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November 2005 in Marco Island, USA
CWG Conference November 2005 in Marco Island, USA
By Richard Reimink, Steelcase, CWG Treasurer
Robert Eramo, Lam Research, CWG Secretary
This year’s meeting motto was “Back to School” and thus our program’s emphasis was on learning. This included everything from learning new features, learning new techniques for doing existing features, and even a little learning from others’ mistakes.
The Fall 2005 CWG Conference was held in a new location – Marco Island, Florida from October 31st thru Nov 2nd. As was evidenced by the 50% increase in attendance over last Fall’s conference, we believe that the location and the 3-day program format proved to be a winning combination. Early concerns about poor SAP attendance due to a conference location far from an SAP office were quickly dispelled as many SAP employees began signing up in earnest. We were even privileged to have SAP Development Vice-President Bernhard Neumann in attendance. Out of 92 attendees, 16% were SAP, 29% were SAP Partners, and 55% were Customers!
As part of our ongoing effort to elevate the CWG to the next level, our partnership with ASUG was defined and strengthened. We were also pleased to have in attendance, Cathy Barrett, ASUG Product Data Management SIG Program Chair. It was nice to receive her compliments regarding her overall conference experience.
Day 1 - Introduction Day
Our conference format was extended to 3 full days beginning with our May 2005 conference. This was the first conference in the US with the expanded format, however. Based on questionnaires returned after this conference, the feedback in the US echoed the positive feedback received during the May conference in Europe. This supports us continuing the 3 day format (Introduction Day/General Session/Hands-On). The Introductory Day allowed customers to bring in colleagues new to this area or new customers/partners to get up to speed in regards of the terminology/concepts/acronyms.
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Presentations on Day 1 included:
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The session rated most attractive was the open Q&A at the end of the day with Experts from the board and the audience. One common suggestion was to have 2 parallel tracks on this introductory day.
Day 1 concluded with Topic-Focused Networking Dinners. This was a new edition to our Conference format and it was highly successful with very good feedback from all participants. We received some constructive criticism. The intent of the topic focused networking dinners is to get a group of CWG members together over dinner to discuss a particular topic of mutual interest. We will continue these dinners at future conferences and fine tune them based on our members’ feedback. Topics for Day 1’s Dinners included:
- Robert Eramo, Lam Research Inc. - Engineering Change, Friend or Foe
- Michael Zarges, SAP AG - IPC Custom Integration Projects
- Steve Yip, Hewlett-Packard Inc. - Holes in the SAP Integration and how to fill them
- Daniel Naus, HP Inc. - How to distribute modeling data from development to production?
- Markus Jäckle, Sybit GmbH - Modifying the IPC User Interface - Creating your own UI vs. modifying the existing one
- Harald Vogel, SAP AG - Synergies and conflicts between ETO and CTO processes
Day 2 - General Session
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Presentations on Day 2 included:
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Although Bernhard Neumann did a great job going into Day 2 the presentation with the top ranking was clearly Peter Einstein's on T-Mobile's Adventure in ECM and IPC. Quotes: "... more presentations with this format ...", "... Not too technical, not too many words, uses picture flows that speak a thousand words ...", "... address specific issue with specific understandable solution ...", " ... productive in avoiding pitfalls... ". Congratulations, Peter!
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Like Day 1, Topic Dinners closed out Day 2. Topics included:
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Day 3 - Hands-on Day
This day consisted of 3 parallel tracks of hands-on, in-depth workshops on specific topics in smaller groups. Workshop organizers are free to go into as much detail as necessary. Hands-on workshops on live systems or work sessions to produce a common understanding of requirements are well suited for this day. Topics were put forward by customers, partners, focus groups or SAP. For all Workshops sign-up sheets were provided on the previous days of the conference and the sessions were tailored to the group that signed up.
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Sessions included:
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The workshop that received the highest ranking on Day 3 was the one provided by Robert Eramo, Steve Schneider, and Steve Silvey. They show-cased multiple "15 minute best practices".