Convert, a dialog platform

So much for the theory. There is no discourse in the German-speaking SAP community: SAP took its leave from Europe a long time ago with its in-house trade fair Sapphire.

Unfortunately, the promotion and support of open discussion platforms on specific topics, such as an AI conference held by the weekly newspaper Die Zeit, is not being continued. And the much praised and important DSAG annual congress makes a great effort, but also fails to create a dialog between SAP's existing customers and the SAP Executive Board:

The opening talks remain presentations without a chance for follow-up questions - there are no microphones in the hall for the audience for a question-and-answer game (discourse!). The talks are not broadcast live, so they cannot be commented on with Twitter messages (see Sapphire keynotes).

The lack of discourse and an open, honest discussion platform hurts everyone in the SAP community. Existing customers are deprived of the experience and knowledge of other community members.

SAP no longer has a direct communication channel or relationship management with its users: On Facebook, SAP has almost one million subscribers, but when Chief Technology Officer Björn Goerke gives an outstanding keynote at SAP TechEd 2017 in Barcelona, there are only 123 "likes.

This ratio of one million to 123 likes is "spectacular. Where is the dialog, the enthusiasm?

Even to a Sapphire in Orlando, USA, only 10,000 existing SAP customers come. Others are already further ahead in their relationship management: At Dreamforce 2017 in San Francisco, Salesforce welcomed more than 170,000 trailblazers from 91 countries on site and another 10 million prospects online.

It also seems to be easy for other IT companies such as Oracle, Google, etc. to organize conferences with well over 50,000 people. Only for SAP it is obviously impossible to inspire and move masses as well.

We want to remedy this communication deficit, the lack of a discourse culture, together with the successful organizer IT&Media (in future Digital Future Congress):

On March 1, 2018, the Convert congress fair will take place in Frankfurt/M.. There, SAP's existing customers, partners and experts will find an open and transparent dialog platform for SAP topics such as process mining, SAP's licensing puzzle, Hana Roadmap 2020, IoT and AI with SAP Leonardo, cloud and mobile computing including the SAP/Apple partnership and S/7 as well as S/4 robotic process automation.

The exhibitors and experts are interested in a sustainable discourse with SAP users, because the challenges in the future S/4 landscape are complex. This important congress fair is accompanied by E-3 Magazine as content partner.

Information is available on www.convert-frankfurt.de.
Or call me directly: +49/8654-77130-21.

In the spirit of the new Convert dialog platform for the German-speaking SAP community, I look forward to every conversation.

Peter M. Färbinger
Editor in Chief E-3 Magazine