Good things come to those who wait!

OK not that I don't have many, many, many, many good things in my life but for someone like me who loves hearing about new technologies, new services and the like this one is just "ohhhh so nice!"

The other week I posted this title into Twitter then had quite a few folks ping me via Twitter, email and others means to ask "what" I was talking about and all I could answer was "I can't tell you yet". The reason for this was because I was not sure if this was a public thing or a purely internal thing at work, I work at SAP for those who don't know me.

I made a trip to Walldorf and right now I am on the train heading home, I was in Walldorf for this "thing" as well as for meetings to drive some new ideas for the SAP Developer Network home with my boss and begin formulating plans for SAP TechEd and SAP SAPHHIRE next week.

Thursday night I had been invited to a reception to celebrate and welcome a new group of people to a program started last year at SAP, the program is with SAP Ventures, the SAP venture capitalist group.

SAP Ventures helps build industry-leading companies by partnering with outstanding entrepreneurs and top-tier venture capital firms. We are information technology investors who focus on enterprise products and services. In the 10 years since we were founded by Hasso Plattner, Chairman and co-Founder of SAP AG, SAP Ventures has invested in over 75 companies.

Our seven person investment team has more than 60 years of combined software experience as operators, entrepreneurs, industry analysts and investors. We have over 35 years of direct investing experience. The entire team believes in involving ourselves deeply with our companies. We are open and flexible in our thinking and believe there is the potential for great companies and solutions in a wide variety of spaces. This is reflected in our willingness to investigate opportunities across all stages, industries and market segments on a global basis.

Andreas Weiskam organized the program last year and as he told me, this is to "formalize the working relationships we have with many of the experts and topic leaders within the vast SAP organization." I've been helping the group off and on, as were the others for the past year with opinions and thoughts on various new technologies. That year, unknown to myself and the others, was actually something like a "test" to gage the working relationships and this time around a select few were nominated to join as a new SAP Ventures Fellow. The Fellowship program is a year long program where we get the opportunity to learn more about the world of Venture Capitalists as well as learn what types of things SAP, in particular look for in regards to new technologies. We'll be given many opportunities such as seeing the process through from start to finish; looking at various companies, filtering out those which apply and which do not, researching the selected companies, a chance perhaps of even hearing the "pitch" and of course being given the chance to even explore our avenues of interest and potentially recommending companies to the group for review as well.

Last night was a fantastic evening, lots of chat and conversations, great wine and food and meeting new people. Their are a total of 15 Fellows in the program from around the world so I'm very excited for the chance and opportunity and look forward to seeing how things go forward from here.

Oh and no I'm not opposed to recommendations ;-) you can email me, catch me on Twitter or even on SDN. I'm not 100% sure on the details yet I will be having my first "1 on 1" in the next week or so and from there I will be sure to find out the who, what, where and how on moving forward. I do plan to share as much as possible as I go along, well at least those things that are for public consumption. Got a "pitch" or know someone who does? Watch this space for more to come!

This is a new adventure for me and it will be fun finding ways to combine this with my day to day job and tasks with SDN! A challenge I look very much forward to.

Technorati Tags:
Enterprise, experience, sap, venture capital, sapphire08, sapteched08

SAP events, reloaded...

4 years of events from around the world!

The people of SAP TechEd

SAP TechEd is an amazing event and the people in it make it even more so, here's a look back from 2005 to 2007 across 9 events!

SAP Sapphire, reloaded

SAP Sapphire is a huge event taking place in the US then in Europe, this year the US one is in Orlando and had 15,000+ attendees and it's the starting point for the SAP Blogger program. 

 

I attended the US one in Atlanta last year and had an eye opening experience in terms of how far SAP goes to make executives available to industry, Analysts, Press, Bloggers, etc. amazing and something I've never experienced with any other company of this size.

I'll be in the Berlin event in about a week's time so if you are there come by and say hello!

The following is a little "flashback" to Atlanta...

Animoto, simply sweet and cool!

First attempt and this service is very cool, will have some fun with this at SAP TechEd this year I think!

Organic Bees Surviving Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) » Celsias

Here's another bit in the regarding the "bee problem"...

"I’m on an organic beekeeping list of about 1,000 people, mostly Americans, and no one in the organic beekeeping world, including commercial beekeepers, is reporting colony collapse on this list. The problem with the big commercial guys is that they put pesticides in their hives to fumigate for varroa mites, and they feed antibiotics to the bees. They also haul the hives by truck all over the place to make more money with pollination services, which stresses the colonies."

(Via Organic Bees Surviving Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) » Celsias.)

Now I've been following this topic not just because I love honey but because the idea of harvesting honey has been around for a real long time,

"It is not clear when man became an apiculturist (beekeeper), but there is a wealth of archeological evidence that as far as 4,000 years ago B.C., Egyptians kept bees in clay pots and used not only honey, but propolis and wax.  In fact, the honeybee was the symbol of Lower Egypt."

(Via Honeybee History.)

And because of the potential implications a lack of the little suckers can mean to our planet, our food and our survival.

Bid on an SAP Exec!

"I acknowledge that inequities in diversity are not always easy to explain or address. I know for a fact how hard the Web 2.0 Expo organizers worked, for example, to attract a better representation of women at the conference. Likewise, senior leaders at SAP have expressed that they would gladly promote qualified women if they could find them. To this, I reply that I've been impressed at the high visibility of our friends such as Google, Microsoft, Sun, and many others at tech events such as the Grace Hopper Celebration, yet discouraged at the relative absence of SAP's visibility.

Which is why I'm particularly pleased to announce that this year, SAP is putting its money where my mouth is. SAP is a new sponsor of the Anita Borg Institute (ABI), which supports the promotion of women in the fields of science and technology. As part of this, Rami Branitzky, our managing director, has invited us to lunch.

That's right: Rami is offering winning bidders a chance for a two-hour executive lunch with him, and the winners will be announced during the ABI's Women of Vision Awards banquet coming up this week on May 8th. You don't need to be present to win -- but bidding ends soon.

It's important enough to Rami and it's important to SAP. So now it's time for ME to put my money where my mouth is. I've placed the first bid on Rami, and although I would look forward to the opportunity to dine with him, I challenge YOU to unseat my bid, so we can help further the cause of diversity in technology and diversity in general -- ultimately to the benefit of us all. Time is running out! Bidding ends on May 8th.

I look forward to your counterbid -- so bid now!"

(Via A bid for Rami is a bid for diversity.)

Technorati Tags:
sap

Value of the wheel

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

(Via TweetWheel - Find out which of your Twitter friends know each other!.)

Or you can view the interactive version here.

I've always been a fan of seeing how connections work and this is one very impressive way, although I can imagine it to be more burdensome for many of those on Twitter with large numbers of followers.

But really what does this mean? What do the connections mean? anything?

Because I share connections with others does that mean I have a benefit out of that, sure mutual friends is a powerful thing on occasion but is it always a powerful thing?

Now for these new environments like Twitter where you can "follow" the musing of a particular user but they need not follow you in return the "circle" of friends can be quite powerful I can think of numerous occasions where I was trying to reach out to someone but they were "unaware" of me, but thankfully one of my other friends had a closer relationship than I to that person and thus through them I was able to complete the circle and accomplish my goal.

How about you? Do you see the value have you "lived" the value?

Technorati Tags:
social, twitter, tweetwheel