First, I'd like to thank all of you in the SCN community for your incredibly warm welcome. I'm thrilled to be a part of this great team, especially since I have known many of you for years, both personally and professionally!
I guess the best place to start is to introduce myself. Before I was asked to join the Marketing team and lead Integrated Digital (comprising community, social and sap.com), I was the CEO of a company called Social Media Group. Founded in 2006, we were one of the first pure-play social media agencies in the world, and we worked with many large firms like Ford Motor Company and SAP.
My history with SAP goes back a long way. In 2007, I was asked to attend SAPPHIRE NOW in Vienna as part of the SAP Blogger Program, run by Mike Prosceno. There I met and interviewed Mark Yolton and Craig Cmehil about the SAP Developer Network (now SCN). Shortly afterwards, Mark became our first client at SAP when he asked us to develop some training materials. Later that year we were asked to help SAP Global Marketing put together their first social media strategy, and the rest is history: over the next six years we worked with SAP Corporate & Social Responsibility, Global Communications, North American Marketing, Portfolio Marketing... the list goes on, and also included a project with SCN to set up social channels.
Having the chance to work with such a great group of people over the years was definitely a deciding factor when I was offered the chance to come on board. I am incredibly impressed with my colleagues and teammates (nice! super smart!) and am very much looking forward to working together to help bring our disparate digital properties together into one unified digital experience that delivers relevance and value. I'm also very excited to be a part of such a progressive marketing organization - one that wants to see us move from "order taker" to "business driver" by listening to the voices of the market and our customers.
Up next? Lots of learning and asking questions and getting to know people. I'm also really looking forward to TechEd Las Vegas, coming up in just a few weeks. As you know, this year SCN is ten, so the team has some very special celebrations planned. Hope to see you there!
