Best Of 2006 ...

[Former Member]

Hi SDNers and BPXers,

It's the time of the year where everyone looks back and reflects on what has happened in the last 11 months that went by so fast.

It is time to sing the praise of things that really made a difference like SapLink. Hopefully also the praise of things that we SAP Community Team have overlooked. With 2500 posts every day in the forums we have overlooked some outstanding contributions for sure.

So please tell us your stories of Blogs, threads, articles, events, that stood out for you that helped you, saved time, made your day, ...

Let us know by posting to this thread and thanks already for an amazing year, Mark.

[Peter_Inotai]

Some of my favorites for 2006:

ABAP related:

- ABAP editor downport

- SAPLink project

- ABAP Online Meetups

General SDN related:

- SDN world

- SDN Wiki

- Support for new areas like scripting languages and widgets

I hope 2007 will be also a great year for SDN!

Best regards,

Peter

[former_member10945]

1. Wiki

2. Upgrade

3. TechEd EMEA ( have never gone )

And the best thing for me was SDN Day. The unconference vibe was great, hopefully we can build on that next year and get people more into the format. I would love to see more people at it and more open slots for sessions.

-d

[former_member184494]

The voice operated showcase for Demo Jam and the Yahoo enabled widgets would figure high on my list of best of 2006.

[former_member583013]

When this list is going to came out???

Greetings,

Blag.

[former_member374]

> When this list is going to came out???

Hi Blag,

Once 0.01% of all SDN and BPX members have posted their favorite thing that happened last year on this site I will post. If I calculated correctly that would be 68 members. Well not all of them are active, so how about 5% of the active members that have over 250 points. We are very proud to have over 1500 of these. You have to spend some hours contributing to get 250 points. 5% of these should have a favorite thing to share here. That would be 75 members.

Reality is, that we have 24 replies, 16 if you discount the ones done by the SDN Team

Of course that this is only a lame excuse, I just didn't get around it yet, but next week guarantied.

All the best, Mark.

[pokrakam]

I get the hint... here's mine:

1. Wiki. Wiki. Wiki.

2. Saplink.

3. Watching the phenomenal growth of SDN throughout the year!

Cheers,

Mike

[former_member583013]

> > When this list is going to came out???

>

> Hi Blag,

>

> Once 0.01% of all SDN and BPX members have posted

> their favorite thing that happened last year on this

> site I will post. If I calculated correctly that

> would be 68 members. Well not all of them are active,

> so how about 5% of the active members that have over

> 250 points. We are very proud to have over 1500 of

> these. You have to spend some hours contributing to

> get 250 points. 5% of these should have a favorite

> thing to share here. That would be 75 members.

>

> Reality is, that we have 24 replies, 16 if you

> discount the ones done by the SDN Team

>

> Of course that this is only a lame excuse, I just

> didn't get around it yet, but next week guarantied.

>

> All the best, Mark.

That's great! Thanks Mark....BTW....I almost believe you lame excuse -:P

Greetings,

Blag.

[Former Member]

There is a very selfish "best of" that I can think of: having been the development manager for the BI Kit in Visual Composer, the nightmare that you can have is the threatening shadow of many customer messages, once this baby is released.

But guess what happened? Two guys from the RIG (kind of elite consultant team within SAP), Prakash Darji and Scott Cairncross, wrote a couple of How-Tos and blogs abouth Visual Composer specific issues, like "How to resolve issues with VC", "How to Integrate with BEx Templates" or "How to integrate it with Knowledge Management", "Export data to CSV, PDF" and some other "sick" stuff.

The result for us in development was: 1-2 customer message per week, which basically is nothing/niente in comparison what happens in other areas. And that meant for us: we could sleep in peace and continue working on additional features and the next release.

That was for me the "Best of 2006" in SDN...

[somnath_manna]

0. SCM-APO and SCM-PP forums (application-specific ones unlike generic SCM forum)

1. SDN Wiki - though content (SCM) is yet to come in

2. SDN Upgrade including Top contributor based on 30 days (gives chance to new joinees to be featured)

3. Blogs

<a href="/people/marion.augenstein/blog/2006/12/05/sales-operations-planning--the-most-important-kpis-for-the-sop-process">KPIs for S&OP</a>

<a href="/people/matt.danielsson/blog/2006/10/29/avoid-layoffs-new-sap-job-skills-to-learn-now Layoffs: New SAP Job Skills to Learn</a>

Personally - joining SDN in August which very soon opened a whole new world and crossing 500 points recently.

My Best of 2006 maybe too specific to my limited domain but then this is all I could explore recently.

Happy new year to all!

Somnath

[Former Member]

Hi,

My list is:

1. SDN Upgrade: new forum functionality like list of own questions and number of views per questions; much improved search functionality; overall stability and performance improvements (though, there are 3 pages that terribly slow: Top Contributors, Top Contributing Companies and Your Reward Points). Much improved RSS engine and submission of SDN blogs to popular aggregators. Guys & gals! Now we are visible and cited at many SAP-related sites beyond SDN

Wiki is just started, I guess it is a good candidate for 2007 contest.

2. In-time previews: WebAS ABAP, WebAS J2EE5, Argo etc. The way to go for SAP -- early previews -> early adopters -> early feedback + faster adoption after release. Can't wait for Muse GUI preview!

3. And, sure, 2006 was a year of Scripting Languages & Technologies on SDN

Valery Silaev

SaM Solutions

http://www.sam-solutions.net

[former_member182371]

Hi,

for me 2006 in SDN has meant a great improvement in my way of working.

i've discovered new ways of approaching problems and stuff i didn't even suspect the mere existence. Tons of new concepts.

To cut a long story short the most relevant points for me have been:

1._ The <b>download area</b> and specially the <u>abap code samples</u> (my starting point in SDN)

2. The <b>ABAP forum</b> (special thanks for Rich heilman's)

3.The <b>blog area</b> (a new daily nice surprise)

4.<b>SAPLINK</b> (i really admire those guys) The event video was cooooool

5. Watching the progress of (<b>Blag</b>) Alvaro Tejada's series on php

6 And last though it may sound silly the series of photos of the different cubicles around the world (in he blog

"<b>i heart my cubicle</b> ")

Thanks a lot.

Best regards and all the best for SDN community

[athavanraja]

there were too many here are some of them

1. SDN Wiki

2. SDN BPX community

3. SDN world

4. The power of community shown by SAPLink

5. SAP Widget Foundation

6. SDN Days and first Demojam in TechEd Bangalore.

7. Introduction of non-SAP moderators

Regards

Raja

[former_member181923]

Frankness Awards:

Thomas Szuecs for his post on singletons

Markus Kohler and Valery Silaev for their frank discussion of optimization

Maverick Awards:

Johannes Reich for his posts on descriptions and models

Andrew Ross for his posts on natural language front-ends

[Former Member]

Few things I liked:

1. Me joining SDN sometime in late August.

2. SDN upgrade

3. Blogs like Argo, Workflow of Netweaver.

4. SAP Wiki

and lastly

5. Me completing five hundred points during Christmas time.

Btw please award points to all of us...:) Jokes apart, I feel priveleged to be a member of SDN.

[Former Member]

I'll do a list like most other (eventhough I've been rather absent in 2006)

• Sneak previews of new technology. Visual composer/analytics/Java EE5 compatible AS etc. It is great to see what SAP is working on and where they are going, keep the SDN exclusives up.

• SAP Wiki. Has a huge potenial, although content not really there at the moment

• SDN clubhouse at TechEd (in Vegas). Great to see what respect SDN has earned internally in SAP

*Blog explosion, it's no longer feasible for me to read each and everyone of them

Merry christmas everyone!

Dagfinn

[Former Member]

Here's my (partial) list in stream-of-consciousness order:

• Joined a successful team at a winning, respected, ethical company

• BPX Sneak Preview in May

• BPX Launch in September

• BPX members at nearly 75,000 in no time

• About 400 new media sessions made available to the community

• Sys Admin audience being addressed better with their own sections/content

• Almost 200,000 bi-weekly newsletter subscribers

• Increased focus on Entperprise Architects

• New Industry Standards and Technology Standards sections in SDN/BPX

• Successful upgrade to NW04 on Linux w/MaxDB - improved availability and speed - and community members say they notice and love it

• New page editing tool developed by SDN team being adopted into SAP product

• SDN/BPX discussion forum solution now integrated with SAP product

• SDN/BPX point and award system recognized as unique and valuable

• Hosted the Enterprise Services Community on SDN/BPX beginning in April

• Attended a bunch of SAP events -- Sapphire (BPX sneak preview), Field Kickoff, Developer Kickoff, TechEd in Las Vegas (BPX launch) + Amsterdam (Wiki launch) + Bangalore (announced SDN Subscription program for developer licenses) -- and met interesting SAP employees, customers, and partners who are enthusiastic members of the communities

• Witnessed SDN/BPX with the first-ever external-facing Wiki for SAP and watched it improve with a 2.0 release

• Saw the maturing of our content / community governance practices and policies

• Enjoyed rising visibility and support for SDN /BPX within and outside SAP

• Witnessing a new Premium Access Zone (PAZ) rolling out to TechEd attendees from Las Vegas and Amsterdam to deliver almost 200 videotaped sessions via streaming video vs. mailing CDs

• Watching SDN/BPX community members take control and co-innovate using the community tools (forums, blogs, wiki...) as enablers of global collaboration

• Seeing improvements in the tools and processes we -- as the SAP Community Network team -- use internally to be more efficient, effective, cost-conscious, and productive so we can spend more time/energy focused on things that benefit the community.

• New page and navigation redesign for usability and improved user experience across many/most community areas

• Watching and cheering for SDN community members in the Demo Jams at TechEd in all three locations -- go Dan/Ed

• Watching Craig Cmehil host Demo Jam in Bangalore especially

• Amsterdam comedy club on SDN Day evening

• Adding excited new people to our team, and shifting people around a little bit to give them greater visibility, to optimize their skills and interests, to better serve the community as it grows and evolves

• Hitting ALL of our major goals for the year despite tight budgets and plenty of obstacles

• Participating in the first-ever "SDN Days" as part of TechEd at all three locations

• Taking a first-mover advantage in establishing the business process expert (BPX) community and having analysts, customers, partners, and employees support this big move

• Spoke with many industry analysts and media/reporters who were very impressed in private and said mostly good things about us in public

• Saw our communities play supporting roles with things like: ESA Discovery System, ES Packages (on the wiki), and others

• Met with a few hundred people from six leading SIs over 3 days in Bangalore

• Saw our SDN and BPX communities featured in publications like: ""SAP INFO," "SAP World," "SAP News," "IDG News," "Computerworld," "Search SAP," "Internet News Service," "Line 56," "eWeek," the new "Scoble Show," and in many/many blogs

• Reviewed glowing results from two surveys - Feb and Aug 2006 - where SDN and BPX members mostly praised the communities in gushing terms ... nice to know the team's hard work is generating results and is appreciated

• Met interesting people from outside SAP who are involved in Collabnet, Yahoo, Slashdot, SourceForge, Nokia, and other companies and who think we're doing cool, innovative stuff

• Discussed many new things we can do for our communities in the months and years ahead

• Saw the community double in size to 650,000 members in 2006

• Thought I saw SAP evolve a great deal as a company to really strongly embrace SDN / BPX and to recognize the value of active, collaborative, co-innovating communities we should focus-on even more in the future

<b>Thank you</b> to the SDN and BPX Community Members and to our SDN/BPX team.

[Former Member]

Not sure if my comments will be taken as unbiased or not but there was one or two things this year that truly stand out in my mind:

• Addition of <a href="https://weblogs.sdn.sap.com/pub/u/251739350">Gali</a> to the Community Team (saved my sanity and the t-shirt and many a other process)

• The SDN Day(s)

• More video content to <a href="https://www.sdn.sap.comhttp://www.sdn.sap.comhttp://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/el/sdntv">SDN TV</a>

• New Podcaster - <a href="https://weblogs.sdn.sap.com/pub/u/23911">Oliver Kohl</a>

• SAPLink

• Wiki

• Scripting Community exploding onto the scene

• Widgets coming so quickly into SDN and the community jumping up to add to them!

• <a href="http://www.zoho.com">Zoho</a> being at the SDN Day Bangalore

Of course getting to meet up with so many people at all the TechEds and all the new people I got to meet as well.

The list actually goes on and on but I think there is a limit to the amount of text I can add in so I keep it to a few "personal" highlights!

[marilyn_pratt]

And the wonderful addition of a top SAP contributor, humorist, and SME to our collaboration team:

<a href="https://forums.sdn.sap.com/profile.jspa?userID=9403&start=0">Mario Herger</a> and the addition of SDN geeklings to our collaborative family: Nina and Jason and Eitan(hope I got that spelling right, Gali).

Another highlight for me this year was meeting the community and top contributors, face to face at events, virtually, and in the BPX community, of course.

This year introduced me to a number of new community faces who succeeded/persisted in sharing good content despite initial push back. They shall remain unnamed but I imagine a few community members are having a good chuckle at my expense....and I'm glad they are.

The community inspired members(self included) to transition from sometime lurker to more vocal participant.

[bhavesh_kantilal]

For me the concept of SDN day was the best part of 2006!

The opportunity to meet SDN'ers , interact and listen to various points of views was really good. Special thanks to the entire team at SDN especially Craig , Marilyn , Mark and Mark for the tremendous support and example they set for the rest of us to imbibe.

Looking forward to the next year with hopefully more surprises!

Regards,

Bhavesh

PS : The only sad part was the Ipods not being given out every week , but lets keep that for some other days discussion!

[Nigel_James]

For the best thing for me was the <a href="/people/thomas.jung/blog/2006/06/28/new-abap-editor-backport Backport</a>. I hassled my clients basis team so much about 620 patch 59 they eventually did upgraded but only after I had rolled of the project! My new client had a newer system so I had both the new editor and the new debugger which made me a happy vegemite.

Others have already mentioned many worthy things like...

• scripting in a box

• the scripting tools

• the improved downloads that install so easily

• saplink

• SDN days - which i couldn't make due to an expanding family

• the SDN upgrade - yay the back room guys deserve medals

• the addition of bpx (like Rich I am still trying to decipher that one)

• the wiki

But for me the sugar on the creme brulle is the fun and joy I get from becoming an active participant in SAPNet this year.

I am looking forward to a great 2007 (the year that is licenced to kill) expecting more innovation and great contributions from all the people who haven't even joined SAPNet yet.

regards,

Nigel

[Former Member]

My favourite of 2k6 was witnessing the moment when Thomas Jung got involved with the SAPLink project, blogged <a href="/people/thomas.jung/blog/2006/09/20/saplink-and-my-first-real-community-project.

With all respect, I believe there was something magic happening to one individual which is very symptomatic for the transformation of 'cat-walk-platform' to a real community.

What I liked very much was this

<i>...You might ask yourself - what business benefit might there be in a Flickr interface to ABAP; probably none. We will probably only use it to create some fun "toys"... </i>

If you share a common passion for something and if you feel comfortable in your community, you do not only exchange and chat about useful stuff defined by biz metrics, no, you make fun, invent, try and throw away things. You don't have to justify anything.

I feel, a number of people here had such a click-experience, when they found themselves here on SDN in a communicative situation rather then a Q&A one or when they found out at SDN day that there are faces behind the names they knew from SDN, faces, emotions, strengths, and weaknesses.

anton

[Former Member]

Some of my favorites for 2006:

• Successfully working with the community on <a href="http://saplink.org">SAPlink</a>

• SDN Day (including the Hofbrauhaus and Boom Chicago of course!)

• hanging out at the SDN clubhouse during almost the entire time at TechEd

• Meeting Ryan, Matt, and Kyle from the RadRails team

• The scripting languages meeting at ASUG/Sapphire in Orlando with Dennis Moore

• Scripting in a box by Craig

• The Wiki

• The SDN mentor program

And this year, I especially enjoyed the opportunity to meet and hang out with: Piers Harding, Thomas Jung, Rich Heilman, Gregor Wolf, Matthias Zeller, Morten Wittrock, Leonardo De Araujo, Tobias Trapp, and also some of my SAP/SDN favorites: Craig Cmehil, Mark Finnern, Mark Yolton, Marilyn Pratt, Gali Kling Schneider, Philippe, Eric Wood, Denis Browne, Dennis Moore, Andre Labahn, and Jeff Word

[RichHeilman]

There are a few things that come to mind that could be categorized as "Best of 2006".

First, I think the growth of the community itself is really something to be proud of. SDN continues to be a vibrant community and is growing stronger everyday. More people asking questions, and more people stepping up and answering questions as well.

Second, the creation of the BPX community. I don't pretend to fully understand exactly what classifies one as a true BPXer, but my goal is to know better by the end of 2007(wish me luck). The creation of the community opened a whole new realm of collaboration and knowledge sharing and is growing everyday. Congratulations to all BPXers for that.

Third, the SDN Day, SAP TechEd tour and SDN Clubhouse. This years TechEd in Las Vegas was great. For me, the SDN Day was really humbling. So many great minds in one room, it was really amazing. I couldn't help to think, what If I could talk everyone in this room into starting a software company, could you imagine the possibilities? The TechEd sessions were, of course, very informative and worthwhile. But a lot of time, I must admit, was spent in the SDN clubhouse. It was a great place to hang around and "catch the buzz". Meaning, checking out the sessions around the clubhouse and joining in some conversations happening in the lounge area. I got to get to know a few fellow SDNers while there, it was really nice to put a face with the name.

Fifth, the SAPlink project. The lead project developers, Ed, and Dan, were having a sort of "Release Party" in the clubhouse the day after they won the Demo Jam.(I was very intrigued by what was demoed) So I asked the question during their session, "Does the 'Program Plugin' handle dynpros?" Dan quickly responded, "No, but you can write it if you want". At that point, I really got what SAPlink was all about, Collaboration. They created this framework, and pretty much said, "Now help us make the tool even better". We can then use this tool to collaborate on other ABAP related projects. There have been many more plugins developed by a few different developers. So being a part of this project was great for me and I learned a lot in the process.

Lastly, the upgrade of the SDN framework itself to the Netweaver release and the Jive(forums) upgrade. Before the upgrade, the forums were a little problematic, forums crashing frequently, response time, etc. Since the upgrade, I am very happy to report no "real" problems with the SDN site. Yes, of course, there are still some qwerks, but nothing severe. So congratulations to the "people behind the scenes". Maybe in 2007, there should be some sort of "spotlight" section on these guys/gals who keep these servers running so that the community can grow and learn.

I would have mentioned the SDN World also, but of course Eddy has already mentioned. This was really cool to see people all over the world and discover that some may not be too far away. Very good work Eddy, and Valery.

I'm sure that there is more, I will be sure to post again if they come up.

Regards,

Rich Heilman

[eddy_declercq]

Hi,

My personal one is SDN World. This not only for showing how the community spreads around the world, but mostly for the fact that the current version could only be established by the strength of the SDN community itself. Two people who never meet IRL- and probably wouldn't connect if there wasn't SDN - worked virtually on the same project.

Eddy

-

---

Discover the new S(D)N search plugin for Internet Explorer 7 AND Firefox 2 in this <a href="/people/eddy.declercq/blog/2006/11/13/the-beloved-in-sweet-harmony log</a>

[former_member583013]

Mine is my book -:P Because I published on Christmas month...hehehe...

Also, some big things that happend this year on SDN...

• Rich Heilman's 30,000 points

• Eddy's and Valery's World Map

• Edward's and Dan's SAPLink

• Frederic's Scripting Languages Tool

• Gregor Wolf's new moderator job

• SDN Wiki!!!

Greetings,

Blag.

[suresh_datti]

I also liked the features in the current version.. especially the display of the top contributors for the 30 day period.. this encourages a lot of contributors to try & get there alongside people like Rich at least for a day or two..

~Suresh

[Former Member]

I completely agree with Eddy. SDN Community has been an inspiration to grow as a person, wiser, increase one's knowledge and step forward to help others....It has been great year.........Thanks all