Twan van den Broek

Yes, another one. But I promise you: it will be my last - this year  So we went to SAP TechEd, learned a lot and  paid it forward  at the SAP TechEd XPerience –  SAP Inside Track Netherlands . Just processed the evaluation feedback, and again I find myself with a big smile on my face   What a positive reactions on our  5 th  anniversary . Thanks!! Here’s a short video recap:

The Future is NOW!  That was our main theme for an SAP User Experience event on October 3rd. It is referring to the current possibilities to improve the user experience within the SAP world without having to migrate to the latest new release of ECC. You can do it today! And that is a good thing as User Experience (UX in short) is hot, even for SAP as it is one of SAP’s main focus points for 2013. We all know where SAP came from with the grey/blue transaction screens ;-)  Picture from SAP Design Guild , some more historic screens at their site. Finally we now realised that it not about the transaction to be executed but about an end-to-end business process . And to really support the user of this process a user-friendly user interface is key. It is the difference between searching for the information you need and supporting your business process. That is how you can identify a good user experience.

At this years SAP Inside Track Netherlands ( #sitNL ), Roel van den Berge shared his experiences on SAP TechEd with regards to SAP Mobile and SAP Fiori. And on top of that he showed us a very creative movie, based on SAP TechEd's keynote which stated Code enables freedom So, Roel came up with new lyrics for " Rockin' in the free world " from Neil Young. I think he did a great job, the new SAP based lyrics even match the original ones!

It was about time, time to do a bit of cleaning in the 'house'. While working on a new design for my blog, I had a few wishes: Rolling header with pictures Leaner design More space for blog posts This is the result: the new one the old one Thanks to Louis van de Wiele, who helped me out with some scripting and CSS stuff. Hope you like it.

Celebrating 5 years of sitNL On Saturday November 23, it was time to celebrate our 5 th anniversary. For the 5 th  time SAP NetWeaver and SAP TechEd enthusiasts gathered together to share knowledge at SAP Inside Track Netherlands, sitNL in short. Or to look at it from another perspective, our little event is just the warm up for Haseenah’s delicious dinner party in the evening  Our sitNL birthday cake Some statistics The Ciber office was crowded, 62 participants joined for our SAP TechEd XPerience. Some participant statistics 52 from the Netherlands 5 from Belgium 4 from Germany 1 from Norway (Thanks for joining Njal ;-) 44 different companies 7 customer representatives 12 freelancers 14 from Ciber 3 from Accenture 3 from TCS 2 from Synerscope Some other sitNL statistics 14 high quality sessions ( agenda ) 1 entertaining  Pubquiz 1 live podcast recording by the  Dutch BI Podcast  members Re...

Thanks to Martijn Linssen  we are able to do a sitNL Tweet Analysis via TwUniverse . And for your convenience, Martijn uploaded a pdf file to our wiki page .  First some numbers 648 tweets, starting at Nov 17 20:50:27 2013 and ending at Nov 25 08:44:22 2013 on: #sitnl. That is 3.60 per hour. Top 10 Most Active Tweeters @steinermatt  (48 = 7%);  @tbroek  (48 = 7%) @roelvdberge  (46 = 7%) @martijnlinssen  (41 = 6%) @fredverheul  (39 = 6%) @jpenninkhof  (33 = 5%) @qualiture  (27 = 4%) @h_neumann  (24 = 4%) @wolf_gregor  (23 = 4%) @yonex_nl  (23 = 4%) Top 10 Most Influential (based on getting RT-ed) @roelvdberge  (50 = 19%) @tbroek  (44 = 17%) @steinermatt  (31 = 12%) @jpenninkhof  (19 = 7%) @konijnenburg  (15 = 6%) @qualiture  (13 = 5%) @cbasis  (8 = 3%) @tomvandoorslaer  (8 = 3%) @fredverheul (8 = 3%) @martijnlins...

At the Ciber Knowledge Carousel Louis van de Wiele and I had the opportunity to explain User Centered Design & Delivery to our attendees. We decided to focus on the design part and conducted a mini Design Thinking workshop. To participate actively in a workshop is a better experience than just sit back and hear what the presenters have to say. But with only 45 minutes for our session we had to push time boxing to the extreme ;-) User Centered Design & Delivery Workshop from Twan van den Broek Our challenge was to “Redesign the event experience”, how to improve the event experience for an attendee. (Hah, quite an interesting case, if I may say so, attendees of our event were able to suggest improvements that we can use for our event next year ;-) After an explanation of the challenge we kicked of with the first step. 1. Context A short interview, 2 minutes sharp, to gather personal experiences on attending events. When was the last time you visited an e...

Counting down, only a few days to go before  sitnl  kicks off. I think we have a very interesting line up at our  fifth SAP Inside Track NL . Thanks to all the speakers who have submitted a session. This year we have shortened the sessions a bit to make sure that there is enough time to get to know each other, talk to each other and enjoy. But with 8 tracks, there is still enough knowledge to absorb ;-) And we all know: You can gather new knowledge by sharing yours.

How to bring relief to Field Service Engineers? How to create a user interface for Field Service Engineers who work in highly complex environments?  How to facilitate the engineers in their daily administration work? How to replace their +20 individual applications with one new working space? How to involve the engineers during the design? How to make sure that the final application is accepted and used? The answer is of course:  Design Thinking !  Design Thinking with Field Service Engineers (SAP TechEd 2013) from Twan van den Broek A story told by Julia Dorbic from D-Labs and me at SAP TechEd 2013.

Due to the success of the previous editions, Ciber is organizing the 6 th Ciber Knowledge Carrousel on November 14 th . This year we offer tracks  for Management, Business and IT. The parallel sessions are gathered around topics like Cloud, Core, Methods, In Memory and Mobile .  You will hear about real life stories at customer situations and new developments and innovations within IT. 15 High quality sessions presented at an inspirational location, the Orangerie, in Den Bosch. The Orangerie , a former Catholic Church is situated in the center of Den Bosch, right in the middle of its beautiful shopping district and lovely canals. You can register for free at the Ciber site  or check out the agenda first. You can find me talking about: SAP TechEd recap , together with Sven van Leuken , we will talk you through the highlights from last weeks SAP TechEd on Mobile, Cloud, In Memory and User Experience. User Centered Design and Delivery , togeth...

SAP TechEd 2013 - The best but also the strangest SAP TechEd ever Together with 10 colleagues I visited SAP TechEd in November 2013. Tim Burchartz - Jaap van de Mheen - Frank Hammen - Michael Hardenbol - Steven Spronk Twan van den Broek - Roel van den Berge - Ted Castelijns - Maarten Kreijveld (Missing on the pic: Leo van Hengel and Wim Snoep, who attended one day due to busy customer schedule) Best Team CloudSitter won the SAP InnoJam on Monday with an app that monitors new born baby’s on their wellbeing. Premature babies have an higher risk on Sudden Infant Death Syndrome , that’s why we came up with a sensor that tracks heartbeat, temperature and breathing. Information is stored in a central database in which thresholds can be validated. If there is reason to warn, the mobile app sends an alarm and changes color. Time to check upon your child. Matt presenting at InnoJam. Winning InnoJam meant that we could also participate in DemoJam , the ultimate stage for ...

Here we go again, this week I will visit my 11th (!) SAP TechEd so far and for sure I haven’t had enough of it ;-) Focus of my visit to SAP TechEd has changed over the years. In the early years I filled my agenda with at much hands on sessions as possible. Lots of ABAP, some MiniApps (early mobile aspirations), SOA and later BPM. But somewhere from 2009 on it has changed to meet as much peers as possible. Sure, hands on sessions are still really valuable during the event, but meeting and discussing with experts and peers to build your network comes in handy throughout the whole year. Next to that I also like to bring something to SAP TechEd. I’ve done some talks on applying scrum to the SAP world , participated in BPM hands on sessions and as an ultimate achievement: reached SAP DemoJam stage in 2012, together with colleague Leo van Hengel. Photo courtesy SAP TechEd 2012 If you want to meet up with me this year, you can find me : Sunday SAP InnoJam ...

SAP TechEd in Amsterdam coming up, counting down … 5 days to go. Time to compose an annual SAP TechEd Topic Top 10 . With 955 entries in this years agenda there is enough to choose from.  For the ‘official’ Topics Top 10 I used the sessions download file from the SAP TechEd site and narrowed the list down to cover ‘only’ Lectures and Hands On Workshops, just like I did previously. That list still contained 380 (!) sessions to choose from and to fit in your 3-day agenda ;-) Here we go … (drumroll) … what will be number 1 in 2013? Still SAP NetWeaver ... No, it's HANA. Guess you didn't see that one coming ;-) # Last years Topic # Sessions 1 2, 4, -, -, - HANA 125 2 1, 1, 1, 1, 1 SAP NetWeaver 53 3 3, 3, 7, -, - Mobile (Mobility, Syclo, SMP, Agentry) 46 4 4, -, -, -, - Cloud 43 5 5, 2, 2, 2, 10 Business Objects (Business Intelligence) 25 6 6, 5, 3, 3, 6 ABAP 20 7 -, -, -, -, - SAPUI5 15 8 7, 9, -, -, - Portal 15 9 8, 6, 4, 5, 4 BPM (Process Orche...

Another successful SAP CodeJam in the Netherlands. The ABAP on HANA CodeJam in Eindhoven. Organized by Roel van den Berge and hosted by Thorsten Schneider . I surely recommend attending an SAP CodeJam, a day of serious coding on a specific topic accompanied by SAP experts. It is just like an SAP TechEd HandsOn Workshop, but outside of SAP TechEd season ;-) What do you get: Deep knowledge on the topic Hands on exercises  Support by SAP experts Meet up with fellow enthusiasts Great food!! Roel opening the event. Thorsten kicks off the ABAP on HANA coding. Let the fun begin. Sven van Leuken dressed up especially for the event. Coffee, ABAP Code and Coke - what more can you wish for? FUN! The complete event in pictures at Flickr .

It’s almost that time of the year. A period where you start writing down your wishes in a letter and hope that your wishes get fulfilled … so here we go. Dear Santa, I have been a good boy this year. Please ... (or in business language ;-) Dear SMP Product Owner, SAP TechEd just kicked off today in Las Vegas, so sorry that I can’t join you to hear and learn all about SMP3 now. Glad with the preview blogs by  Jens Koerner  ( SMP3 Launch ) and  John Wargo  ( Kapsel ) and really looking forward to SAP TechEd in Amsterdam. Wish list MDD and its UI Please update the out of the box UI components for all platforms. They are worth investing in and expanding their lifespan. It provides the possibility of having an approach that supports “Build once and Deploy anywhere”, very handy in the enterprise world. The current “Windows 3.1” look and feel is really outdated. With OpenUI coming to the MDD approach (formerly known as Agentry) it will be...

SAP Inside Track Netherlands - #sitNL - turns 5. 2013 is a year of celebrating community milestones. Our own SCN clubhouse for example, celebrates its  10 th anniversary . Well from my part: Happy Birthday dear SCN. Thanks for bringing us together. Clean the carpet, open the doors, as we celebrate another anniversary. This year  sitnl  will turn 5! A 5 th  episode of us SAP NetWeaver geeks coming together on a Saturday, somewhere in Eindhoven ;-) SAP Inside Track NL – The SAP TechEd XPerience Saturday No vember 23 rd , 2013 10:00 – 19:00 Eindhoven, the Netherlands Registration is open, please go to our  Wiki page  to register for the event. Hold on, not sure why you should attend? Maybe a view into history will help: 2012  About Communities and Families 2011  SAP Communities Rock 2010  Community Rules! 2009  The first one Last year’s top valued sessions where: Joris van de Vis  with...