So, "it will be so nice and relaxed at TechEd", right?  haha, and I signed up for InnoJam on Sunday, thought it would be a nice relaxing Sunday session.

Got here "late".  It started at 9 but I got here at 11. No biggie I thought. And it wasn't.   But, I was asked to join a team. For some reason I ended up in a team that had a challenge given to them called "Kids Love Math".  Using the methodology "Design Thinking" to come up with an answer to how we can use sports statistic to make math fun for kids.

Still no biggie, fun fun. And we worked through the afternoon and increasingly towards "developing a mobile app for the kids". Sure, we can write up a design and draw out some stick men on a piece of paper.

But no, now they want the app to be developed. Sure, no biggie, we can do that tomorrow.   But no. The Code Freeze is at 3pm tomorrow and the rooms are open ALL NIGHT. *ugh*

So here I am, it is now 8:11pm and it is expected that we stay here all night till the app is done. And if we are the winners we will win something big and our app will be shown to 5000 TechEd attendees. LOL

Talk about stepping in it big time.  haha, so much for lying in my bed drinking a bunch of wine and do nothing. lol But awesome team, loads of fun, and the best learning experience taking a idea through Design Thinking to a developed application using Hana and UI5

http://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/display/events/Team+%25231+Documentation

As an UX professional I am always interesting about hearing new methodologies and practicing those methodologies.  During InnoJam we were walked thru the design thinking methodology or "Design Thinking" as they call it.  While they explain their process very quick and try to provide some guidance on how to execute each steps they fail at some level to account for nearly 75% of the participants have no experience/exposure to any UX process. I would suggest that they visualize the process more... say each team have a very large wall with panels labelled with the process so you can literally see you journey down the process and help more context information.  Also during each step I might play helpful hints on the main stage like during ideation display tips like "If I am <persona name> would I use this... why... how would this help me?"

Another interesting observation, when checking in they ask if you are front end or back end?  When I mentioned UX and front end they were excited because I was front end, I guess we can assume there is still a large shortage of front end devs (or at least in this small subset of the SAP community).

Another observation, give challenges where SAP is not trying to create a product or market product or research product.  This year one of the challenges was very similar to a problem the Innojam keynote speak spoke to and something SAP was actively working on.  Given the short time period you definitely need challenges to narrow scope why not take InnoJam and try to tackle problems that are something you never would expect to be solved with SAP technologies. (Trying to think of an example but I can not think of any right now)

Another interesting observation at least on my team and it looked like the same thing feeling everywhere, no ego-s.  Everyone was there to learn and have a good time.  It was a very positive environment.

Final observation, GOOD beer was served at night.  Goose Island, Dog Fish Head, ShinerBock, Sam Adams... a nice surprise.

Overall I found the InnoJam a very good experience and would recommend it to anyone that would like to learn about various SAP technologies and "Design Thinking" or just to experience something new.

You can find more information on the event on our wiki page here.

Now that everyone has made it to the lunchbreak, it seems a good time to pause and think about the morning session of day 1. Many attendees arrived well before 9am (and were rewarded by missing the rain that fell later), and were assigned to their teams after a quick review of the Design Thinking challenges and their skills. More details on each team will be posted later, but Fred Verheul, the DT coach for team 5, is already tweeting like crazy about them. Team 8 is composed entirely of SAP employees from different locations, allowing them a great opportunity to share with and learn from each other. Don't worry, they can't win the prizes!

Once Uwe Kylau introduced our partners, Blackberry (and their new handsets) and Amazon Web Services (thanks guys!), Hester Hilbrecht got the DT ball rolling. Our 7 teams are working on 4 different challenges, with a medical focus, which is where our medical domain experts came into play for the interview phase. With the teams eager to get the input they need so that their solutions can actually solve the problems at hand, the experts were kept busy and it wasn't long before lunch was served, including famous Dutch Saucijzenbroodjes!

Here are some photos of the event so far.

The guys from Blackberry:

Team 8:

Claudius Metze being interviewed during the DT process:

You can find more information on the event on our wiki page here.

Following on from my earlier blog, here's a rundown of the progress the teams have made so far:

After lunch the teams dived into their story-telling, ideation, and prototyping. After sharing what they learned, helping each other to be creative and come up with ideas, and working on mock-ups, they were ready to present their prototypes to the assembled DT coaches and domain experts.

Personally, I'm sure this rapid-fire 3 minute presentation/2 minute feedback session will have sharpened their focus on the 6 minute presentation they'll need to give tomorrow after they've created their solutions, but for the moment it was a great opportunity to take some feedback on board so that they don't try to pack in too many features or hit any snags.

Oh, and before you ask, there's no team 6 (don't ask me why either!)

Team 1: B-Fit, presented their eponymous application, which aims to allow Klaus (their 30 year-old SAP employee persona) to manage his health, fitness, and food habits. The app will allow Klaus to create a profile on his Blackberry with his statistics, and then to create and share workout plans with other users, learning what has worked for others, and receiving rewards for the successful plans he shares with them. In addition, the application will measure his statistics, mood, and other characteristics so that it captures as complete a picture as possible about Klaus and his health.

Team 2: Cloudsitters have created Cloudsitter, an application intended to help reduce the anxiety that new parents experience regarding Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. While it's a relatively rare occurrence, millions of new parents every year are terrified of the possibility it could affect their baby, especially if they were born prematurely. The app will help Julia, the mother of a new-born who arrived 1 month prematurely to feel less anxious about baby Jimmy, by using sensors to monitor his heart rate, breathing, and other statistics that are sent to the cloud. Should something then change, they will be alerted to this so they can check that Jimmy is okay.

Team 3: Dr. Schultz, is a cardiologist, 45, and the head of the department at his hospital. He needs better access to information, which he and the other doctors can share efficiently, so he can make faster diagnoses and provide better treatments. He can use a tag-based search function for symptom combinations and access anonymized patient treatment records to identify treatments that have worked in the past.

Team 4: Medisight, presented their prototype Medisight application for patient handovers when doctors have returned from time off. The application allows them to access all the key patient information, including their room, along with a record of all their statistics and lab records that have changed while they were away from the hospital. This allows them to quickly identify any changes in their patient that they need to be aware of, so they can be better informed when discussing courses of treatment for the patient.

Team 5: Die Healthy, want to help Mary, their 35 year-old mother-of-2, with the support she needs to be a better role-model for her kids. Mary is an insurance broker who is very busy but also loves junk food. She needs something to help her to be healthier ad stay motivated, but without complications. Their app will use sensors to collect data about Mary, allow her to access a history of her data, and allow comparisons with people in a similar cohort. It will also make predictions on future health based on current lifestyle. If there is a worrying change in her condition, she will be alerted and provided with a list of questions and potential explanations to dismiss any false alarms.

Team 7: BB7, have prototyped Transport Diagnostics with Confidence (TDC) to assist Barbara Best, 32, a heart surgeon at a university hospital. She wants accurate diagnostics, to build on the knowledge of her more experienced colleagues, and to provide transparency for her patients. By breaking down hierarchies at the hospital, the level of diagnosis can be improved regardless of the doctor's level of experience. By using an application with push notifications of lab results she can access all the information she needs, along with treatment recommendations based on patient symptoms. If she has any doubts, she can ask her more experienced colleagues for their opinions. If a patient presents a previously-unseen set of symptoms, then the app allows the creation of a new case file so that it can be documented for future reference.

Team 8: Hospital MyCare have created a prototype to help Florence, a head nurse in charge of shift change at her hospital. Florence loves to plan, loves her work, and her patients. She hates inefficiency, interruptions, and double work. The app is intended to smooth the shift-change process, where time pressure is crucial but a lot of information must be exchanged. A dynamic checklist approach based on user information and other information sources such as sensor data can be enhanced with manual and system-suggested steps to help ensure that no critical information is left out of the handover process.

You can find more information on the event on our wiki page here.

After presenting their prototypes and receiving some feedback, it was time for the teams to get really busy, with the actual coding involved in implementing their applications. InnoJam rules are pretty clear: code, working code. The best idea in the world isn't the best idea in the world if it's just on paper.

So, with additional coaching and technical support from our array of technical experts (thank you, you know who you are, and we appreciate you, but there are too many names to list here), the teams got working on their overnight coding challenge, the core of every InnoJam.

With the creative juices (along with wine, beer, and Red Bull) flowing our 7 teams worked hard with the 3pm deadline in mind. Aside from the different prizes on offer, longevity also became a contest with our stamina prize: on the hour, every hour until 7am, every conscious team member from each team got a token. The winner (to be revealed later) would be the team with the most tokens.

I must admit, the time after 7am this morning was distinctly quiet, with a few team members finally crashing (maybe breakfast isn't the best way to start the day), before an influx of refreshed and returning team members and tech experts from 8am onwards livened things up again. They might have had some sleep, but they also got drenched getting from their hotels to the RAI.

Somehow (and I've been awake since a little after 3am, so it has been quite a long night) it's already lunchtime, so if I were competing then I'd be feeling under pressure but overall the teams seem quite calm and composed. Let's see what they're like at 2.55 though.

Here are some pictures of the stalwarts (and the snorers) for you to get an idea of the overnight and early morning activities:

You can find more information on the event on our wiki page here.

Okay, the coding is done. It's game-time. 7 teams, 6 minutes each, lots of prizes up for grabs, including the DemoJam slot and limited edition Blackberry Z10 handsets. I'll try and give a blow-by-blow, near-realtime run down of each presentation, plus the winners afterwards. Uwe Kylau is our Master of Ceremonies. Our judges are Jan Penninkhof, Phil Loewen, Claudius Metze, and Matthieu Schapranow.

First up: team number 5. Die Healthy used a Blackberry, a heart monitor, SAP HANA, UI5, and Fiori, in creating an app to help people to stay healthy more easily. This might be the first InnoJam presentation with partial nudity, as a heart rate monitor is displayed. Data from the monitor and other sensors is sent to HANA and then to an application that can be used to get a picture of the health and the history of the wearer. Emmanuel Foissard is showing off the Fiori UI to the judges with real-time heart rate information. 'Mary', the persona the team used when creating the app can compare herself to other users, and receive alerts in the case of any worrying changes in her condition.

Next, it's team 2. Cloudsitters. Their app was created with SIDS, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, in mind, to try and reduce the anxiety that new parents feel regarding this tragic condition. Because there are no known causes, just risk factors, it's something that really preys on the mind. Their app uses wearable technology on the baby, to monitor temperature, heart rate, position, and other data to keep track of the infant. These measures are compared continuously to a healthy profile, and if this deviates then an alert is sent to your Blackberry, telling you immediately that there's a problem. The app allows you to summon help directly, to make sure that there is no delay. The app will also collect data from children who use the device, so that in the case of SIDS, health researchers can gain information that can help to explore the cause of the condition and help prevent it in future.

Team 3 are third, and they're Anonymous Doctors. Doctors are faced with a vast volume of new publications every year, which is impossible for one person to absorb and use. Team 3 have developed an app that allows doctors to share information with trusted colleagues to improve their diagnoses, and reduce their workload. Tag-based search lets users find relevant documents for the case they are dealing with. Articles can then be added to the case file of the relevant patient, and treatments can be applied based on that information. EMR was used in developing the app, along with UI5 and SAP HANA.

Team 7, BB7, are next. They used the persona Barbara Best (hence the name) in developing their application. Patients expect doctors to use the latest and greatest information when treating them, but sharing and balancing the knowledge of experienced and junior doctors is a barrier to this. TDC, their app, uses UI5 technology to access information that nurses have already gathered on their patients. Additional patient information can be added in the application, and procedures such as blood tests can be requested directly from it. Once the results are available, Barbara receives a notification with the results on her Blackberry. Reference values can also be accessed via the application, to compare the results for the patient. HANA allows the information to be combined with further sources of knowledge for diagnostic purposes, and clinical pathways propose a treatment for the patient. Barbara can also ask her colleagues for their opinions on the patient, directly from the app.

Team 1, B-Fit will now present their app, B-Fit. There are many fitness applications in existence. Their application wants to offer something new and innovative, with three main functions: collecting user data, scheduling check-ups with doctors, and creating fitness plans that are the key part of the app. The app uses UI5, SAP HANA, and uses a Blackberry device. You can plan different workout types, with different options within them. You can connect to your cross-trainer, for example, and the data from your workout is sent to HANA. Calorie measurements and BPM analysis are then available for the user. Fitness clubs can feed data into SAP HANA that can then be passed to health insurers, so customers can get credit and benefits for their efforts to exercise and be healthy.

Our second-last team is team 8, MyCare, comprised of SAP employees. They have their medical hats on, and they're ready to go with their roleplay exploring patient handover during shift change at the hospital. It's midnight, Claudio wants to get home after his shift, but he needs to hand over crucial information to Hannah. Their application helps smooth the change process, by making all the vital patient information known to the incoming staff. Bed and ward number, comments from previous doctors, and other patient information is available from the app. The app also allows patients with extra care requirements to be identified easily. An alert in the app allows patients requiring urgent help to receive the help they need on an emergency basis. They want this app data to be integrated into EMR, and to include the handover checklist directly.

Our last team is team 4, Medisight.Their app tries to address patient handover when a doctor is returning from vacation, to minimize the amount of information they need to take on board. The innovation in their app is to focus on the delta information since the doctor was last on shift. The app gives a timeline of the changes since the doctor visited each patient. Anonymous patient case histories help to suggest treatment plans for each patient in the hospital. Their app uses UI5, and can be accessed on the doctor's favorite Blackberry device.

So, after the deliberations, the results: first up a token prize for the SAP employees who competed as team 8. They can't participate in the main competition, but they worked hard (in a developer-free team!), and at least three of them stayed all night, so they deserve some recognition. Well done guys!

Next, it's the stamina contest, and team number 5 wins with the highest percentage of possible tokens. Appropriately enough for a team that stayed up all night (it resembled a dinner party to be honest), they receive a coffee mug!

Now, it's the creativity award, and it goes to BB7, and they receive a glow-in-the-dark, USB light bulb.

Feasibility and technical implementation goes to Cloudsitter, based on their choice and use of technology, and they also snag the viability award!

Desirability is the last secondary prize, and that goes to Medisight. The judges made this decision based on the last 10 seconds of their presentation, with their EMR integration.

Now, we're into the big prizes. It's Leo McDermott and the other Blackberry guys with their prize for the best use of Blackberry technology. The winners of the special edition Z10 handsets are B-Fit!

It's time for the big one: InnoJam winners, t-shirt and $100 AWS voucher recipients, and DemoJam presenters tomorrow night...the judges are on stage to announce the winners. Claudius Metze announces...it's Cloudsitter again!

Here's a picture of our winners in their coveted InnoJam Winner t-shirts:

This was the first time that I was at InnoJam . It was a great experience for me as an intern at DevEx team to support and help my team in the organization of InnoJam at TechEd Amsterdam 2013. And I am happy to share my experience with you.

Before coming to InnoJam when my friends were asking me “What is InnoJam?”, I was replying “Oh… It’s a competition between several teams who needs to create the best application within 30 hours using SAP technologies”.

But what I have learned from InnoJam is that it’s NOT just about making the best application using SAP products. It’s more about creating a story, understanding what actually the users need and creating a solution that will help them to achieve their needs.

I would like to mention several things that I really liked at InnoJam

• Design thinking
  It was so interesting to follow how the teams were working on each step of DT. Although for many of the participants this was something completely new, the teams with the help of their coaches reached really great results (bravo to all coaches of the teams. They did a great job).
  I can’t not to mention how much enthusiasm the team members had while working on the DT tasks. One of the DT steps was to interview the users to understand who are the users and what they want to do, and some of the team members even went out to find their users outside, although it was raining heavily (yes, I have to admit that Amsterdam was not that much welcoming with it’s weather )
• Team work
  Another thing that impressed me was the collaboration between developers and non-developers. It was amazing to see how people who had never met each other before were working so organized together as if they were a team for a long time.
  
  
  
• Tech Sessions:
  In between there were small sessions where SAP tech. experts were introducing the technologies that participants could use for building their applications. I also used the opportunity to watch some of the sessions that were very interesting for me and got an idea of the technologies which I hadn’t used before.

• Atmosphere
  I was awake the whole night so I could follow the whole progress of the teams. Around 3-4 AM, although many of the team members were already tired, there were people who were still full of energy working hard  on their solutions (coffee, Red Bull, drinks and snacks helped a lot   ).
  
  
  
  Of course, some of the team members didn’t manage to stay awake the whole night (It’s hard not to fall asleep once you sit on those comfortable ‘Fat Boys’ ).
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

It’s hard for me to write about all my impressions (and I am not that good at writing) so I will stop here.

This was the best tech. event I have ever been so far. I really enjoyed it and I am looking forward for the next InnoJam to be there again (this time maybe as a participant ).

Thanks a lot to all those who gave me this opportunity to be at  TechEd InnoJam in Amsterdam.

I hope to see you all at the next InnoJam,

Lusine

If you just want to see photos, video and our winners, go to the Event WIKI.

Well, we didn't actually celebrate that, but between SAP InnoJam and it's predecessor, SAP Innovation Weekend, we made it to 10 installments of this hack event co-located with SAP TechEd. Fits nicely with this year's global community theme SCNis10. Don't you think?

Now, it's somewhat hard to write about this event. ... I just cannot find the right words. ... We not only made it to double-digits in terms of occurrences, we also had our wining team make #1 at SAP TechEd DemoJam the next day. ... This is just so amazing and I still doubt myself and my perception of reality, thinking that I will wake up tomorrow in a hotel room in Amsterdam starting a Groundhog Week time loop. ...

OK. Maybe I'm so baffled because my view is biased. I won't go into details here, but let's just say that I would have loved to resolve a few things a lot earlier than they eventually did. So I went into day 1 of this InnoJam hoping to keep the show train on track. Ultimately, my fears proved so wrong. There is no reason whatsoever to be unhappy about the event and it's outcome. Quite the opposite. I'm more than pleased with the healthcare theme and how teams approached the rather serious topics we put forward as challenges. They took it to their hearts to make the best of the sometimes difficult task to learn enough about the problem, even though they had limited direct access to first-hand users. I actually saw people ringing up friends or relatives more than once. In fact, I gave away my own phone for a few calls. If you see things like that, if you see your participants dive into the topic, you know that you passed the first hurdle.

When you also pass the second hurdle, there is pretty much nothing that can spoil the event (apart from freezing everyone to death with the aircon - *hint*hint*). We did that later at night, passing the hurdle that is, not freezing everyone to death (although it was a shivering close call at one time). We achieved to hook up our teams with all our key technologies, including SAP EMR Unwired and the machine-2-machine software that came with a number of sensors. During presentation time we saw SAP HANA, UI5, EMR Unwired, fancy mobile apps on BlackBerry devices; participants running on stage, pretending to be hospitalized and saving lives. That alone was worth all the effort to put this event together. I suggest you go and watch the replay.

So there we were at the end of day 2, all happy and relieved that everybody had so much fun. Participants and supporters happy to see the inside of their hotel room at a decent hour. Ourselves happy that nobody got injured (it happened before). ... For our winning team, however, the fun was about to continue. They spent the entire next day polishing their app prototype, as well as their story, in preparation for the big showdown at TechEd DemoJam that evening. Team CloudSitters vs. 5 other demos. 30+10 hours of development vs. several months. And they made it. Unbelievable. Compelling story, simple app and a superb delivery on stage. Congratulations: Matthew Riches, Andreas Profitlich, Christian Braukmueller, Twan van den Broek, Uwe Haneke, Niels Willems, Martijn van Dortmont, Tommy Aarts, Adrian Matys, Paddy Uduji

YES WE CAN! ... provide a platform to produce a DemoJam winner in less than 48 hours. I'm so proud of everybody involved in SAP InnoJam, past and present, participants and supporters.

For this installment, SAP TechEd InnoJam Amsterdam 2013, I want to thank all participants and the following people. All of you have been instrumental to make this event a HUGE success! THANK YOU!

• Partners / sponsors: Leo, Dennis, Sharif and Jon from BlackBerry, Toan from Amazon Web Services
• Domain experts (supporting our healthcare theme): Claudius Metze, Janos Varadi, Theo van Veldhuyzen, Matthieu-Patrick Schapranow, Marc Noetzel
• Design Thinking coaches: Fred Verheul, Twan van den Broek, Phil Loewen, Raquel Pereira da Cunha, Julia Dorbic, Stefan Behrendt, Marilyn Pratt
• Technology experts (on and off site): Ingo Brenckmann, Thomas Jung, Rich Heilman, Jan Penninkhof, Lucas Sparvieri, Robert Eijpe, Abdulbasit Gulsen, Martijn Tielen, Ralf Ackermann, Johannes Hoenger, Joerg Singler, Martin Bachmann, Shashank Mohan Jain, Gaurav Singh, Srinivasa Reddy Challa, Kavitha Santhana Lakshmi
• SAP University Alliances: Ann Rosenberg, Waltraud Grimm, Juliane Krampe, Daniel von Dungen, Niraj Singh
• SCN and event staff: Idit Herzog, Nicola Herrmann, SAP Registration Office (Stephanie, Helen, Camille), Christine Godek, Audrey Stevenson
• Other behind the scenes staff: Rachel Chaudhary
• SAP DevEx staff (on and off site): Myles Fenlon, Hester Hilbrecht, Alexander Graebe, Robert Kubis, Lusine Stepanyan, Julien Vayssiere, Marek Kowalkiewicz, Inga Bereza, Ingo Sauerzapf, Juergen Schmerder, Michael Byczkowski, Michael Flynn, and las but not least Anne Hardy

=> Go to our event WIKI, if you want to find all articles about the event, see photos or videos, check on the winners, etc. <=

So this is it. InnoJam season 2013 is over. I'm glad that I played my humble part in it.

To all of you: Enjoy the festive season and hope to catch you in 2014.

For many of us, the last days of October mean last-minute preparations for Halloween, stocking up on sweets for trick-o-treaters, finding that perfect pumpkin for jack-o-lantern, or putting finishing touches to costumes of little witches, devils and harry potters. For 26 students from Hasso Plattner Institute, EISTI, Eurecom, SKEMA Business School, Polytech Nice Sophia, CampusID, University of Bolzano though, the last 2 days of October meant
something very different: meeting up at SAP's long term research and education partner Eurecom’s new facilities on the new Campus SophiaTech of the international science park of Sophia Antipolis in France at 8:30am for the SAP Business By Design Mobility InnoJam.

 

The organization of this first French SAP InnoJam was not a small affair and the organizational committee, fittingly dressed in orange, was looking forward to finally welcoming the participants after months of preparation. To support SAP University Alliances team (Boukli Marouan, Alexandra Darras, Karla Baca), different teams from SAP Labs France SAS (SAP Active Global Support Solution Support (Caroline Testard), SAP Business Intelligence Advanced Development (David Trastour), SAP Product Security Research ( Jean-Christophe Pazzaglia), and SAP Solution Manager Mobile development (Mabrouk Amine, Zubataia Tatiana and me)) faciliated by the SAP Developer Experience team (Vayssiere Julien), in addition to neighbour and partner of Eurecom, and SAP Partner Ubister (Pierre Gueguen) all worked together to make sure everything was ready when teams arrived. 

There was another first at this SAP InnoJam: the possibility of virtual participation. The participating teams discovered on their arrival an additional remote competitor: a highly motivated team from Sup’com Tunis (or Higher School of Communication of Tunis).

In the first part of the 1^st day, the BizFire and TechFire sessions took place with speakers presenting the basics and concepts of SAP Business by Design, as well as SAP Cloud Application Studio and SAP Mobile technologies. In-between the two presentations was the highlight activity of the day: Design Thinking. Each team was coached by two SAP Design Thinking coaches. Out of three challenges, the teams chose the one they felt more interested in and started researching creative solutions. The walls, desk, flipcharts and whiteboards quickly and surely got covered in post-its and drawings of all colours, with ideas and findings popping up from everywhere.

 

The competitive spirit of the teams started to spread, which brought additional fun to the presentation of prototypes. Make sure you do not miss the most
entertaining presentation by the “6 Fingers” team.

In the evening of the first day each team received a laptop with SAP Cloud Application Studio installed and was ready to start implementing their ideas.  The work for some teams continued throughout the night and the organizers met some very sleepy faces when they came back in the morning.

The second day, with everyone hard at work coding was a big contrast to the noise and commotion of the first day. The SAP and Ubister experts present on hand were hard at work to take care of teams and make sure they did not get stalled by technical or functional issues.

When presentation time came up, tired but happy participants, organizing committee and jury members gathered together for the fast-paced InnoFire. 3 teams present locally and the remote team in Tunis each had 5 minutes to demo their work to the jury presided by SAP Labs France SAS Managing
Director and SAP InnoJam sponsor Hanno KLAUSMEIER. The last bits of energy were gathered and as usual at SAP Jams - the best presentation was very entertaining.

While participants have had time to enjoy a well-deserved cocktail, the jury had a difficult task to find a winner among the four very deserving teams. The final decision was pronounced by SAP Labs France SAS Managing Director Hanno KLAUSMEIER after 30 minutes of hard deliberations and greeted by tons of applause in the room and on the phone – as the winning team was one from Sup'Com Tunis. Well done to the winners for their hard work and determination to participate in SAP InnoJam remotely.

If you or your SAP ByDesign customer needs a solution for efficient business card or time entry in their system via mobile phone – the SAP InnoJam participants have it!  SAP Partner Ubister has also appreciated participation in the event and are considering organizing a similar event together with SAP  in their “home” Brittany area of France which counts several high profile engineering schools and is the second French region for telecommunication
and the fifth for electronics. We hope more SAP InnoJams to follow in France!

I also would like to use this opportunity to encourage other SAP Labs around the world to either organize their own SAP InnoJam or join together in a large-scale virtual InnoJam. The participation of colleagues remotely in our SAP InnoJam was a success, let’s build on this experience and organize a virtual SAP InnoJam between different teams from SAP Labs, SAP customers or SAP Partners! Anybody on? – SAP HANA on Cloud, 3-4 challenges for the best SAP HANA mobile app, teams of 5-8 people, 48 hours of coding and best app selected by SAP’s senior managers – does it spark anybody’s enthusiasm? Just contact me and we can try to make it happen!

Last year at the SAP TechEd event there was some confusion around the SAP InnoJam event, specifically in what was going to happen to the event in 2014. There were some rumors that it was ending and would be no more. Well I am here to tell you that it is alive and well!

However, with all things there are some changes I want you all to be aware of. Our team was tasked to taking on the SAP InnoJam challenge moving forward and so over the past several weeks we have done just that. We have spoken to tons of people, reviewed feedback, blog posts, tweets, etc. and come up with several options that were reviewed and discussed. What follows is how the SAP InnoJam events will be moving forward and what that means to all of you.

First the biggest change is that the "SAP InnoJam" event name and format we are reserving for use at our own annual event. The reason for this is simple; we want to be able to modify and adjust our agenda and format without causing disruption to the community, University Alliances and others.  I think to best explain this the following goal and agenda will help.

The Goal

The goal and purpose of a InnoJam event is to give attendees a technology experience around the building of actual working solutions/prototype during the course of the event. Based on themes and business cases of real world problems.

Agenda and Flow (30 to 36 hrs)

• Welcome (5 mins)
• Keynote (40 mins)
• Business Case presentations (1 hr) - BizFire
  • Each case represents a possible team
• Team Selection based on business cases (1.25 hrs)
  • Teams are open, join the one that shows interest for the same business case you do
• Break (30 mins)
• Technology Showcase (1 hr per pillar, presentations from partners, etc.) - TechFire
• Design Thinking (1 hr)
  • How can design thinking help your team
  • What can Design thinking do for you
• Team separation, Design Thinking coaches assinged (30 mins)
• Break (30 mins)
• Team Work (24 hours) - Innovation Slam
• Presentation preparation with coaching (45 mins)
• Break (30 mins)
• Judging and Announcement (1 hr) - InnovationFire

Again this format will take place at SAP's own annual events each year. We tried not to make too many radical changes all at once so consider this a evolving format.

Our own UA program now have their very own event which is the "SAP UA InnoJam".

The Goal

The goal and purpose of a UA InnoJam event is to provide students with a guided experience around the building of actual working solutions/prototype during the course of the event.

Agenda and Flow (30 to 36 hrs)

• Welcome (5 mins)
• Keynote (40 mins)
• Theme Presentation  (1 hr)
  • Each event has a central theme designed in co-operation with faculty and regional businesses
• Team Selection (1.25 hrs)
  • Teams are created randomly by the hosting team in order to mix universities, experiences; the faculty and students will be further separated to give the students a chance to challenge the faculty solution vs. solution
• Break (30 mins)
• Technology Showcase (45 min per pillar, presentations from partners, etc.) - TechFire
  • 2 to 3 technologies present
• Design Thinking Mini Workshop (3 hr)
  • How can design thinking help your team
  • What can Design thinking do for you
• Team separation, Design Thinking coaches assinged (30 mins)
• Break (30 mins)
• Team Work (24 hours) - Innovation Slam
• Presentation preparation with coaching (45 mins)
• Break (30 mins)
• Judging and Announcement (1 hr) - InnovationFire

Now to round out the selections we've also asked the community to expand their own "SAP Inside Track" format to include an InnoJam style element. After speaking with the amazing folks in the Netherlands who have driven the community versions of the InnoJam the last several years we felt the following event format would be a good starting point and we've provided a suggested agenda however we hope that the community takes the opportunity to be innovative with the format and agenda of the event as well - who knows what amazing things will come about that we could roll back into the official event formats.

We are of course happy to schedule an open call to discuss any of these changes and we welcome all of your feedback!

One week ago today I was both exhausted & excited as the rising sun cast orange rays through the windows onto my determined but exhausted team.

We were 20 hours into the 32 hour InnoJam at CeBIT 2014 and had built much of what we designed hours earlier, but we still lacked key features that we grappled with realizing in the 'new-to-us' framework we chose: SAPUI5. 

Questions had arisen during the process:  Should we go native android, iOS, or our more familiar brand of javascript/html5 where we know a bit more? 

We liked the idea of SAPUI5 because it sounded like it could deliver the value to our target persona who required a quick and easy-to-use, cross-platform compatible, aesthetically appealing UI experience, and still be able to access the native device features like camera and geolocation. Not to mention we were there to learn something about SAP beyond our existing capabilities.

With the help of our devoted tech coach and various advisers we  surmounted obstacles one by one as our final deadline approached.

This is where I was most impressed and grateful for my team!

Members of my team actively grouped together on tasks and knocked out function after function on our kanban board while others focused on final presentation designs and key points to emphasize in the story.

In the final 6 hours, our pace quickened even as we picked up others' work when breaks felt 

necessary --- for example when one of our champion coders finally fell into a deep doze in his chair.

Fortunately, we managed to meet the goals of our kanban board, even if only 1 hour before our final deadline.

Repeated moments of frustration & function coding blocks could have been stagnating & deflating to us, but we were able to bounce back off of each other's commonly held vision to find new solutions anyway! And that we did!

Our customer sponsor was pleased, we met the judging criteria well enough to qualify as finalists, and we felt good about how we worked.

In retrospect, I think My InnoJam experience can best be measured by what I learned: both about myself, my team, and the end-to-end process of idea-to-delivery/prototype presentation:

• I learned that some people are like machines and just don't sleep. I'm not one of them. (I had to crash for at least 2hours).

• I learned that we can transform moments of despair into hope by committing to a common vision across the team.

• I learned that there are many new ideas that can arrive only after building a foundation out of previous ideas.  This I see in the early prototype-feedback loops of the Design Thinking journey, and I'm still experiencing this on a higher level days after the final presentations as we decide which of the diverse next steps we might take to complete a full version of our app game.

• I learned that a team of strangers can get together and ideate and build something useful, after numerous obstacles and several would-be deflating moments of failure - all without using the words "stupid" or "bad idea". Such a positive environment made it easier for me to release my imagination and offer crazy but fascinating (I thought  ) ideas.

Beyond that, I got to learn a bit of what can be done with SAPUI5 (including inspiration from watching other teams'results), how I work under pressure in a team with a specific goal, and get inspired by the impressive  work of the 107 students I shared the room with.   Additionally I got a glimpse at how SAP employees interact with people & work on teams -- which is valuable insight for me when I consider what working culture might be like inside SAP.

One of my team mates made a particularly unique impression on me. I call him a "Solution Ninja" because of his continual alertness (I don't think he ever slept) and continual seeking for the next step - I  could ask him to try something crazy and he would just do it, and then come back to find a new problem to solve or a new graphic to build, or even suggest new considerations we should take and offer to handle it. At one time or another, each member of our team showed this trait on time or another.

I'm persuaded that having the right people necessarily includes having a diverse set of people who are willing to think proactively to detect and solve emergent gaps in the team dynamics.

Thanks SAP University Alliances team & all other organizers!

Thanks teammates: Chad, Heinz, Patrick, Monika, Romil, David, Bernd, Ehsan and our awesome Design Thinking coach Horst!

And thanks to the 107 brilliant students who made this a really tough and inspiring competition!

That was FUN!

Check out the cool impressions from other teams by Ben Parnell, Martyn Rushton and Jochen Guertler

Το SAP InnoJam πλησιάζει·μόλις 10 ημέρες έμειναν! Κλείσαμε για την περίσταση σχεδόν όλο το χώρο του The Cubeκαι πλέον, όλοι στην ομάδα ετοιμάζουμε τις τελευταίες λεπτομέρειες για εκείνο το διήμερο. Βάζουμε τα δυνατά μας για να σας εμπνεύσουμε και να δείξετε στις 9 & 10 Απριλίου τον πιο δημιουργικό εαυτό σας, δουλεύοντας πάνω στην πιο καινοτόμα πλατφόρμα στην ιστορία του business software.

Για όσους δε έχουν ακόμα ενημερωθεί τι ακριβώς είναι το InnoJam, ένα είναι το σίγουρο: θα σας συναρπάσει!

Δηλώνετε συμμετοχή στο παρακάτω link και θα συμμετέχετε στον πιο καινοτόμο διαγωνισμό φαντασίας, αντοχής και δημιουργίας! Θα αποτελέσετε μέλος μια ομάδας που θα μάθει να σκέφτεται διαφορετικά, να συνεργάζεται και να θέλει τη νίκη .

Η κάθε ομάδα θα αποτελείται από developers, άτομα με business/finance/marketing κατεύθυνση και πάνω απ' όλα, innovators! Το πρωί της πρώτης ημέρας θα δοθεί ένα κοινό challenge και μέσα από τη διαδικασία του Design Thinking η κάθε ομάδα θα καταλήξει στη δική της λύση. Για τους developers της ομάδας, έπονται 24 ώρες coding.... Τα υπόλοιπα μέλη θα συμμετέχουν στο session επιχειρηματικότητας, όπου με τη βοήθεια και καθοδήγηση των Entrepreneurship coaches θα δημιουργήσουν το business plan και το marketing plan της "επιχείρησής" τους.

Στο τέλος της δεύτερης ημέρας, η κάθε ομάδα θα έχει 8 λεπτά στη διάθεσή της να παρουσιάσει το project της στην κριτική επιτροπή. Οι νικητές της διαδικασίας θα έχουν σύντομα συνέχεια, καθώς θα συμμετέχουν σαν ομάδα σε διεθνές συνέδριο στο εξωτερικό. Αυτό όμως είναι το λιγότερο. Όλοι όσοι συμμετέχετε θα έχετε κερδίσει μια μοναδική εμπειρία ταχύτητας, καινοτομίας και δημιουργίας!

Για να δηλώσετε συμμετοχή, μπείτε στον παρακάτω σύνδεσμο:

http://www.eventbrite.com/e/sap-ua-innojam-athens-registration-10910115449

Αν θέλετε περισσότερες πληροφορίες, επικοινωνήστε μαζί μας στο 210-9473885 ή μέσω e-mail στο info.greece@sap.com.

Σας περιμένουμε!

[δείτε εδώ ολόκληρο το κόμικ]

The morning of April 1st (and this is no joke :-)), marked the first ever Israeli
SAP Innojam. For the next 3 days, some of the brightest minds of SAP Labs
Israel worked day and night on developing the most innovative, useful and even
craziest ideas they could think of.

Earlier this year, I met up with some local colleagues working on great
product on SAP Fiori called Project Magnet, a recommendation system for business contentm using a vector space model and data mining.

We discussed different ways SCN could leverage SAP’s BigData solutions for the community and how we can further enhance our HANA based social intelligence platform.  After a few brainstorming sessions, we had some great ideas on how we could use contextual, machine learning capabilities
on SCN.
 
 

We formalized great working relations with the team and thought InnoJam would
be a great opportunity to showcase the potential for levering Project Magnet on
SCN.

The idea was to create an app that encourages community members to
contribute to the community while building their reputation.  The app knows what areas the user has expertise
in by scanning their applications and e-mails, and then recommends which
contribution goals the user should target including a detailed step-by-step
plan for achieving the goal.

The app sits on the user’s desktop and notifies when there are relevant open
discussions in SCN that contribute to. It also captures some of the data the user
has already collected and prompts them to use the content to create blogs and
documents on SCN.

It also motivates the user to make progress on their way towards becoming an
expertise Guru by graphically displaying their growth and leveraging SCN’s gamification
capabilities.

It was a privilege to take part in this SAP Innojam experience. We had a
wonderful, diverse team, of UX experts, developers and content, led by the
great Vitaly Vainer. The fast paced startup vibe was truly exhilarating. Seeing
an idea truly come to life within just three days from inception, to laying the
groundwork and through execution really demonstrated the caliber of my
colleagues here at SAP Labs Israel.

We named the app iGuru and demoed it to our judges alongside some other
great applications on the Morning of April 6.
While we didn’t win, I feel that we are winners!

Monday, March 30.

I'm currently ranked 11 out of 15 in our betting group standing. Idan is making fun of me because of my poor ranking but at least I'm still ahead of Yossi…  This group betting is already a tradition for us: for every major soccer event we gather a group of about 20 friends (employees, family etc.) to participate in a group "fantasy" betting game. Each participant pays an entry fee of 100 NIS and then places their bets on the tournament and on each match within the tournament. Each successful bet grants the participant a few points and the points add up throughout the tournament. In the end, the most successful participant (most accurate bets) takes the cash jackpot. This time the group is betting on the UEFA Champions League and the Quarter Finals are about to start.

About a month ago, Yossi came to me saying that the InnoJam session is our chance to finally develop the betting platform that we always talk about. The thing is that the more we participate in these betting competitions, the more we realize that there is no suitable website or application to allow us to manage the group and the betting. So, we're often left to manage the entire operation with Excels and Google forms, and this is a very time consuming, manual task.

So – we ran a quick design-thinking session to identify the requirements for such a fantasy betting platform. The "quick" design-thinking sessions quickly grew into 4 long sessions but it was a lot of fun: We started with several interviews of potential users of such an application (only to understand that we know better than most of them ;-). We then continued to analyze the requirements from the interviews, by wallpapering our meeting room with a colorful collection of sticky-notes. After that, we defined and collected as many features as possible while allowing our fantasies to flow un-inhibited. In the end, we narrowed it all down to a reasonable feature set and then, thinking on the short scope of the InnoJam we further squeezed it down to a minimal set.

These brainstorming sessions are by far the best part of the software development process; when you feel like you're working in a start-up where everyone is heard, every voice counts and each member is part of the creation process of something that is truly ours.

Tuesday, April 1.

Barcelona vs Atletico and Man UTD vs Bayern – These are today's matches. And I have 10 more minutes to place my bets on these matches. I'm sure Bayern will beat Man UTD but the match is played in Manchester, so I'll go for 2:1 to Bayern. On the other match the odds are even with a slight advantage to Barcelona as the home team, so I'm leaning towards 1:0 to Barca.

I can also bet on the Under/Over – (whether the total number of goals in the match will be over 2.5 or under 2.5) and I can pick the winner in each match (or tie) – these additional bets allow me to spread my chances across different items (e.g. bet that Barca lose despite betting on a score of 1:0 for Barca) – But judging by my poor ranking in the standing table, I have to go "all in", in hope that my bets succeed and I climb up a few positions.

InnoJam coding sessions kicks off… our team (Yossi, Batya, Liran, Vlad, Walter and myself) started the day with a quick morning meeting to split the coding tasks between us: Batya and me on the back-end. Vlad and Walter on the UI and Yossi and Liran are in charge of loading the data from external sources (Yossi is also in charge of the moral…). We're all in a good mood although the pressure is already felt, in our hearts, thinking about how on earth are we going to finish it on time?

We spend the first day coding enthusiastically and every now and then we relaxed with a beer or some other refreshment from the InnoJam treats. Developing on HANA proves to be rather quick and straight forward. Despite the many glitches related to the HANA development environment, one can see the good and solid architectural foundations of HANA and the potential of it for the future. On the other hand, SAP UI5 despite offering an impressive and modern, clean UI, proves to be a major challenge with a very slow learning curve and many obstacles that keep us from progressing at a satisfactory pace.

At the end of the first day we have most of the back-end ready and we realize that we have a major problem with the UI.

Wednesday, April 2.

Last night's bets proved me completely wrong. Both matches ended up in a 1:1 tie. Luckily I managed to grab a measly 4 points for betting on "Under"(2.5 goals) in both matches, thereby preserving my ranking in the standings table. On the other hand Yossi guessed correctly on one of the matches and closed the gap behind me. You can imagine the "warm" welcome greeting I got from him this morning.

For Today's matches I decide to take a slightly bigger risk betting on 2:0 to PSG on Chelsea and 2:0 to Real Madrid on Dortmund. I spice that up with a bet on "Over" (2.5 goals) in both matches. I'm guessing that most people will take more conservative guess while I have some catching up to do, so I have to take some wild guesses if I want to climb up the standings ladder.

On the second coding day the pressure builds up. Each of us is digging deep into his code, trying to overcome various issues (isn't it "sweet" that the P4 server crashes down for 3 hours just after you've deleted your code and need to re-sync from the P4 repository?). With no proper supervision of a "project manager" (classical start-up mistake..) we find ourselves at the end of the second day with only 1.5 screens out of the 5 that we planned to be ready. We decide to shift Batya and myself to try to work on the UI, even though both of us don't have any experience in SAP UI5. The stress of not being able to meet the deadline starts to show and we all stay to dry our eyes in front of the monitors till 10PM…

Thursday, April 3.

Yet another disappointing night of betting for me… My so-called risky bets proved even too conservative when both matches ended up with a high score of 3:1 and 3:0. At least I got the winning teams right and I got some points for the "Over" bets. Unfortunately, Yossi welcomed me this morning with a cheerful grin having taken an even bigger risk than me (he had less to lose) and scoring both matches correctly. He's still far from the top of the standing but the fact that he passed over me in the table was enough to make his day.

On the third coding day we start to think of short-cuts of how we can present the project on the InnoJam competition despite not finishing it. However, we've already narrowed the application down to the very basic screens and our commitment to the integrity of "our baby" is still very high… we can't give up any features. Yet.

We pound the keyboards all day long (out of frustration?) only to find by the end of the day that we haven't made much progress and we're only at about 50-60% of the work.

At 10PM we sit for a team talk. Decision time: Are we going for an "all-nighter" plus a potential "Friday at the office" in order to fulfill the project or are we quitting (what a shameful word…)?

In the end it was one factor that convinced us: Our main goal from the beginning was to have fun! To enjoy the creation process of a new project, a project which is ours, a project that we created from zero and that we are fully committed to (who else can convince Walter to stay 3 nights in a row till 10PM??).

And at this point we decided to leave it as is. Perhaps we'll return to it in next year's InnoJam. Perhaps some of us will continue working on it in their spare time. Who knows? The important thing is that we enjoyed it.

It was one of the best experiences we had in SAP. See you in InnoJam 2015!

Thursday, May 1.

That's it. There's only one game to go – the Champions League Final. Since the Quarter Finals, I've gone from bad to worse as I try more and more radical bets in an attempt to beat my friends' bets and jump up the table. Needless to say – It was futile. Yossi on the other hand gathered a good momentum since he passed over me and has since made it to the top 5 with a small chance of winning if his bets will be accurate on the final match.

We're now defining the rules of our next betting group towards the 2014 world cup, starting in June in Brazil. This time we want to have many more exciting betting artifacts (How many goals in the entire tournament, which is the worse team, etc.) and yet again we're looking for a betting platform that will suite our needs but to no avail. We're forced to retreat to the "good old" excel way of running things. I wonder who will finally pick up the glove and identify this amazing business need… :-)

First things first: if you're living in or near The Netherlands, sign up for this event using the registration page. And don't wait too long, because on May 16th we'll have a go/no-go decision moment, and we want this event to happen on Friday 20th and Saturday 21st of June .

What the hell is SIT InnojamNL?

I mean, you'll probably know what an InnoJam is, and I'm sure you know what an SAP Inside Track is, but SIT InnojamNL? Is this a new type of event?

Well no, don't worry: it's the regular Innojam event that we've been running in the Netherlands for the lastthreeyears. The reason we renamed it has to do with changes made by SAP itself: as of 2014 the SAP Innojam brand is exclusively reserved for the Innojam events just before d-code (formerly known as SAPTechEd).

However, this rebranding and the fact that SAP doesn't organise this event anymore, at least not like they've been doing so far (with a dedicated team featuring well known people like Rui Nogueira, Julien Vayssiere, Hester Hilbrecht and Uwe Kylau, and of course tons of others) also means an opportunity to rethink our local Dutch event. And so we have also made some changes, which I'll dive into below.

Design Thinking

No change here! We decided not to follow SAP in eliminating the 6hr workshop and 'only' facilitating the teams that want to do such an exercise. On Friday June 20th, we will go through the whole designthinking cycle once again. Why? Because a) we believe this part of the Innojam leads to better final solutions, and b) because we want people to get familiar with it and make them aware of the added value designthinking can bring to an organisation in addressing real world problems. In fact, in my opinion the designthinking part of this fourth Innojam event will be better than ever. Big kudos to Jan Koster from SAP The Netherlands for his efforts. He started thinking about challenges and business cases way before we even decided to run the event again!

Design Thinking artefacts from last year (courtesy VNSG)

DesignersDNA

One of the things Jan has done is mobilising the DesignersDNA group. From their web site:

DesignersDNA is a platform for experienced innovation professionals to share knowledge and experience in using design thinking in innovation and change within large corporate global organizations.

Jan is one of the members of the DesignersDNA platform that includes design thinkers from organisations such as Philips, Shell and many others. Also worth mentioning: Arne van Oosterom, founder of the DesignThinkers Group. Arne and some more members of the DesignersDNA have been fleshing out the business challenges and will be some of the designthinking coaches during the event. DesignThinkers Group is even one of the sponsors (but more about that later). With their expertise we'll be sure to have a great first day!

A and B program

This year, for the first time, we'll have two options for those who want to participate: an A and a B program (actually an A and an A+B program):

• The A program will let you participate in the Design challenge on Friday, to be concluded by the lovely diner by Haseena Penninkhof (yes, we managed to contract her again!). Afterwards, you're done and can enjoy your weekend .
• The A+B program means you will stay for the whole event and help building a software solution, based on the prototype from the designthinking workshop. For the technically inclined (aka developers) this is of course a must-attend.

The entry fee for the A program is € 85,- (for VNSG members), for the A+B program € 125,- (again, for VNSG members). Non-members will be charged an additional € 10,-.

One of the highlights of the event last year: Mrs. Penninkhof's diner (courtesy VNSG)

Sponsors

If you're even faintly familiar with SAP Innojam, you'll notice that the fees mentioned above are a lot lower than usual. This is a direct result of yet another change we've made: we've been searching for sponsors for this year's Innojam event. And here Denise Passchier from the VNSG has done an excellent job (supported by Jan Koster and myself) and managed to get the following companies on board (at the time of writing): The Next View (main sponsor), SAP NL, Ciber, Superp, Intenzz, DesignersDNA, myBrand, Creetion, Vrumona, C/Tac, Phoqus, CGI and newFounders. As you can see the event is broadly supported by a lot of Dutch SAP partner companies, which indicates a) this is the kind of event people want to be associated with, and b) we're very lucky in The Netherlands to have such a great ecosystem of partners.

What else has changed?

Well, not so much actually. We will of course still have some cool technologies from SAP to build solutions with, and as usual we'll have technology experts to help everyone out during the event. We'll have some students again, and a master of ceremony and a jury to judge the teams and to announce the winning team.

In my opinion the VNSG and SAP NL are doing a great job again, and now we want all of you to join and make this event the best sapinnojamnl ever!

So again: if you're interested, you can read more about the event here (in Dutch), and you should sign up here.

You can also follow us on twitter: we'll be using the hashtag #SAPInnojamNL.

Thanks for reading!

Dream - The What:

The motivation behind our project was the desire to truly challenge ourselves. We didn’t want to just showcase an idea, but rather fully implement the necessary infrastructure in its entirety.

We knew that doing this within three days constituted as pushing the envelope, but most of us just wanted to see if it could be done.

About a year and a half ago I happened to watch a TED presentation by a very talented PhD student called Lior Zoref, who wished to showcase the Wisdom of the Crowds, and more specifically its utilization as a methodology for making accurate estimations. He recreated an experiment originally observed by Sir Francis Galton, by bringing a live ox onto the stage and asking everybody to individually estimate its weight.

While none of the five hundred participants successfully estimated the weight of the ox, with guesses ranging between the mere hundreds and up to the thousands of pounds, the mean of all estimations was in fact only 0.0016% off of the true weight of the ox.

Needless to say this left an impact on me, and after presenting this to my initial InnoJam partner, Barak Kinarti, it seemed that he too saw the potential immediately. Furthermore, within a few discussions we decided that we should create a platform that would allow participants to utilize the methodology and harness the power of the wisdom of the crowds in order to make better educated decisions within short

time frames.

We saw a variety of different use cases for such a platform, including live polling of participants in live events in order to gain a better perspective of opinions, however we wished to apply the methodology to a more exciting and visually stimulating field without sacrificing the potential profitability of our product.

In a moment of reflection, I recalled a brief conversation with an acquaintance who explained a new field in the legal gambling industry called “Micro gambling”, which consisted of placing bets on short term questions regarding sporting events.

Matching the thrill and visual appeal of sporting events with the profitability of the legal gambling industry and with crowd sourcing as a service sounded like fun to both Barak and I. Furthermore, it was an easy idea to pitch, which allowed us to gather our entire team of extremely talented developers within a single day.

In our first Jam meeting we formulated a business model. We would focus on sporting events upon which legal gambling agencies are taking micro-bets, and by conducting polls in order to gather specific estimates from millions of participants simultaneously, we would use the wisdom of the crowds as a form of predictive analysis provided as a service to the same gambling participants who were polled, right before they are faced with their decision whether or not to bet, and what bet to place.

It is at that moment that Ran Gross, a talented architect who served as an early stage advisor, suggested that we name the product “Show me the Money”, which is essentially the service we wished to provide.

While our user base would consist of gambling participants, they would in fact not be our clients. The polling, analysis and data presentation would be entirely free of charge. Moreover, Our customers would be the gambling agencies themselves who would pay in order for us to route our users’ traffic, whenever they’d wish to act upon the information we provided, and place real bets.

The next step was determining the scenario and environment. The entire team unanimously agreed that it should be a mobile application that would also be streaming the sporting event thus eliminating any need for proximity or dependence on other technologies, and providing gambling participants with a one-stop-shop experience.

The flow: Prior to a specific play, all users would simultaneously be presented with a question and then be allowed to estimate the outcome of the specific play.

Furthermore, all user estimations would be aggregated within our database in real time, the mean would be calculated and pushed back to all users with an informative display of voting segmentation.

Next, users would simultaneously be asked whether or not they wished to place bets. If they affirm that this is indeed their desire, users would be prompted with a friendly interface that allowed placing the bet, determining the amount while still displaying the poll results.

Upon placing the bet, it would be routed to the gambling agency for processing and the user would proceed to watch the play unfold.

Code - The How:

This flow immediately shed light on several of the technological challenges we faced, including synchronization of all connected devices in order to assure that all users shared the exact same experience simultaneously, the streaming of high definition video content as the center piece of our application without sacrificing responsiveness and performance in general, the implementation of a coherent and intuitive user interface, the application of social connectivity and gamification in order to assure consistent and recurring participation of users.

Considering the amount of users we were targeting, we knew that we had to utilize a fast database and server combination and this is where HANA stepped in to accommodate our needs. Additionally, we chose to utilize both node.js and nginx servers simultaneously to manage traffic over open web sockets. This allowed us to progress fast, learn how to work with web servers that we were previously unfamiliar with, while enjoying the connectivity and speed required in order to deliver the level of responsiveness we were seeking.

Our team was highly diverse and consisted of extremely talented colleagues with a vast array of specialties including client side, user interfaces, server side, databases, performance engineering, UX and graphics. This in turn allowed us to transfer knowledge and learn from each other while assuring the highest quality in each field.

Stating the development process was a roller coaster ride would be an understatement. The majority of team members pulled entire nights, and we still found ourselves minutes away from the semi-final demo we were expected to deliver, still standing around Yaniv Carmel who was feverously debugging a critical show stopper.

Show – The Demo:

We spent the entire final night preparing the product and then the presentation itself, which in itself was not as simple as we thought it would be considering the amount of features implemented and the very limited amount of time, however we progressed through the semi-finals and received a very positive reaction.

After finishing our final presentation and even before hearing the results, the team members already shared a unique vibe and state of mind, feeling that when taking into account that we had accomplished that which we set out to do within only three days and nights, we’d already won regardless of what the results might be. However, this could be attributed to sleep deprivation and vast quantities of sugar .

A special thanks to Yotam Shapira and Adi Eshet for organizing such a fun and educational event.

And of course, thanks to everybody who took an active part in this project:

Barak Kinarti, Carmit Pinto, Dmitry Bakaleinik, Itai Fonio, Pavel Maliy, Zohar Sheinberg, Nirit Cohen-Zur, Ilana Rahlis, Yaniv Carmel, Alex Kravchik, Ido Itzkovich, Ohad Granica.

  --  Daniel Turin

And we have kicked it off.

Another edition of the InnoJam NL has just started today!

Jan Koster: Welcome to the candy shop!

This year, the Innojam, isn’t just an InnoJam, it’s a SAP Inside Track Innojam (notice Inside Track in its name). Because SAP wants to use the SAP InnoJam name exclusively for the InnoJam events in the weekend before d-Code, it needed to be rebranded. As is was encouraged by SAP to call all community events SAP Inside Track events, we have decided to call this InnoJam the SAP Inside Track InnoJam Netherlands, or #SITInnoJamNL in short. More on the name-change was discussed in a recent SAP Hana Café NL podcast: http://saphanacafenl.podbean.com/e/s01e05-sit-innojam-nl/

What has changed

Apart from the change in its name, only a few things have changed:

• The SIT InnoJam NL is now an event that is driven by the community instead of by SAP. The major players in the organization are VNSG (the Dutch SAP User Group) and the SAP Community. As the event is taking place at the SAP Office in Den Bosch, it is quite obvious that SAP Netherlands is also co-organizing. However, instead of SAP taking the lead, the driving force it the SAP community!
  
  
• Another thing that has changed is that Innojam teams have a better chance of being elected to perform their demo on stage during the d-Code demojam, in front of an audience of thousands of likeminded community members. With that, they will receive brutally honest and usually deafening loud feedback through a HANA application called the “clap-o-meter”. Using a secret algorithm, the clap-o-meter is able to measure the audience's enthusiasm and engagement with the demo and the solution.
  Winners of the SIT InnoJam will even have a greater chance to perform their song and dance on the d-code DemoJam stage!

• For the first time in the existence of InnoJam, it was possible to register for parts of the event. It was possible to register for the entire event, but it was also possible to register for the design thinking part only.

• A final, but in our thrifty Holland, very welcome improvement is that the organizers of SIT InnoJam NL have been able to lower the entry fee of the event, by asking sponsors to help out with some financial support or logistics. An overwhelming number of sponsors has agreed to help out. Thank you The Next View (main sponsor), SAP NL, Ciber, Superp, Intenzz, DesignersDNA, myBrand, Creetion, Vrumona, C/Tac, Phoqus, CGI and newFounders!

SIT InnoJam NL Sponsors

What didn’t change

• The SIT InnoJam will still feature a design thinking phase, which helps to get to know the team mates, to properly understand the business case and to actually put some thought into the solution. The jury will judge the final solutions based on desirability, viability and feasibility as well as technical aspects. Design thinking will especially help the participating teams with the jury's first three assessment aspects.

   SIT InnoJam NL participants pasting a paper trail over the A2 during their design thinking process

• The overall structure of the SIT InnoJam also remained the same, starting off with design thinking sessions from 9am to 5pm. Followed by the realization, hacking and coding phase from 5pm till 3pm the next day. The event will be concluded with a presentation by all teams, assessed by a jury, which will elect a SIT InnoJam 2014 winner!

• Another thing that didn’t change is that the group of participants will be split up in 6 teams with an similar mix of developers, business specialists and students. All teams will be working on their own design challenge trying to make an indelible impression with the judges.

• Great food! Mrs. Penninkhof is preparing an delicious meal from the Malaysian cuisine.

  The lovely Mrs. Penninkhof, always prepared to feed the hungry

Theme and tasks

This year’s team is “prevention of social isolation of the elderly”. Just after the kick-off, Hanneke Dam of VNG (Association of Netherlands Municipalities) elaborated on this issue, to get the SIT InnoJam participants familiar with the theme. The teams are dared to come up with innovative IT solutions based on SAP software, that offer help or support the elderly as well as institution around them, such as volunteers, general practicioners, municipalities, family members and charity organisations. As part of design thinking’s discovery phase, the various team would have the possibility to conduct interviews with domain experts to deepen their knowledge even further. Based on this theme, 4 subtasks were prepared, and each team is made responsible for one of the tasks.

Hanneke Dam of VNG explaining the the SIT InnoJam NL theme

Another record breaker

Noteworthy already about this SIT InnoJam is the massive turn-out. It seems that the Dutch Innojam is growing every year, both in attendance as well as maturity of the solutions delievered by the participating teams. Last year we had a breakthrough and were happy to announce that every single solution the teams came up with, actually worked! This year is already in the books because of the number of attendees. We have 68 attendees: 56 regular attendees and 12 students.

Another interesting fact is that all attendees are Dutch speaking. While we usually have non-Dutch speaking guests from Germany, we didn't have that pleasure this time. It might be that the Dutch have been a bit too intimidating during Worldcup 2014?. Anyhow, this allowed us to conduct the entire SIT InnoJam NL in Dutch, which I am sure is convenient for many of the participants.

  Full house at SIT InnoJam NL

During this SIT Innojam we can also see a continuation of the collaboration with SAP University Alliances. SAP is very keen on seeing future members of the workforce to get familiar with SAP concepts and technology, of course in the hope that they will also apply their knowledge and skills in their future jobs. Michael Woidt, SAP University Alliances Country Manager Benelux mentioned that he is looking for more collaboration between SAP users and students. InnoJam is a great way to achieve that (here's Michael's Blog on this topic).

Michael Woidt, making the case for University Alliances

Fun!

It was emphasized that although these two days should be all about learning news skills and technologies, there should definitely be a fun aspect to it as well. It appears that some of the participants are already taking that very literally

Ronald KonijnenburgandSven van Leuken having fun!

Kudos to Fred Verheul, Jan Koster, Denise Passchier, Claudia Bleijswijk  en Rob van der Marck for putting this great event together!

On behalf of the Dutch SAP community: Thanks so much!

This blog post is a continuation of Jan Penninkhof 's post from Saturday, to be found here. You may also want to read Michael Woidt's blog post about the participation of the students at sitinnojamnl.

The second day of Innojam officially started at midnight, since at Innojam we just go on coding all night, remember ? Due to a wedding I couldn't stay on Friday evening, so I only made it back past eight o'clock. Most of the participants were already/still up and running, but I could still see a few students sleeping on the couches (no pics to protect the innocent). During lunch I got this photo from one of them, Ayoub Mobarik (thanks Ayoub!) as proof that apparently even students can't pull an all-nighter anymore these days:

I'm sure anyone who has been attending an innojam will recognize this .

So what else is there to say? The teams tried frantically to get some live demos up and running (except for team 4, they appeared to be very relaxed?!) until 15.00u, when it was time to stop coding and present their prototypes in front of the jury (pic below courtesy of the VNSG), consisting of (from left to right) Johan Bouwmeester (municipality Almere), Thomas Bresser (Philips, one of the Design Thinking coaches), Hanneke Dam (VNG, Association of Dutch Municipalities) and Rob van der Marck (VNSG):

Team presentations and results

So what did the teams present? Well, for that you'll have to watch their presentations below (beware: they're in Dutch, but you can get an idea anyway):

Team 1

Team 2

Team 3

Team 4

Team 5

Team 6

After some deliberation the jury announced team 4 as the winning team. Runner up was team 3, and third place went to team 1. Congratulations to Ronald Konijnenburg, Sven van Leuken, Twan van den Broek, Niels Willems, Leo van Hengel, Celine Estripeau, Peter Tonies and (student) Ayoub Mobarik!

Final thank you words

As Jan Penninkhof already stated: we're very grateful for the sponsoring of this years edition, so here they are once more: Thank youThe Next View (main sponsor), SAP NL, Ciber, Superp, Intenzz, DesignersDNA, myBrand, Creetion, Vrumona, C/Tac, Phoqus, CGI and newFounders!

Of course also a big thank you to everyone that made this SIT Innojam possible, and while I'm bound to forget people, I do want to mention the people from the VNSG: Mientje Paais, Denise Passchier and Claudia Bleijswijk during the preparations, and Claudia, Hans de Labije and Rob van der Marck during the event, as well as Jan Koster from SAP Nederland.

For those of you who want to read/watch more about the Dutch SAP Inside Track InnoJam 2014, here are some links:

Student report, including photos, thanks to Dirk-Jan Schenk

Another student report from the same source

Dutch BI podcast: zooming in on the technology behind the solution of team 4 (Google Hangout)

HANA Cafe NL podcast: Recap of the event including live coverage at night

The blog by Jan Koster over on the Dutch SAP website

A photo set by the VNSG

A photo set by Twan van den Broek

See you all next year!

Update: just received this picture from the VNSG with all the participants, so I thought I'd share it here with you:

Update 10/28: Added a link to the playlist with some of the projects that the teams came up with during InnoJam in Palo Alto.

• Mingle with a diverse group of experts and developers while building IoT solutions for real-life agricultural situations
• Learn and explore cool gadgets and sensors as well as SAP's newest technologies with on-site SAP domain experts
• Huddle with new teammates
• Hack a prototype of your solution
• Pitch your prototype
• And, if you're the best, you'll win a spot on stage at DemoJam finals on October 22 in Las Vegas or November 11 in Berlin! 

• Welcome
• Keynote
• Business case presentations
• Team selection based on business cases (Teams are open so participants can join based on their interests)
• Break
• Technology showcase
• Design Thinking
• Team separation, Design Thinking coaches assigned
• Break
• Team work (24 hours)
• Presentation preparation with coaching
• Break
• Judging and announcement

• SAP
  • SAP HANA
  • SAP HANA Cloud Platform
  • SAP Jam
  • SAPUI5
  • SAP Lumira
• SynerScope

Updates:

Update 10/2: Added additional information on the technologies that will be available and some information about the scenarios.

Update 9/29: Added list of technologies and info on sponsor.

Update 9/19: Registration for SAP InnoJam in Palo Alto is now open!

So there have been some questions regarding SAP InnoJam and what to expect from technologies, processes, etc this year.

Well first if you've been before you'll find the format is very much the same as before with some modifications based on your feedback.

Technologies in our "TechFire" will be SAP HANA Cloud Platform, SAP JAM, SAP HANA, SAP Lumira and of course IoT solutions with SAP. We will also have some partners sharing some tech and technology as well such as Intel and Synerscope!

SAP HANA Cloud Platform

SAP HANA Cloud Platform powers applications that deliver real-time insights to drive more effective and timely decision making. Dramatically accelerate analytics, business processes, sentiment data processing, and predictive capabilities to run your business in real-time.

SAP HANA

SAP HANA converges database and application platform capabilities in-memory to transform transactions, analytics, text analysis, predictive and spatial processing so businesses can operate in real-time.

SAP Lumira

Quickly build beautiful visualizations with just a few clicks. Combine data sources and get the big picture and granular details together. Visualize large volumes of data without having to sacrifice performance. Maximize data knowledge and drive immediate outcomes.

Deliver agile data discovery across your enterprise with trust and scale. Leverage any data – big and small. Govern and administer data, visualizations, and users by leveraging your existing analytics infrastructure. Securely scale data discovery to your entire organization, today.

SAP JAM

SAP Jam provides intuitive and powerful tools for social collaboration to help you drive results wherever you work. With it, you can add structure to conversations and work to quickly drive action, make decisions, or solve business critical problems. It enables you to drive and track the offline work that occurs when exceptions arise or teamwork is required to attack business-critical issues. You can work with customers, partners, and employees directly in your social collaboration environment, in your business applications, or while mobile.  SAP Jam does all of this while also enabling IT to protect key corporate data, avoid social silos, and deliver social collaboration across an entire technology landscape.

Synerscope

Since the topic is Internet of Things for the Agricultural Industry, Teams will have to deal with structured and unstructured Data, which they will not only try to use but initially need to get a feel for how to make sense of the data. In addition, SynerScope's Solution allows the fast consumption of different data layers i.e. Comparing publicly available weather data with correlating growth of crops and usage of different methods of cultivating the land. And this without a lot of programming.

We'll also have experts on site helping and showing how to connect things like a Raspberry PI or Littlebits together and then bringing sensor data to SAP systems!

And of course we will also have Design Thinking and other activities involved. In fact I'm excited to announce that we have a very awesome Design Thinking and SAP Mentor coach joining us in both locations to help explain the benefit of DT and the value it can bring to your project! She'll also be on site in both locations to help each team navigate the processes and help you on your way!

Meet Julia Dorbic, a Design Thinking expert having traveled the world helping companies implement the methodologies. I've had the pleasure of seeing her present all over in the US, Europe and as far away as India so we know that everyone will be in the best hands for Design Thinking! (side note: Julia does not work for SAP, but has taught many inside of SAP around the world)

We are so excited to have Julia join us in Palo Alto and in Berlin!

Now Berlin is completely sold out but there is still time to join us in Palo Alto - registrations are filling up with folks flying in from all over (as far away as Australia) and locals coming from all over the Bay area so don't miss your chance!