ASUG Pacific Northwest Chapter Meeting - 10Feb2011
Micheal and I traveled to Tacoma, Washington this past week for the Pacific Northwest ASUG meeting. We not only attended a few sessions, but AccM was a sponsor and a presenter.
The Pacific Northwest Chapter is very strong, bringing in almost 200 people for this event. It primarily covers SAP users in Washington and Oregon, but I also met people from Nevada, Idaho, California, Utah, Colorado, and British Columbia. I remember attending 10yrs ago from the company I was with in Boise, Idaho – the enthusiasm and attendance was just as great as back then when the SAP community was very busy and the economy allowed for many to travel and attend.
It is an easy trip, just a quick flight from SLC to SEA-TAC and then a taxi to Tacoma. We had great weather all 3 days and beautiful views of Mt Rainier both from the plane and the Tacoma Convention Center where the meeting took place. If you look closely in the picture of Micheal at the AccM booth, you will see it in the background.
We met up with Kirk, our co-presenter and client from Terasen, at the hotel and reviewed the presentation. Micheal also had a chance to get some sleep since he only got a couple hours the night before due to a busy one-day trip to California.
Since many people travel to the meeting and stay the night before, a Meet & Greet Reception was held Wednesday night from 6-9p. Almost 100 registered and the room stayed busy all night. There were drinks and appetizers in a casual environment. It is great to mingle with a mix of professions, ages, and cultures – all linked by SAP.
Thursday was a busy day. We arrived around 7a to set up our table and prepare for everyone starting at 8:30a. We had our new brochures and readiness surveys, along with some older brochures and business cards. It was good to compare with the other sponsor tables. We don't have the marketing budget that some of the large name companies have, but strategies are similar. You want people to approach the table and learn about your product. We gave away an HD Camera but specifically to someone that attended our presentation and filled out a readiness survey. We were hoping for more attendees to participate, but we will work on our approach over the next few weeks at other ASUG meetings and get more feedback.
Our presentation was in the last group of breakout sessions, so Micheal and I took turns between attending sessions and working the table. I attended both the keynote and closing presentations and learned something new in each. I also attended a talk from SAP on Enhancement Package functionality, which was very helpful. Lunch included "Birds-of-a-Feather" breakout tables. I sat at the Procure to Pay, while Micheal sat at the Influence table. We both were excited about our discussions and felt that they were beneficial. I hope more of the ASUG meetings adopt a similar technique.
At 2:30p, we all went to the breakout room for our presentation, which should be posted shortly on the Pacific Northwest ASUG document website. It is titled as follows
Contractor Management Solutions
Case Study: Add-On Software Web-Enables SAP External Service Management
We had a small group, but everyone was attentive and asked some great questions. We hope to continue conversations with many of the attendees to better understand their contractor management situation and see if AccM and TOP® (The Owners Perspective) can provide some solutions. Kirk and I each presented 2 sections – highlighting the recent TOP® implementation at Terasen. We finished in just over an hour, including the questions. If we had some more time, we could have gone through the 10 questions on the readiness survey in more detail.
The meeting finished up with some great prize give-aways and after relaxing a bit, we had a nice dinner overlooking Tacoma. Overall, it was a successful trip and another opportunity to share our knowledge with other SAP colleagues.
Once again, the Pacific Northwest Chapter has impressed me with the number of attendees, sponsors, venue, and overall organization. Whether it is 2001 or 2011, they are consistently putting together great meetings and representing what ASUG is all about. This time, I’m not going to wait 10yrs to attend the next event.