Hallway sessions rock!

sapteched07bangalore 012
Originally uploaded by Durairaj Athavan Raja

I was scheduled to give my Twitter/NetWeaver session during the Adobe and SDN RIA Innovation track at the SAP Community Day here in Bangalore but when I went into the room it was jam packed and I decided I would do it later if anyone wanted or during the week.

Next thing I know I was in the hall and ended up with a total of like 15 folks just standing around watching the whole thing. Of course I was actually unprepared as I forgot to redo my NSP setup after reinstalling the image (after Munich and of course not testing before Bangalore).

So everyone got a taste of SAPLink as well as I used that to quickly install everything.

So we had it all, I did a test tweet "S:ping" which was in the public time line quick enough and the program ran. Of course as I was not using a test user I could not send the response tweet to myself but everyone got an eye opening experience of "thinking outside the box" and we went on to hack some more since then...

Enterprise Irregulars in Bangalore

Community Day 093
Originally uploaded by marilynpratt

One of the coolest things about conferences is the fact that I often get to meet up with my fellow Irregulars and Bangalore was no exception.

Yesterday and today I got to spend time (never enough) with Prashanth Rai, odd really as I actually spend quite a bit of time in conversation with the other EI's that when we finally do meet face to face (sometimes for the first time) that we tend to fall into the conversation almost instantly as though we've known each other for years.

The diverse group is probably one of the most knowledge groups I've had the pleasure of working with and every day I tend to discover something new about each of them. In this case Prashanth was quickly hooked on the "Wii" and will be hunting for one himself here soon ;-) perhaps next time I will not be so lucky in a game of tennis...

Community Day Bangalore 2007

Community Day 075
Originally uploaded by marilynpratt

Always great to finally get to see old/new friends again in person. I still remember Abesh from the first time I met him. It was rather funny actually.

Last year while at the SAP TechEd in Bangalore this young kid comes up to me and starts telling me how something is not available inside of SDN, my response was "well if you work with that then make it available" a few hours later he came up to me again and told me that after seeing everyone come together and play our Quiz game at the Clubhouse he made up his mind and decided to join the community.

This year Abesh was there again and this time he was working for us as part of our event staff! Amazing how a community comes together!

Many congratulations should go out to him as well - having just celebrated his nuptials he came back to Bangalore to be with the community and brought his new wife with him whom we all had the pleasure of meeting the other night! Regardless of numbers this community has always stayed true to the fact that friendships are formed and kept here!

Bangalore here I come...

Not much longer now, in fact in about 24 hours I will be getting ready to leave for the airport, destination Bangalore, India.

Normally trips are pretty easy nothing major but in the case of Bangalore I needed a visa and that of course was just a pain in the butt.

To get the visa I need to go to Frankfurt, normally I could do it via the mail but due some change my "state" in Germany I live in was not able to mail them in so it had to be in person. Being Frankfurt that is a 3 hour card drive or train drive. With the current weather in Germany I wanted to go by train, but with the current train strikes that really was not working out. So my trip via train had to be canceled and rescheduled for the following Monday (last Monday) but with the idea in mind that if they decided to strike again I would need to leave Sunday afternoon to ensure I was there in enough time as I could only drop off the visa application between 830 and 1130. Luck would have it and the trains did not strike so Monday morning 5am comes along and I board the train which was of course late. Then the next train which is of course late as well, and I miss my final connection to Frankfurt. 30 mins later I get the next train and make it to the Frankfurt airport followed by a short wait then the train to Frankfurt and I'm a grand total of an hour later than originally planned. I then rush out to find a taxi to take me to the building, it's a new outsourcing center the consulate is using so I've no idea where it is. After a 10 min cab ride the guy stops and says here you go, I pay and as I get out of the cab I see the train station a straight walk away and probably 5 mins (confirmed later when I was finished - 7 mins).

Now here I go into the office and within a matter of a few minutes I am in, now get this 3 people working the desk, 2 in the office one to process and one to take my money so I think a it of overkill on personal but hey I was in and out so I was happy.

I then spent some time heading into Frankfurt to look around and look for a cafe or somewhere I could comfortably sit and work; no luck so back to the train station and about 6 hours of waiting as I could not pick up the completed visa until 1800 (it was now 1200). After 3 bums, 2 drunks, a crazy guy, 20 euro, no power, uncomfortable chairs which lead to back pain I was able to head over and pick up the visa then pay an additional 10 euros because I missed my train and the next one was a bit of a different route I was on my way home.

It's now Saturday morning the sun is not yet up and all that is left is to pack my bag and enjoy time with the family, it's been one of those weeks so certainly looking forward to relaxing today!

by map-generator.net

@eventtrack new features

Both del.icio.us and flickr integrations will be released sometime over the weekend!

Right now flickr is based on the "tag" alone but I could also do it based on "group" or contacts of the "eventtrack" user - thoughts?

For del.icio.us you just need to add eventtrack to your network then when you bookmark something use the same tag as your event and mark it for the user "eventtrack".

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development, eventtrack, social

@eventtrack the numbers, ohhh the numbers

OK normally I hate "watching" the numbers except between Yellow Park and me, he's leading - nice job Chris! Although as soon as my current episode gets noticed I think I will blow him away LOL



With this @eventtrack project though it's actually quite cool to watch these numbers, such an awesome feeling to know people are finding value and use out of something you've created! Thank you everyone!

Technorati Tags:
development, eventtrack, social

Eventtrack running solid!

My longest Kyte episode yet and my thoughts all around @eventtrack

Technorati Tags:
collaboration, development, eventtrack, social, twitter

Embracing the passion...

Yesterday I was lucky to be invited to an internal series of events by our KM group. They are hosting a series of info sessions and some how or another from the 10 sessions or so 2 are from me. All sessions were voted on so we know I can at least put a good session description together ;-)

Now for the first session, also the first in their series I did one on "Embracing the passion, why should I share?" I went total non-confirmity of course and it seems I hit a few interests as I ended up with two meeting invites after the meeting and one phone call.

You can find the presentation here if you want to give it a look but please keep in mind I'm one of those who thinks slides should be sparse and lite as the conversation and presentation are the key to being a successful presentation.

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collaboration, community, social, presentations

Eventrack - Twitter on the fly...

So what have you built today? LOL Sorry a bit wasted from this little side project but it's up and seems to be running ok for now.



For more details please have a look at Dennis' post here.

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development, twitter, collaboration, eventtrack

Thoughts while working SL/RL event

Today and tomorrow I'm involved with a Second Life/Real World event, I posted awhile ago about it here.



It's certainly an interesting experience and I honestly think more taxing and complex than a real world event on it's own...

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"second life", "virtual worlds", sap

Google Open Social and Plaxo

Google Open Social and Plaxo
Ursprünglich hochgeladen von Craig & Nicole Cmehil

Here I was deciding I should at least give OSN a shot and see if there is really meat to it or if my concerns of ID, Security, etc. are valid?

I made a small Google Gadget (Google Widgets running on sites that support Google's platform is basically the raw thing here) jumped over to Plaxo and viola here is what I am hit with - first emailing them says totally not scalable and if it's "MY" profile and this really is "OPEN" why the problem?

Now if the security concerns are valid then this makes total sense and thank you Plaxo for protecting me, my network and of course your own butts!

Nice idea but a huge uphill climb to make it anything more than the Vaporware it is right now. Enterprise for one won't adapt a platform without security and I mean proper security in place - so for now I'll let the MySpace and Facebook battle discussions about Google's Open Social continue.

SAP Community Day London

"SAP Community Day London - April 2008

The Community Day at TechEd Munich was transformational for me in one major respect - it turned my perception of the SAP Community Network from a really useful website and bunch of forums into a genuine community of really talented people"

(Via Forty Beans » SAP Community Day London - April 2008.)

An idea finally coming to life is a beautiful thing!

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sap, social, sapcamp, community