SAP Insiders Conference - Las Vegas

This turned out to be a fairly funny story.  I was working away on a Friday afternoon trying to finish some things up and head out for my typical evening swim before getting home for dinner and the Director of Accounting swung by my desk and asked what I was doing on Sunday with a conspicuous smile on his face.  I replied that I was just planing on the usual weekend stuff.  He then informed me that I should make some plans to fly to Vegas on Sunday to attend this week long conference for SAP.  They had a cancellation in their group and needed someone to attend as they had already payed the $4000 registration fee.  I made a quick call to Tara and then started booking plane tickets and hotel rooms as fast as I could.  Two days later, on Sunday, here I was above at the Bellagio.  Well, actually, because I registered late I had to stay across the highway at some Hilton rather than in the Bellagio with all the other conference goers.  But, at least I came over here for all the conference meetings and in any case it was quite a change from the blizzard in Colorado!

Vegas is actually quite an weird place to go mostly by yourself without friends or family.  Also, I was reminded how sad it actually is to see people playing slots and seemingly not care if they win or lose but just waste their lives away pounding buttons and smoking.  I was able to walk around and see some pretty fun sites around the hotels like the above which is apparently a multi-teired chocolate fountain that flows from the second story down to the main floor.  Pretty crazy!

This was a entire ceiling made from hand-blown glass dishes or flowers that were all different shapes and sizes.  There had to be a thousand or more of them hanging up there.  Very cool.

This is the front of Paris Paris as I took a bit of a stroll down the strip to see different hotels.

Lastly, this is the famous Bellagio fountain show that goes off about every 30 minutes to music.  I think this show was with Lady Gaga's song, Bad Romance.  The conference ended up being pretty good, but was certainly very technical in nature.  I was mostly over my head trying to hang on in learning about SAP S4/HANA technology and SAP Finance changes based on the new technology.  Pretty fun trip overall, but I think it would have been more fun with family or more friends along.