Warning: This post can be considered a little pathetic. But the author hereby claims that it will not be any worse than the Independence Day movie where the American president leads the attack against the alien mother ship. I was told that the movie is not that famous worldwide as I though, so I recommend everybody to spend one evening watching it.
I read many personal stories about how the SDN contribution has changed ones live (by the way, some of them are really inspiring, I would recommend everybody to read one or two, and especially to the people who are new to SDN). All the people mentioned that they found that very beneficial to their career to be active members of the SAP Community. They have learnt a lot. It helped them to prove their experience and the level of the skills. Of course people have found friends around here, got good feelings about the provided help and many more personal things.
You can apply all this on me. It is the very true. I have found the feeling of being useful very nice, I have found some new personal relationships and maybe the SDN "career" will be of any help with my "real" career. But that is not that important here.
I would like to dedicate this post to my friends from SDN and especially to all the people who are active here and feel "no borders". English is not my mother language and maybe it is not clear what I am trying to tell here. But the part about "no borders" is the most important part of my message.
My (SDN) friends come from the various parts of the world. I have found friends from Germany, United States, India, Argentina, Spain, Switzerland, Pakistan and some more countries. Some time ago I was asked by a friend from Pakistan (that is you, Uzair) who asked me: "If I would come to your country, would be a skilled SAP consultant or developer, would it be difficult for me to find a job? Would I find a suitable job without the problems or I would be considered a third world country citizen and treated like that?". This was the moment I started to think about this "no borders" thing.
My answer was of course: "you would find a job and would be treated like the honest man with skills, education, family and all the other stuff". That is true and I don´t want to change a word of the answer. But it is even better (I am young and naïve and maybe you don´t feel the exactly same way but...) ...on SDN the color of your skin, your language, your homeland or your gender is not "important" (I mean that any of these characteristics does not limit you in any way).
Take a deep breath and think about it for a second. When reading a blog post or when considering a suitable answer for a forum question, have you ever checked the other person for the mentioned characteristics? Have you ever checked a guy´s flag before answering? Have you ever decided not to answer a question asked by a woman? Same with the rest of the characteristics.
Conclusion: Sometimes when you watch the TV, you may think about what is going on there (in the rest of the world) when watching the daily news. But you don´t see anything like that here on SDN. And I am glad for that. I am glad that people here are really equal (all pros...) and the only thing that counts is your polite behavior (well, your SAP skills count as well, right...? Something like the number of ABAP keywords you can tell at 2.00 a.m.).
Hope you feel it the same way, regards Otto
