The SDN diploma

[OttoGold]

Dear sirs,

I wonder, if one is and active contributor (or better to ask about the top one), does he get a diploma or something?

Why do I ask: these days I have helped few people to translate their CVs to help the find a job. And every guy had a certification, training etc. section in his CV. From my point of view any SDN "nice-looking-paper" about "you have contributed X points in Y category during the year Z" would have both subjective and objective (hopefully) value for a man (or a woman).

Through the SDN contributions one learns a lot and creates some real value both for the "world" and for himself (herself).

For me such paper would have the same value as (for example) the graduation exam result paper (which can be considered important in ones life).

By the way... I know quite many people who have their university diploma fframed and hanging on a prominent place on the wall, same with other "important papers". For me any SDN diploma would be such important paper.

I wonder if something like this exist? Existed... or maybe will exist?

What are your opinions, fellow SDNers?

Regards Otto

p.s.: it would not cost SAP that much, wouldn´t it?

[former_member184657 · Accepted solution]

The recognition program started with iPods and moved on to T-shirts to Badges to World Food Program to finally.... suspense.

pk

[OttoGold · Accepted solution]

Ugh, pk, what is this suspense:)) I sense some humor involved but cannot translate the message...

That means there is nothing in stake but the little shiny jpeg, is that so?

Otto

[former_member184657 · Accepted solution]

It just means that nothing has been announced yet (as far as I know) and hence it remains a suspense to all.

pk

[marilyn_pratt · Accepted solution]

@pk And my colleague Laure Cetin will soon be here to "break that suspense" . I see that it is a very good thing that the community "cares" enough about what that next step will be.

@oliver - let those who laugh "be hanged" . Lucky for me I can plaster my room(which is my office) with as many certificates and diplomas as I like because at the end of the day they aren't really for others, but for me And in my case no one sees them but me....

Now recognition here, within the community, is another story altogether and there are many ways to "get noticed" positively here.

And talking about cultural things, just noticed @otto, you were addressing your comments here to "dear sirs" so forgive my intrusion if this was a "boys only" thread.

[former_member181931 · Accepted solution]

Thanks Marilyn who gave me the heads up about this discussion in a call this morning. I would have been late to reply otherwise. In My Control Panel I can see that I am watching this Forum and I should get the notifications, but somehow this didn't work. Will and fix this.

I am very excited to see that you guys, among other SCN members, are enquiring about: What comes next? And yes I will break the suspense soon, but here is an advanced insight into what I've been working on recently.

SCN MEMBER RECOGNITION

We know that SCN members visit SCN and contribute not only to grow their knowledge, but to help the community and hope that in return it will help them one day. Most of us are active on SCN because it's a passion. Some look for points, which is fine if they respect the rules of SCN (and SCN is watching!) and some take a lot of pride in being recognized by their peers for their contribution, whether it is a thank you in a forum or in an email, a certificate, an icon on SCN, etc.

The overhaul of the SCN Contributor Recognition program is happening and I am in the final stage of implementing the changes with IT. Communication to SCN will then follow when we go live. Now *** drumroll *** and I will try to answer all your questions and comments here: We need to differentiate online recognition from "material" recognition. Maybe material is not the best word so I am using "".

In our world today everything goes fast and most of the information we receive, exchange, share with our peers, is online. Very soon SCN Active Contributors will benefit from an enhanced recognition online on our website and we are working on ways to extend this recognition externally, online as well. Have you heard of web badges? You can customize them, grab the lines of code, and put them wherever you want on your blog site, etc. Facebook has something like that. We are working on evaluating such an option for SCN but will need a bit more time for that.

In terms of "material" recognition, yes we had Certificates that we sent to all Top Contributors in the past year, the SCN members who are the leading contributors in an area on SCN (3 people by area). We will continue to do that. And yes we've heard the wish from the Community to show that they are an SCN Active Contributor, you can expect soon a way to showcase your active contributor status on SCN, offline as well. More to come soon I don't want to divulge too much but basically this is something that you described here Otto

[former_member181931 · Accepted solution]

@oliver: SCN is such a big community, with members from all over the world. I am French too and I can understand that an SCN certificate may not be something that you yearn to display on your wall, but other people in the rest of the world care about it, so yes we will give them the opportunity to do it

@otto: thank you as always for engaging with other SCN members and constantly providing us with ideas that we may be already evaluating or that we may have not thought about yet. FYI Otto: @pk is a funny one and you should not always take his comments seriously Right pk?

Looking forward to discussing this more in the thread if you wish.

Laure

[former_member184657 · Accepted solution]

FYI Otto: @pk is a funny one and you should not always take his comments seriously  Right pk? 

The draft of my first post looked something like this:

The recognition program started with iPods and moved on to T-shirts to Dog-tags...Oops...Badges to World Food Program to finally.... suspense.

pk

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hello Laure,

If some people are pleased to dispaly a diploma on their wall, I've nothing against it and let them do it !

I just wanted to show that what is nice in a country is not in an other one.

This is one of the nice thing here on SDN whith such a worldwide audience : we learn about each others cultures.

Regards,

Olivier

[marilyn_pratt · Accepted solution]

With you on that Oliver : [Cultural Cues|http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/14114] [original link is broken] [original link is broken] [original link is broken];

[OttoGold · Accepted solution]

I wonder if Laure could comment on this thread again, because things has changed and we have all the new badges and topic leaders and maybe you could get some golf balls or diplomas?:))

[former_member181931 · Accepted solution]

Hi folks,

Thanks Otto for pinging me and being on top of all these threads!

I'm finalizing the work on this, and am happy to tell you that soon there will be some news about such a "diploma" for active contributors. And I'm talking about "couple of weeks", not months

We are not changing the plan for Topic Leaders/Top Contributors, they will still receive a certificate, but this time at the end of the year- I'm still working on the set of benefits for our leading contributors per category.

Best,

Laure

[OttoGold · Accepted solution]

I am so glad to hear that. If there is anything we could do about it, to help you, Laure, please ask here or in private.

I would love to be the proud betatester of your certificate:))) Thank you for all the effort you put into the Community behind the curtain, we are aware of all the energy you invest even if it is not that visible every day...

Regards Otto

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Just thinking out loud here... but what about an SDN Community Diploma?

Idea: Folks can roll up to take questions for let's say 2 hours with a few days notice of the event in the category that it will be issued for. Anyone can chip in but must first have "registered" their answer somehow (so it is not support or free consulting...) and must post a link in this registered answer to an authoritative thread, blog, wiki or article on SDN. This can be done in advance, or "on the fly".

It is an online community exam and everyone can watch the guru taking it. After the 2 hours, it is opened for public discussion (and congratulations

I think that will have a high entertainment value, will be a real challenge and attract more attention to some of the gemstone content on SDN!

Unlike the "normal" SAP Certification exams, the guru can use SDN, google, OSS, their own system, etc etc to check on stuff and prove their ability to search... BUT... if they post a linkfarm or copy&paste they are immediately disqualified.

I have a similar set of questions in the security forum for people to play around with -- >

It has about 1500 views per month and I hope they did not all come to see Prasant K Paichha being guestified... so I suspect there would be some interest in this.

Personally if I observed, when logging on to SDN, that Otto, Olivier and PK are currently taking the exam, I would probably take a look and send them a question or two.

Of course people will try to cheat (particularly if some ponits aspect is added to it...) but it is an idea which I think is worth exploring.

Cheers,

Julius

Edited by: Julius Bussche on Aug 21, 2010 10:36 PM

[OttoGold · Accepted solution]

Personally if I observed, when logging on to SDN, that Otto, Olivier and PK are currently taking the exam, I would probably take a look and send them a question or two.

sounds scary! )))))) I am sure you would ask questions, where the only answer is 42, but would ask for the whole process description (like how did I get the answer:))).

Seriously... I support the idea! Could be a little difficult to get a set of questions that one would stand a chance to answer (I understand that this is the entertaining part, something like ...charades?:)))), but would really entertain people. My only concern is: it would test one´s ability to search, or anything more?

regards Otto

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Yes, you can ask anything as long as it is civil and can use the search if you want to during the exam. Effective searching is also an important SAP problem solving skill (see SAP Note 192194 for more about that...) but is not the main purpose behind it (in my suggested form of the idea).

The main idea is a fun way for members to interact and focus on quality content.

Cheers,

Julius

[OttoGold · Accepted solution]

I don´t want to comment on the idea any more, because any "improvement" of the original idea could spoil the fun. So: I support the idea and wonder how could we start the "game". I am afraid we would have to create some external "admin" system, where people can post the questions, where you can watch the gamereal-time etc. Or are there any details about the technical stuff you´ve prepared to make it easy to run?

By the way, I have one more idea. Something similar, will use chat, but not for fun. Or it could turn into fun maybe, but thatwould not be the right purpose. I would start an "interview of the week/month". Something like our local news company is running regular interviews with celebrities, singers, politicans. People ask questions, "admin" filters what could be useful, is asked in a polite way, remove duplicities etc. (admin ths means moderator) and the "local celebrity" answers to spread the word, clarify the strategy, chat about the fun, personal plans etc.

We could invite Mark and Chip from SAP, Marilyn, Thomas, Rich, Claudine, Martin or any more names from SAP that can share something nice/ funny or important regarding SAP SCN. We could invite the SCN members who can share something personal or from their fuield of expertize, we could ask Mentors to come for a talk, we could invite some customers or partners to tell us wha´s new, something about the education/ certification or anything else, you could think about and would find useful.

What are your feelings about it?

Regards Otto

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

I don't think the forum software has the ability to deal with this, nor the wiki and the blog UI is a deterent even to cockroaches...

But some other medium might exist already or be considered for such online collaboration. Marylin etc would no better than I do what could do the trick. Let's wait and see what they say.

As for your idea (interview interviews) we already have blogs here where people interview each other and Marilyn's own special "blog-a-logue" invention.

My thought was more an "online exam" which is orchestrated by the active SDN community

Cheers,

Julius

[OttoGold · Accepted solution]

As for your idea (interview interviews) we already have blogs here where people interview each other and Marilyn's own special "blog-a-logue" invention.

But you cannot ask your question. You cannot get involved in the activity in any way. My way would trigger some activity, I believe. People would poke heads into the interview corner to see if this is for "ordinary people" (many of the activitites do not work like this, you´re spoon fed, but cannot get involved!). Would be like Community:1 instead of 1 on 1.

Otto

p.s.: how comes you sit by the machine Sunday night?:))

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Blogs have a "comments" feature and they at least have a threaded tree structure, so that would be closer than a forum thread. However the "interviews" would hog the blog "ticker" if it really took off.

Another option would be a dedicated forum (for each interview?). Can't see that happening...

> p.s.: how comes you sit by the machine Sunday night?:))

For the same reason you are?

The missus is watching some movie where they try to either look important or innocent all the time or both at the same time, but prior one of them killed someone!

My "SDN time" is in the early mornings and evenings. On weekends I catch up on other forum areas, blogs, tinker around a bit in the wikis, check mail alerts outside of my active areas, read the Coffee Corner "news", browse through twitter, etc.

Cheers,

Julius

[former_member46 · Accepted solution]

It is a very cool idea, not sure how it could be done though. Seems like a really nice contest idea for the end of the year.

I promise to discuss this with the team but it might take awhile due to vacations. So have patience and we'll get back to you guys.

[OttoGold · Accepted solution]

Nice to hear you like it. We will be waiting:)) cheers Otto

p.s.: even if we would have to wait for some time, please tell us the thoughts of the other people, if we can expect something to happen or not. We understand the difficulties. Thank you for all the time and effort!

[former_member181931 · Accepted solution]

We will. The idea of a game brought by Julius sounds like a very nice idea, indeed.

And thanks for the kind words, Otto: "Thank you for all the effort you put into the Community behind the curtain, we are aware of all the energy you invest even if it is not that visible every day..."

Laure

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Not sure either how to present sucha test in the current software.

An alternate version of it could be something like the company VirtualForge does at the TechEd's in their "Find the security bug" competition. Here, each forum moderator team would need to think up a really tricky and complex problem, and the gurus can all submit possible solutions which involve the least coding, lowest TCO, highest ROI, maximum use of the system's native abilities (config, tuning, etc) and without sacrificing any other aspects of good software deployment (e.g. security).

After the competition deadline closes, the top 10% of the solutions are published and the voting tool is used to submit it for comments, appraisals and flamewars

I think this would be similar enough and logistically easy to handle.

Thanks for considering Otto's ideas and my proposal(s)!

Hopefully something cool can be worked out. Should be good fun!

Cheers,

Julius

[former_member46 · Accepted solution]

Our team discussed and all agreed that it is a great idea! Weu2019re happy to support forum moderator teams or other individuals who are willing to take upon themselves the organizing of an online contest in their category.

I think it would be a really fun idea to organize as a sort of 2010 end of year event. Perhaps organize now (maybe have face to face discussions in TechEd for those attending) and aim for mid to end of November for the actual contest. What do you think?

The question is the proper method. How should it be carried out? At one point Julius suggested a dedicated forum. Perhaps we could hijack the u2018test and playgroundu2019 forum for a month of quizzingu2026

The contest organizers will need to align so that the contest format is consistent among the different categories. To that end, I suggest creating a wiki page under the [community challenges |http://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/x/MBM] section for interested organizers to interact and align.

On our side we are willing to offer points to participants, organizers and winners as encouragement for some community fun (therefore SCN ids will need to be taken during registration).

So who is ready to rise to the first challengeu2026and begin organizing?

[ChrisPaine · Accepted solution]

>So who is ready to rise to the first challengeu2026and begin organizing?

ohh yes! But... possibly having the moderator access/control would be needed to ensure the process was best organised. Any thoughts on what the first steps would be - or perhaps the TechEd conversations first?

And if you do get a chance to discuss at TechEd - please do let all us poor unfortunates who can't make it this year know the outcomes of your discussions...

Chris

[former_member46 · Accepted solution]

I'm sorry to hear that you won't be attending this year Chris.

I will be in Berlin and would love to discuss with those attending there. So please let me know if you'll be in Berlin and we can connect there.

We would of course share afterwards just as I'm sure those attending Vegas will after too

[Lakshmipathi]

I wonder if something like this exist? Existed

Yes SDN also give "Certificate of Appreciation" for Top Contributors and I can proudly say that I also got this certificate in 2009 which I value as a prestigious one. Not sure whether this will continue every year.

thanks

G. Lakshmipathi

[OttoGold]

Well, that must be cool! Congratulations:)) Otto

[Former Member]

Hi,

>I know quite many people who have their university diploma framed and hanging on a prominent place on the wall

Well this is a very cultural thing, very different in each country.

If I were to hang my diplomas on the wall here in France, my collegues would laugh at me so loud that I would have to quit.

It would be considered as very pretentious and completely ridiculous...

When in Rome, do as the Romans...

Regards,

Olivier

[OttoGold]

Well this is a very cultural thing, very different in each country.

Well... okay, same with my country, but under the impression of american movies I find the "habit" a nice one and would hang my SDN "diploma" if I had one.

Otto

[OttoGold]

By the way: the question is not "to hang or not to hang", my question is if people would like to have such thing. A small badge is not something you can show to a potential employer, right? And you could easily put one into your personal materials without a right to do that and there is a good change nobody will notice.

And since I have been asked about the benefits of the SDN contribution for the contrbutors, I keep thinking about it. When a paper can help you get a better job (or even get any job), that there is a real value in that piece of paper.

Such paper would be a real-life business card of our virtual identities here on SDN.

Otto