Special Thanks To Thomas, Charlotte, Daisy, Lily and Oliver

Last week was SAP week on monkchips. I have a couple of posts before I am done on related content but I wanted to take this opportunity to thank Thomas Otter and his family for their kindness.

I first met Thomas just a few months ago, and it was really good to meet someone I had a rapport wth at SAP. In fact, he originally invited me to Walldorf (Germany’s Redmond) just to meet a few SAP developers and engineers (you know how RedMonk loves practitioner knowledge!), people like Jeremiah Stone, who has a very bright future in front of him: he is one of those rare breed of technologist and master spin merchant, with. no. BS. That is – he can turn a negative into a positive without having to lie to do it. Trash talk about SAP NetWeaver? “No Problem”, he’d say, that means people are taking it seriously”. But then SAP decided to formalise the meeting as part of its dedicated blogger relations program (nobody else has one, so clueful is a fair adjective, I think).

But this isn’t about Jeremiah. Its about Thomas and family. Its one thing to invite someone to visit your company. Its quite another to invite someone into your home. But that’s what Thomas and Charlotte and their lovely kids did. Charlotte is charm personified, and Oliver helped me sleep in in the morning by crying (that’s a new dadism – its great when you know you don’t need to worry about the little one making the noise. very relaxing.)

So I got to spend some time in Landenburg, a nice little town, with a lovely family. It was far nicer than hotel life, I have to say. I felt like a proper blogger with no expense account…

Thomas “Lance” Otter is currently cycling up a bunch of insane hills, but I know he he has his crackberry with him. So Thomas- thanks.