Thanks to tahir.z for adding me in the blog it forward (BIF) challenge. I enjoyed his BIF and the great pictures from Turkey. I finally found some time after end of year and fourth quarter activities to write this. For information about this challenge please check out this blog.
I have only recently taken an active part on SCN, but have been using it as a great resource for SAP related information since the SDN early days. I had the opportunity to have a coffee with SCN real founder nominee and serial entrepreneur etay.gafni at Copa Café in Palo Alto last year and got some great stories from him which convinced me to take a more active part in the community.
About me,
I am a husband and the father of two wonderful children, a son aged 12 and daughter who is 8 years old. They keep me occupied when I am not working or on business trips.
I am the co-founder and CTO of Neptune Software. Currently I live in Oslo, the capital of Norway. The city’s population has nearly reached a million people and is the fastest growing in Europe. The city was founded around year 1000 AD as a trading post for the Vikings. Luckily for dj.adams and his fellow Bluefin colleagues we have stopped raiding the UK shores – for the time being.
Here is a picture of our Oslo office view of the royal castle and the National Theater. You can also make out the famous Holmenkollen ski jump in the background hills if you study it closely.
I started my career as a java developer in the late '90s in Stockholm for a Swedish startup – Proceedo. We developed an e-procurement cloud solution and at the time our greatest competitor was (the now SAP acquired) Ariba. Proceedo still lives and is owned by Visma, and unfortunately I believe some of my old J2EE code still runs on their server :smile:
After the burst of the IT bubble in 2001 I moved back to Norway and worked for Price Waterhouse Coopers and IBM before my entrepreneurial drive once more hurled me into starting up LogTech with a few SAP savvy friends. We quickly grew and got acquired by Ciber.I worked there for five years before I finally decided to start Neptune Software in 2011 together with my best friend Ole Andre. The fundamental idea behind the company, improving the user experience for SAP end users, was something we had worked on for quite a while and had prototyped both Flex and Silverlight solutions. Finally, the emergence of HTML5 as the defacto framework for modern UX in the enterprise convinced us to quit our “day jobs” and start the fantastic ride Neptune has been.
A picture of me and my co-founder at our booth taken at TechEd Las Vegas last year by none other than john.moy3
What do you most enjoy on SCN?
As stated above, for years I only used SCN/SDN as a source for information when working as a developer in SAP projects. After several SAP Inside Tracks and TechEd’s last year meeting the people of SCN in real life I have realized that the community is much, much more. Coming from a country where the SAP world is small and where everyone knows everyone it was fascinating to experience the same community feeling on a global scale.
There are a few fantastic things I would like to mention about this community that took place in 2013.
bill.mcdermott has started blogging, twittering and communicating directly with the foot soldiers of the SAP world! This shows the strength of SCN as well as great leadership in my opinion. I hope he will take the BIF challenge from applebyj (just adding some extra pressure :grin: )
Another amazing thing was the open sourcing of UI5. I believe that the community effort played a key role in that decision and I will mention a few people that deserves it (there are many more, but these spring to mind) roel.vandenberge for his video at SITNL, jan.penninkhof2 and john.patterson3 for their important “open source SAPUI5” blogs and skemp for the t-shirt stunt.
Lastly I want to give credit to andreas.kunz as he has really shown that you can get great and honest feedback from the insiders of SAP to the community.
Speaking at SITNL
What you are you doing at the moment?
I have spent the last week in Singapore which turned out to be a very interesting place. I was lucky to get the CEO of JCS who is a native Singaporean to show me around places I would never have stumbled upon myself so that was a great privilege. It was my first trip to this fantastic city where green lungs and historical buildings co-exists in harmony with ultra-modern skyscrapers. I also attended the Inside Track there and held a presentation. The event was hosted by energetic SAP Mentor jansirani.murugesan <- thank you for a great event!
Picture of this fabulous city
I also had the opportunity to do some business deals. Just hope the people in the back are not laughing at what I just signed!
Blog it Forward
Then it is my turn to throw down the glove I guess..
I would like to blog it forward to the following people:
ole-andr.haugen (He needs to get started using this community actively as well :twisted: )
andreas.kunz (Our UI5 guru of this community)
patrizia.rossi2(New member of the fantastic TechEdge team)
As for questions, I only got one: What is the coolest thing you plan in 2014? The rest you can pick from the very first SCN BIF here:
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