The Rantings of an American Evangelist in London

In April of 2006 while still a content strategist and community manager of the SAP Developer Network, I raised my hand to help create and launch a sister community to the SAP developer network designed for business architects, process consultants and more functional consultants in our ecosystem. It was to be the Business Process Expert Community.
In May of 2006 I went to our yearly SAPPHIRE business event and there met with blogger/analyst Dennis Howlett (expatriate Brit and author of the AccMan Pro Blog as well as well-know ZDnet blogger, who is, in his own words, “never knowingly under-opinionated” ).
Dennis challenged my thinking about my being a Community Evangelist for when I introduced myself to him as such he performed a rather mocking obsequious gesture which signaled the pomposity of such a title. And suddenly I saw myself as ….. the American Evangelist.
A month later, while using Flickr to prepare a Web 2.0 presentation for the Americas SAP User Group (ASUG) Leadership keynote I found this apt visualization:

The Rantings of an American Evangelist in London
Originally uploaded by Ploener


Arriving in London for the Somesso conference this year, I indeed found myself the American Evangelist in London.



Link:

Ada Lovelace Day and The SAP Community Network

Thanks to a Facebook invite from the inimitable Sandy Kemsley , I learned about Ada Lovelace Day a few months back.
Suw Charman-Anderson, herself a fascinating woman wrote: “I will publish a blog post on Tuesday 24th March about a woman in technology whom I admire but only if 1,000 other people will do the same.”

By the way, for those of you, who like myself weren’t sure who Ada is, Suw Charman-Anderson explains: “Ada Lovelace was one of the world’s first computer programmers, and one of the first people to see computers as more than just a machine for doing sums. She wrote programmes for Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine, a general-purpose computing machine, despite the fact that it was never built.”

Now as a value add in my job as an SAP Community Evangelist, I have the privilege of knowing some of the smartest techies on the planet. So my first and only challenge in role models was finding “A” woman… as in limiting myself to a single role model.

I found that approach a tiny bit…well…limiting. And soon realized rather than to try to name every remarkable woman in Technology I know or know of, I could introduce people outside my SAP Community Network and perhaps even inside that community, to some of the women of the community I admire. So I’ll name just a few (second huge challenge) of my local heroines and by linking you to their blogs, tweets, or wiki profiles allow you all the pleasure of discovery or perhaps further introduction.

Bhanu Gupta – I first met Bhanu during SAP TechEd in September 2006, when she attended the first Business Process Expert Day, but I had been a fan of this Business Intelligence nova for a long while before that, as she rapidly became one of the most prolific forum participants on the SAP Developer Network attaining top contributor ranking internationally. She told a great community story as many of the folks in the community didn’t realize she was a woman.

Anne Kathrine Petteroe – Ann also told a great community story of how twitter facilitated our meeting her in the SAP headquarters during an SCN Meetup in Walldorf – Later, I had the privilege to meet with Anne again when she came to TechEd Berlin 2008 as one of the developers of ESME and a powerful contestant in “Demo Jam”.

Moya Watson – Technical evangelist and all around SAP superstar, Moya, writes like a dynamo and shepherds software solutions to release. Moya introduced me to the world of digital anthropology through her blog posts on the SAP Developer Network and celebrated women in technology by pointing to the book O'Reilly Goes Live with Women In Technology Series

Dafna Yanay a tools mentor and community evangelist for Visual Composer . This Israeli who studied industrial engineering garnered comments and followers on her blog posts from every corner of the globe and is a frequent speaker at SAP TechEd.

Ginger Gatling was my teacher and mentor in a number of SAP related technical courses and has been a colleague for over a decade. Can’t say enough good things about the way she transfers knowledge to thousands of people online and at live events. She has this way of explaining technology that makes you feel “you get it”. She introduced me to Susan Keohan who goes under the code name SAP Workflow Goddess and who is an active ASUG (SAP User Group) volunteer leader who in turn introduced me to Gretchen Lindquist who has been “working in SAP Security since 1997… the lead configurator and technical support analyst for an SAP partner system in her ERP landscape” and somehow it seems like I’ve know forever yet another ASUG leader Karin Tillotson, Technical Lead for Valero’s SAP Data Archiving Project.

And lastly, one of my newest …and perhaps youngest heroines, another colleague and community member Jen Robinson whose simple list of places you can find her “Elsewhere” belies the depth, maturity and passionate commitment those activities have her engaged in.

And now since I see my list is already 9 women, I’ll conclude with a warm acknowledgment and shout out to the other techie women in our SAP Community Network, colleagues, mentors, fellow community members whose ranks thankfully are swelling and can be seen coaching Business Expert topics, mentoring developers, coding solutions, supporting process integrations and representing a world of talented women, who have chosen to follow a career path in technology.

SAP Insider BPM2008

SAP Insider BPM2008
Originally uploaded by marilynpratt

First Jumpstart day session of the SAP Insider BPM2008 in Vegas this week featured Column 2 author, analyst and blogger Sandy Kemsley .
Topics included: definitions of BPM and BPMM – Business Process Maturity Model.
Session started by attempting to create order around the confusion of BPM-related terms.
Three info packed hours further covered subjects such as understanding the range of process types in an organization, tips like: "Don’t let the requirements become the design", warning around spending too much time modeling the "as is" state, and some fair accessments of SAP Netweaver BPM. Clear understanding that many “required” features are delayed until future versions. Outlined that there is more strategic integration with SAP ERP and a common process layer for modeling BPM and ERP. There was also a pronouncement that the goal was to become the BPM of choice for SAP customers rather than the best of breed BPM. What I further understood was that Sandy Kemsley liked the SAP NetWeaver BPM data mapping capability which although not inherently different from what you would see in other systems was highlighted as providing capabilities that are good.

ESME Team Member Meetups - Accidentally on Purpose

I feel a bit like Woody Allen's Zelig with the uncanny ability to insert oneself into some exceedingly interesting (historic) social environments as a famous nobody. It's like having a passport to be an official "fly on the wall" of some fascinating conversations. You get to be present, observe and on occasion document and record. That's the way I'll approach Office 2.0 this week and that seems to be my experience heretofore with the ESME folks.

“Enterprise Social Media Experiment (ESME) is a Web 2.0 application that permits social network-based communication among, between, and outside organizational boundaries. ESME draws its development team from the SAP Community and includes both BPX'ers and business people with an interest in learning how social networks, the media they generate and business processes can be usefully co-mingled to deliver innovative solutions to old world problems.” (Darren Hague, Richard Hirsch and others in the SAP Community Contributor Corner wiki)

When Dick Hirsch began to flesh out and realize the original BPX community project, it was obvious that he was a quintessential or model SAP business process expert: a professional with deep SAP technical acumen, experience of business modeling tools and process improvement methodologies, as well as an adept story teller with a keen journalistic eye and language.

The ESME conversationalists list (those engaged in the collaborative conversation about ESME) looks like a “whose who” of some top SAP Community Network members.

So being the declared online yenta I am (which is a grandmotherly busybody), I wanted to know more about those virtual members I haven’t yet had the pleasure to meet.

I’m fortunate to go around the world these next few weeks and I’ll be rubbing shoulders with almost all of the ESME folks, some by purpose and design and a few, quite serendipitously (like in the case of David Pollack who happens to be with me this week at Office 2.0). There are even a few folks I got to meet-up with recently at their invitation, having nothing to do with ESME whatsoever. Such is the case with Jen Robinson and Kirsten Gay who I met with 2 weeks ago in the US SAP headquarters in Newtown Square when I was invited to meet with the team of Natalie Hanson an "anthropologist working in the business world" and Kirsten and Jen's manager.

Kirsten and Jen happen to be members of the ESME team.

I was interested in the skills they bring to the table and their internal portal work and particularly in their focus on the very human side of technology.

Here's their brief bios:

S Kirsten Gay is the Manager of User Experience at SAP America and experienced in user interface design, design team management, integration of design deliverables with market demands, and strategic development of design services for corporations, educational institutions and private clients.

Jen Robinson, currently a lead in SAP's Global Business Knowledge Management Competency Center and an MBA student at NYU Stern whose professional interests include IT strategy, emerging technologies, entertainment, and new media.

Attending Office 2.0

Here I am in San Francisco attempting to live into the concepts I'll be hearing more about tomorrow at Office 2.0. That means using Google Calendar and scheduling my sessions by looking into the wiki agenda and working with everything via my browser. For someone (me) complaining endlessly about email overload and struggling to make sure I at least know of and attempt to understand and use the latest and greatest enterprise collaboration tools, the next few days should be very interesting, to say the least. I'm hoping I can tweet some of my impressions and I'll be using my colleague, Craig Cmehil's Eventtrack to organize my contents around the event and tag them with #o208 (thanks Craig) .

I do feel a little out of my element. Granni isn't the fastest wiki markup maven in the west (and I'm in the west now having arrived here this evening from NYC) and I really will be itching to see how others tame the beast with Office productivity untools. One of my goals: to look over shoulders and see how others are getting their collaboration work done. I think the case studies will be enlightening.

Oh, and I hope to finally meet a number of twitter pals and see how face-to-face corresponds to online interactions. Was really hoping to meet Gia Lyons, my heroine of "collaboration made easy" assets, but I don't see her on the roster. Her new colleague, Sam Lawerence will be there though and I will finally get to meet Oliver Marks as well.

My biggest goal will actually be to invigorate my understanding of how to facilitate adoption for folks like myself, perhaps a slightly different demography from the 30's something, hard-core geeks I engage with in my SDN world for whom every technological gizmo is perfectly intuitive and if you don't "get it" immediately, you are some dumb **s n00b.

Wish me well. Want to bring some fresh energy to the BPX tables of SAP TechEd the following week in Vegas and recharge my batteries that have run low from working in my isolated cell of a home office. Having put the accident, summer and Teched prepping behind me, I'm raring to go.

A Metaphor for Collaboration

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A while ago I blogged on BPX/SDN about the metaphor of a Jazz ensemble for collaborative behavior in our community. The title: Successful Collaboration is Like Jazz and the blog content was inspired by the meeting I had with Social Media expert Kevin De Kock.
Today I stumbled upon another collaborative metaphor which really resonated well. This time I found it by visiting a video posted on Elliot Masie's Learning Town wiki, which is a learning collaborative platform growing exponentially these past 3 months. The idea featured in the video of rowing (crew) being an almost perfect collaborative analogy, shouldn't have taken me by surprise as I've spent the last year supporting, admiring and yes, even dabbling in this sport which my youngest daughter, Carmel, excels in. The video blends a great visual with texts that typify an ideal collaborative environment.

Discharged from the Trauma Unit and Discharging Some Emotion

Ironically while a rather heated debate rages on our SDN/BPX blogs around the topic of personal contents in the SAP blogsphere I am faced once again with a dilemma of what content is appropriate for which audience. Here in “A time to mourn a time to rejoice”, grannimari, can definitely share and discharge a day’s emotions and convey personal feelings, opinions and observations. Is that offensive in the business context? Where do we draw the line?

Today was pretty dramatic. It started by waking up being alive. Now, I know that is what most of us perceive we do everyday, but considering last evening nearly had me dead, waking up alive was rather an occasion. In fact, I half-jokingly asked my husband last night if I was dreaming I had survived the rather serious car accident that a few hours previously had thrown my vehicle on to its side and forced this grandmother to confront her mortally in a stark way. I sincerely could not fathom that I wasn’t dead.

Thankfully, the car that plowed into mine had passengers who sustained no injuries, but being trapped in an overturned vehicle, with the knowledge that my mortality was as finite and sure as any other disposable resource on this planet was very sobering. Modern technology provided means to alert my family to my predicament and to assure them that although badly shaken and my car totally destroyed, I was alive and well. But during the hours I lay in the trauma unit, being checked from head to toe, and very alone, I kept thinking how helpful it would be if I could reach my blackberry and punch in a few tweets. A kind of self medication and reaffirmation of life was what I imagined that ability to be.

This morning I fulfilled that urge and the responses were heartening. Empathy is a powerful human need. I discovered a number of colleagues and friends and even virtual strangers (twitter followers who I really didn’t know at all) who sent caring words across the twitterverse and shared similar harrowing experiences.

I have no lack of loving people in my immediate periphery. I’m blessed with a remarkable spouse and uniquely sensitive children and very close and good friends of long standing and steadfast support, many of them rallying around me yesterday and today. But how can I describe and celebrate the incredibly healing power of the kind words of virtual strangers?

So I still deliberate over whether such content has any place in a public business environment, namely my SDN/BPX blog arena, while I haven’t the slightest qualms about posting these sentiments to my @marilynpratt twitter account and microblog environment. For whom do I post these? Actually, mostly for my business associates, who, if truth be told, are transformed in an instant to more familiar acquaintances in the context of these sharings. Today I was really grateful for that as well.

Thanks for all your good wishes. They are very therapeutic.

A Reason to Rejoice - Wedding, Sustainable Style

When my oldest daughter wed in a civil ceremony on the lawn of our municipal building a few years back, with the trees for her canopy and only her loving sibs and parents as witnesses, it seemed a really fitting choice for a young woman who seriously cares for the environment and celebrates simplicity, nature and modesty.
We couldn't have been more pleased with her choice (in spouse or location) and we secretly wished that other such joyous events could transpire with such a minimum of stress, pomp and waste.
Imagine our surprise yesterday when child 2 announced that he would be combining a visit to us with a similar request to wed; same location, same minimalist style.
Now, it is not that I condemn rituals or decry formal celebrations or imagine that the rest of the brood will follow suit in this exact manner, but there is something so eminently pure about the choices of these two siblings that I need to stop and acknowledge their courage in daring to be different and dispense with extravegance.
In these turbulent times of reckoning with the finite nature of the stuff of our planet, it is very refreshing to see young people choosing a method of commitment that doesn't entail inordinate amounts of waste. They have taught me to reexamine what tradition has schooled us to expect and instead of paroxysms of frenzied planning details, just delight in their assertion that such events needn't be extravagant to be meaningful.

They arrive the fourth of July and with them a declaration of independence from the dependence on wedding stuff. The fireworks are virtual.