The Marathon Man

SAP is introducing an Innovation Weekend around its annual TechEd event in Berlin and Las Vegas next month. It gives participants a chance to “Gain hands-on experience with some of SAP's coolest and newest innovative technologies, taking an idea from concept to prototype.”

Given my book’s focus on innovation, Craig Cmehil, one of the event’s main drivers has been discussing with me a presentation there. Distracted by all my other book and consulting travel, it only dawned on me last week that I was committing to weekend travel. And he really perked me up when he said “of course we can work around your sleep pattern”

You see it is a 30 hour non-stop event. Yikes!

Craig has been an unbelievable champion for SDN and other community involvement at SAP. That has earned him the title of Open Innovation Manager. But not just Open, he should also have Rapid and Agile in his title. He is big on marathons. For two years in a row he has also run a call-in marathon for Doctors without Borders on his weekly radio show. Again in the spirit of openness he has invited various bloggers and associates to present on a variety of topics, and simultaneously raised money for a worthwhile cause.

So, I asked this insomniac about these marathons:

“ One of the amazing things about my job, various jobs I've had, has
always been the access I have to new and interesting technologies not
to mention many new and cool innovations. The downside was finding
interesting ways of sharing what I had access to on the inside with
those on outside. It was during a few late night projects I began to
think that I need to find a way to give back and to share more, I
always tend to spend so much online and around computers and was never
a stranger to long hours working on different projects and as we began
the Hacker Nights during the SAP TechEd events and the 24 Hour
Marathon during the Friday Morning Report show that I began to realize
that I was not alone and thus this year the Innovation Weekend was
born - a formalized event around things we've been doing for years
already but with a larger goal of reaching out to more people with new
technologies that have not even gone fully out the public yet. It's
exciting to be able to finally bring some of these cool technologies
to even more people in such a public setting - I've always said we
don't lack innovation just a good communication around it!”

Enterprise software moves at a glacial place. Here we are looking at Oracle OpenWorld this week still looking for clues around Fusion after 6 years of development.  Even Craig’s employer SAP has taken years maturing ByD.

Craig is a diamond in that rough. Openness and intensity. Enterprise software can use much more of that.

Selfish Disclosure: I am being generous to Craig with the hope that I get a half way decent speaking slot in those 30 hours. After all the parties at Oracle Open World I will need to hibernate like a bear :)