TechEd Bangalore - 2012

TechEd Bangalore 2012 was my first experience of attending such a big conference. I was attracted to this event by reading many blogs on TechEd at different locations by participants. In India it's a three days conference and the overall experience is good. I arrived at the location well on time and had a very much smooth registration process. I must say volunteers were very supportive in resolving any registration issues.

Keynote session:

I remember, when I had entered the conference room before the keynote session, the very first time, looking at the arrangements I had a great feeling and it added to my excitement of attending the conference. I was lucky to get a front seat very much near the centre stage to attend the keynote session. Keynote revolved mostly along three hot topics and can be guessed easily; database technology, mobility and cloud. It was fascinating to see demo's related to these topics. To be at a front seat is both advantageous and disadvantageous. Advantage is you get to see the stage activities precisely and disadvantage is I could see how frequently the keynote speaker had to look on screen to see what was his next statement. This was not good to observe as it distracts the attention of participants. There was no new big announcement done in keynote session. Vishal Sikka's recorded session was full of big words like empathetic systems, empowering end users etc. etc. and certainly around HANA. These big words no more enchant me, without any reason. It was also good to see that human values or design thinking was part of every session. However there was no demonstration of any product where design thinking was applied and which added to the value of the product. At the time of partner keynote session, most of the front-seaters had already left the place. However, IBM had a good demonstration of using technology to solve real world problems.

First day sessions:

I had booked two hands-on workshop for the first day. First was ABAP on HANA and second was on Business by Design to build mobile apps. ABAP on HANA was a lovely session. The speakers were very charged and very clearly explained how to control HANA database with ABAP. It was clearly shown that to move to HANA is non-disruptive. It was great to see the huge time differences when the program ran on HANA than on traditional database. It was great. However, I could not do anything practically owing to time constraints. This session was a hit for me. I would not emphasize more on the fact that better could have been done in terms of arranging a working computer for all the participants.

Business by design to build mobile apps too had good speakers and they were very patient with the participants. Coding was done in C#. Expectation was the app would run on any mobile device. Unfortunately it did not run on my ipad.


Demojam:

Demojam was certainly a hit. It showed many beautiful apps developed by participants in six minutes. It was strange to see that the winner was decided by the amount of support given by the audience. However, the winner had developed an app for smooth commutation of ambulances in India. There were many other great apps as well.

V.V.S Lakshman:

This was exciting.

TechEd party:

I did not attend this and hence can't write about it.

Second day:

I did only attend design thinking workshop on the second day and have shared my views on SCN.

Third day:

Third day had an exciting beginning for me as I was interviewed by Jason Lax regarding SCN. This can be found on online TechEd link. I planned to visit the many booths on the third day. I visited Capgemini stall and they showed an app that they had made using HANA and mobility. It was good.

I then moved on to HANA booths and again could see different kinds of charts. However I realized that those booths were more for marketting purpose than giving a presentation to attendees.

 I attended two hands on session on the third day. First was building user interfaces in the cloud using SAP UI5. It was interesting to follow steps and at last see an working model.

Second was ABAP on Eclipse. This session was again a hit for me. Speakers were good and they clearly highlighted the improvements in ABAP on eclipse. There were many times when speakers said, this is in JAVA and is now available in ABAP as well. Time for this session was sufficient and enough.

Conclusion:

TechEd Bangalore is good to attend. It is very necessary to keep your agenda ready else one may end up in confused state during the event. It is particularly beneficial for people who would like to know about a new product by SAP or roadmaps of technology by SAP. People have to be specific about their aim of attending TechEd. 

Impressions of working at onsite!

This was my first onsite trip at work. I found the work environment very different than back at offshore. I found the environment to be very challenging and motivating all the time. One has to be quick and smart. I had a very complacent experience working at onsite. I was very efficient and productive in my short stay of a month here. Luckily, I found a small and chirpy team at onsite. I highlight small as being part of a small team I knew every member closely.
I always wanted to know someone inspirational working in my organization and in my team. Looks like I have found few of them.
One one hand where I find the environment motivating, on the other side I found there is no scope of doing anything apart from work. This in one sense is good as there is lot much time left to do anything else. Working at onsite, I couldn't at any point say, I did not no something. If I am a developer I am expected to know all aspects of development irrespective of the module it belongs to or any other aspect for that matter. It is like jumping into the battleground irrespective of the fact if you have required weapons or not, just fight. This is also fun.
I found a special privilege of working from home. At offshore this concept of working from home is not much encouraged. 

Approaching change requests

Lately I have been involved in lot of change requests related to ABAP programs. Such Change requests are usually considered to be very small and hence are expected to be delivered very fast irrespective of complexity involved in the change. I have observed few ways in which developers handle such changes. Lets take an example of changing contents which are getting fetched from a report, one of the safest approach would be to loop again at the final internal table and modify the contents just before sending it for display, is that the good approach? I am not sure if such techniques are result of tight timelines or developer not being interested in finding out what was the original development or the intention is just to get the work done. There could be many other possibilities. But I think both the functional consultant and the developer have great roles to play in handling change requests. There are many occasions where a change request is not properly represented in the functional specification. Let's take a scenario wherein the developer handling the CR is different from the original developer. In this situation it is always good that the new developer gets to know the background of the program and then handle this change. FS author has an important role to play here, until the developer decides to manage everything on his own. The new change should be properly represented with references wherever possible.

I usually don't rush while handling change requests unless I am forced to, depending on the criticality of schedules. Recently, I handled a very tricky change request. I remember I took 4 days of analysis and just one day for coding as I could easily figure out the perfect spot for change after understanding the design of program. I never tried to rush with the program and I am very happy as it has gone through the testing without any defects.
Another scenario crossed by my mind, what if both the functional consultant and developer changes while handling a change request? These scenarios explains the importance of documenting developments as accurately as possible. It's altogether a different story that once development is done, one hardly bothers about documentation, in most of the cases.
These change requests also highlight that the original program is built in a very flexible and maintainable way. I have more than often realized the importance that the basic and original programs should be built in a robust way else with time it will only become worse.

C'mon, be different!

This blog is a result of my observation of social medias etc. I have seen that people start acting and following what others, who have probably achieved a greater milestone than them,  have been doing. Now this may sound good for others but does not look acceptable to me. I can understand after reading many inspirational books which say, try to be like great people and follow their habits to become like them. I am not contradicting in terms of habits which may mean personal development but just copying someone else's views, the way they use social media, the way they write blogs does not seem acceptable to me. If everyone starts copying someone else, how will different ways evolve? On one side it is at times good but certainly not always.

Everyone should have their own personal identity, views, and ways of using things and projecting themselves. If Mr. A is a great personality, does not mean his ways are always the best. I have been repeatedly seeing people trying to use twitter the day few others are using. I am not sure what's their purpose of using twitter but it is just not ok if everyone has the same way of using it. Similarly I have seen new people writing blogs of similar nature on one of the professional sites, I have been active, lately.

For me, I have always tried to be myself and project my own real ways. Not to say, good things can be imbibed from others but I am sure I don't copy anyone else's ways.

South Mountain hike

I had a short hiking trip to South Mountain in Arizona. Through out the trip, I could only see different varieties of cactus plants. Single Cactus, Family Cactus, Old cactus and many more. I had good mexican food too and did also visit a chinese grocery store.

Some of my cool dresses so far!

Experiencing USA!

I am at Tempe, Arizona. It's a beautiful place. Ever since I have landed to US I am trying to find, that, one big explicit difference between USA and India and I am very pleased that I have not yet found any big difference in terms of facilities or anything materialistic for that matter. But, there exists a huge and I mean HUGE difference between attitude of people. People are very disciplined and have a good attitude towards rules. The biggest difference I have found is People and govermental policies. We all know about political parties in India and hence conditions of some of the obvious things like roads. GPS works like a charm here. I asked my colleague here if GPS would act as precisely as it works here in US, answer as expected was no. Roads are just awesome here. I have been discussing all the differences I have noticed so far with my friends and now I think it's a good idea that I express them in this blog here. There are many things which are just opposite to what they are in India. Switching on direction is switching off in India. The steering wheel or driver's seat is right in India, here it's left. There is silence almost everywhere. It is very surprising that I don't see anyone walking on the roads. I can see more women driving big cars than I have ever seen in India. Car is a basic necessity of life here. I was amazed to see police on horses, bicycles and the swiftness with which they act. It is good that I have visited many places in India as that has given an idea of how beautiful India is.

Standard of living is too high. I was very amazed to see beggars and homeless people here. Normal lifestyle is resplendant and luxurious here. Not only that but also working culture is different here. We have evening life here unlike in India on working days. Things are very structured and organized here and system is obeyed. I am not sure if obeyance is good in all cases but certainly obeyance is the best choice in few cases. I would not like to comment on personal lifestyle of people etc.  I am very proud about the cultural values of India and I hope they retain themselves among many things that are rapidly getting changed in India or getting influenced as part of globalization. I feel few things should be made mandatory or as rules in India. First among them is elderly people should be taken care of by their kids unless goverment makes policies for taking care of elderly people. Like our former President, Mr. A.P.J Abdul Kalam I have a belief that India has huge potential and it would certainly improve on many fronts it is currently lagging behind.

Getting into some personal stuff now, after surviving on breads for many days, I finally got to eat Indian food. I am very happy to see that Indian grocery store too are here. One of my leads invited me for lunch, today and I had a wonderful time. Walmart has been my favourite hangout place if not Starbucks coffee so far!