Reflecting back on my SAP community journey over last 7 years, and now as I land up to become SAP mentors, which to me is a huge honor.
How it all began and first blog?
It all began just few months after I joined SAP to drive the Enterprise Performance Management topics when my then boss Nenshad Bardoliwalla asked all of us to start getting busy blogging and engaging in SAP community, post-acquisition of Outlooksoft, which is now SAP BPC. I took this advise very seriously and I wrote my first blog post as junior blogger “SAP gets serious about EPM” and got the privilege of it getting reviewed by Marilyn Pratt. At first I was surprised by the frank feedback from Marilyn, but really understood how the content we publish in SAP community needs to be educational, focusing on some amount of details – technical/functional and blogs should have an opinion associated with this. Most importantly it should encourage exchanges of comments.
How the journey has helped to get our solutions broader reach through SAP community ?
From then on, the journey has been the most fruitful, especially given I was based in India, and the online SAP Community channel to me was a great way to engage with global customers, partners, consultants and fellow sap employees.
We ( ryan.leask prakash.darji2 and I ) started the group, in those days we had it called Business Process Expert community and I was effectively the moderator of the group. WE ALL REALLY BELIEVE THAT SCN HELPED THE TOPIC/SOLUTIONS EXTENSIVELY.
My engagement further got fruitful as we also started group as the product netweaver based product got great traction in the market, and the need was to get the information shared and discussed very effectively. One of the famous blogs of our group was from Ryan Leask which was the most hot blog of that year, and got maximum attention and discussions.
My focus since was on more business process expertise, I continued on the journey and the blog that I wrote on Best Practices Planning using SAP BPC gets attention even now.
One of the best content blog that came out of our group was from Jens Kroner which is the all in one blog and most sort after in the BPC world those days.
Beyond Core Solution area
After the initial focus, I tried writing some generic blogs that were beyond my topic, covering SAP Teched keynote by Vishal Sikka in the pre-HANA era, as well as shared the insights of India’s president APJ Abdul Kalaam’s visit to SAP Labs India on Creative Leadership
Other forms of engagement in SAP community has been by speaking at SAP Teched, getting involved in some of the activities that Marilyn Pratt invites us to join as well as helping/supporting consultants who are seeking information in the solution area, reaching to me from across the globe.
One attempt that we made was to encourage others to blog, and shared a blog “I too want to become a famous blogger”.
At SAP Labs Bangalore, as part of the tracks, we have been encouraging developers,product managers, architects and designers, who have been often closed, to start sharing their deep knowledge. Couple of examples of quality amazing blogs as part of that are Journey of Algorithm by balaji.govindan and Internet of Things and Design by jayawant.tewari
In the last few years, I have tried to focus more and more on quality, and also on the broader SAP. I was very happy to see the interest from my SAPPHIRENOW blogs on 10 Key Takeaways, as many people want a quick recap of the important content from an event as big as sapphirenow.
Thanking people in the journey
I really thank The specified item was not found. , Nenshad Bardoliwalla, sanjay.poonen jonathan.becher jhansi.rani , mark.finnern2 jon.reed applebyj jarret.pazahanick2 , mark.chalfen ramesh.ramaswamy2 and many more who have directly or indirectly supported me in this community journey….
Finally it all comes to next step in the journey, as being a sap.mentor and hoping I can continue contributing to the SAP community in newer avenues..
