Have you ever heard of this famous quote from Tao Te Chung (Father of Taoism)? "A journey of a thousand miles starts in front of your feet."
This message certainly applies to my hobby - the Education@SAP LinkedIn group (http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=1856570&trk=anet_ug_grppro) I founded back in 2009 under the premise of providing SAP Education customers and partners a collaborative outlet into my SAP Education world. Yes, the Education@SAP LI group is my evening hobby - my daytime passion at SAP Education involves managing the SAP Financial and HCM curricula as well as the Certification Program here in North America. For me, the Education@SAP LinkedIn group provides the stage to tell the world about the value of SAP Educational products and services available. The group was also created to provide similar messaging in the social media world as found on SAP Education's primary SAP.com website: http://www.sap.com/usa/services/education/index.epx.
Before the group was officially created, a couple of friends and mentors, Marilyn Pratt and Cory Coley-Christakos, gave me some terrific advice (and I am paraphrasing) - listen to your customers and become their trusted advisor. In order to truly help someone with an issue or problem, you have to listen for the symptoms first and then react accordingly. My 10+ years of being an SAP Instructor showed me why this is true and it certainly holds true even in the social media world.
Fast forward to today, March 5, 2010...
March 20, 2010 will mark the one-year anniversary of the Education@SAP LinkedIn group. During the past year, the membership has slowly grown to 2,541 with 43 active discussions, numerous news postings, and even 4 job postings. Along the way, I have answered untold email questions and requests from all sorts of wonderful SAP customers, SAP partners, SAP independent consultants, and SAP employees. And for the most part, every question and request to the group focused on the same topic - how can SAP Education help one improve their SAP skills?
However, I continue to take baby steps in the LinkedIn world compared to some of the other SAP-related LinkedIn groups available. By comparison, the Education@SAP group is small when compared to the largest SAP LI group - SAP Community with close to 50,000 members. While it would be nice to have that many active members in the Education@SAP LI group, I take the more conservative approach and am content with one more member than the day before.
On the Education@SAP site today, I post information about new courses, our wide-range of delivery options (classroom, virtual, onsite, or online learning), the SAP global certification program, SAP Education products, and anything else you can think of related to SAP Education. In addition, I have setup direct feeds from SAP Developer's Network weblogs where all sorts of terrific information is posted (including some related to SAP Education). EVERYONE is welcome to post and collaborate on the site - as long as you follow the rules provided on the group's profile: (http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=1856570&trk=anet_ug_grppro).
Fast forward to March 5, 2011...
Help me continue the story...
Please stop by the Education@SAP LinkedIn group (http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=1856570&trk=anet_ug_grppro).
All are welcome and encouraged to participate - I look forward to seeing you there.
