Doctors and lawyers all understand that as members of their professions, they are obligated to do what is called pro bono work, and most of them consider doing such work a privilege and not an obligation. For doctors and lawyers, pro bono work usually involves providing some hours of their time free of charge to a medical or legal clinic. Certainly, any of the SAP SDN Expert Forums are "clinics" of exactly this type, and the experts who answer questions in these Forums are doing the same kind of pro bono work as doctors and lawyers. And any of the bloggers here who try to explain really complicated things to us lesser mortals are doing the same thing. And even dummies like me do their part by trying to urge the IT profession out of the many smug, complacent, and self-serving attitudes that characterize it today. So, although SAP clearly benefits from all this pro bono work, it must also cost them a pretty penny. And I'd therefore first like to thank SAP for providing a place where we all can discharge our pro bono obligations to the IT profession in our own way. But on the other hand, I think that we all could do a lot more. Because what is really needed is an "SAP Anonymous" with its own 12-step program for breaking bad IT habits; And not just bad programming habits either. Bad project management habits, bad project conceptualization habits, bad project staffing habits, bad marketing habits, etc. So I personally would love to see more SDN'ers make a "New Year's Resolution" to begin at least some of their posts in 2007 with the simple statement: "Hi. My name is X. My worst IT habit is Y, and I hope you can help me shake it."
