As a presenter in Vienna working for a SAP Services Partner, I’m really interested to discuss. I’ve had long conversations with Craig about how we tread the line between a commercial organization which is in the business of doing business, and the long unpaid hours I have personally spent of my spare time putting together a submission.

We are going to try our hardest to put together a demo which is fun, cool and pulls lots of aspects of both SAP and non-SAP technology together in innovative ways. We want to blow your mind and get the audience thinking about the art of the possible.

If in the process of this people see us as fun, cool and thought leaders in the SAP space then there is no harm done, but that’s not been the starting point.

@Thomas – looking forward to RIA HN, hope you have something to blow our minds like last year!

@Nigel – I’m counting on your clap then mate! Will be good to see you.

Regards,

John

Thanks for your comment and giving us a yet a different perspective.

1.5 years… quite some time went into it then! But to me it doesn’t matter whether they did it in their own time or not. The important thing is the signal that 4 SAP entries out of 7 send out when you declare TechEd as a community event.

On a brighter note, our submitted video of the Composite Apps so far can be viewed here:
http://compriseit.com/demojam.mov

Thanks,
M

Last year two of my colleagues ended up as second after SAP in Vienna. Of course they were already proud to participate on stage in the Demo Jam. But when they were backstage talking to the winners and understood that they were already busy with the idea for 1,5 year, they felt a little disappointed. How can we compete with them as we have to realize our idea during evening hours?
Let me be clear: I really admired what I saw from last years winners, it was a great tool. Like with the new ABAP editor a few years ago – development tools will get a huge hand from the (development) crowd.

Let’s just hope that the selection committee is working conform a proper and fair mechanism. Anyway I am looking forward to this great evening event. And I agree with Michael, when one of the entries is a sort of commercial entry – I will be disappointed. I hope we can see the entry of CompriseIT somewhere online.

Twan

The other side of the coin is that if this is the best that is on offer then it seems like SAP has filled up slots because there have been no better solutions on offer?

Maybe those who missed out need to start up a DJ Fringe show.

Just my £0.02

Nigel

So perhaps we need to put a lid/hold on our comments until we see the entries…hopefully it will be the best demo jam ever, as I know the CE Ninjas entry was very good, so my expectations are high.

I do hope that demo jam does remain a community thing…if it goes the other way I am sure the community is strong enough to create an alternative outlet for our creative juice….Perhaps this is the way with community success…once the mainstream see it as a success, it takes over and the community fringe moves on.

I am sure it will all make sense after a couple a beers in Pheonix or Vienna

Thanks for sharing your views with us.

I’ve only just spotted your comment in the spam checker. Not to take personally

As I’ve tried to point out in several comments now: I don’t think there’s a problem with SAP employees taking part, but not 4 out of 7 and not without keeping in mind that SAP employees have a tremendous advantage when building their entries over SAP-Outsiders. You have access to the actual developers of the very products you’re trying to built on top of! The latter shouldn’t be underestimated. You mentioned the ABAP editor winner from a few years ago: would an outsider team have been able to create this in the same time without potential SAP internal input?

I’ve been to training courses in Walldorf many times and have experienced first hand how closely knit internal teams at SAP sometimes can be. There is nothing wrong with this, but when you’re competing against externals then it does create an unfair contest in my book.

M

On the other hand, I would hate to see Demo Jam become just another outlet for the marketing opportunities – SAP, Partner or Customer. That will surely lead to the death of Demo Jam. Lets face it, people are tired by that time of the day. Most attendees have been exposed to about 10,000 PowerPoint slides by that point of the conference. They choose to stick around the convention center rather than getting a good meal or resting because they want to see something special – something they won’t see anywhere else during TechEd.