Community and Collaboration at SAP Inside Track Manchester
Earlier this month, around 40 folks gathered for a two day event in Manchester's Northern Quarter for SAP Inside Track Manchester 2016. Read on to find out more about this event and others like it, and how the days played out.
SAP Inside Tracks are community-organised events for like minded people to come together to share knowledge on SAP related subjects. These subjects are commonly of a technical nature, but the range is far and wide overall. Beyond knowledge sharing, the events are a great opportunity to network and build local communities. Think "unconference" rather than "conference" and you won't go far wrong!
The event
The events have been taking place across the globe for a number of years; take a look at the dedicated SAP Inside Track space on the SAP Community Network for more information. This is the fourth time we've run the event in the north of England ... in 2013 we held it in Manchester, in 2014 and 2015 we were graciously hosted by the folks at Sheffield Hallam University, and this year we returned to our roots, running SAP Inside Track Manchester, or "sitMAN", in the birthplace of the industrial revolution and the true home of computing! This time around the excellent Manchester Digital Laboratory - MadLab to most people - was our host, not only for the two days of sessions but also for the evening event at the end of the first day.
The sessions
In the run up to the event, attendees submit session proposals, which are then organised into one ormore streams shortly before the start. Our event had a good mix of content on Day 1, covering the HANA Cloud Platform (HCP), the Internet of Things (IoT), User Experience, SAP S/4HANA, BI, Security, UI5 and more.
Sourced from the community - the attendees themselves - the session topics are based upon whatever someone wants to talk about. This brings a really interesting dynamic to the event. For example, beyond the technical topics already mentioned, we also discussed ways to tackle the mountain of email under which we all find ourselves.
Day 2 is normally given over to an all day hands-on workshop. This time, we ran it on building custom tiles on the Fiori launchpad. Sounds familiar? Of course - it was related to what we presented in our Bluefin webinar event The SAP Fiori Launchpad as a Human-Centric Dashboard from earlier this year.
The evening event
As has now become tradition at sitMAN, we finished off Day 1 in style, with an organised beer tasting seminar run by The Beermoth, a most excellent purveyor of fine beers just round the corner from MadLab. Thence we naturally furthered our exploration of all things beer in nearby classic pubs, from Port Street Beer House, through the Marble Arch, Smithfield Tavern and beyond. Building and sharing SAP tech knowledge is thirsty work, you know!
The sponsors
Most SAP Inside Track events are free to attend, or there's a nominal fee. Our sitMAN event was free. But the venue hire and beer seminar wasn't, so it's only right to thank the sponsors of the event, without whom it couldn't have happened. Our very own Bluefin Solutions, ITelligence, Resulting IT and Zoedale Ltd - please stand up and be counted, and accept our thanks again for helping make this happen. Of course, the event doesn't just happen of its own accord; there's a core set of folks behind the scenes who do a lot of the organising, so many thanks are due there also!
Wrapping up
SAP Inside Tracks are essentially grass roots events, and this one was no exception. No pomp, circumstance or ceremony, just plain old community spirit and down to earth practicality, and above all, a willingness to participate and share knowledge and stories. So the final thanks should go to the attendees who not only turned up, but took part and made the two days a great success. Until next year, happy hacking!