRM Customer Service.

During BizFire I presented a com-mon everyday problem - car pool-ing or from a different perspective hitchhiking goes mobile. As it turned out much to my surprise there were few folks (Anup, Nitin and Reshma) from SAP Active Global Support Team were interested in the idea and looked forward trying to con-vert this concept into working so-lution. The only problem was this motely group did not have much technical skillset especially around Netweaver Gateway and Sybase Unwired Platform related technolo-gies that we had in our hands to play with. But when there is enthu-siasm you manage to find the right resources and we could tie up with an ABAP expert (Satish) and Em-bedded technology geek (Jyothin) to form a team.

Next few hours went over de-liberating on the data model, pro-cess flow, logic development and identification of the actual techni-cal components required to build the prototype. Satish, Nitin and Reshma focused on understand-ing Netweaver Gateway and how

Impressions from InnoJam Bangalorereported by Somnath Manna

The Bangalore InnoJam 2011 Wiki sums it all “After 30 fun and intense hours, 10 teams, 70 participants, 3 winners - the SAP Mobility InnoJam is over.” But there was much more behind the scenes over that weekend at SAP Labs Bangalore, India.

Innojam attendees listening to TechFire presentation

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TECHED BANGALORE#SAPMQ3 2011

business logic and data model setup in ECC can be exposed to applications outside of SAP using OData channel. No one had much clue but searching on SDN got us two How To Guide articles and e-Learning. Likewise Jyothin paired up with Anup to look into SUP and Android SDK to build the Mobile Ap-plication. Of course the technology experts were always around to pro-vide guidance and overview of the technology with SDN our next best resource.

The teams slogged on till late

night after dinner and snacks with even one team doing a night out. Day 2 morning soon after waking up I landed up back at the venue. Our team was all charged up and started actual development in sys-tem. We struggled sometimes but with help at hand never let down.

Morning went over quickly and post lunch (teams have to be taken away from workstations) there was mixed feeling as some teams were doing their testing while other still furiously coding.

Finally it was end of coding time with the count-down timer down to 00:00:00 and it was presentation time Demo Jam style with only 6 minutes per team. The judges were Anirban Dey, and Yaad represent-ing the different technologies that teams used during InnoJam. The top three teams were who devel-oped Mobile Sales Assistant, predic-tive analysis for renewable energy infrastructure project setup using the power of HANA and gamified shopping experience using mo-bile device. But the solution that won the day was Enterprise Mobile Sales Assistant who in fact went on to compete in Demo Jam at TechEd

Bangalore following Wednesday (October 19) and well deservingly secured Runners Up position.

While we did not make it to top

three all in the team unanimous-ly felt we had won anyway. The whole team came together at In-noJam, not with prior exposure to the technologies, learning so much and really making putting to use theory made us winners. We learnt a bit more of SAP Technology in the most collegial atmosphere possible and that we shall never forget.

Although I was skeptical before the event as Functional Consultant with minimal hands-on coding ex-perience if I could survive the chal-lenge. Fast forward to Sunday night I think this was one of my most in-tense but very interesting weekend thanks to InnoJam. It was fun at the same time lot of learning - not just theory but very importantly put in practice. Of course there was Networking (met a bunch of new and very smart, passionate people) thrown into along with strong dose of new technologies from SAP.

Somnath Manna, with pictures by Marilyn Pratt and

Abhishek Patnaik

Teams working late night

Blogs from the eventReporting Almost “Real-Time” From SAP Innojam Bangalore 2011 InnoJam Bangalore - from participant perspective Behind the scenes of TechEd Bangalore InnoJam... SAP Innojam Bangalore 2011....and the Winners are....and the Wiki Page http://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/display/events/

SAP+InnoJam+Bangalore+2011

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GAMIFICATION #SAPMQ3 2011

TOPIC OF THIS ISSUE:

Gamification of the Enterprise:An Insider’s StoryThis year’s SAP TechEd in Las Vegas was all about Gamification. We saw Jane McGonigal giving a captivating guest key-note on the topic, the participants of SAP InnoJam spent 30 hours developing apps around the theme, yet for most attendees “Knowledge Quest” was probably the most tangible experience in regards to gamification of the enterprise. As such, we sat down with Julie Barrier, Senior Director, SAP Marketing to talk about this shining example.

MS: Julie, thanks for tak-ing the time to share with our readers about your baby “Knowledge Quest.”

JB: Haha. My “baby”. Funny you should say that. I find myself using words like “conceived of” (the idea) and “gave birth to” (the idea) when describing it to people. I feel a huge sense of personal pride associated with it. So yes, I suppose in some ways, I consider it my “baby” – not to mention the fact that it was an exhausting, yet extremely reward-ing experience. Very little sleep, running on adrenalin, enjoying ev-ery minute of it. Just like babies.

MS: Yeah, I can relate to that. That’s why we develop-ers call our projects babies too. So, in a nutshell, what was it all about?

JB: Knowledge Quest was, to my knowledge (no pun intended…), the first time that SAP “gamified” an event. I guess you could say it was a pilot – on a rather large scale -- created exclusively for onsite at-tendees of SAP TechEd in Las Ve-gas: 6000+ in total. It was designed around two major objectives: 1) to enhance learning and education among the attendees; and 2) to fa-cilitate networking and create more fun, meaningful interactions for the attendees. I like to describe it as a “gameful, enriching experience” -- a

Knowledge Quest Home Page

“fun factor”, if you will – that we add-ed on top of the event. We weren’t looking to fix anything wrong; the event has always been a big hit with a loyal following and growing at-tendee base. We were simply look-ing to add something fresh and new that would make it an even better, more memorable experience for the attendees. My dream was that it would bring smiles to peoples’ faces (or in some cases, some “grit” to their game faces ;), and a sparkle to their eyes. After all, that’s a worth-while metric, right?

MS: OK, now that sounds interesting. I never thought of that before as a metric. So, how did it go? Did your dream come true?

JB: Yes, it did, even moreso than I could have imagined! It was truly amazing! People loved it! We had almost 900 players in total, most of whom were extremely engaged in the game. These players racked up a total of 1,006,957 total points, completing a total of 55,855 mis-sions. Now, 900 players may not sound like a high number when you

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GAMIFICATION#SAPMQ3 2011

Mark Yolton talking about Gamification during his keynote at TechEd Las Vegas 2011. Picture Courtesy by SAP

think of 6000+ total overall attend-ees, but considering this was a pilot, and also considering all the other activities available to the attendees, we were quite pleased with that re-sult. 91% of the players said they want Knowledge Quest again next year, so that was quite encouraging. It validated that in fact, there was a need for this type of engagement. And by the way, by reaching our goal of 1,000,000 points collective-ly, SAP made a charitable donation of $20,000 to KaBoom! -- a national (US) non-profit encouraging play by saving playgrounds for America’s children. This was of course in addi-tion to individual prizes we awarded to the top 20 winners. Lots of hap-py campers out there – from un-derprivileged children who will get more playgrounds, to adults – SAP TechEd attendees – who got to par-ticipate in something wonderful.

MS: Wow, that’s impres-sive numbers? But besides numbers… were you able to get any anecdotal/qualitative feedback from the players?

JB: Oh yes. Quite a bit. This was the best part, actually. We got lit-erally hundreds, even thousands of comments all combined -- from hundreds of players – captured both within the game itself, as well as via 1:1 interviews that we conducted with some of the players onsite. I personally combed through every single comment that was inputted into the game platform, and also in-terviewed several of our most pas-sionate players. I must admit, I was quite overwhelmed (in a good way), even emotional, when soaking it all in. The smiles and sparkles came through very strongly, in every word that was spoken and written by the players who participated.

MS: Wow, that’s great. So, what did people actually say? Are you able to share some of their comments?

JB: Sure, I’d love to. I actually created a couple visuals that cap-ture just a small snapshot of the feedback we got. Verbatim. And there are tons more comments, just like these.

There’s also a great highlight video on YouTube and a post-event blog/success story – both of which were produced by our vendor, The Go Game, based in San Francisco.

Those will give you a glimpse of the positive energy and passion exud-ed by the players. It was like this every second of every day at the Knowledge Quest booth on the SAP TechEd show floor. Insane, huh?

MS: That’s pretty cool. I’m not surprised, though. People were really into Knowledge Quest, from what I could see. In fact, I played the game my-self, and know quite a few oth-ers who played too, and every-one seemed to love it.

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JB: Oh good. I’m glad you got the chance to experience it first-hand. Most importantly, I’m glad you and your friends had fun with it. That was the point.

MS: You surely sound very passionate about it and I can see why. It is quite a success story indeed. Would you mind sharing with us some insight in how it all started?

JB: Sure. I’d be happy to. You

know, most stories start with “Once upon a time…”, right? Well, this one is no exception. Once upon a time, around a year ago, I was contacted (a bit out of the blue, at least that’s how it seemed at the time) by one of our Marketing executives (whom I didn’t know , but who apparently knew of me) to participate in a small, informal team consisting of about 8-10 people. The purpose of this team would be to generate ideas around

ways to inspire people about SAP. It was basically a task force of cre-ative dreamer types (like myself) who were brought together in an “extracurricular activity” (as I jok-ingly refer to it) to influence things in a very positive direction. We were told we had an open slate to come up with these ideas, and that there were no limits, no rules -- except that judgments were not allowed. So, just free white space to express ourselves, with totally open minds, and then we docu-mented these ideas. At the time, let’s just say that I was probably at an all-time low in terms of feeling inspired or inspirational, so I was a bit skeptical about the whole thing. It was very uncomfortable for me, knowing how I felt inside. But, I agreed to participate, desperately hoping that maybe – just maybe – there would be a slight chance I might turn myself around by par-ticipating in something so fun, so open, and so positive.

MS: OK, what happened?JB: Well, indeed, something

transformational happened. I would never have believed it if I hadn’t Nice feedback, right? This was a real Success!

GAMIFICATION #SAPMQ3 2011

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taken part in it. Throughout this ideation process with our little “In-spiration Team” (as I like to call it), I started coming alive again. I had forgotten what it was like to feel like that. Suddenly, I was not only feel-ing inspired by this group of people whom I’d never met previously (but whom I immediately trusted and felt comfortable with), but also realized that I, too, have the ability to inspire others with some of my wacky ideas too. I thought to myself, “What if I could do this every day, not just as an extracurricular activity. What if this were the basis for my job? What if I could actually create for myself a position and a purpose at SAP that aligned my dreams and passions with the needs of the busi-ness?” What if I could focus on be-ing inspired, and inspiring others?

MS: I love that. But what does that have to do with Knowledge Quest?

Knowledge Quest team together at TechEd Las Vegas. Photo Courtesy by SAP

JB: Oh right. Sorry. I guess I was digressing a bit, but in fact, it’s all quite relevant to Knowl-edge Quest. You see, when we were generating and documenting those inspirational ideas, we came up with about a hundred or so. One of those ideas was an “Amaz-ing Race”-style game for SAP. And then, we methodically filtered and prioritized all those ideas, and the “SAP Amazing Race” idea made it to the Top 5. Once we had our Top 5, our little team disbanded, and I immediately moved into the SAP Marketing organization where I proudly assigned myself the title of “Sr. Director, Inspiration Market-ing”. At that point, I started think-ing about – and building out – this whole “SAP Amazing Race” idea, and subsequently met some folks at The Go Game who – as luck would have it – specialize in bring-ing these types of concepts to life at companies’ events. Serendip-

ity. And so, the idea evolved into Knowledge Quest, and the rest is now history. By the way, here’s a little video that was filmed onsite in Vegas, by SAP News. And if I may, let me just take a quick mo-ment and recognize three people who were instrumental in bring-ing Knowledge Quest to life: El-len Stangroom, my co-lead who partnered with me to execute on the concept; Chip Rodgers, VP and COO, SAP Community Network; and Mark Yolton, SVP, SAP Com-munity Network. Without their teamwork and passion, this would never have happened. It was prob-ably the most rewarding collabora-tive effort so far in my career!

MS: NICE! Now that surely sounds inspiring and the per-fect example of the culture change we see from the old SAP to the new SAP. So, as you say, it required some kind

GAMIFICATION#SAPMQ3 2011

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of “getting out of your com-fort zone” to become a change agent. For me, that was what I liked best about Knowledge Quest. It gave people an incen-tive to actively network and step out of their comfort zone in approaching other people.

Knowledge Quest gave them a reason and a good conversa-tion starter to engage at the various pods etc.

JB: Exactly. Let’s face it: we are all people. And, people like to have fun. After all, we are social be-ings at heart. Knowledge Quest

married business and technology with fun and games and learning and social networking. It brought people together in new ways, and hopefully inspired them about the company that SAP is becoming: a people-centric company that is human, personal, and fun – in ad-dition to the solid, well-respected business software company that has earned us a strong reputation over the past 40 years.

MS: So, will we see Knowl-edge Quest at the other SAP TechEd locations as well?

JB: Unfortunately, not this year, since it was just a pilot, designed ex-clusively for SAP TechEd Las Vegas.

MS: Too bad, that the people in Bangalore, Beijing and Ma-drid have to miss out on this experience.

JB: Yes, I know. But you know what? We’ve actually created a demo site where anyone can go in and test drive Knowledge Quest. It’s far from the full experience, but at least it gives people a taste of how it worked, with hands-on access to

GAMIFICATION #SAPMQ3 2011

Take a look at YouTube video called “Knowledge Quest game for SAP TechEd 2011 - Las Vegas”. It is worth seeing.

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Watch YouTube video where Julie Barrier, Chip Rogers and all others responsible for Knowledge Quest are talking about the experience. Video is called “Knowledge Quest: Gamification in Action at SAP TechEd Las Vegas (Sept 2011)”.

GAMIFICATION#SAPMQ3 2011

the customized game platform we created.

- Log in with username: gogame | password: sap

- Create a game name for your-self (anything you’d like)

- Log in with 715+ your email address (eg/ 715julie.barrier@sap.com)

Here are some codes you can use to play around:

- Session Quest: CD300, ALM212, EIM268, BI109, CD106, CD161, PMC222, SCI202, CD162, CD203, CD205, ALM262, BI360, CD210, SCI266, SCI260, SCI261, ALM300

- Exhibitor Challenges: luxor6, spade4, spade9, heart0, club0, poker8, nugget8, venice9

- Clubhouse Challenges:o Technology Innovation Zone:

innovate63o ASUG Lounge: asug19 o Sybase Village: village95o Services Innovations: service76o Heroes: Application Lifecycle

Management: lifecycle08o SAP Solutions for Small and

Midsize Companies: solution29

o SAP Community Network: net-work38

o SAP EcoHub and Partner Re-sources: partner92

o Solution Extensions from SAP: extension83

o Innovation from SAP Partners: sap32

o SAP Help Portal: help99o Hasso Plattner Institute: has-

so44

MS: So, given the feedback, it clearly sounds as if people both liked it and got some value out of it. Probably one of the best success stories for gamification in the enterprise I’ve heard so far! So, will it stop there… or will this be-come a regular event? Please!

JB: The plan is that Knowledge Quest will become part of SAP TechEd, in all locations. We hope to improve upon what we already did in Vegas, and make it even better next year!

MS: Anything else you’d like to add before we close?

JB: Actually, yes. For anyone out there who has hopes and dreams and passions and ideas, and is looking for a way to make them real: Keep on persisting. Don’t expect someone else to do make these things happen for you. If you truly believe in them, go af-ter them yourself. In fact, I feel so strongly about this that I have the following quote -- my own quote, actually -- attached to my email signature. It says, “Don’t wait for inspiration. Create it!”

MS: Wow Julie. What a great note to end on. I thank you for taking the time to speak with me so openly and candidly, and am looking forward to more great things to come.

JB: Thanks Matthias. The plea-sure was mine. I really appreciate all your support and positive ener-gy, along with the rest of the SAP Mentors.

The interview was conducted

by Matthias Steiner

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SCN TOPIC LEADERS#SAPMQ3 2011

I have been a frequent visitor to SCN since 2003. However at my previous company where I worked was classified and therefore I had no access to the Internet. I could only visit SCN before or after work.

After some encouragement by fellow ASUG volunteer and SAP Mentor Jim Spath, I started post-ing on ASUG.com. Jim Spath is top contributor on ASUG.com, and has always been for as long as I can recall. I never felt confident enough to post anything on SCN.

Then a few years ago, I had a job change, and I started to feel more confident about posting. So I start-ed out with a blog, contributed an article, and thanks to Marilyn Pratt and Jim Spath I was promoted to an Expert Blogger. Marilyn took the time to provide tips to me to improve my blogs such as including images.

Along the way, I looked up to fel-low Mentor Ingo Hilgefort, who is also an SCN top contributor. I have learned so much from Ingo’s SCN blogs and articles (and he is also a top forum contributor) that I felt I should “pay it forward”.

Additionally I was inspired by fel-low SAP Mentor Matthias Steiner’s 2010 Introduction to SCN video (see picture above).

I had not yet met Matthias in person but I was inspired by what

Becoming an SAP Community Network Topic Leader: Paying It Forward…Sources of Inspiration

At SAP TechED Las Vegas, I was thrilled to be recognized as an SCN (SAP Community Network) topic leader. Truth be told, I am surprised I did this. Here is my story, and maybe it will inspire you to become a topic leader.

“Contribute and don’t watch the points… the points will take care of

themselves”.

he said in this video: “contribute…if you read a blog, comment on it.” His story of a 2008 blog that turned into becoming a SAP Press book is impressive!

At SAP TechED Las Vegas I was part of the SCN Topic Leader Net-working Lounge hosted by Jason Cao and Marilyn Pratt. I was asked to comment. I said “contribute and

SAP Mentor Matthias Steiner on the Value of SCN http://www.youtube.com/inscopeblog#p/u/2/lislxwGYFus

don’t watch the points…the points will take care of themselves”.

So I hope others who are SCN “wallflowers” like I used to be will consider contributing to SCN. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve searched SCN for a question and found the answer in a blog I wrote. Pay yourself forward…

Tammy Powlas

Contributors for this issue in order of appearance:Matthias Steiner, Jarret Pazahanick, Ivan Femia, Dilek Adak, Alvaro Tejada Galindo, Michelle Crapo, Tammy Powlas, Otto GoldWith Blagbert by Alvaro “Blag” Tejada Galindo