enterpriseGeeks

Bridges never burn

Well here I am, once again writing a life changing moment in an post to so many people that I know out there. I’ve done this type of post before but I’m not sure I’ve done it with as many happy thoughts in my head swirling around distracting and exciting me at the same time.

Over the years I’ve done a lot of things, I’ve tried a lot of things and I’ve experienced a lot of things. I have no regrets; it’s something that I am extremely proud that I can honestly say! So what am I babbling about now?

Well as of February 1, 2012 I’ve started a new job at a new company, many of you will know the company and many of you will probably either laugh or stare right now with wide eyes. I’ve decided after long and careful thought to rejoin SAP as a Technology Evangelist.

Evangelism is no strange term to me and I’ve always been extremely happy being able to sit down with the non-believers and show them that all that marketing hoopla is actually based on reality! So coming back to work at SAP right now where the number of non-believers has grown recently is a challenge that I am eager to take on!

HANA, Mobile, Cloud, Gateway, the list goes on in terms of the technologies that I will be dealing with and I can’t wait to get my fingers into the mix and see what can be done and push the limits even further!

The past 10 years has been a strange ride for me, from moving to Germany to getting married to having children to getting divorced to changing jobs from one industry to another to making my own start-up and selling it to joining another start-up to working in development, community, communications, influencer relations.

Interestingly enough though, in my professional life there has always been a constant about what I do and how I do it and it’s always revolved around passion, motivation and dedication to something I believe it. So when the opportunity came up late last year with SAP I eagerly entered the conversation and as I learned more about what is happening and what is coming down the pipeline I simply found it harder and harder not to say yes. I’ve watched SAP change so much over the past several years and it looks to be changing even more as we speak!

Now is the time when I’ll be especially curious about what my friend and mentor Dennis Howlett has to say and of course Jon Reed, and of course what they say together. I’ll also be looking at every possible angle I can to convince another friend Vinnie Mirchandani that innovation is taking place and then the list goes on and on with all of the Enterprise Irregulars and of course my own buds over at the Enterprise Geeks.

It’s still the very early stages of the job and I’ve a lot of catching up to do on all sorts of things such as HANA, and there is a lot of stuff – have you seen all of this??

• HANA Blog  https://www.experiencesaphana.com/community/learn/experts
• Twitter: www.twitter.com/sapinmemory
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/hanabysap
• Youtube: www.youtube.com/saptechnology
• Slideshare: www.slideshare.net/hanabysap
• LinkedIn  Group: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=3683024&trk=myg_ugrp_ovr
•  HANA Microsite: www.experiencesaphana.com

Not to mention the Mobile things, which Sami and I will be reconnecting on the “Mobile World of SAP” podcast. Then there is Gateway and so many other projects to find out about!

Ones you may never have even heard about like Process Orchestration!

• LinkedIn group: http://www.linkedin.com/groups/SAP-NetWeaver-Process-Orchestration-4153845
• Tour Demo: http://www.sap.com/asset/index.epx?id=6696492d-ca36-40fc-9c76-57e68f6405ac&name
• Video eBook: http://www.sap.com/community/ebook/2010_10_SAP_ClearVideo/index.html
• SAP Insider article: http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/go/portal/prtroot/docs/library/uuid/20a80d40-dbda-2e10-7d93-e0d2e517bd50?QuickLink=index&overridelayout=true

It’s truly an exciting time to be into Technology and be at a company with so many things moving forward! I’m overwhelmed but not for long and I’ll do my best to bring it to all of you as quickly and easily and plainly as humanly possible!

In just 3 short days I’ve seen and heard about things that folks like Ed Herrmann and Dan McWeeney would say “let me at it” and folks like Anne Petteroe would say I’m in and even folks all the way over in India like Abesh Bhattacharjee would go nuts to get their hands on.

Expect to start hearing a lot more from me as the days go on!

Leaders

A leader leads by example, not by force. ~Sun Tzu

From the Dortmund Zoo

Such a majestic creature deserves better. I just saw this on Facebook from some friends and immediately not only had to share it but felt the need to do another step and post it as well. When I see things like this I realize the real power and value of social networks and how we as individuals can not only make a difference but encourage others to do as well. Be a hero and do your part whether it is for this or something else but speak up and take a stand!

http://www.pharside.co.uk
Have your say on Twitter, use hashtag #GiveItHorns

Winter is not a time to stop working.

With just 20 minutes to spare before my Midnight deadline for 2011 I finalized and have now made available for purchase my first in a set of photo books describing the crazy complex world of this information technologist! I do hope you enjoy the images and for a limited time since I made the deadline there is of course a discount on each purchase!

Purchase direct on Lulu.com – Vol 1

Flash preview:

The Cracks are starting to show!

I’ve been gone from the SAP world for awhile now but I doubt I’ll ever be completely gone – too much of my blood is still in the veins of the Developer network. So when I saw all the back and forths about the recent “delay” of the relaunch of the new platform I decided it was about time I chimed back in a little on the topic.

So to set things a bit here I want to point out that over the years a lot of thought, energy and myself went into the platform and community and so it does hold special meaning to me which is why I can’t be 100% negative or positive about this announcement but I do think some things need to be said if for no other reason than I need to voice it to get it out of my system.

Mark posted and probably one of the hardest posts he had to write about delaying the launch…

It’s an understatement to say that the decision to delay the launch was not taken lightly… it was really difficult, nearly excruciating after so much time and work has gone into design, build, migration, testing.  But, despite extraordinary efforts by our core SCN team, our partners in SAP IT, vendors/consultants, and key stakeholders, we don’t feel that the new platform is of high enough overall quality to launch to our community members. With a project of this size, there are literally thousands of moving parts, and we need to feel absolutely convinced that every aspect of the site meets our high standards. It is making progress but doesn’t meet those standards now, so we’ve identified what is needed to get it there, and we’re actively engaged around the clock in fixing those issues so we can deliver the new site to you in early 2012.

Much respect to Mark for making the tough decision, they are never easy. Especially when you have over 2 million people now so hyped up about the new platform.  However, with any major decision like this others will pick up on it and my friend and mentor Dennis did. He wrote a piece on his ZDNet blog talking about it and how this was a “fail” for SAP.

The black lashes started at this point it seems. The SAP community is a strong willed and strong mined group of individuals with an intense loyalty to each other and the hard working folks behind the community and my hat goes off to them, however I think Dennis is right and I am shocked and how much leeway the community is actually giving the team for this monumental failure in project management! I can understand Mark being upset with Dennis’ post

Especially sharp and biting criticism came via a very negative ZDnet blog.  Part of the reason for this very blog from me is an attempt to fill-in the gaps in information in order to satisfy that type of tough critique and others that might go un-written.  I hope my follow-on blog helps somewhat, although I’m not expecting that I can answer every criticism adequately enough to satisfy all of the critics despite the length and scope of this.

which he posted in his follow up post.  Again major kudos to Mark for his follow up and as some comments say, he should have lead with this one but…. “water under the bridge”

What I really want to get to and say is that I hope that everyone is truly looking at this whole debacle as what it really is… and it’s hard for me to say because I have friends involved on the team… it’s a FAILURE! No other real way to look at it. From a Project Management perspective who doesn’t know they have critical errors two weeks before go live? Yet still talks about how great the go live will be? I’m not saying this to be mean or point fingers I’m saying this because when you are dealing with a living breathing entity a mistake like this has to be seen for what it is and you have to learn from it. How many communities have ever attempted what SAP has here with this relaunch?

So to restate my stance now, I believe it was the right decision. I believe the team is doing it’s best and has the best intentions in mind, I believe Mark has done the best he can to show open communication and transparency. I believe this is a massive FAILURE.

Several comments talk about forgiving and quality coming first and of course the community is about the content and the people but what about credibility and the open communication on all levels and not just from the man at the top himself? Martin picked up on several of these points as well in his post.  As well as in his comments to Dennis on the ZDNet post.

HOWEVER …. Until Friday, SAP and the Community managers had presented the upgrade as a given. There is a credibility gap, and they will be given much less wriggle room by even me (one of their more ardent supporters) next time.

As the enterprise continues to embrace community I think this is a critical statement. In the past as a user of the technology you never really had a voice yet now you do and that voice gives you a lot of opportunities… SAP has been a leader in giving it’s Ecosystem the voice so now they need to take extra special care to ensure certain levels of credibility with their communications. I remember over the years the ghost writers for executives and yet SAP was one of the first who showed that our own execs (e.g. Shai Agassi) were not only willing to write but to do it also from 35,000 feet while on a flight.

So where and when did the process really break down? Why was SSO and Security not high priority items that should have been in place prior to even people entering as beta testers? Why did Thomas not mention any of these problems in the eGeeks podcast? Are they that critical? It tends to make one question the transparency and updates given or is Thomas just so comfortable with tech that he subconsciously skipped right over it? He did however mention SAP would be the largest implementation of the platform and also that a complete subset was created just based on the bugs but still he gave no indication of the problems shared with the broader community.

Should we be forgiving – of course the team is working hard however we have to learn and hope they learn from this as well. Mark even addresses this point:

Some will ask: Who’s responsible for this delay?  Who needs to be held accountable?  Who can we point a finger at for this delay?  Easy answer: the buck stops here, with me.

Which again I think is great but I don’t want to blame I would rather see a “lessons learned” as a result, SAP has constantly been used as a showcase of “how to do it right” so now I think this is another opportunity to show what they learned from such a massive undertaking. Of course I also want it to be called what it is but that’s because sometimes the harsh reality is what will help others in the future when they begin to plan or move forward with the continued evolution.

While many people are under the impression that Google+ is just another social network that will compete with Facebook, apparently they are wrong. According to Nikesh Arora, Chief Business Officer at Google, Google+ wants to allow social elements to be brought into all of the products and services that are offered by Google. Google+ is aiming to integrate other services like YouTube as well as ‘direct connect’ being included in their search business.

So rather than merely trying to gather people together and keep them all on one site, Google+ is much more than that. The idea is that there will be social signals integrated across all of Google’s products. People who are surfing the web, from sites like http://www.partypoker.fr to live news feeds are likely to eventually end up on something that is related to Google. When they do, they will then be able to access a whole world of possibilities that they can use while still being connected to the same main site.

However, there are still some features of Google+ that will inevitably compete with some features of Facebook, but this seems to be unavoidable with any social networking site. According to Arora, the way that the web is developing today is heading much more towards the social side of things rather than being information-based. This means that users will have to provide more personal information to such sites if they are going to get the most out of social products.

Consumers these days are based around trust and convenience and that is basically the choice that they must make. They must decide to trust the web company to store information about themselves, because they are going to be provided with a convenient and enjoyable service.

Sunset does not mean an end!

I had a phone call the other day from the King HOPper himself, Kartik. A good friend and recent writing sensation from India whom I’ve known for years. His first question was “how are you doing”, mine the same. However, as always with Kartik I realized he’s doing something I used to – doing what he loves to do and wants to do and bringing like minded people along with him…. it really got me thinking about motivation, being motivated and re-finding the motivation. I made Kartik a deal either I kick it back in gear by the 1st of December or I come to spend 3 weeks in India with him – I almost decided to balk and lose on purpose but I’m a gambler in many senses of the word and decided with so many friends out there enjoying Bangalore right now it was time to kick things back in gear.

I may not post or even record right on Friday but I will post once a week from now on and the 24 Hr Marathon is still on – date suggestions?

The podcast is my little rant on “motivation”

1. Fast Talkin   –  Kevin MacLeod   –  Scoring: Noire
2. I Can’t Help  -  Bosco and Peck   –  The Burden Of A Healthy Mind
3. Una Vida (One Life) – Lawrence Blatt  -  Fibonacci Dream