Getting Technical

Recently I was set up with a system without the correct SAP systems on my ‘logon pad’. This made it a little hard to access the systems I needed but here is the tip.

Use the sapgui.exe application to access the system you need.
Simply (from windows) hit the start button and then ‘Run’ and then type:

sapgui [appserver-domain] [system number]

If you add the switch /WAN it will treat it as a low speed connection.

One of the benefits of this is that it doesn’t start the SAP Logon application which will save you about 20M of memory. The downside is you don’t get the application in your tray that shows all the systems you are logged on to when you right click it.

More information here [SAP Service Marketplace link - credentials required]

It has been a long time coming this year, but I can now confirm that I will be attending TechEd in Vienna.

Vienna - I'll be there.

It will be a flying visit as I fly out  Thursday night so not much time to enjoy the highlights of the city.

So what will TechEd hold for me?

I have planned a few sessions to attend but there will be lots of SAP Mentor meetings , Demo Jam (SAP Entries notwithstanding), Hacker Night, catching up with virtual friends in the flesh and a keynote or two.

I note that Leo Apotheker will not be speaking. That is interesting all by itself.

The wonderful Community Network people have produced these badges and I love this one. “Come See Me Speak”. I know it is meant for people who have official sessions but you could come just to see me speak. I will be talking after all.  See you in Vienna.

Speaking at Vienna (well I am not a mute)

Earlier this year we (a couple of SAP Mentors) put on an Inside Track event in London. As the SAP TechEd series of events is coming around now I am starting to think about what we could do for next year. Here are a few questions for you:

Did you enjoy the event this year?

Would you recommend it to a friend?

What went well?

What could we improve?

Given there is an event in Bonn in the first half of next year would you come to both?

What dates work for you?

What topics would you like to see covered?

Answers in the comments please.

For more information about the SAP Inside Track series of local events follow http://twitter.com/sapinsidetrack/

Note for the lawers amoungst us: SAP Inside Track is a community run event organised by SAP Mentors in various cities around the world. It is not officially endorsed as an official education channel by SAP AG or any of its local subsiduaries. Having said that the people who come to these events know what they are doing and you 1. might learn something and 2. might meet someone. You should come.

I love recruiters. I really do. It really comes down to different skill sets for different roles. With over  a decade in this software game now I have learnt a few skills that makes my time salable to the highest bidder. Over time I have taken some skills off my cv as it generates false hits for roles that I have no interest in doing.

Having said all that I am always happy to talk to a recruiter or read their emails. Sometimes they start with ‘ Sorry if this is not right for you… ‘ you get the idea. I would rather build the relationship with them when I don’t need them than have to try and sell myself and my skill-set to someone who has no idea who I am when I do desperately need a new client.

I have a handful of recruiters that I work with I guess, but every now and then I get a call that even makes me chuckle. The guy was running through the specification for a new role that had ‘just come in’. It was all sounding pretty good until he read out “Must have ‘Double Zero’ skills”. For a moment I thought I was going to be required to save the world from some evil dictator.

“I think you mean Oh-Oh”, I said.

“No it says ‘Double Zero’”.

“It actually says Oh-Oh. It stands for Object Oriented. They are looking for object oriented skills.” I was being patient with him.

“Well you learn something every day.” He gave a little embarressed laugh.

And while we have a little chuckle over this incident I really hope he does learn something every day because I certainly am. There is so much happening in the wonderful world of software development not to be. I am currently  working on my Flex 3, WDA, ABAP, ABAP OO, PHP, Python, Dojo and one or two other things for good measure.

Darren Hague and I had a odd idea last year.

“Why not run an unconference for SAP developers and consultants in London.”

SAP Inside Track London 2009

We had both been to SAP Community Days and thought we could pull something off. So we hustled together a venue and a wiki page to handle the signups and sessions.

It was a lot of fun. So much so that this year we are repeating the whole process.

This year we have managed to secure IBM Southbank as a venue. Thanks to a lot of help from Zoe Slattery. 

The date is April 4 and there is a small charge of £10 to cover the lunch. (Signup quickly in March for the early bird rate. In April it will rocket to £15!)

There are several SAP Mentors coming to the event from Europe so it is a great chance to hear from them and particularly the ESME team.

Ant Phillips from IBM will be presenting a session on connecting SAP up with Project Zero, the community version of Websphere sMash. The other sessions planned for the day are on the SDN Wiki.

One of the  sessions is a discussion on certification. This has been a hot topic in the SAP community lately. New Mentor Michael Koch is currently running a survey on how certification relates to contractors. You can complete this survey here and it would be great to see some good results from that survey at the unconference.

You can follow the fun in twitter at @SAPInsideTrack.

One of the great benefits of these days is the networking and conversations with people in trenches.  In credit crunched times such as today these can be even more valuable than official training sessions and (dare I say it) certification.

If you would like to come along to meet the mentors, participate in the sessions, run a session for yourself there is still time to signup.

If you check the sylabus on most it ComSci degrees, it is unlikely that you will find a course or even a hat tip towards anything legal. Even the course that I took which included subjects on Communication, Managment and a full year project had no content on anything legal.

This is why my friend Thomas Otter is investigating in his efforts to become a Pointy Headed Doctor err… a Pretty Harmless Driver … err Purple Headless Dragon. Actually none of those. He is completing his PhD. Not to be confused with PHP which, I grant you, at some level is very similar but on others completely different.

Anway enough of the rambling.

I will let Thomas actually describe what he is doing:

Legal systems have evolved over centuries to codify rights and obligations in societies. Throughout history law and technology have interacted, modifying each other along the way.  It is often an uneasy relationship…

I want to ask as many software people as possible about what they understand of the law that can impact software, and what their attitudes are towards a couple of legal concepts in a software context.

It is designed to gather information about the knowledge, education and attitude of software developers towards the law related to software, and how law is or isn’t built into software. My goal is not to just have a small survey of a couple of hundred developers, but to really survey lots of them.

To do this, I want to tap as many of my readers  as I can to spread the news of the survey, and for as many of you to take the survey as possible. The more answers I can get from around the world, the richer the results will be. I will also be following up with telephone interviews with a much smaller sample group.

In this survey I have used the term software developer rather broadly. I define this to be anyone working professionally to design, build or maintain software (information technology). So if you are a product manager, solution manager, implementation consultant, systems architect, business analyst, or a systems tester, for instance, then we would be just as interested in your responses. The survey isn’t just aimed at those who code, but those who make a living from its construction and maintenance. Much of this group would fall under that definition. The Germans have a rather nice term,informatiker, but it doesn’t really translate very well.

You can access the survey here or use this link in twitter to get the word out to your friends social network, tribe or whatever the new word for friends is this week.  http://is.gd/eACI

In a world of SOX and Data Protection this is very timely research.

The goal is to get at least 1006 responses so that the data is statistically significant.  (You did stats 101 didn’t you?) I am reliably informed that it is progressing well but until you take 10 minutes of your precious time to add your response it will not be complete.

… you get on the front page of SDN

So I did a hasty screen grab.

SDN Frontpage

Thanks to @welshcathy for letting me know!

I didn’t expect to take this long to announce the winner of the caption competition. Thanks to all those who took part.

Congratulations to Johan who came up with the winner.  SFLIGHT is the be all and end all. What else would you need? I am sure that the SAP Airline Industry solution is build on the solid foundation of SFLIGHT. (For all of you who don’t know the SFLIGHT is a simple database model that many introductory ABAP courses use as a learning tool.)

I’m convinced now! SFLIGHT is better than their current system.

Thanks for playing along and next time I am sharing aproximate space time coordinates with Johan there’s I’ll get the first round.

For a while back there I was “out of work” which means my company was short of a client to invoice. Not the best situation.

Long story short is that I have remedied that predicament and it all worked out very well given the current economic climate etc etc.

I have been meaning to blog a little about recruiting 2.0 or recruiters or that sort of thing as we all have a love hate relationship with that. We need to recruiters to find people but they can, on occassion be annoying. I tend to take the good with the bad and forge direct relationships with clients where possible. I can usually pick a bad recruiter as he has no idea what he is talking about when he reads a spec to me. It usually his first day and I am flexible and usually tell them to go to SDN to learn the lingo.

Anyway thanks to all the people who provided me with leads and support recently. While blogging or twittering didn’t directly to an offer it sure didn’t harm my cause.

My new gig – well I can’t tell you. I have signed an NDA which prevents me from telling you, dear reader, in this public forum. No matter – that’s how some big companies operate so I will happily toe the line.

[It is a great project though]