Martin Maruskin blog (something about SAP): SAP TechEd 2020 Virtual event

Thursday, December 31, 2020

SAP TechEd 2020 Virtual event - my recap

Note: The blog is cross posted on my blog at SAP Community.

This year it was obviously very different experience. Due to pandemic situation mostly all over the world, SAP TechEd event was held virtually. That came with some advantages (it was for free) but some may miss face to face part of the TechEd experience. I think format of this year TechEd will prevail going forward however I think perhaps there will be some parts of it (like pre/after show events) that will not be organized virtually. What about gathering of few SAP aficionados and do the TechEd together at some location? Something like small SAP Inside Track – the TechEd edition? Yeah just an idea. Of course, only in case there is no pandemic :(

I liked a “channel 1”. Even when I had no session scheduled I just tuned in. There was a plenty of information available with regards other sessions that I was not aware of, talks/discussions with community members, guests, replays etc. In general, it served me good to get an overview on what is going on other TechEd topics that I wasn’t initially interested in.

In addition, I found a very useful to follow social media during the event. Especially a discord channel to get a tips what are good sessions to see its replays, see live comments from community or just simply hang out with other TechEd goers.

Naturally based on my job, I followed tracks like Analytics, Database and Data Management in detail and partially App Development and Integration. During the time of the TechEd I focused on session type Workshops and Expert Q&A’s because in these I could leverage the most e.g. while having an access to system, performing exercises, ask live experts etc. Most of regular sessions I watched / will watch on demand afterwards. Concerning the workshops, some of them were not really occupied by attendees – simple people did not show up. This I think had a multiple reasons. As the whole event was free, some people may signed up to just whatever workshop was available at the time they were building their agenda. Later on they either were busy with their daily jobs, they forgot about it because they weren’t notified or simply didn’t care. In future perhaps better notification process would need to be setup. In case of some workshops I attended I got the notification when it was about to start via email from SAP sometimes from zoom. I guess for some people it was confusing.

Most of sessions are available on demand. It creates a useful resource list to study for all attendees. There are many sessions I still want to go through. Thus, I highly appreciate this option to do it on demand.

One more highlight for me was a music theme of the TechEd. It was a song called Mysteries by Richard Lacy and Sarah Mac from album Big & Bold 80's. Great choice I admit.