First (second) Solution Manager Seminar a success

Yesterday we concluded the first updated Solution Manager seminar (see Events link at right) in Frankfurt.  (Actually, we weren’t in Frankfurt, but in a suburb along the Main River called Höchst.)  John Krakowski from SAP, Marcel van den Top (recently independent with the breakup of BearingPoint in Europe), and I had a great time meeting European colleagues – and one Australian.

It seemed like the audience was made up principally of consultants; however, there were some interesting customers as well.  People had a complete range of Solution Manager backgrounds, from one attendee with no experience at all to experienced contractors looking for detailed technical hacks.  I wish we could be all things to all people, but we have to shoot somewhere in the middle with these things.  Sigh….  But we came away feeling great about the content we delivered.  We were able to discuss and demo new Solution Manager content such as the Business Process Change Analyzer, the Custom Development Management Cockpit (Marcel did a great job with that one), and things you can now do with the workcenters.

I still experience some frustration with the inconsistent “look and feel” as you pass from the workcenters to the SAP GUI and back, and I hope that Solution Manager customers participate in their local user group Influence Councils to provide this feedback to SAP, since I know I’m not the only one who feels that way.  (In addition, my laptop has issues with going from workcenters to the SAP GUI – specifically, when I try to access a GUI window from the workcenter, the GUI window flashes, bleeps at me, and immediately closes.  I’m running Windows XP via VMWare Fusion on a MacBook Pro, and I think I have all GUI and browser settings correct, but if anyone has any thoughts, please let me know.)

Next stop:  Philadelphia, my home city, July 15-17.  Please join us!

After the conference was over, Marcel and I shared a cab to the airport.  He was to return to his customer in Paris, and I picked up a rental car at Hertz to drive to Switzerland.  I am spending two days in “retreat” on the Swiss Riviera, in Montreux.  The weather is spectacular – I could not have asked for better.  I arrived at 5:30 Wednesday afternoon.  The view from my hotel room is amazing:

(The hotel room itself leaves a bit to be desired for a “four-star” hotel, but they have free internet and movies – and did I mention the view?)

Montreux is in the northeast corner of Lake Geneva (Lac Léman here in Europe).  The sun is warm, the air is cool, and I am writing this from a bench along a walkway on the lakeshore.  It is a bit hazier today than when I took the picture yesterday, but since I’ve experienced many cold and rainy Junes in Europe, I cannot complain!

Tomorrow I will drive through the Swiss and French Alps to visit old friends in the Ardèche region of France.  I have not seen them in thirteen years, and I am looking forward to spending the next few days meeting children who were born since my last visit, drinking excellent cheap co-op Gamay, eating goat cheese, and probably thinking little about Solution Manager.

Lots of work planned for when I get back to the States, though, so stay tuned for updates.  And as always, please leave feedback under the Comments link.  A plus tard!