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I started with actual sleeping for most of the night. My wife is ill, and she is at a hazard to fall, so any noise while asleep wakes me with a start. Combine that with the unique hot and cold AC in use at The Palazzo, and it can be a tough night, and it was the previous night. This night I managed to sleep most of the night with only a few door slams walking me from some of the early raising folks at 5 and 6. The AC stabilized at freezing and I slept buried in the covers. I awoke without headache and feeling rested.

Which was excellent as today I had my challenging presentation. I was presenting how to code Python for ABAP-ers (ABAP being the special software language used by the SAP company) and why it was important for ABAP-er to learn Python. For the presentation, I had written a group of demo programs that went from a basic Monte Carlo generation of Pi–it was better than a yet-another-hello-world program–to a full-blown Machine Learning demonstration Pythonic program. All the code runs in a virtual Linux Cloud9 server in a western AWS cloud. I also brought a microPython device, the Amazing Fez, a fez from a costume that uses a wearable microprocessor, LCD display,  and GPS all coded in Python to create an amazing display.

So I did the normal start for a morning and then headed to the speaker ready room. There a hot breakfast is served and more importantly are copies of the hardware I would use for my presentation. I needed to practice and check that everything worked.

I had breakfast with some SAP folks that I knew from past meetings. They chatted while I ate quickly and then headed to the laptops. I turned on the Amazing Fez which got me some attention from the technical support team of SAP for presenters. They loved the Fez. I showed them Adafruit’s Playground Express that is the basis for the hat. I brought one to hand around, so they looked at that.

Everything worked perfectly. I was able to logon to AWS and bring up my development environment with all the Python ready to use. This inside of the SAP network! I thanked SAP technical support! Actually, I was so excited I got up too fast and knocked over my chair and said: “that the computers work, but I forgot how to use a chair.” That got the German equivalent to an eye-roll–they ignored me. My powerpoint was there even with the typos which I left alone–don’t start editing two hours before your presentation. Accept what you have an use it. Fix it for the next use, if there is another.

I then went over the presentation and did everything in my head and brought up every program and ran each one while thinking about what to say and how it would fit the audience. I learned that the laptop was just as hard to use as my new one (they are the same brand) and practiced moving some windows around–my laptop sucks. To make this an excellent experience for the audience and to be able to handle questions and unexpected glitches, I need the rehearsals and practice.

Now I had to do this on the real laptop in the large room with a mic. So with an hour to go, I headed up to the room to see what I would need to do. I was the first speaker in the room even though it was a 10:30 presentation. So I found the room and set-up. Again, all the servers connected and the powerpoint, with typos, was there ready to use. Excellent!

(my classes is near the bottom of the list)

The support staff was happy to see a speaker forty-five minutes early and that I had set-up and the projector was running my the powerpoint entry slide. I then went off and tried to wait. The worst part for me.

I then met more staff, and they got me a wireless mic–the same I always use–and asked me when to let folks in. There was a line! It was standing room by the time I started. We let people in early.

Folks came twenty minutes early, so I took questions! I answered questions like where did the Swoosh come from, and is the company’s motto “Just Do It.” I pointed out the guy with three stripe shoes on, and he took the ribbing with a smile and suggested I should bring replacements next presentation. I passed around the microPython hardware and turned on the Amazing Fez.

I stated on time to a full room. The presentation went well with many questions, and some folks in the audience answer a few for me. I finished on time. I got two sets of applause. I asked for applause after I did the live demo, and everything was perfect. All the computer folks knew that was taking a risk. They also appreciated that all the code was MIT license and free and available to be used as they wish.

I found that I had used “dockers” and not “docker” in one slide. Dockers are pants. Docker is a computer virtualization product. It got a laugh as I pointed that mistake out. Just have to roll with the typos.

The room cleared out fast–folks had hands-on to get too.

I demurred when after the presentation, a man identified himself as working for a training company in Australia and wanted me to fly, at their cost, to Australia to give the same presentation. He will email me. I met others later in the day, and all were happy with the presentation.  This includes the guy I ribbed about his shoes, and he said he loved the presentation and will do some Python Machine Learning now. Another guy from Catapiller said the same thing. So I guess it went well.

I went to the floor to walk and clear my head. There I meet an old friend, Lonnie Luehmann, who built Nike’s first SAP data warehouse. He works for SAP now and he gave me some trinkets, towels with SAP logo. We talked about old times and how our families are doing and how he and his wife miss Oregon and Nike. He gave me a towel to give to Michael G.

Lunch followed, again in the speaker room–Michael G found me there and gave him the towel. After lunch Michael G and Peter Keller and others had a presentation on Migration. I collected emails for them while the presented went on. We want to obtain the emails of folks interested in the subject to meet again later.

(Michael G after finishing his presentation)

I then attended a rather disorganized presentation on change control but then meet some more old SAP friends, Boris. Again, I volunteered to help SAP better understand our needs for change control and automated change control. It is so nice to see these folks!

Then more hands-on classes. I was a walk-in and thus got there 30 minutes early, so I was first in line. I already had three hands-on reserved so I must wait and fill any remaining seats of hands-on sessions after the reserved seats are filled. I do not usually get a front-row seat as a walk-in, but it was the last hands-on and folks bailed on it, so I enjoyed the front row. In this session, I explored building a computer workflow to control updating business partner from a generated event from the S/4 HANA accounting system. Technology has changed and this was much easier than I expected. I had a glitch at the end, but it was close enough for me.

Three hours for dinner is a long time. We had the customer dinner tonight and for reasons best left unexplored the food took hours to deliver. Mine was not hot. A couple of glasses of wine and taste of a few desserts took the sting out of the long night. Thank you SAP for dinner!

So not a bad day.

It is a lot to ask for me to endure two hours of hands-on and lecture. It is almost impossible to do it twice. Today I did one two-hour and one four-hour hands-on and lecture. I survived. I enjoyed the hands-on. The talk was just too long at over two hours in the afternoon after lunch! I managed to stay awake. But that is after the keynote…

The keynote address was this morning at nine. There was coffee and pastries and fruit available. I was surprised to see donuts–this is usually banned by low-carb folks. I did meet Sandeep, who is here like me for some presentations.

(Sandeep is in the dark suit sitting, and Nike’s Sumit is stand in the blue shirt)

Michael joined me. I saved him a seat. The keynote included some excellent information about SAP’s direction. They, SAP, see three pillars of Data, Intelligence, and Operations in today’s digital enterprise (companies for you who are not hip on the newest lingo). SAP can bring value in these areas as it already covers more than 80% of these areas with their existing software–according to the keynote. SAP’s Chief Technology Officer, Jurgen Mueller, also said that a recent study found that 80% of CEOs believe their company has a right web presence while consumer claim only 8% of these websites are any good. This is quite a gap.

Jurgen believes the answer is to build solutions that use the three pillars. That you must have operational data that for example, tells you the sales numbers are down. You need intelligence to understand if this is an unusual event or a trend or related to some other issue. You need data to make these answers.

This was a pretty good start, but the presentation collapsed into a sales pitch, and there was no follow up on the 80 and 8 numbers at the beginning.  Jurgen should have tied this together and showed how SAP could ensure that a CEO would know if the company he or she heads website are good. Closing the gap if you like. No, he left that flapping in the wind.

My first class followed, and I was not disappointed that Jurgen’s speech ran long, and I had to leave it early. I had a course on Python and AI and how to do Machine Learning in an SAP environment. In the class, I shared a computer with a former Nike coder. We are both now Python coder, and we went to town as did much of the class. We finished all the work and learned a few new things in Python and how SAP HANA uses Python and supplies its own libraries. The presenter had trouble keeping up with the class–an unusual and very positive event.

After that, I went to the speaker ready room for lunch. This is a secret lunch for speakers. There I met an old friend from SmartShift, Abby, and we chatted about how time has treated each of us. We have not seen each other for a few years, so it was nice to revisit old times.

The next class was long–four hours. It was two hours of lecture after lunch and then hours of hands-on. The talk was dreadfully boring but informative as often happens in SAP TechEd. I do not know how these folks learned to present new material by reading every slide in a near monotone. We finally survived the presentations and started into the SAP Data Hub exercises and used it to translate text on-the-fly and then to classify text by getting the AI to make suggestions about what product was being described in the text. This was new as I always thought of SAP Data Hub as well something the shares data, a data hub.

We also built a chatbot. This was easy and took no time at all. Again, all SAP tools.

I then talked to Matthias Kretschmer, one of the presenters, about change control and a CI/CD process to install Data Hub. They, SAP, are just working on this now. I told them we would be interested in working on this with them. He will talk to his associates in SAP and get back to us.

Next was drinks and reception in the vendor area. I bumped into Paul Lui from Oracle, an old friend, and talked about AI and Machine Learning. Yes, I had spent a whole day coding AI and ML, so I was interested in sharing. He might make my session on Python and will grab a copy of my powerpoint if he can’t make it.

Finally, Michael G and I just had a quiet dinner at a place in the hotel. We were both ready to be a bit quieter.

A surprise today. The publishers of the new board game War of the Worlds: The New Wave included my picture of the game in their update on Kickstarter today and thanked me in the update for the photo.

I was happy to wake with no migraine. I got going a bit late and wrote the Day 1 piece and answered various emails and issues at the shoe company. I even did a call about the proper way to connect systems together. Which was impressive as the first presentation in my first class was about the same thing. This one was by Whirlpool and SAP about how to create a digital business experience. My call was about how we should connect systems to create the same thing.

The class covered many items about how to make the user experience of software more intelligent and how fast and straightforward beats slow and complex and that even ugly and slow was far better than slow.

I forward Whirlpools powerpoint to the engineers, and they found it a good read and were forwarding it around even before Whirpool had finished talking. It was the same powerpoint as Whirlpool will presentation later in the week, so I just downloaded as part of my conference access and sent it on. The shoe company got an early look.

I also discussed some of the issues by text with my engineers and then asked SAP about these problems. Not sure SAP was ready for this much technology, but it was interesting to be real-time (This is class UX216 by Sunil Sharma from Whirlpool) with some of our questions.

(Wonderful night in Las Vegas)

After that, we met up with friends and headed to the Hofbrauhaus Las Vegas. Here German beer is served in liter glasses. Peter Keller and our friends from Goodyear came to have dinner, songs, and beer. It is a tradition to meet before TechEd get started. I limited myself to 1 1/2 liter–so I could walk and write later.

We sang German songs and talked about old times.

So we start up another TechEd drinking and talking about technology and kids that are now in college and retirement age. We remember friends that are not here and wish them well. We miss Jan Poepke and send him the traditional pic of Michael and Michael raising a glass to him.

We are happy to meet again and to learn some new things and talk about what we need to do next and how to do it. We are reaching for the future with one hand and for a one-liter German-made beer with the other. It is a good night.

(Airbus to Las Vegas)

So I just spent $12 for a coffee and croissant at Illy. That is part of the reason I just can’t love Las Vegas. The gambling dens and stuff shirt food locations I can ignore, and there is a least some honesty there–they just want your money–but the ridiculous cost of a coffee is just going too far. Well, I am on the strip in The Palazzo, but I get a free drink at the slots! I do wonder if I could just sit at the slots and put in $10 on the cheap one (if they exist anymore) and get a free coffee.

(me just after finishing security in PDX)

I am happy to be here for TechEd. I flew in on Sunday with no interesting events. This is good as my wife, Susie, fell and was injured on Friday night. I was in Portland at the time headed into playing a board game at Guardian Games. Susie called me to tell me she was alright. Corwin who lives with us was with her and had bandaged her up and said for me to continue with my plans. So I played Game of Thrones (second edition) and then passed on another game and came home early. The GOT game went a bit strange (odd set of random conditions happened that none of us had seen before in GOT) and ended with an easy win for Cody (I lost again in a six-person game).

(Game of Thrones–just at the start)

Susie’s glasses where bent; she had face-planted on them. The happened in the kitchen onto the hard floor. The hinge of the glasses had cut her temple. I was able to repair the eyewear (I have special plyers for my model work that are good for this kind of work).

So I bought all the groceries, did laundry, cooked, cleaned, and all that jazz and packed. Susie and Corwin are set for the week, I hope. Corwin has been teaching Susie a new word, Uber, and I think they can find what they need. Also Safeway deliveries for a minor fee to our house.

Fate being a bit unkind this weekend, delivered two new games to me. On Saturday, I drove to Vancouver, WA, to get my copy of Vindication: Leaders and Alliances, which is an update and extension to one of my favorite Kickstarter games: Vindication. Of course, we picked up the game extension in a coffee place–This is the PNW. We chatted with the folks that made the game. I knew the designer and was one of the playtesters for an early version. Back home without time to play. I did open it and replace the fixes for Vindication as I had the first printing. Already to play…when I get back. And then one came in the mail: War of the Worlds: The New Wave. This one I have been waiting for. Fate gives it to me now. So in the middle of dinner, dishes, cleaning, laundry, and all that jazz, I also unwrapped and played a game against myself (it is a two-person game). I also wrote a review (just approved today and posted).

(War of the Worlds at the end of first practice–Tesla card out just because it was so cool looking)

So got here, Las Vegas, the regular way and enjoyed our fine PDX airport on the way. There is in PDX I had Mo’s Clam Chowder before flying in the back of an Airbus. I find PDX comfortable with good WiFi and food and even a little movie theater. While waiting for my flight, I watched a video on how to play War of the Worlds game and found I had missed only a few rules. The game designers often put out play-through videos so the buyer can learn how to play and to see if it is something they want.

I met Michael G for dinner on Sunday night as is our usual process and we spent too much for a few beers, salads, and a shared pizza. We then went for a walk on The Strip. MG was surprised by the number of gals wearing large feathers, and these gals wore little else. There are more than last year. We also marveled at new places and tried to remember what was there last year. It is always

We then saw a pair of girls walking quickly by with riding crops and dark outfits and a large bottle of water. MG said, “their shift must be over.”

The plane gave me a migraine headache–does not often happen to me but it is a form of altitude sickness caused by the low pressure in the aircraft. My legs also ached on the plane, which is also a sign of that. I was happy this was a short flight.

I was not able to bring the migraine under control with aspirin. The walking and food helped for a bit, but the bright lights of the computers brought it back when I got to my room and made it far worse. Sleep usually works, and so I delayed this until this morning. I am much better today.

 

Photo by me