Craig's Rantings...

SAP Network Blogs

2008-07-20T10:49:00.001+02:00

So very cool to see good things happening!

"I am not sure if you have been following along with the progress meter that appears on the SDN and BPX home page for the Points for U.N. World Food Programme.

I have and when it first came out I thought, "Great I could write a little scraper to grab the number every day and track the progress". Initially the meter was an image so that wasnt possible. Now the points is in the code of the html so it is possible to scrape the current total out.

I went for a low tech solution. Yesterday I wrote (with a pen a pager) at the top of the my todo list the current total. It was 1,761,894. Today I repeated the process (it's a simple algorithm I know) Just a few short moments ago it was at 1,772,288.

So with a little maths (yes it is spelled with an S by most of the world) we have:

1772288 / 199 average of 8906 point a day so far this year.

1772288 - 1761894 = 10394 point in the last 24 hours.

If we continue at that rate for the rest of the year (166 days) we have 1725404 points which when added to the total to day is 3,497,692 a mere 2308 point shy of out goal of 3,500,000 so we as a community make a contribution of €200,000 to the worlds hungry.

I am excited about that because:

We are very close to our goal
My maths have not taken a very big sample so there is bound to be inaccuracies.
TechEd is going to give us a big bump with everyone submitting sessions, being involved in community day or SDN day or BPX day and writing blog posts promoting those sessions, creating new and exciting projects for DemoJam etc etc
You might not even think about this part of what we are dong very much but I am encouraging you to think about it from time to time. Think about how being involved in a such a great community such as the SAP Community Network is not just a technical or business community but it is a human community and a community that cares.

Here's to 3,500,000."

(Via On track for a great end to the year.)

Technorati Tags:
collaboration, community, sap, wfp

Nanomonk - SAP and Adobe (Part 2)

2008-07-19T14:25:00.001+02:00

Click to Play

The final part of the Nanomonk event from Friday the 11 of July.

Nanomonk, video replay part 1

2008-07-18T08:35:00.001+02:00

After several days I've finally managed to edit down the first half of the video from last Friday's Nanomonk event.

RedMonk (http://redmonk.com) put together a frank and open conversation between SAP, Adobe and a collection of partners and customers.

It was a brilliant conversation and I've begun working on part two of the video already!

Technorati Tags:
adobe, collaboration, community, Enterprise, experience, james governor, presentations, sap, social, redmonk, nanomonk

Starship Enterprisey, the relaunch

2008-07-16T15:23:00.001+02:00

It's with great pleasure and excitement that I can announce the relaunch of Starship Enterprisey. Many will remember the show as "Starship Enterprisey Radio", the show launched last year at the SAP Sapphire Vienna event and it was me together with Thomas Otter.

"Starship Enterprisey Radio, a podcast series started in May of 2007 by Thomas Otter and Craig Cmehil from the center of the enterprise universe - Walldorf, Germany to talk about software, technology and processes in the enterprise.

Both Thomas and Craig at the time worked for SAP (opinions however are their own) and both are members of the Social Media Collective and the Enterprise Irregulars.

In 2008, Thomas made a career change and the show was put on hold while in a time of flux. Then in April of 2008 it was decided to rekindle the show, unfortunately Thomas was unable to continue at this time. Craig decided to continue the show and move in the direction of video as well as audio. <"

(Via About | Starship Enterprisey.)

The show has a new home, a new look, new format and a new RSS feed, the focus hasn't changed but many other aspects have - I'm equipped with some new equipment and ready to go. My first event as Starship Enterprisey will be the Business Objects Influencer Summit this coming August 11 to 14 in Boston. Even cooler is that for the event we'll being making use of @eventtrack as well!

Now since is the inaugural launch of the new Starship Enterprisey I decided to do so with a short introduction video, I'm very interested in your feedback, comments and of course suggestions BUT I also want to know who you want to see on the show and what topics you want covered. The show is SAP specific and I will be working hard to in touch with many of those within the company that can share vision, strategy and what's to come.

Click to Play

Technorati Tags:
Enterprise, sap, starshipenterprisey, bobjsummit08

Social Networks, building with zero resources

2008-07-10T11:18:00.001+02:00

Lately over on the SAP Community Network I've been focused on a project to build up a social network aspect within the community but as a challenge to do so without actual resources assigned to make it happen. I have my skills, my time and the support of many in the community.

Why am I doing this? Not because we have no budget or anything like that it's simply because I think we can and I don't think it takes that much (in terms of tools) to really build up a social network, it's something we do daily in the contact that we have with those around us.

So what is a social network?

"A social network is a social structure made of nodes (which are generally individuals or organizations) that are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as values, visions, ideas, financial exchange, friendship, kinship, dislike, conflict or trade. The resulting structures are often very complex.

Social network analysis views social relationships in terms of nodes and ties. Nodes are the individual actors within the networks, and ties are the relationships between the actors. There can be many kinds of ties between the nodes. Research in a number of academic fields has shown that social networks operate on many levels, from families up to the level of nations, and play a critical role in determining the way problems are solved, organizations are run, and the degree to which individuals succeed in achieving their goals.

In its simplest form, a social network is a map of all of the relevant ties between the nodes being studied. The network can also be used to determine the social capital of individual actors. These concepts are often displayed in a social network diagram, where nodes are the points and ties are the lines."

(Via Social network - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.)

Or a more "social" approach to the definition,

On the web in the days before all these fancy tools we used things like Webring to tie all our sites together. Webring is still strong today and I still see lots of use of it and that made me wonder.

For me a social network is at the raw form a collection of "Who am I"'s tied together in some form or manner.

Over on SCN we have a wiki space dedicated to this purpose, we call it the Community Profiles or perhaps "Community Pages" - now since it's a wiki and easy to edit we decided to add a clause, very un-wiki like but still it's to protect the legitimate users from those who might want to "spam". Our community has a reputation system based on point values and so in order to be allowed into this particular space to basically market yourself you need to devote some time and energy to the community and earn up to 100 of these "points". This shows you've been in the community long enough to have a decent understanding of what it is all about, it prevents instead overload of everyone just putting junk in there and it helps to really highlight those who are putting an effort forth. Un-social network like? Perhaps but with over a million users quality needs to be ensured in some way.

Now as it's a wiki we encourage the use of the labels or tags on each page - my page for example I use multiple tags to indicate the languages I speak, the locations I am active, the technologies I know and the events I am attending.

The page itself is free form (we provide some templates to get you started) so I am able to put my entire resume or a simple bio in if I like and I can do so in my native language, in my native language and English (language of choice on the site), so on and so forth.

Do I need more? What more do any of these fancy tools and site offer me? To be honest not much more and as I am in the wiki environment anyway it's quite easy to just jump over and link to things I am doing already. The environment is specific to SAP technology, strategy and business which would be what I might be trying to market from my skill set anyway. All very targeted and still very free form for me to write what I feel important and not be trapped into some form where specific fields are required - this is my chance to be me, about me and what I do and "Who I am".

Now using the wiki search it's quite easy to find myself and others who share certain tags, or simply click a tag like "flex" and I find those who have added that tag as well - I can then expand that to the entire wiki covering every area and instantly see who of those people has been active in the topic across the board.

Why would I do that? Well for starters if I am having trouble and need help I have a couple of choices, first I can email, IM and Twitter everyone I know to ask - a bit intrusive; I can post a message to the forum - what happens though if it's not 100% specific to SAP technology? Finally I can go this route via the "Community Pages" and then look to see what contact info the person has made available and perhaps narrow my search to a very targeted few people and build a new connection and solve a problem all at the same time.

In essence we are putting the raw nuts and bolts behind the concept of a social network in place to let the community find each other - it's been an exciting project and I have been learning a lot in how people deal with each other and the self promotion/self marketing concept. Ego surfing it's not, at least not if you are careful about it. Are we taking a step back from the advancements in social networks like Ning, Facebook, MySpace? I don't think so because we are not replacing them or competing for their users we are simply giving our existing users the ability to tell us "Who am I" and build connections to their peers within the environment they are comfortable with.

Our next stage which has already begun is the building of an interface client with added features on top that are perhaps not necessary in the system but useful to the users, for example the ability to easily add notes for a specific member you have come across.

From the screenshot you can see (or perhaps not) that it's based on Adobe Air and is a alpha test version of the client. Here's a small screen cam of how it all works so far.

Technorati Tags:
community, development, experience, experiment, sap, wiki, social networks

The Bees!!

2008-07-06T23:05:00.001+02:00

It turns out our garden actually has several nectar sources, so we've been paying extra attention to those flowers and plants and being sure they are watered, cared for basically going the extra mile to ensure we are doing the little bit we can.

I've also been doing reading and came across this interesting bit,

"My relationship with bees started three years ago when I decided to build a wild life friendly cottage garden with a natural fishless pond in it. When flowers are blooming and the pond is filled with water and plants, lots of bees and dragon flies come to visit my garden and pond. I really enjoy watching and observing them. But there is one problem comes with a pond without fish: Mosquitoes.

I don’t put fish in my pond because they will eat dragon fly nymphs and tadpoles. How to solve the mosquito problem? There’s a popular product on the market that does a wonderful job by killing the mosquito in their larva stage. It looks like a donut; you put some in pond or any water container. It floats and releases BT (Bacillus thuringiensis subspecies: a bacteria based insecticide) on water surface. When mosquito larvae come to the water surface to breathe, they take some BT and get die within a few days. I was a little bit skittish to use this product at first. But they say it kills nothing but mosquito larvae. After tried it several times, it seems their claim is true. It really does a wonderful job for mosquito control. It has been getting more and more popular in the last couple of years. You can find this product in any major hardware or garden supply store nationwide. Even governments have started to use this product for mosquito control in large areas of still water."

(Via I might know the answer for CCD - Bees and Beekeeping Forum - GardenWeb.)

I think we'll be seeing more and more of these "armchair" analysis but considering the problem at hand I think it might be wise for each and everyone that seems plausible and this one does to be seriously checked out.

It certainly has made me think twice about the 2 ponds we have in the garden (one with and one without fish), luckily we also don't have mosquitos like those I am familiar with in Florida but we do have some and they are annoying but not bad enough for me to attempt a control like this one.

Technorati Tags:
ccd

Found in the SAP Community Wiki

2008-07-06T19:58:00.001+02:00

I love scanning the various areas of the SAP Community Wiki, in the first quarter of this year there was over 3000 new pages and 10s of thousands of edits alone so I often take a day or two a week to kind of just cruise around and see what I can find. Today I came across a section on CSR and well I copied most all of the page text as I couldn't decide on the "best part"...

Seriously though if the topic of Corporate Social Responsibility is in the least bit interesting to you I highly suggest you check out this section!

The new approach to rewarding participation is a direct result of community member feedback indicating a strong interest in a more socially conscious rewards program. The announcement was made at SAP TechEd '07 Bangalore, being held in Bangalore, India from November 28-30.

For several years, SAP has successfully encouraged members of the SDN and Business Process Expert communities to share their knowledge and experience with other members through a member recognition program that awards points for contributions to the community, such as blog posts, articles, code samples, tutorials, videos or forum posts. Community members vigorously compete to be recognized as top global contributors, and prizes are awarded for reaching point milestones. The new program replaces the distribution and shipping of prizes such as T-shirts in favor of prizes in the form of World Food Programme donations.

Donations will directly fund the World Food Programme's Food for Education, an international universal school nutrition program that aims to ensure every hungry child has at least one meal every day. Community members will be kept up to date on the effect that their efforts have on reducing hunger and increasing educational development through regular blogs, podcasts and videocast contributions from the World Food Programme. SAP supports a number of corporate citizenship projects with the World Food Programme, one of the world's most distinguished humanitarian aid organizations and one that has a strong presence in India.

"We applaud the members of the SDN and Business Process Expert communities for bringing activism to their virtual community," said Francisco Espejo, chief, School Feeding Service, World Food Programme. "The correlation between improved nutrition and education performance is dramatic. This SAP initiative shows how online communities can help foster the most basic level of community development by offering kids a meaningful incentive to go to school and stay there. We look forward to establishing an ongoing dialogue with the members of the SAP community networks as we bring them closer to our on-the-ground activities via videos and podcasts from field sites, so they can see first-hand how their contributions are making a difference."

The SDN and Business Process Expert communities enable customers, partners, developers and employees to engage with IT and business professionals across the globe to share expertise and best practices related to SAP solutions and enterprise SOA. Participation in these communities ? which is free and open to all who are interested in collaborating ? helps members to engage in collaborative innovation, deploy SAP solutions more quickly and benefit from the collective knowledge of the SAP worldwide community.

"The SAP ecosystem includes one of the most prevalent, active and engaged online communities in the world," said Claus Heinrich, executive board member, SAP AG. "And while the SAP ecosystem has gained a global reputation as an economy of its own, it is now time to use this power to contribute on a more human level. The contributions raised by SAP community members will be put to good use by the UN World Food Programme in their local geographic region and will make a difference raising the level of education and economic development for some of world's poorest people."

(Via Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability Projects.)

Technorati Tags:
community, sap, social, wiki, csr

Community serendipity delivers value

2008-07-05T20:00:00.001+02:00

Friend and fellow Irregular, Dennis shares some experiences after a late night crunch session to finish up a project spawned in the community that he jumped on board with!

The project is actually far from finished but they put in a tremendous effort to achieve their stage 1 in time for the SAP TechEd Demo Jam - they submitted so (disclaimer I host Demo Jam in Berlin and Bangalore however I have no part in the selection process of who wins nor am I able to influence that decision) I have my fingers crossed for them they did a great job pulling things together in a short period of time to make a big impact!

A couple of weeks ago I gave my view of Enterprise Twitter from a BPX perspective. Little did I know that 14 days later I'd have had the pleasure of working with a talented bunch of folk from Austria, Germany, Norway, India, UK and Brazil. My job was to convert the story board developed by Richard Hirsch into a voice over. As the deadline for submission approached, things became increasingly hectic but the team remained calm and good natured throughout.

I learned a great deal about how communities operate and the benefits that can be derived. First up, I should say that I've only met two of the main participants in the real world. Building virtual relationships is challenging because 'we' can never be sure who we are dealing with. A lot has to be taken on trust. There are many ways to assess this.

We can for example look at what a particular person contributes to the community. We can track how others react in comments. We can use existing trusted relationships to receive introductions to other trusted persons and so extend the network. Since ESME is designed to demonstrate the creation of groups in a problem solving environment, we had to 'eat our own dog food' as part of the process.

The proof is in the final outcome. ESME was created for DemoJam and as at the time of writing (I will update), we don't have an MP4 file that shows the final screencam. Having seen the Camtasia file, I was astonished at how well the script was interpreted by the development team working on the AIR client and data creation.

(Via SAP Network Blogs.)

Another friend and fellow SAP Mentor, Abesh has also posted a post today with some more details and the actual submission itself. I think it's the first time since Demo Jam launched in 2004 that anyone has actually blogged their submission before the selection process has even started (submissions were accepted up until July 4th).

"A couple of days back I had blogged about ESME - The Enterprise Social Messaging Experiment, about how it was initiated, who all are involved and what we are trying to build.

As Dennis Howlett mentions in his Blog on SDN, we are a group of individuals from the community who share a dream of making enterprise social messaging a problem solver for the enterprise and though we have not met, we know each other and more importantly completely trust each other.

An initial thought of invoking public response got us thinking and what better place to showcase our idea than Demo Jam at SAP TechED.

Without further ado let me present to you our idea, nay, dream, and we would like to know what you think. After all social networking is all about communitites, about you."

(Via ESME - The Demo | Les Aventures de Techiemaque....)

It's amazing the power that can be generated, harassed and directed in virtual environments and this project has shown that anything is possible!

My best wishes to the entire team and if they don't make Demo Jam they've got a spot during the RIA Hacker Night in both Las Vegas and Berlin for SAP TechEd to present their work! Yes they have the spot regardless ;-)

Technorati Tags:
collaboration, community, development, sapteched08

The Alps and Zimbabwe « Vendorprisey

2008-07-04T11:01:00.001+02:00

On behalf of the Friday Morning Report I've decided it would be awesome to help out Thomas and his crew in their efforts to raise money! It's a noble cause as is most all charities and so here we go!

"This year,in August, I’m being even more of an idiot. I’m doing a week long Alpine ride with a bunch of cycling mates, all of whom are leaner and meaner than me. This time the money will go to the Zimbabwe Benefit Foundation. It is a very reputable charity, and has Desmond Tutu as its patron.

Violent and sustained attacks against civilian voters in Zimbabwe are leaving behind hundreds of mutilated and injured men, women and children. Many of them have also had their homes burned and their possessions destroyed. ZBF has launched an emergency response to support victims with medical supplies, blankets, food packs and basic building materials throughout the country. We appeal for your help now.

I discovered the charity via the Sokwanele blog, which provides brilliant but harrowing coverage of the goings on in Zimbabwe.

The donations page over on the justgiving.com site, here. It would be great if you could head on over there with your credit card handy."

(Via The Alps and Zimbabwe « Vendorprisey.)

Some might wonder why I am doing this on behalf of my own show? We'll the show is about things that interest me and charity and helping your fellow man interest me a lot and in today's show I ended it talking about "give it a thought, what you can do to help your fellow man and make the world a better place" in reference to today being the 4th of July and it being a day celebrating the founding of a document bound in the ideals of human rights. So when I read Thomas' blog this morning (I know I am behind on my reading) it made sense to donate on behalf of the show because the show (corny as it might sound) inspired me to do it!

Technorati Tags:
community, csr, friday morning report, thomas otter

Friday Morning Report

2008-06-22T22:14:00.001+02:00

Just recently I started a new show, using video - so I guess I've started a new "TV" show. If that is what you can call these regular video broadcasts over the internet that are starting to spring up these days? In some ways it reminds me of one of my favorite films, Pump Up the Volume. One of the "lines" from the film was "Steal the Air." Of course this was all about a pirate radio station and that havoc one kid can cause trying to get the truth out to the world regarding the trouble lives of teens but I think we might actually being seeing this very concept now. With the predication that 98% of the content on the internet will be (think "Pennycam" from Lost in Space) video content sites like Kyte.tv, uStream and Veodia might be the new "black" in terms of the places to be!

As for my show, you can subscribe the audio here which will also contain the video replay as I do the show live on Friday mornings at 9:15 CET.

I'm using CamTwist, Kyte.tv, Garage Band and Mevio for the show and so far the live participation has been steady, even a little increasing and the views of the shows afterwards have been increasing which is my motivation for continuing. The show is my show, and therefore I'll try not to overload this blog with constant updates but I might from time to time talk about it here or there or in context of something else going on.

The show's homepage is here as well as here, the reason for the second link there is because many of the shows will cover some of my activities as the Community Manager of the SAP Developer Network again though this is not an official "production" from SAP but from me as individual (just so we are sure on the disclaimer and disclosures here!)

The final bit of info you might find interesting is the production calendar.

Technorati Tags:
8 things, experiment, life, ustream, kyte.tv, friday morning report

Hugh cards

2008-06-09T14:41:00.001+02:00

SAP Developer Challenge 2008

2008-06-09T11:10:00.001+02:00

For those in the world who don't think there is cool and interesting things going on inside of Starship Enterprisey then sit back and check out this little video which is a prelude to tonight's live broadcast!

SAP Developer Challenge Demo Jam 2008 at Monday 4:30pm PST.

Business Process Experts Speak - Benefits of Membership

2008-06-03T08:14:00.001+02:00

I love it when people start to do cool things, what a surprise this was and then seeing folks I actually know it, like Dennis a fellow Irregular and a welcomed member of our Community - rock on BPX!

Does what happens in the Facebook stay in the Facebook?

2008-06-02T09:32:00.001+02:00

Let the conspiracy theories fly! Of course to be honest it makes sense and reminds me of the argument from last year I think it was "but they are doing it anyway, at least this way we know how".

SAP and ActionScript

2008-05-29T15:30:00.001+02:00

Abesh a SAP Mentor and Top Contributor of the SAP Community has just released his SAP/ActionScript libraries!One of the great things about being a part of such a strong Community is getting to hear, help and learn about projects like this long before they are released to the public and this project is just one of those awesome ones that you'll sit back and say WOW!

read more | digg story

Twitter / Craig Cmehil: irony of our days via @Scob...

2008-05-28T12:15:00.001+02:00

Robert posted this tweet about how he got 30 comments within a really short period of time about Twitter vs. Jaiku, the irony when I clicked the link was that the conversation was taking place in FriendFeed, can we say Hugh was right on?

"irony of our days via @Scobleizer http://tinyurl.com/6x7yph twitter vs. jaiku in friendfeed"

(Via Twitter / Craig Cmehil: irony of our days via @Scob....)

Technorati Tags:
community, gapingvoid, hugh macleod, jaiku, Scoble, social, twitter, friendfeed

Amazon.de: Enterprise 2.0: Die Kunst, loszulassen: Willms Buhse, Sören Stamer: Bücher

2008-05-26T09:24:00.001+02:00

For my German speaking readers I wanted to share something that has just come out. I was asked awhile back if I would be willing to contribute to a new book, a collection of essays around the topic or "myth" of Enterprise 2.0. Many I know do not actually like the term Enterprise 2.0 but it does seem to be the best way of describing the idea around bringing consumer based concepts and technology into the workplace through enterprise driven software.

If you are reading this blog chances are you are already aware of many of the concepts around Web 2.0 and the idea of collaboration and sharing but perhaps not yet aware of the impact of such concepts can have in the workplace.

The book contains case studies from SAP (me), Vodafone and Nokia as well as great bits from Andrew McAfee, David Weinberger and others.

"Wie können Web 2.0-Technologien als Werkzeug für Unternehmen sinnvoll genutzt werden? Wie müssen sich Unternehmenskulturen verändern, um als Enterprise 2.0 bestehen zu können? Lohnt es sich für das Management, loszulassen und Kontrolle abzugeben? Mit Fachbeiträgen namhafter internationaler Autoren wie Andrew McAfee, Don Tapscott, David Weinberger, Ralf Reichwald, Michael Koch sowie Case Studies von Nokia, SAP, Vodafone u.v.m.
Das zentrale Prinzip des Kapitalismus, die traditionelle Arbeitsteilung, ist nicht mehr zeitgemäß. Der Gegenentwurf heißt Enterprise 2.0. Klare Arbeitsabläufe, Hierarchien und eine Individualisierung der Arbeit haben mittlerweile an Bedeutung verloren. Wissen, Kommunikation, die daraus entstehenden Netzwerke und eine darauf abgestimmte Unternehmensstruktur zählen mehr denn je. Unternehmen haben die Chancen und Entwicklungspotenziale des Web 2.0 für die eigene Organisation erkannt. Neue Internet-Technologien ermöglichen eine aktive Kommunikation und Mitgestaltung im World Wide Web und schaffen eine Kultur des offenen Dialogs zwischen Partnern, Kunden und Mitarbeitern. Ein reger Wissensaustausch, Feedback und Kritik fördern Kreativität und Produktinnovationen. Enterprise 2.0 bietet die Chance, Grenzen zu überwinden."

(Via Amazon.de: Enterprise 2.0: Die Kunst, loszulassen: Willms Buhse, Sören Stamer: Bücher.)

My contribution to the book starts on page 181, a case study of SAP: Der Aufbau von Communities Im unternehmen.

Viele sind der Ansicht, das SAP alt, verschlossen und ablehnend gegenüber Innovationen eingestellt sei. Es sei sogar ein Unternehmen, das Software entwickelt, ohne sich um die Anwender zu kümmern, Diese Ansicht ist falsch. Und es ist spannend zu beweisen, wie falsch diese Behauptung in den letzten vier Jahren gewesen ist...

It was a lot of fun taking part in this one, especially since the results were then in German and it was my first German book project.

Technorati Tags:
collaboration, community, Enterprise, experience, sap

Colony Collapse Disorder and where does it leave us?

2008-05-22T12:33:00.001+02:00

"Colony Collapse Disorder (or CCD) is a poorly understood phenomenon in which worker bees from a beehive or Western honey bee colony abruptly disappear. While such disappearances have occurred throughout the history of Apiculture, the term 'Colony Collapse Disorder' was first applied to a drastic rise in the number of disappearances of Western honey bee colonies in North America in late 2006."

(Via Colony Collapse Disorder - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.)

I'm still following this topic and it just seems to get more and more distressing. The USDA has created a "Questions and Answers" section and as expected of a government site they put the fear of economy into us by throwing out rather scary big numbers.

"Bee pollination is responsible for $15 billion in added crop value, particularly for specialty crops such as almonds and other nuts, berries, fruits, and vegetables. "

Granted as the dollar seems to keep sinking that is a major concern but what I found more interesting was the following,

"The scientific literature has several mentions of honey bee disappearances—in the 1880s, the 1920s and the 1960s. While the descriptions sound similar to CCD, there is no way to know for sure if the problems were caused by the same agents as today's CCD.

There have also been unusual colony losses before. In 1903, in the Cache Valley in Utah, 2000 colonies were lost to an unknown 'disappearing disease' after a 'hard winter and a cold spring.' More recently, in 1995-96, Pennsylvania beekeepers lost 53 percent of their colonies without a specific identifiable cause."

Nature seems to work in cycles and although I can't find anyone mentioning the fact that it looks like every 40 years something seems to cause the bees to disappear I have to wonder if maybe something about the nature of the bee or the genetic makeup itself?

Until I can I find more though I've starting looking for ways in which I as an individual might be able to help - I don't use pesticides and if I did I would avoid them around midday (high activity time for bees seeking nectar), so the NAPPC has been an interesting site to check out and Wikipedia has nice section on "nectar sources".

The challenge though is to find a way to plant more nectar sources and not end up having a swarm of bees around my kids, they just don't seem to match very well.

Technorati Tags:
life, ccd, honeybee

Beginning my adventures in the Venture Capitalist world

2008-05-22T11:41:00.001+02:00

OK, this has been an extremely interesting few days since I last posted about joining the Fellowship program and even though I've already received a few tips for companies to look at I've not actually had my one on one to find out more about what my role will be or how involved I will be - that's coming though!

I have started to hit various blogs from folks who do this though and began looking for some of the "tips" they might have to share and one struck me as just brilliant yet one that I never would have guessed...

"I get the one line description from your web site. For each company, I type in the name.com and read the home page for the 'one liner' of what the company does just to remind me.

Make sure your home page can give me, your customers, and anybody else a speedy understanding of what it is you do."

(Via Important Reminder - Your One Liner.)

It just seems so obvious and yet it never dawned on me, in looking at the websites of the tips I've received I never thought about that and now that I've read this I decided to go back and look again. It truly gives me a complete different impression of the companies, however in some cases I would have passed on by without a second glance but having done the research already I think I would have been missing out on something.

I'm not sure how many of you reading my blog might be involved in this field but I'd love to hear your thoughts on that - is the "one liner" approach the way to go or is it better to take the time to click the "About Us" link? Am I looking at that too literally, perhaps a short paragraph does the trick as well or is this field so hectic that you have to be super fast to process or someone else will scoop them up from under your nose?

The more I look into things the more interesting it gets as well as the more exciting - it reminds me of the films from the 80s showing the "bull pen" on Wallstreet - pure "ordered" chaos!

Technorati Tags:
experience, venture capital

Good things come to those who wait!

2008-05-17T15:06:00.001+02:00

OK not that I don't have many, many, many, many good things in my life but for someone like me who loves hearing about new technologies, new services and the like this one is just "ohhhh so nice!"

The other week I posted this title into Twitter then had quite a few folks ping me via Twitter, email and others means to ask "what" I was talking about and all I could answer was "I can't tell you yet". The reason for this was because I was not sure if this was a public thing or a purely internal thing at work, I work at SAP for those who don't know me.

I made a trip to Walldorf and right now I am on the train heading home, I was in Walldorf for this "thing" as well as for meetings to drive some new ideas for the SAP Developer Network home with my boss and begin formulating plans for SAP TechEd and SAP SAPHHIRE next week.

Thursday night I had been invited to a reception to celebrate and welcome a new group of people to a program started last year at SAP, the program is with SAP Ventures, the SAP venture capitalist group.

SAP Ventures helps build industry-leading companies by partnering with outstanding entrepreneurs and top-tier venture capital firms. We are information technology investors who focus on enterprise products and services. In the 10 years since we were founded by Hasso Plattner, Chairman and co-Founder of SAP AG, SAP Ventures has invested in over 75 companies.

Our seven person investment team has more than 60 years of combined software experience as operators, entrepreneurs, industry analysts and investors. We have over 35 years of direct investing experience. The entire team believes in involving ourselves deeply with our companies. We are open and flexible in our thinking and believe there is the potential for great companies and solutions in a wide variety of spaces. This is reflected in our willingness to investigate opportunities across all stages, industries and market segments on a global basis.

Andreas Weiskam organized the program last year and as he told me, this is to "formalize the working relationships we have with many of the experts and topic leaders within the vast SAP organization." I've been helping the group off and on, as were the others for the past year with opinions and thoughts on various new technologies. That year, unknown to myself and the others, was actually something like a "test" to gage the working relationships and this time around a select few were nominated to join as a new SAP Ventures Fellow. The Fellowship program is a year long program where we get the opportunity to learn more about the world of Venture Capitalists as well as learn what types of things SAP, in particular look for in regards to new technologies. We'll be given many opportunities such as seeing the process through from start to finish; looking at various companies, filtering out those which apply and which do not, researching the selected companies, a chance perhaps of even hearing the "pitch" and of course being given the chance to even explore our avenues of interest and potentially recommending companies to the group for review as well.

Last night was a fantastic evening, lots of chat and conversations, great wine and food and meeting new people. Their are a total of 15 Fellows in the program from around the world so I'm very excited for the chance and opportunity and look forward to seeing how things go forward from here.

Oh and no I'm not opposed to recommendations ;-) you can email me, catch me on Twitter or even on SDN. I'm not 100% sure on the details yet I will be having my first "1 on 1" in the next week or so and from there I will be sure to find out the who, what, where and how on moving forward. I do plan to share as much as possible as I go along, well at least those things that are for public consumption. Got a "pitch" or know someone who does? Watch this space for more to come!

This is a new adventure for me and it will be fun finding ways to combine this with my day to day job and tasks with SDN! A challenge I look very much forward to.

Technorati Tags:
Enterprise, experience, sap, venture capital, sapphire08, sapteched08

SAP events, reloaded...

2008-05-09T14:41:00.001+02:00

4 years of events from around the world!

The people of SAP TechEd

2008-05-08T17:55:00.001+02:00

SAP TechEd is an amazing event and the people in it make it even more so, here's a look back from 2005 to 2007 across 9 events!

SAP Sapphire, reloaded

2008-05-07T08:43:00.002+02:00

SAP Sapphire is a huge event taking place in the US then in Europe, this year the US one is in Orlando and had 15,000+ attendees and it's the starting point for the SAP Blogger program.

I attended the US one in Atlanta last year and had an eye opening experience in terms of how far SAP goes to make executives available to industry, Analysts, Press, Bloggers, etc. amazing and something I've never experienced with any other company of this size.

I'll be in the Berlin event in about a week's time so if you are there come by and say hello!

The following is a little "flashback" to Atlanta...

Animoto, simply sweet and cool!

2008-05-06T16:23:00.001+02:00

First attempt and this service is very cool, will have some fun with this at SAP TechEd this year I think!

Organic Bees Surviving Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) » Celsias

2008-05-05T21:15:00.001+02:00

Here's another bit in the regarding the "bee problem"...

"I’m on an organic beekeeping list of about 1,000 people, mostly Americans, and no one in the organic beekeeping world, including commercial beekeepers, is reporting colony collapse on this list. The problem with the big commercial guys is that they put pesticides in their hives to fumigate for varroa mites, and they feed antibiotics to the bees. They also haul the hives by truck all over the place to make more money with pollination services, which stresses the colonies."

(Via Organic Bees Surviving Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) » Celsias.)

Now I've been following this topic not just because I love honey but because the idea of harvesting honey has been around for a real long time,

"It is not clear when man became an apiculturist (beekeeper), but there is a wealth of archeological evidence that as far as 4,000 years ago B.C., Egyptians kept bees in clay pots and used not only honey, but propolis and wax. In fact, the honeybee was the symbol of Lower Egypt."

(Via Honeybee History.)

And because of the potential implications a lack of the little suckers can mean to our planet, our food and our survival.