SAP user groups and community events

SAP user groups are independent associations of the organisations that run SAP software: DSAG in the German-speaking countries, ASUG in the Americas, UKISUG in the United Kingdom and Ireland, and their counterparts in most countries where SAP is used. They exist so that customers can speak to the vendor with one voice, share what works among themselves and educate their own people. Alongside them sit the vendor's own conferences, SAP TechEd and SAP Sapphire, and a layer of local meet-ups run by practitioners. Together they are the social infrastructure of the ecosystem, and for an individual career they are the fastest way to become known for something.

What is an SAP user group?

A membership organisation, usually a non-profit, whose members are customer companies rather than individuals — though partners and consultancies typically have their own membership category, and the people who actually turn up are employees of both. The groups are independent of SAP: they negotiate with it, criticise it publicly when they think it necessary, and are taken seriously precisely because they are not part of it. The best known are DSAG, whose home market is described in the Germany guide, and ASUG in North America; UKISUG, and national groups in the Netherlands, France, Spain, the Nordic countries, Australia, Japan and elsewhere, follow the same model on their own scale, and the groups coordinate with each other through an international network of their executives.

What do user groups actually do?

• Influence. They collect member requirements, vote on priorities and put them in front of the vendor's product organisation through formal channels. Product decisions, licensing terms and maintenance policy are all shaped by this, which is why membership is worth something to a customer company.
• Working groups. Standing groups by area — finance, logistics, HR, technology, security, a given industry — where the people responsible for that topic at member companies meet regularly, compare notes and produce guidance. This is the layer most relevant to an individual: the working group for your area is where the experienced people in it, in your country, already know each other.
• Events. An annual congress or conference, technology days, regional meetings and topic days: presentations by members about their own projects, sessions from the vendor, and the corridors where most of the value is exchanged.
• Education. Publications, surveys of the membership, and guidance documents on topics from licensing to upgrade strategy, often more candid than anything the vendor produces.

What are the vendor's own events?

SAP runs two flagship conferences. SAP Sapphire is the business-facing one: strategy announcements, customer stories and executive keynotes, aimed at the people who decide what to buy. SAP TechEd is the technical one: hands-on sessions, road maps for the platform and the programming models, and the place where developers, architects and Basis people learn what is coming and meet the people building it. Each runs once a year, in person or online. For a consultant, TechEd in particular is where the vocabulary of the next year of projects is set — the sessions on the platform and on clean-core extension tend to become the following year's job descriptions. The vendor also runs smaller hands-on developer events in many cities and an online community where practitioners answer each other's questions and publish what they have built.

Where do the local meet-ups fit?

Below the formal institutions is a layer of practitioner-run events: evening meet-ups in a city, community-organised one-day gatherings with talks by local people, developer groups around a technology, and informal regular tables where SAP people from different employers eat together. They are free or nearly so, they need no company membership, and they are where a junior meets a senior from another firm, where freelancers hear about the next programme before it is posted, and where someone relocating finds their first local contacts. The geography of SAP work shows up here directly: a city with a dense SAP community has a full calendar, and one without has a gap somebody could fill.

Why does participation matter for a career?

Because SAP work is staffed through reputation more than through advertisements. Programmes are staffed by delivery managers asking colleagues who they know; freelancers get their next contract from someone they worked with; senior functional people become known for a topic by speaking about it. A working group, a presented project, a regular meet-up attendance — each puts your name next to your area in the memory of the people who staff work in your city. It is the in-person half of being findable; the public profile is the other half, and the two reinforce each other when the facts match. For someone trying to get in, events are also the most honest source of information about what the work is like, and one of the few ways to get near a project before having one.

How do you start?

• Find out whether your employer is a member of the national user group. If it is, you can usually attend working-group meetings and events at no cost to you; ask who represents your area and go with them.
• Go to one local meet-up in your city, whatever its topic, and say what you do. Most calendars are found through the online community, professional networks and word of mouth from the first person you meet.
• Attend the vendor's technical conference once, in person or online, and treat the session catalogue as a map of what the market will ask for next.
• Then contribute. A short talk about a real problem you solved, a written answer in the community, a working-group document you helped draft. Contribution is what turns attendance into reputation, and it is far rarer than attendance.

The events tell you who is in the room. The SAP World Map is the standing version of that: the SAP professionals of a city, by role and area, visible between the events — including in the cities the American and European user groups serve and the ones that have no group yet.