TechEd Barcelona Blog
(The Arjen and Paul perspective)
This year, with 8 colleagues from Just-BI NL & MY we were the chosen ones to go and discover the TechEd in Bangalore. During our trip, we have found out what it takes to survive this unique event and its buzzing location. Here’s our top 4 tips to get the most out of it and return in a good (or even better) shape.
- Bring a local! (Should not be that hard when you work in the IT industry) Getting to know the cuisine is way easier when your Indian colleague tells you what to try. As a bonus, he/she can get you started in the big bargaining game (see tip #3). The rest of your crew should also contain at least 1 tall (i.e. Dutch) guy, making it easier to spot him across the show floor.
- Be prepared for huge crowds. Not only does Bangalore have a high population density, the TechEd is no different than the rest of the city. This year’s edition was reportedly the largest one ever in number of participants! And they managed to squeeze those into one hall. This is noticeable in the long queues for the lectures and hands-on sessions. But do not let that scare you, it turns out there is almost always a spot for you. And that, in turn is a metaphor for the city’s traffic. You will stand in line for ages, but eventually you will get there.
- Become an expert in bargaining. Everything is up for negotiation; whether it is the price of a nice shirt or the fare for a rickshaw. When we got into our first rickshaw, we overpaid by about 10 times. Although we liked making the drivers very happy, by the end of the week we transformed into hardcore dealmakers. That includes walking away and pulling angry faces.
- Get ready to go in-depth with SAP Labs engineers. The TechEd in Barcelona can sometimes come across as a sales pitch, with its fancy show floor and high-level lectures. In Bangalore, the speakers really want to share all the ins and outs of their product. For example, Paul ended up in a 30 minute session about the new calendar value help in SAP GUI 7.6, most proudly presented by the guy who built it. However the pitfall for some speakers is that they are too stuck in the details and start summing up all 80 certificates and standards their product has.
Visiting TechEd in Bangalore was a great experience. Within one week we were able to learn about Cloud Platform, Analytics Cloud, S/4HANA and the latest features of Web IDE (Everyone can be a full stack developer!). This all enables us to help you build your Intelligent Enterprise, while keeping the core clean. What that last sentence means, we will explain later over a cup of coffee.
Oh and tip 5? Enjoying spicy food comes at a cost…
Figure 1. TechEd 2018 Bangalore
Paul Schoondermark & Arjen Koot
