With ASUG Tech Con­nect on the hori­zon (Nov. 7 – 9, in New Orleans; reg­is­ter here), ASUG is delight­ed to intro­duce Nerd Exchange, an excit­ing new col­umn from Jele­na Per­fil­je­va and Paul Mod­der­man, The Bor­ing Enter­prise Nerds. Help­ing sub­scribers stay on top of SAP, AI, Cloud, and enter­prise soft­ware news through their hit Bor­ing Enter­prise Nerdlet­ter, Jele­na and Paul are fun­ny, cyn­i­cal, and always inter­est­ing — a breath of fresh air for the enter­prise soft­ware landscape. 

Ahead of their ASUG Tech Con­nect pre­sen­ta­tion and round­table dis­cus­sion, ​“The SAP Skillpoca­lypse: How To Not Become Extinct,” Jele­na and Paul share their feel­ings toward the inau­gur­al event and reflect on what they hope to take away from their first vis­it to New Orleans.

Paul Mod­der­man: ASUG Tech Con­nect. Com­ing up ear­ly Novem­ber. What are your feelings? 

Jele­na Per­fil­je­va: I’m excit­ed, which is an unusu­al state for me. Per­son­al­ly, I’m look­ing for­ward to get­ting back to nor­mal after all these years of COVID dis­rup­tion. It’s not like I want to ​“go back to the island” exact­ly where we left it; the world has def­i­nite­ly changed. We can’t deny that. But I’d like to get back into in-per­son gath­er­ings and con­ver­sa­tions – that’s been lost for a while. 

Paul: Going along with that, it feels like I’m get­ting back my ener­gy. Maybe we’re in a bub­ble of excit­ed nerds, but I feel more zest around this event than I have for oth­er gath­er­ings late­ly. It’s a total­ly new thing! Osten­si­bly, ASUG Tech Con­nect is stand­ing in for on-site SAP TechEd for the U.S. audi­ence… but it’s a dif­fer­ent com­pa­ny run­ning the show, with a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive. The spir­it is in the right place: to breathe new life into SAP techie gatherings. 

Jele­na: You know, I think there might be an issue with peo­ple treat­ing this event like mini-TechEd, and maybe orga­niz­ers want to dis­tance them­selves from that. One is SAP, and one is ASUG. And there’s an advan­tage to that. You can have tru­ly hon­est con­ver­sa­tions and enjoy a more laid-back vibe. What themes are you watch­ing for?

Paul: I am real­ly watch­ing the larg­er thread of inno­va­tion, in two sens­es. In the first sense, because the Ger­man user group, DSAG, pro­vid­ed some very straight­for­ward feed­back to SAP about pric­ing changes and poli­cies around deliv­er­ing inno­va­tions for on-premis­es cus­tomers, announce­ments to which ASUG offered its own response. I think the SAP world is still grap­pling with that and will be for a while. But I also zoom out and look at the tech world at large. What is the eight-hun­dred-pound goril­la in every soft­ware con­ver­sa­tion these days? Arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, or AI. I don’t think any­one is think­ing ​“I’m just going to go to SAP for any and all AI good­ies.” It’s the broad­er thought about what I can do for my enter­prise with AI. Which is way too much to unpack in one short article. 

Jele­na: As a devel­op­er, obvi­ous­ly I’m most inter­est­ed in the devel­op­ment track. But I’m also excit­ed about ASUG round­ta­bles around part­ner rela­tion­ships. This sub­ject can’t quite be dis­cussed the same way at TechEd, so I’m look­ing for­ward to hear­ing cus­tomers and part­ners share thoughts on liv­ing their best life together. 

Paul: It should be easy to hear those shared thoughts, since we’ll be lead­ing a dis­cus­sion on that very sub­ject, ​“Swipe Right on Deep­er Part­ner Capa­bil­i­ties.” But let’s focus on out­comes: What do you want to walk away from Tech Con­nect with? 

Jele­na: New con­nec­tions with inter­est­ing peo­ple. I’d real­ly like to hear some great cus­tomer sto­ries, and what my fel­low nerds are actu­al­ly doing with tech­nol­o­gy. When real peo­ple on the ground share what they strug­gle with, every­one benefits. 

Paul: I think the non-nerd world under­es­ti­mates how much nerds like to get togeth­er and talk nerd shop. There’s this stereo­type, that techie intro­verts just want to be in a dun­geon star­ing at code screens. But it’s not true! Nerds want to talk to each oth­er, and lev­el up their nerdery! (And if they tru­ly want to lev­el up their nerdery, they could check out our ​“SAP Skillpoca­lypse: How To Not Become Extinct” talk.) The ses­sions will prob­a­bly be great, but I’m also pumped to go have din­ner or drinks with folks and swap war stories. 

Jele­na: In-per­son events are serendip­i­tous. You can’t replace the ran­dom con­nec­tions that arise from hear­ing some­one describe a prob­lem they’re fac­ing, know­ing that you’ve tack­led it before and that you can help. Or the oth­er way around! It’s like you don’t have to go hunt­ing for new ideas; they’ll just find you. 

Paul: I’m going to wrap us up with a final thought here. I think the ASUG mar­ket­ing depart­ment made a good nam­ing choice. Tech Con­nect col­ors the mean­ing of the event with a sense of com­mu­nal learn­ing. There will be vision­ar­ies prog­nos­ti­cat­ing with roadmaps and deep exper­tise, and if that’s your thing you’re sure to find it. But the secret ingre­di­ent is atten­dees learn­ing just as much from their peers as any ses­sion leader turbo-nerd. 

To hear more from Paul and Jele­na, be sure to attend their ASUG Tech Con­nect pre­sen­ta­tion and round­table dis­cus­sion, ​“The SAP Skillpoca­lypse: How To Not Become Extinct,” and sub­scribe to both First Five and the Bor­ing Enter­prise Nerdlet­ter.