Jelena,
Thank you for your comments - Greatly appreciated. Your points and Gretchen's were taken in to consideration and have changed the title of the poll to be clearer (Hopefully).
Regarding my own submissions that were rejected, I am not phased by that but I was certainly surprised. 100% of my job revolves around working with users to get them what they need out of the SAP system. I typically work with at least 3 clients concurrently and focus on certain areas of SAP so I like to think that I know the area better than most, and that includes mentors (which is a topic for another day!) I reached out to my fellow peers (some mentors and some SAP employees and some users...) and they had the same experience as me...
From a user perspective the feedback I got was that SAPPhire was a good place to go where in 1 room they could see all SAP's new toys... With regard to ASUG, it was only attended because it was co-hosted with SAPHire and in general the folks chosen to go were done so as a "thank you" for their efforts - i.e. The perception, rightly or wrongly, is that the annual ASUG event is a party but not much more... From a consultant and the SAP folks that I reached out to (in the SCM space) we were greatly disappointed because there was a lost opportunity to further transfer knowledge to the user community. Myself and a few of my peers (mentors and SAP employees alike) actually like to share our experience with users. We are happy to give back to the community and if someone learns something that they didn't know before then great, all the power to them.
Obviously I have struck a nerve here with several Emerald level folks chiming in and as long as there is mutual respect for each others opinions and feelings then I will keep the debate going.
All the best
Kevin