One of the more curious incidents of my career occurred at the recent Sapphire as SAP invited a group of freeloading bloggers to its annual event in addition to the usual freeloading press and analyst corps. Like a too old, scraggly wet dog without an owner, I was willingly adopted by the bloggers, which I would like to call the "Enterprise Street Irregulars."

Our Sherlock Holmes is Jeff Nolan, who in a prior life as a VC for SAP is now heading up SAP's Apollo Group with a keen mind and interest in disruptive technologies (Wikis, Blogs, Web 2.0, a.) Watson is Mike Prosceno, who is a VP with marketplace communications at SAP.

Like a scruffy band of adolescents, which at heart we all are, Jeff tried not to control us but rather give us the same access to executives and customers that is had by FAGI (Forrester, AMR Research, Gartner, IDC.) So as a group we have fanned out and looked at Sapphire with the eyes of folks having different agendas and points of view than that of traditional media and analysts. SocialText, a company selling Wiki and collaboration technology, has set up a Sapphire Wiki and posts are being tagged and tracked in del.icio.us and Technorati.

What has been most interesting about meeting and boozing with this group was the ability to jell and intellectually riff off of each other with a startling quickness and rapport. And unlike my past two professions—journalist and analyst—there was a large desire to share information, ideas, etc. with a healthy but constructive give and take. Rather than each of us wanting the "big scoop or idea," we want our fellow bloggers to post cool stuff that we can refer and link to (less work and writing for the rest of us.)

The tentativeness that professionals often have when engaging each other never came to the fore with the Irregulars as we dealt with each other as people and individuals rather than employees and titles. We were all looking for answers and more than willing to share our IP in a way that would never occur in a traditional job and media.

By banding together, we were able to see first hand the power of Metcalfe's Law, which states that the power of the network increases by the square of the number of users. This effect and the fact that a strange combination of interest, technology, altruism, "need to get a life," and whatever has spawned an eclectic group of people who have started to blog, collaborate, and analyze the enterprise-software space.

One manifestation of this was the attentiveness of SAP executives to the Irregulars and who wanted to follow up with many of us on a variety of topics. Again, an interesting phenomenon for a group that supposedly has no clout.

By bringing us together, SAP, in effect, has cemented the pair bond between an array of unique and sharp thinkers (this writer excluded.) Thank you SAP for the opportunity. You may not realize what you have unleashed.

Erik Keller is principal of technology consultancy, Wapiti LLC. This post is related to sapphire06.