As we get closer to the SAP InnoJam events happening in conjunction with SAP TechEd && d-code it's time to talk about solutions. SAP InnoJam is all about coding an innovative solution using SAP technologies around a central theme.

This year we chose an ambitious and difficult theme, Agriculture. With a drought in California and the fact that we are having the first event in Palo Alto we thought the theme fit. The thing for us was that Agriculture is not just "farming" but rather in all the things related to it. Many of our ideas have spawned from our own projects.

• SAP Green Roof project
• A Joint Venture with SAP
• SAP Customers unlock the power of intelligent things

So although the theme itself is agriculture and there are brilliant opportunities to make things happen we also remember that innovation will lead where innovation leads!

Ian wrote a blog the other day with a full scenario on the topic and Chris commented on the post with his own experiences.

Sure Ian. I spent 7 and a half years running a SAP for a farming company. They handled the end to end process from growth through to delivery to supermarkets so I have plenty of examples to share.

 

So from an ERP perspective, I was able to setup production orders to "grow" a crop in SAP. This took a few attempts over multiple seasons, but we got down to being able to drive harvest dates in SAP ECC by confirming the different crop growth stages. Fro example in Australia, sweet corn takes about 72 to 80 days from emerging to harvest. We did confirmations in SAP at various stages of the crop growth that pushed the production order finish date out in SAP. It worked great and they have used that system for 5 years now. The problem with it is the data collection is all manual. It needs to be manually entered in the system. This is an interesting area to look at.

 

Further to this. When a crop needs to be sprayed, fertiliser, pesticides, etc. The record keeping requirements are quite intense. There is no system that allows us the easy offline collection of this and relates this back to an SAP production order. You end up with a different set of paddocks maintained in a different system. The process was then to manually extract the information and manually enter this into SAP ECC against the production order. All chemical usage is ultimately recorded against a Production Order for traceability but the collection cost is high. I see this as a huge area for potential. There are batching systems that are around but the different types and mixes of chemicals generally means that someone is manually mixing.When they spray a paddock, the operators generally spray across multiple paddocks which makes record keeping even harder. This is a brilliant use case for geo fencing where you can then apply the record to paddocks contained within that area.

 

There is already some great technology around GPS assisted steering in tractors. It is amazing system technology that has a proven purpose. If you take this a step further though, you can produce maps of the paddock.This has been around for a while now. The next steps are producing salt maps of the paddocks to measure salinity and start making crop decisions accordingly. For example turning planters off so as not to waste seeds on soil that will not do well.

 

There are a heap more examples and use cases for the combination of IOT technology, SAP ERP and agriculture. I could go on for pages :-) It is some of my favourite topics.

Chris

Which for us was brilliant because we wanted to ensure that another piece of feedback made it into the mix this year - you asked for the option of bringing your own scenarios to the event. You can!

So be sure to register for Palo Alto if you have not already, and for those who helped make Berlin a sold out event already get your thinking hats on and start talking to those folks at your local farmers market and find out what difficulties they are having and come prepared to help hack a better world together!

Maybe your solution will help figure out how to monitor not only weather but maybe also migration patterns and infestations of insects that destroy crops; or perhaps you have an idea of how to give early warnings to famers on water, rainfall and erosion?

Ideas are flying and the emails I've gotten so far are showing some really interesting thought processes for this event and we are excited to see what comes out of it!

At the moment there are still slots open in Palo Alto for the upcoming event, register now. So ok now to the good stuff!

I blogged earlier about what to expect and about making a solution.

This year we chose an ambitious and difficult theme, Agriculture. Granted there are many aspects of this topic and we of course have left the floor open for all of you to bring your own ideas on what to build, we certainly don't want to paint you into a corner so to speak. We want you to have a wide range of aspects to look at here, whether it's the drought in California or looking at other environmental factors that could and do effect this industry.

For us we want to see how broad, wide and crazy you can all get with data, software and hardware around the theme and what you can come up with!

To get you into the right mindset and to give you some links to get those creative juices flowing I did some searches for data available online around the topic - this is by no means all of the data and you are of course welcome to use any data you have access to (remember the legal side too please).

• WHO | Data and statistics
• http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products.aspx
• http://data.worldbank.org/topic/agriculture-and-rural-development
• http://econ.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/EXTDEC/EXTRESEARCH/EXTPROGRAMS/EXTIE/0,,contentMDK:20390030~menuPK:475530~pagePK:64168182~piPK:64168060~theSitePK:475520,00.html
• Agriculture | Data.gov
• http://www.sage.wisc.edu/mapsdatamodels.html
• Data Sets » Agriculture and Food Security | SEDAC
• Agriculture in the United Kingdom data sets - Statistical data sets - GOV.UK

Just looking at data and reading about things in the news my own thoughts drift to the Amish (I even made "Amish White Bread" last night, that's what it's called anyway) and what they are doing around organic farming these days.

Zook: Well, there was a big psychological block that I had to get through. I’d see a couple bugs out there and feel like I immediately had to do something about it. But, I learned that if I sit back, things will often take care of themselves. That first summer for instance, we saw a lot of horn worms. Before that, I would have sprayed them right away, but this time I waited and a bunch of wasps came along and killed them. Once I saw that, I started getting really excited.

I started to think wow how cool would it be if we could track pest infestations, weather patterns and associate that with farming land? What if I took the idea from the Kenyan teenager who found a way to help stop poaching and adapted it to something smaller than "people"?

Or being able to map all the farming in an area to help determine what crops may be the most profitable for a farmer, granted I am not a farmer but I could imagine it would be no good if everyone grew the same things?

Or when you hear what farmers are doing in Louisiana? They are wanting to use drones to check water irrigation!! How many other locations could benefit from similar technologies and use of technologies?

Or maybe something more back to home, like how difficult my own small balcony table top garden is considering my travel schedule or teaching the kids about this stuff?

Long gone is ‘SAP is all about ERP’ – today SAP is all about solving customer challenges through a customer focused mindset and innovative solutions on big data, mobile, cloud and predictive analytics!

October 23-24, Aalborg University, Manufacturing Academy of Denmark and SAP invited students and practitioners to a joint 30-hour intensive innovation camp aimed at creating exiting new business solutions based on cutting edge technology to meet the challenges of Future Digital Manufacturing and Supply Chain Transformations. In this event we wanted to explore the potential of digitalizing manufacturing and the supply chain.

Check SAP Innovation JAM 2014 on YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FDX6nyTfRY&feature=youtu.be

70 participants worked in 8 pre-assigned teams to develop ideas, prototypes and solutions. The event started with an introduction to the design challenge and the four cases were presented. Participants were also given an introduction to the design thinking methodology and selected technologies. Each teams had an assigned SAP Design Thinking coach to support them through the process. The solutions were to be presented to a professional jury that would award the best team with the most innovative solution.

The overall design challenges for SAP Innovation Jam 2014 was “How might we help companies leveraging smart manufacturing and digital supply chain visibility so they can achieve efficiency gains, reduce time to market, and increase flexibility?”. This challenge was exemplified by specific cases from four leading Danish manufacturing companies who was also part of evaluating the solutions.

Who were the case companies.

After an entire day where the teams used Design Thinking to explore and understand their customers pains and issues and following brainstormed on possible solutions, their first high fidelity prototype was up for validation. After valuable feedback from industry and solutions experts was given, it was time for the teams to create not only a solution mock-up but also explain the value with focus on; Human desirable, Business viable and Technology feasible.

A HANA Cloud Platform was made available for all participants. After a training by SAP Mentor Robert Eijpe, selected members of the team was ready to code, making use of UI5 for their prototype. Supported by Robert, SAP HANA Experts and partner INVOKERS the teams was ready to rock! A green screen studio was made avialable for for them to visualize their ideas.

To explore and collect insight on team cases and customers a JAM room was made available for everybody.

Friday afternoon 30 customers, partners and several journalists were invited for a 3 hour inspirational SAP Open Innovation day. Professor Charles Møller, PhD, Director, Aalborg University explained the innovation power of SAP, customers, millennials and university faculty joining forces to solve the challenges of the future. Mark Raben, SAP Innovation Heads EMEA hosted a panel discussion with LEGO, Grundsfos, Vestas and Danish Crown to understand their challenges in future manufacturing.

Now the time had come for the 8 teams to present their innovative solutions to solve the challenge in Digital Manufacturing and Supply Chain Transformations. Each were given 6 minutes. From worrying if the teams would actually make it - it all came out beautifully in the end.  Impressive how 30 hours with people, method and the right space can enable well thought out solutions.

MADE presented their view on challenges and Ralf, Lehmann, Senior Director, Solution Management LoB Manufacturing presented SAPs view on Responsive Manufacturing Industry 4.0.

Then it was time for the judges to find a WINNER!

During the entire event everybody was kept updated through social media such as Facebook and Twitter using the hashtag #SAPInnovationJam14.

The winning solution – Team 4  Grundfos:

Problem Part of the process to understand the issues was creating a persona of a customer at Grundfos to empathize and understand pains and challenges. If the customer is not getting products well in time what does that mean to him?. The root cause of not being able to sell a lot of standardized products was identified.

Solution This easy and user-friendly solution would gather information from the inventory and give sales and customer a comparison of customized and standardized product in lead time and cost. This solution would give customers an option to go for a saving and less lead time with just a click.

Aalborg University now hopes to bring this solution forward into further development.

The Future of Manufacturing and Supply Chain in Denmark

Denmark and many western European countries are concerned about the future of their manufacturing sector. The recent years we have seen a vast number of jobs being offshored to low cost countries. One of the strategies for re-industrializing the western world is to digitalize existing industry to make it more responsive and productive and thus competitive. Many national Initiatives like the German initiative “Industrie 4.0”, the US initiative “Smart Manufacturing Leadership Coalition” and the Danish initiative: “Manufacturing Academy of Denmark (MADE)” are addressing this challenge.

Long gone is ‘SAP is all about ERP’

For more information:

Link to Event microsite

Link to full agenda

THE ONE AND ONLY TEAM!

Aalborg University

• Professor Charles Møller, PhD, Director, Center for Industrial Production

Manufacturing Academy of Denmark (MADE)

• Nigel Edmondson, Managing Director

SAP Design Thinking Coaches:

• Gitte Winther Bruhn
• Jacob Lund
• Hanne Schultz Andersen
• Helene Jespersen
• Claire LAUPER
• Rasmus Jacobsen
• Peter Arentoft Nielsen
• Norman Aziz

Technology Support:

• Thomas Madsen, HANA Lead SAP
• Robert Eijpe, SAP Mentor and HANA Guru
• Rune Durhuus-Andersen, Invokers, User Experience and UI5 Expert
• Morten Toxværd, Invokers, User Experience and UI5 Experts
• Martin Holm Nielsen, Invokers, User Experience Design

Other Supporting Roles (Industry Speakers, Innovation and Photographer):

• Ralf Lehmann, Senior Director, SAP Global Solution Management
• Jesper Waaben, Manufacturing Lead SAP
• Mark Raben, Innovation Head EMEA
• Stephan van Rijn, Onsight Media – Filmmaker

I participated in SAP InnoJam recently and I have to say I had so much fun, I get to meet people from different backgrounds and I had the chance to work with latest SAP technologies. However, based on my experience below, I think there is one aspect in team distribution that can be improved.

The event started strongly with presentation from product experts and after there were enough topics presented, it was time to pick a topic / team you want to choose. Everyone was free to choose the topic or team that he/she is interested in. I also noticed some participants tend to stick with people that they know of, people that (I think) have some great influence in the community, or people who have had triumphant experiences in previous InnoJam events. Well, this sounds just natural: if you want to win InnoJam, you surely want to get the right resources to work with, to deliver a working prototype for the demo at the end of the event.

Unfortunately for me, I did not know anyone except for few faces that I have seen on Twitter from time to time. I ended up in a team of 7 people: another person and I have been actively involved in technical aspects of software development, but the rest had little exposure to programming in the past or no technical background at all.

I was quite happy with my team and I did not see any problem in delivering a prototype for the demo. We also agreed to just keep our solution simple, knowing that we did not have enough technical resources. We decided that we would show a simple prototype showing our temperature sensor capturing the current temperature, save it in HCP, and display the number on mobile application developed with SAPUI5.

When it was time to assign individual task to each team member. We had to ask the non-technical members to also try tackling some serious programming tasks. Of course this is not ideal, but we had no other choice. Again, there were only two of us with previous programming experience. With a lot of help from the product experts, by the end of first day we were able to get the sensor to work and submit data to HCP. I was quite happy with our progress.

However, things did not go as we planned on the second day. We struggled in creating our mobile application and extending our HCP application. We were unable to get as much help from the product experts anymore, because understandably, they need to spend their time to help other teams as well.

By the time we had to prepare for the presentation, everything was a mess. HCP application was not working anymore, we had no backup of the working version from the first day, and we had SAPUI5 screens populated with only hardcoded values. I could see frustration and disappointment from our team members. Anyway, the show must go on, so we presented whatever we had although nothing really worked. As you can guess, our prototype was far inferior compared to others.

No, I’m not about to rant and blame the non-technical people here for what happened. You can always argue that better team management and testing would avoid disaster during our demo but even if we could get everything working, our result would still be very basic, you know, just like a simple Hello World application. However, I do think that a better distribution of technical and non-technical people in each team would reduce the risk of having such a problem. In fact, this was done at my first InnoJam. After topic leaders have been chosen, non-technical participants should be given the first priority to pick a topic/team and they should be spread out across all teams equally. After that, remaining spots in each team can be filled out openly by technical participants. As a result, the teams will have a good, equal mix of technical and non-technical people. We will also be able to avoid having non-technical participants together in one or two groups. Moreover, technical people who want to choose the topic or other persons they want to work with, can do so.

I think this would be much better for everyone. The technical members don’t have to worry over the lack of resources, and they can even help mentoring the non-technical ones. The non-technical members, on the other hand, can start small in programming. They don’t have to handle a huge task straight away. Also if anyone comes across a problem, the team will have more chance to discuss and solve it within the team, without having to hassle the product experts again and again.

If the non-technical members don’t feel comfortable with programming, that will be fine too. They can contribute in other ways such as manage design thinking process, build reports using Lumira, generate dummy data for testing, etc.

I am aware that InnoJam is a coding challenge contest and technical skills are highly required to become a serious contender. However, we can’t prevent the non-technical participants from registering for the event and I personally do encourage non-technical people to participate. Diversity is one of important aspects in effective design thinking, and this aligns nicely with the real purpose of InnoJam: finding the most innovative solution to real life problems. But again, I think more equal mix of members in each team will bring most benefit to each team and team member.

Feel free to provide any feedback and by the way, thank you to Field Management team of SAP InnoJam Berlin 2014 for all your hard work! I knew that our demo was far inferior than others and I am sorry that our demo was a disaster but I am proud of our efforts anyway. Oh, congrats for the winner anyway, you guys deserve it.

This week I had the opportunity to be part of a SAP InnoJam event at FH Kufstein, Austria. As a technical coach I supported the teams in all questions about SAPUI5 and mobile development as well as team organization in general. Below I want to recap my impressions of the event.

Preparation and Team Building

Kick off for the organizational team was on Wednesday, 4th of February. After having a look at the location and the setup (which was extraordinary!) we were invited to a little hike by the team of FH Kufstein. They led us uphill to a very nice restaurant. When we were finished with a traditional Austrian dinner, we went home by bobsleigh!

The Challenges

Workflow Access at your Fingertips

Are you responsible for approving purchase orders or incoming invoices? Do you approve leave requests? Do you authorize contracts or confirm the content of other documents? What about a central and user friendly access to all your workflow items, even while you’re on the way?

Create an innovative and easy to use workflow user-interface!

The Mobile Goods Receipt

In the timber industry, the production planning is very important. Therefore, it's necessary to know when and in what amount a raw material will be delivered to the factory. On the other side it's important and required by law that a truck driver has to have a detailed goods receipt which needs to be shown at traffic controls.

Create a mobile application which helps truck drivers as well as the factories to improve the production planning!

Mobile Controlling for Startups

The manager of a startup needs most of his time for the daily business, sometimes even for the production process itself. There is not much time left for controlling tasks. Therefore, he needs an easy to use tool to get an overview of all important controlling information.

Create a solution which provides the right and most important information for a manager to help him making the right decisions in the daily business.

Idea Creation and Presentation

During the first day, 41 participants from 6 universities and 3 vocational schools were divided into 6 groups. They followed the Design Thinking process to generate innovative ideas to solve the given issues. Our Design Thinking coaches helped them to create personas, validate their ideas and build prototypes. The prototypes focused on simple and lean solutions as well as a good user experience.

Coding

After the Design Thinking presentations, the groups went back to their tables and worked on a concept to realize their prototype. They discussed about SAPUI5, Fiori Design Guidelines and the HANA Cloud Platform. Their ideas were all about mobile apps, which can be used on a smartphone as well as on a tablet device. Furthermore, they thought about using the Fiori Client to use device features like push notifications and camera integration. The ideas included bar code scanner and Google Maps integration. They mainly focused on the user experience and on a simple and self-explaining solution.

Some of the participants stayed up all night but others took also the chance to take a short nap in the lounge area to get some energy back.

Final Presentations and the Winner

The final presentations started at about 5 p.m. after 20 hours of coding and preparation. The six different presentations included role plays, PowerPoint presentations as well as prototype demonstrations. We as technical coaches had to rank the different prototypes regarding their technical implementation. This wasn't easy for us especially because every prototype had its own special feature, for example browser push notifications, phone call functions or a native client.

The jury, including representatives from the different companies which provided the challenges, had to make a really tough decision by choosing the winner.

Finally, team 6 won this SAP InnoJam! Their solution helps managers to easily get an overview about the company's situation in areas like financing and production planning. They convinced the jury with a good presentation, clean code and a reasoned business plan.

(f.l.t.r.: Hans-Peter, Marina, Juliane, Silvia, Martin, Paul, Johannes, Julia, Carsten)

Many thanks to all my coach colleagues Paul Grill, Johannes Staehlin, Martin Grasshoff, Carsten Becker& Marina Brenner, our colleagues from SAP University Alliances Silvia Rathgeb& Juliane Krampe and the organizational team from FH Kufstein lead by Hans-Peter Steinbacher!

Looking forward to the next SAP InnoJam!

Even though I had taken a lot selfies, I did miss out on a very important one, my twitter interactions were at an all time high, I forged new relationships, made new friends, and for 32 hours was awake eating and drinking but for the most part coding. A week so packed with activities that its hurried termination etched strong lines that will take a lifetime to fade.

I am John Omesili, I live in Paris and I participated in CeBIT15 SAP InnoJam at Hanover, Germany. Back in 2014, a guest lecturer from SAP University Alliances programme in person of Didier PETITJEAN had spoken to my class about interesting activities within the SAP ecosystem, one of which was the InnoJam. We all missed the 2014 innoJam, but I made plans to attend the next one, a promise I kept true by qualifying to be among the 70 students who made it last week.

One of the most intriguing questions I used to ask was “What do SAP Consultants do?”. The interaction between the University Alliances(UA) programme and students helped put this in perspective especially through the InnoJam to work with SAP Consultants.

Not all who work at SAP are techies, some just know how to do the talking, Storytelling is what it's termed. When I got to attend was the SAP Big data truck tour at SAP’s France office, Lord, that presenter know how to sell Ice, but story telling was taken to another level when Ian Kimbell mentored my team’s demo presentation. with these few unveiling experiences and other unmentioned benefits, I would count myself as one who has enjoyed the UA programmes.

The Innojam is a coding challenge contest organised by SAP for students where the use of SAP technologies is spiced with innovation and design thinking in order to prototype real life business scenario while providing its participants the opportunity to directly learn from SAP Professionals all withing 32 hours.

Kicking off development during the Innojam was quite interesting for me, I suddenly found myself in a whole new world, it was like being a country where I could not speak the language. I had to work with a team that had not much experience in SAPUI5, I felt powerless, the thought of championing the coding within 32 hours compared to watching a Youtube video on a 2G network. In a world where time was limited, I quickly pulled out my project management skills and put in place a delivery strategy.I ensured apportioning of tasks to team members between research, code and design. I knew that spending a few hours putting my team through the rudiments of SAPUI5 was the right investment that would pay off.  And so the long night started.

I guess I had started something good because right after the first round of heads to the 404, 503 and offline sessions -sleep,  these guys had started asking the right questions on navigating the documentation and SCN wonderfully. I was indeed happy that I had passed some knowledge to the team. This motivation drove me through the rest of the day until we accomplished each task set out for the project.

Alertness took a hit at me during the stage presentation, Benedict, my team member,  had perfectly planned out the sequence of the story and just when I needed that tenacity the most to sell our smart traffic idea to the judges, the baton fell. A little staggered miscommunication brought the Judges bells ringing and saw us over shoot the allotted 6 minutes by 3 seconds. But, yeah, heck of an introduction selling the idea, the judges and other Innojamers could not forget that and we know who thank for the power of a beautiful story.

Did we win the Grand Prize? No, but we were all winners, each according to his/her own contribution towards ensuring that the goal set out was achieved, for me, that was the  definition of success, to pursue and achieve a worthy ideal.

The InnoJam is over and I have returned to Paris, I will wrap up my Internship this month at BMB Services, graduate by the next and start out as a vacataire administrative teaching HANA Cloud Platform for Dummies at ESIEE for the current semester's SAP course. I see a wonderful opportunity here. I am sure that I can pass the torch from Hannover to Paris and prepare a new breed of InnoJammers come next spring.

So watch out for the ESIEE students next year and maybe, hopefully, I get a chance to take that selfie with Bill McDemortt. Tchuss!!!!!!!

Here is very short video of the event

http://t.co/Ai5rSJ7W2j

This year I was able to be a tech coach at two different SAP InnoJams (CeBIT, Fashion) - and hopefully there are more to come! I want to share my experience with you what it's like to be a tech coach at SAP InnoJam.

You are the expert for ...

When you are a tech coach then you are the expert for a certain topic (mine is SAPUI5), but the broader your knowledge, the better. I prepared myself with the openSAP courses for HCP and HANA (especially HANA XS). Due to the fact that our team developed the SAP Web IDE I know this tool from the inside out, and I am very familiar with GIT (due to my work) and HCP HTML5 apps and the destination service.

Your job

It all starts with the so-called "Tech Fire". There you present the participants your technology. I showed on stage how to get into SAP Web IDE, import the sample project, setting up the destination in HCP and where to find useful information. The other SAPUI5 coaches gave an introduction about SAPUI5.

At the beginning of the event you help the participants to get started.If I am next to a participant I make sure that they have everything setup and know about the most important resources (API reference and Demokit for SAPUI5). After that you act like a walking dictionary, knowing where to find all the information - whether it is the SAP documentation, certain blog posts, SCN or github repositories with examples.

Later on it is getting harder as their projects grow and their questions are getting more specific, you'll need a certain time to understand their app structure, their approach and coding. You will also act a lot like a trouble shooter and trying to give them the right hints about how to debug, what does the console say and what information can they get out of the network trace. At the end it is getting more hectic because time is running out and suddenly nothing works.

When they use a trial account they can not share their git-repo for HTML5 apps on HCP and they will manually putting together their hard work: you need to act as an "integration" helper. It is always tempting to take their laptop and "just show them how it's done" (am I "pair-programming-spoiled"? ;-) ) - but your job is to support them so that they can do it on their own - you are their coach and not the programming buddy.

Some late night fixing before going to sleep:

Your checklist

• overview presentation about your technology
• getting started examples
• full fledged examples
• list of useful resources
• arrive well-rested !!

You are not alone

Despite the fact you are referenced as the expert for a certain topic: no one knows everything. The good thing is, that you are not the only expert for a certain topic. There are other tech coaches at the event which you can ask if you are stuck. And don't only reach out to the experts of "your" topics, other colleagues may also have experience with your technology.

You'll be surprised by the questions

When doing your daily business or developing things in your free time you will do it your way. Also when working together with your colleagues, your team will have a certain idea about how to solve problems. Coaching a group of people with a different mindset, experience and background will open your eyes and will surprise you how they would solve the problem. So expect some unusual use-cases for your technology.

You can't be "prepared"

Obviously you should know your technology really well, but you can't really "prepare" for such an event. For sure you should provide getting started material and a presentation for your technology, but other than that: you can't be prepared. There will be always new things which you would have never thought off.

You'll meet other colleagues

SAP is a very big company and therefore it can be hard to get to know colleagues from other departments. An InnoJam is a great opportunity to make new friends and connections. It is fantastic to work together with our internal young talents but it is also a great honor to work together with "old stager" (really experienced colleagues).

You'll work outside your comfort zone

The InnoJam is not like your 9-to-5-job. If you have the night shift then you try to stay up as long as possible to support the participants. You are suffering from the lack of sleep, feeling stressed when it comes to an end and the participants experience unexpected errors, feeling overstrained when things don't work out, craving for the next coffee and develop a craving for the offered sweets. But I think every developer has already experienced some night shifts and some last-minute bug-fixing - so such a work environment should not surprise you.

You'll have a lot of fun

Although the event can be quite stressful, you will also have a lot of fun! Whether it is some colleagues starting to fool around or the participants doing funny things - this is important! The participants face a lot of desperation when things don't work out and they suffer from more sleep deprivation than you do. So try to keep the good energy at the event, be up for any nonsense, cheer up some desperate faces and find some words of encouragement for them. Starting a pillow fight is also a good idea!

You'll get to know the E2E process

The great thing about those kind of events is that you see the different SAP technologies in an E2E process so that you can see how the different pieces fit together.

You'll learn a lot of stuff

Since you see the whole E2E process and have experts from other areas around you will also learn a lot of things. You can also use the breaks to ask the questions which you always wanted to know about a certain technology. The participants will solve the problems in unexpected ways, so you will learn new solutions to solve problems. It is also really valuable to listen when the participants are taught "how to sell their idea" on stage. Next time I will try to arrive earlier, to see the Design Thinking process in action. What you can also learn from the event is where your documentation is unclear and where people struggle most.

You can be proud

At the end, when the participants present their solutions, you will feel proud because you know where you helped them so they could succeed. And at the final words every time a participant will speak up and "special-thank-you" (the tech coaches) for their support - at this moment you feel like the king of the world!

Summary

It was really a pleasure to be part of such great events. I made new friends, good memories and learned a lot of stuff. If you ever have the opportunity to be a coach at such event: DO IT!!!

If you have any doubts about "if you are good enough" - this quote totally nails it:

"If we wait until we're ready, we'll be waiting for the rest of our lives." ― Lemony Snicket

And here my favorite picture from our last SAP InnoJam:

It was a pleasure to work together with Christian Heller, Rui Nogueira, Julian Breuksch and Julia Lakatos! My special thanks goes to SAP University Alliances for making this possible, René Wohllebe for the organization and Mr. InnoJam himself: Craig Cmehil.

As Craig Cmehil already announced earlier: This year, the only way for you to get on the DemoJam stage is by winning the InnoJam. You should register now (Las Vegas / Barcelona) to ensure you'll get a seat and the chance to become instantly famous within the SAP community!

Saved a seat already? Great! Now, let's focus on increasing your chances to get nominated to get on stage at the DemoJam!

1) Joining the InnoJam JAM Group

You'll received an invitation to a private JAM group. Join and activate notifications. We'll publish information nuggets about the themes and technologies building up to the event. Don't let the others be better prepared and stay up-to-date! You can also find a team or new potential team members in the JAM group...

2) Building up your team before InnoJam

Time is limited! If you can find team members before the event, there is no need for you to do team building or "get to know" sessions. You can jump-start into development. Therefore, suggestion #2: Find a team and have a briefing right before InnoJam to ensure the following: you know the team members (and how they look like), you know the background and experiences of each member, you understand the theme...

3) Understanding the theme

Be prepared for exciting challenges this year. In Las Vegas, you'll solve issues in the "Medical & Healthcare" field. Barcelona teams will be focusing on the "Energy & Utilities" field.. Sounds quite broad? It is - on purpose! This year, you won't know you challenges upfront. You'll get them assigned during the kickoff of InnoJam! Everyone will start greenfield. Keep in mind, we will publish information nuggets about the theme in the JAM group, building up to the event. Make sure to check it out regularly. The other thing you can do to improve your chances: know how to master the technology to solve your challenge...

4) Learning the technologies

Tech portfolio this year: HANA, HANA Cloud Platform and UI5! You have to use at least one of them to qualify for the DemoJam nominations. We have "getting started" guides, introduction videos and much more prepared for you. Here's an example:

Our tech experts already joined the JAM group (that you should have joined by now as well). Ask your questions and get answers before the event, so you don't waste time with that Data-Model you're trying to access within your UI5 page..

5) Organizing your trip

What makes your jump-start most efficient? Planning your trip accordingly to ensure enough time to get comfortable in Las Vegas or Barcelona! Dates, agenda, and location are provided .. take a guess .. in the JAM group!

There it is: 5 steps to help you to be ahead of the competition and to increase your chances of becoming instantly famous on DemoJam stage! Let me know if you have questions.

See you in Las Vegas and/or Barcelona!

Nobody could have fully prepared me for the moment when I arrived at the SAP campus in Walldorf. I am one of the first twenty Vocational Training Students in Ireland and having only been part of the company for two months, the absolute enormity of SAP's operation in the small town of Walldorf left me feeling quite insignificant. My moment of apprehension was quickly diffused by the hearty welcome bestowed upon me and my colleagues by the University Alliance team who had organised the InnoJam. We were individually greeted by name and then inducted as a collective as we were finding our feet in our new environment. The organising team went out of their way to help us integrate with the other students taking part in the InnoJam which allowed us to hit the ground running, something that is vital in a hackathon style event where you need to condense everything into such a short timeframe.

The InnoJam itself was testament to what can be achieved through clever planning and exceptional time management. What I was most fascinated with was the punctuality with which the schedule was followed. The mentors were reluctant to allow us to deviate from the timetable by more than five or ten minutes, however, they were not unwilling to be flexible in certain circumstances. This provided a fantastic fluidity to the InnoJam and ensured we remained focused throughout.

If you are ever afforded the opportunity to attend an InnoJam I would adivse you to seize it with both hands. While I certainly gained a number of valuable insights from taking part in the event, I believe there is also a great deal to be obtained simply from observing the logistics involved in the running of an InnoJam. As a developer, I went into the event placing a heavy emphasis on the technical aspect of the design process. I now realise that the design thinking aspect deserved just as much, if not more, attention. I feel that those who possess an inquisitive mind, an eye for intelligent design and the skills to clearly present their thoughts to others would thrive in the environment of an InnoJam.

A week ago today, me and 6 of my colleagues from the Co Operative Learning (Vocational Training) Program in Ireland flew out to Germany to take part in the Business Innovation and IT Mobile App Competition. The event was organized and hosted by the SAP University Alliances Team at SAP’s headquarters in Walldorf. This was my first time attending a hackathon type event, and I found it a very enjoyable and worthwhile experience.

The 32 hour event began with the reveal of the topic, which was to make an app which increased employee productivity. We were then given an introduction to Design Thinking, and this is probably the most important thing that I took away from this event. It focuses around finding the right target audience for your app, and making sure that your solution meets their needs. First we interviewed our target audience to see what they were looking for in a mobile application. Then we returned to the drawing board and began the creative process of deciding what our app would be. Here we created low fidelity mockups and discussed what functionality to include in our app. We then returned to our target audience to see if we were onto a winner with our app, or if revisions had to be made to our initial prototype.

We were than given a crash course on SAP UI5 which was the language of choice for this event. It was here that the real fun started, as only one member from our team had experience using this technology. From this point, we had 24 hours left to get to grips with this technology and take our app from the mockup stage to a working prototype stage.  As a team, we coded through the night, and with the help of the dedicated and friendly technology mentors, we got to grips with UI5 and created a functional version of our app.

I found this a great way learn a new technology, as after just 24 hours, I have a good concept of how to create apps using UI5. I feel that I learned more from this approach to learning a new language than I would have in a week on my own.

Throughout the hackathon, I also met a lot of like-minded people, as we had the chance to gel and network with each other over the 32 hour period. The group was made up of a diverse group of people from different backgrounds with different skills and opinions that I wouldn’t have met otherwise. Everyone was so friendly and helpful, and we managed to keep each other motivated and on track, which was a great help at 5am, when your code was broken and your app wouldn’t run!

The next day, each group was given the chance to present their app in front of the panel of judges and everyone involved in the event. I found this interesting, especially when we got to see what the other groups came up with in the 32 hour time frame.

Overall, I really enjoyed the week and as I learned a lot that I can take back with me to other projects that I do in the future. I would highly recommend taking part in a hackathon event as it is a great chance to meet new people, develop new skills and challenge yourself.

Thanks to the SAP University Alliances team and all other organizers that made this event such a success and made sure we had everything we needed to enjoy our time in Germany.

The first thing I noticed when I arrived at SAP Waldorf was the enormity of the campus. This was the moment I realised the size of SAP. It was then that I realise that my opportunities at SAP were limitless.

As I entered building 5 (The training building), I could see all those unique design feature you would expect to see in a technology company nowadays, bean bags, the oddly decorated walls and other random features. The most interesting thing in the building for me was our workplace for the next 36 hours, it was the design thinking room. I have never seen a room as setup for innovation and creativity.  High stools, beanbags, white boards, flipcharts, stopwatch’s, timers, every colour of marker possible and most of all post-its, post-its everywhere.

Now to the Innojam, never had I even thought of competing in an Innojam until my manager forward this to me. I thought it was worth a shot and fired in my CV. Luckily enough I managed to be one of the lucky student selected to go. An Innojam for those who don’t know is the combination of innovation, creativity, persistence and technical ability. You are assigned to a random team and asked to present a demo of an app to judges on a topic of the organiser’s choice (app to help people in sap increase productivity). I learned lots on a technical side from the SAP mentors as well as my fellow competitors but most of all I learned the importance of good teamwork. Before I never truly realised the importance of “Effective and concise communication” (to quote every CV ever) and Co-operation. I was able to see how one small misunderstanding could slow a team down massively.

On the technical side, I was very challenge by the Innojam. As I had never seen SAPUi5 before and many of my competitors had. This caused me some trouble in the early hour of the morning but I got to grips with it sometime around 5. It was an unusual experience learning something new at that time as your attention span begin to fail and all that is keeping you going is determination.

Finally, when all the projects were presented the organisers hosted all the competitors on the roof of building one to celebrate completing the Innojam. I’d like to thank the SAP University Alliances Team for organising this event and allowing me the opportunity to attend this event.

I recently took the oppurtunity to travel to SAP headquarters in Walldorf, Germany to take part in an InnoJam. Myself and six of my colleagues from the CoOperative Learning Interns programme travelled out together with high hopes on winning and sure enough, one of did. The event had been organised by the SAP University Alliance team who did a fantastic of filling a 32 hour window full of coding activities.

The day began at an early 8am where we were given a short introduction and details of the 32 hours that lay ahead of us. We were split into teams of three and four. The teams were chosen in a way so that each team had people with different backgrounds of experience such as computer science, business information systems and business. We started with an introduction to the whole design thinking process. What it is, how it works and why it is used. This was my first time being exposed to this type of thinking. I found it very interesting as I knew that it existed and wanted to see what it was like.

The challenge that we were all given was to build an app that helped people at SAP be more productive. So first of all my team and I wrote down a list of questions that we were going to ask employees around SAP. We wanted to find out from the employees what they thought would help them the most. This was the crucial task of finding out the needs of the end user. After conducting our interviews we set about choosing an idea for our app and making a prototype on paper. Our app was called SAP On Time. The idea of the app was to allow users to notify their colleagues that they were going to be late for a meeting. They could also schedule, reschedule and cancel a meeting. After making our first paper prototype we sent out again around SAP asking the employees what they thought abut the app, were there any improvements to be made and would they use it. We then repeated this process to get the final version of the app that we would code.

The coding of the app was the hardest part. The app was built using SAP UI5 libraries which I had never used before. Nor did anyone else. So the coding of the app got off to a slow start however with the help that we got from the mentors we managed to get started. After a long night of coding and no sleep, we eventually managed to get our app up and running. Some features did not meet our expectations however we were still delighted that we actually built an app.

I found the InnoJam to be a great overall experience. It gave me a great insight into the size of the company and the great things that I can achieve while working here. I wish to return to Walldorf again in the future to achieve bigger things.

What made more than 70 students from 60 universities in 17 countries join this event? The fancy location, a BeachBar in Berlin’s hot Mitte district or the challenge to code for 32 hours non-stop with a bundle of fun activities thrown in and the chance to win a ticket to SAP TechEd? But this time there was another incentive. The event provided a forum for discussion with top SAP business leaders.

In his keynote, Stefan Ries, SAP Chief Human Resources Officer, highlighted the opportunity to make an impact with the help of technology. Other SAP leaders shared stories from their own personal career journeys, including Jens Krueger, Head of SAP’s Finance business unit and co-head of the SAP innovation Center in Potsdam, and Anka Wittenberg, SAP’s Chief Diversity and Inclusion.

The students also discussed today’s business landscape during a panel with Stefan Ries, Jürgen Griesbeck, Founder and CEO of streetfootballworld, and Reza Mehmansefat, Co-Founder & CEO of start-up Full Control. The panel highlighted how technology can be used as a key change agent and enabler in a corporate world, start-up, or social entrepreneur organization.

Ultimately, what attracted the students to the event was probably a mix of all these factors. And hopefully SAP can build on this success next time, because SAP InnoJam: Coding the Future is a two-part event. The second part will take place at the end of October at the HanaHaus in Palo Alto. Both locations – Berlin and Silicon Valley – embrace the local start-up and technology spirit. The mission: getting the workforce of the future enthusiastic about SAP!

Watch these two cool videos from the Berlin event - - the enthusiasm is contagious!

Related Resources

• SAP InnoJam: Coding the Future in Palo Alto
• Video interviewwith Jens Krueger at the “SAP InnoJam: Coding the Future” in Berlin on Facebook
• Photo albums of the event on Facebook

I'm very glad to had an opportunity for attending InnoJam this year. Almost everything was great such coding rooms, foods and drinks except chilling room because there wasn't enough pillow to take a short nap at night . It was not the only opportunity and also there was another, which is, WindRose team. Who was the WindRose ?

The WindRose Team,

Team members, all from Turkey, which are experts on different skills. Beginning from left side Serkan Ozcan,   Beste Şahin ,

Ridvan Polat, Abdulbasit Gulsen and me at behind .

Preparation,

We organised 3 SCN Meetups in the Turkey before arriving to Barcelona. Since last meetup was too close to Innojam so subject was about preparation. Everyone has installed all required tools on their labtobs. Team shared the work to each members according their skills. A funny fact is nobody fully prepared

Idea Creation,

During the first day, from different areas such students, sap mentors and community members are divided into 18 team. All followed the design thinking process to generate innovative ideas. Our design thinking expert helped us to improve our idea. In my opinion, this step is the key of the all project. We spend about 4 hours to draw our idea on board.

Coding,

After spending long time on design thinking process we started to code. We used Hana cloud platform, predictive analysis, fiori and SAP Jam as technological tools. Idea was simple and valuable. Our challenge briefly was how-to employees can be more proactive on the field. We thought that we should predict defects and fix them before occurs. The predictive analysis came to stage. Analyzed the data and created task on SAP Jam. Scheduled a program with XS engine which listens data with in an interval from analyzed data if it exceed then it created a task by using SAP Jam ODATA APIs. Once data created then employee received a notification on his mobile. After fixing defect he or she changed the status to completed and send task from mobile application back to Jam.

Final Presentation,

The final presentations started over 20 hours of coding and preparation. The presentation included business model and prototype demonstrations. All worked well as we expected. The jury, including representatives from the different teams which provided the challenges, had to make a really tough decision by choosing the winner.

Finally, It was full of experiences and fun for me. Being a part of Innojam will always stay a good memory to remember.

Many thanks to all my team friends, sap experts and mentors who was there all the day to help.

himpfs

My first participation at an SAP InnoJam was really a great experience for me. At Saturday I arrived in Barcelona and went to the registration desk in the Fira Gran Via.

I did not join a team before participating at the InnoJam, so my first task was to look for a team. After a few minutes I found an old friend of minewhich I already met  at the SAP Inside Track in Hamburg this year. So I already got a new team member, only three additional ones were missing now.

After a bit of smalltalk with different people, we found three other guys for our team. This was the teambuilding part of the event and after 30 minutes every team got their challenges.

Afterwards my new team and I went into the heart of Barcelona, where we were on the lookout for  something to eat. We  ordered some special catalan ham and cheese tapas and washed them down with some pints of craft beer.

My second day in Barcelona started at 6 o’clock in the morning. The official coding time started at 8 am on Sunday with some snacks and an introduction of the SAP organization team. Every team got a small room and shared it with up to three other teams. The first task was to create a common understanding of the challenge. This we achieved by using the design thinking method and an additional survey.

After some hours of inspiration, we started to build our app. At the beginning we got some support of a SAPUI5 developer of SAP. After 16 hours of coding it was very quiet outside. Some of our rivals went back to the hotel, they wanted to catch up some sleep… At this moment, we took a short break of 15 minutes, after this we continued with coding.  I think, I had my maternity blues at 4 or 5 o’clock in the morning, Monday morning. This night was very hard, it means 24 hours without sleep. But the bigger problem was only 6 hours of coding are remaining. After a short 6 hours sprint, we created an app with all three technology parts. We included SAPUI5, SAP HANA and the SAP HANA Cloud Platform.

At 12 o’clock, we had to stop coding and  had to wait for the decision of the jury. The two hours were the longest two hours in my life until now. After a six minutes presentation we had to wait again. Some moments later the jury finished their work and my team was disappointed, we were not under the first six teams, so we did not get an Apple Watch.

But the feeling, the community and the coding were a great experience and hopefully I’ll be back there next year.

What do you get when you take a room full of Geniuses & let them loose on an HCP account & box full of Lego Robots? 

Early in May SAP UK held it’s first INNOJam event.  Usually these involve teams of customers & partners participating in a coding challenge over two days using SAP products.  This time the challenge was a little different as there was a physical element entitled “Making SAP Real”.  Teams were given the challenge of using robotics and Hana Cloud Platform in an IOT scenario.

Each team was given a set of the Lego Mindstorms EV3 robotics, an HCP account, two days, plus as much pizza & coffee as they can eat!

If you’ve never come across Lego EV3 before, it’s a set of sensors, motors, actuators & bricks that form round a small Lego computer brick that runs Linux or other OS, and connects via Bluetooth or wifi to a computer, or direct to the internet.  (Sort of like Lego’s own version a Raspberry PI) The brick runs a series of commands either via a set program, or interactively accepting commands from external sources if you’re clever enough to program it.  An example simple EV3 machine can be seen here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4k9bWbtJEk

The challenge was to use a combination of software, sensors & physical robotic models to show what an SAP solution does.

Team 1 and their Rubik cube production line

The event took place at the SAP Maidenhead offices where four teams of six were given the challenge and their tools in the morning of day 1.  The event was well supported by our Partner community with representatives from Itelligence, CompriseIT, AgilityWorks, Bluefin and the SAP Mentor community.  In addition we had students from Sheffield Hallam University and a number of customers taking part.

Each team was given an SAP facilitator to help with the challenge, very quickly different solutions for solving the problem were adopted by each team.  Some teams took a technology first approach, connecting the Lego EV3 up to their computers then establishing a link with HCP.  By mid afternoon of the first day one team had Hana Cloud Platform receiving readings off the Lego motion sensors and had managed to establish two-way communication by getting HCP to command Lego to do things from the cloud.

This was a big step as traditional IOT scenarios largely involve one-way traffic of sensor readings going up to the cloud but not back again.  This was helped in a big way from the sample .Net code supplied by SAP’s own resident expert Laurent Devroede who’s team had done much of the technical pre-work for the event.

Two of the remaining teams had taken a more design based approach and spent the first half of day1 establishing what the business case was they were solving and how the process would work. Team 1 took an entirely different approach and started building Lego almost immediately, in what turned out to be the most impressive physical model of all the teams. It was this team that kept me busiest with a constant demand for new varied materials & equipment !

The Sap Mentors and our own resident University professor (that had accompanied the SHU students) played a valuable role in steering the thoughts of their teams when the technology challenge got tough.

Mid-evening of Day1 we broke for Pizza and the teams worked into the evening until about 10:00pm.  Day2 saw the solutions taking shape,  team1 solution was based around a quality control solution for ordering Rubik cubes.  Team3 was producing a security solution based on Lego robotics which scanned badges for access control.  Team2 was making a production line sorting machine named the “Prawn Pusher” after one of the team members who worked for a frozen seafood company.

Team 2 “Prawn Pusher”                                                     Team 3 Security Robot 

Team4 had initially been ahead on the day1 being the ones who were first to establish the Lego to HCP connection. However as the first coffee of day1 reached the bottom of the cup team4 still didn’t have a firm idea on what their solution was doing. At this point I couldn’t help wondering if a quick Design Thinking session the day before would have paid dividends!  However a quick pep talk from the team’s SAP Mentor got them back on track and they decided on an HCP powered postal delivery system.

Team 4’s Postal Delivery System

By the afternoon of day 2 all the systems had taken shape nicely and we had four working Lego EV3 systems being powered by Hana Cloud Platform.  All teams presented their solutions back to the group and the SAP staff helped judge the winner.

The solutions were as follows:

Team1

Rubiks cube fulfillment line: An HCP screen takes the order for ‘x’ rubik cubes, the system checks if they are solved or not and delivers the completed ones to goods out. The unsolved ones are then placed into a cube-solver which scans & fixes the cubes before delivery. Verdict:  A great concept let down only by lack of time. The cube solver worked well but the production line element wasn’t completed in time.

Team2

“Prawn Pusher” Quality control line: A nice concept that was in contention to win from the outset. The concept came from one of the team members who worked for a frozen seafood company,  A hopper of ‘prawns’ (read Lego bricks) was fed onto a conveyer belt which graded their quality based on colour. The decision to grade the prawn was made by HCP rules and then reported on the HCP dashboard.  Verdict:  A great system that showed definite promise on the day.

Team3

Security Robot:  A robot scans your badge and lets you pass or not depending on your access privileges.  Verdict: The system worked well but the judges felt a little more interaction was needed

Team4

Postal Delivery Service:  The team started off with the fact that nearly half of all rural post boxes are empty every time a postal worker checks them for collection!  The Lego model consisted of a Postbox which sensed when a letter had been posted, An HCP application then monitored this & other postboxes to show a driver a map of which boxes needed emptying.  Once collected the system monitored loading bays at the depot, the entry barrier was HCP controlled and only let in a post van if there was a delivery bay free.  Verdict: A well thought out solution which all judges agreed had potential for practical use in the real world.

Which team won?  It was close but team 4’s Postal Delivery Service scored the most points against the original challenge criteria.  We were amazed at how much all four teams had progressed over the two days with four working HCP Lego systems.  Feedback from all participating was very positive and it served to bring together our developer community with our partners and University Alliances working together as teams.

Whilst spending two days playing with Lego Mindstorms is a great fun, this exercise has a more serious side to it.  If you are an organization looking to embark on an IOT journey but worried about how hard or complex it will be, then our INNOJam proves that from a standing start you can take Hana Cloud Platform and produce a working prototype quickly and in an agile way.  If you are interested in using HCP then a free trial account can be found here:  Cloud Cockpit

The Winning Team 4: Luke Greenwood, Utsav Chobe, Will Wong, Pranav Goswami, Shane Allen, Jonathan El-Haddad, Guneet Wadhwa