Executive Conferences: SAP (and Celebrities) in the House

So you’re just back from a conference? Who’d you see? No, no, I don’t mean other CIOs, industry experts or inspirational gurus?I mean, who played?

If you went to Sapphire, SAP’s user conference, last year you could have seen rockers Lenny Kravitz and Sheryl Crow, and last year’s InformationWeek conference featured Jay Leno. This year those conferences featured Aerosmith and David Spade, respectively. Dana Carvey made an appearance at CTIA Wireless in February, and Jerry Lee Lewis’s son wowed CXO Media’s own Enterprise Value Retreat in January by playing piano with his knees, elbows and toes. In March Ray Charles entertained a Fortune conference, and surf music king Dick Dale rocked a wireless conference.

So you might want to rethink your criteria for choosing conferences to attend. But be prepared. As one participant from last year’s Sapphire said, “Lenny was great, but it was kind of disturbing when he started to yell, ’SAP in da house, y’all.’”