Dave's Adventures in Business Intelligence

The last few weeks have been crazy busy. We had the formal launch of the Global Business Object Network (see the new website at www.gogbn.org) and I want to talk more (much more!) about that in some future posts. We also concluded the BOB Member of the Year voting process so I got to notify the winners and interview Michael Welter, one of the top three finishers this year. I started the BOB Member of the Year process last year as a way to celebrate the anniversary of BOB as well as provide some well-deserved recognition to members of the BOB community.

And during all of this (along with client work) I got an extremely wonderful complement myself a few weeks ago: I have been recognized as a member of the SAP Mentor program. What the heck is that? That was my initial question. 😆

In short, the SAP Mentor program appears to be a super-sized version of the BOB Member of the Year program. A link to the FAQ page appears in the releated links section at the bottom of this post. The description from the page reads as follows:

A program to find and promote the best active SAP experts in the whole SAP world. Giving them direct and early access to information and SAP employees as well as helping them to spread their knowledge within their network. Use their passion and knowledge to improve SAP products and processes.

I clearly am no SAP expert. 🙂 But it’s not news that SAP now owns Business Objects, and I do have some expertise in that area. I assume that I was offered the honor because of my ongoing role as the BOB Administrator as well as my active participation in the national conferences over the years. I was not told the exact reasons for my selection, so I am simply guessing. I certainly appreciate the honor.

As part of that honor I was invited to attend the TechEd event that starts tomorrow in Las Vegas. Day 1 of TechEd is the “Community Day” where I will get to meet other mentors and attend presentations. I was quite pleased to review the agenda and see more than a few presentations related to Business Objects. What I hope to do is do daily blogs from the conference (much like I did from Berlin earlier this year). As this will be my first experience at a TechEd event I hope that my first impressions will be interesting to other folks from the Business Objects side of the fence. I’m also very happy to be going to a conference without seeing my name on the speaker list. 🙂

So, hopefully I will be “talking” to you quite frequently next week. The primary goal will be to share my experiences with TechEd, but I also have some unfinished posts related to the GBN launch that I would like to get out as well.

Now I’m off to print my boarding pass and finish packing my bags for Vegas. In this case, what happens in Vegas will be posted here. Within reason, of course. 😉

Related Links

• SAP Mentor Program FAQ
• SAP TechEd 2008