Blog It Forward – Jocelyn Dart

Blog It Forward Community Challenge    Blog It Forward Chain

Hi folks,

I was blogged it forward by Blog it Forward – Sue Keohan .

I am Jocelyn Dart, and I am a self-confessed semi-nerd and part-time luddite.

Oh and I do the odd bit of SAP Business Workflow, SAP NetWeaver Process Orchestration, SAP NetWeaver Business Process Management and SAP NetWeaver Business Rule Management on the side.  Occasionally I play with BRFPlus.  I’ve stumbled through over and around most of the business suite at one time or another and in the last – gulp – 17 years have probably forgotten more than about SAP than most people get the chance to learn (nobody mention R/2 😉 ).

Self-confessed semi-nerd? Ok well I am a puzzles and patterns person – I like to know how things work and something of the creative/amazing/crazy thinking behind them. But if you start talking databases or platforms to me then I start to lose consciousness (sorry folks… only so much can fit between the ears) .

I grew up in the “Birthplace of Modern Australia” – Kurnell, a peninsular suburb of Sydney, where Captain Cook famously landed in 1770.  Mind you a few years later Captain Phillip took one quick look and moved up to the next bay north, Sydney Harbour, which is why Kurnell was still a little village attached to a fair sized National Park (native bushland), which is now famous as a Humpback Whale watching spot. Got a love a humpback!

The most fun thing I ever did at Uni (Sydney University of Technology) was to code in Assembler (yes that’s the nerd bit).  Mainly because we actually got to move a little rectangle around the screen based on where – we – put – the – cursor!  *** In ASSEMBLER ***!!!  On the joy! Oh  the gamification! Oh the crazy!  Did I mention it was a while ago?

In response to an earlier ‘Blog it Forward’ by Greg Myers, I will answer the following questions:

What was your dream job as a kid?

When I was a kid in primary school I wanted to be a teacher.  I liked teachers, teachers liked me.  This was about the only job I understood. My Dad worked at the Kurnell Oil Refinery – I still have no clear idea what he did other than make friends with policemen while organizing emergency shutdown drills.  My Mum was your typical overworked housewife who always wanted to do so many other things…. but housework was never going to be my forte (even now I have a cleaner … 10 years later and getting a cleaner is STILL the best decision I ever made).  Then I started High School.  It took about 5 and a half minutes to look around and think – teachers work with students – students are bad – NOT  going to be a teacher.  So it’s more than a little ironic that one of the jobs during my time at SAP that I absolutely LOVED was my 3 and a half years of being an instructor.

What is your favourite place in the world?

Yes that is spelt correctly “favourite” with a “u”. As in the correct English and Australian spelling. I like the “u”s in favourite, colour, and humour. And that’s enough on my minor protest against the globalization of language…. just don’t get me started on the sulphur/sulfur debacle 😥

Is it too corny to say home?  Truly Australia is a wonderful country.   But I guess there are a couple of places that I really love – one is Cronulla Beach (next stop California – and about the same lifestyle), and another is the view across the Georges River everytime I travel on the train into the city.  Here it is – an actual shot from the train – smeary windows and all.

And the third is pretty much any view of Antarctica. Like this one. And I’ll give a shout out to SAP Mentor Graham Robinson here as he shares my Antarctica addiction.

What was the most fun project you ever participated in and why? 

Bizarrely enough in some ways it was also one of the worst projects – I had 6 weeks to turn around a highly politicized “doomed” Adobe forms and workflow project with my only help 1 raw untrained to-be-workflow-developer, 1 just trained ABAP-er and 1 lifesaver team lead to help with the paperwork and to minimize the politicals and meetings with management so we could get on with it, and the support of the onsite project manager to kick butt with the other teams we were depending on.  So not just speed programming and speed workflowing but speed project planning and light-speed mentoring with a little political minefielding thrown in.  A total buzz and a fantastic result!  May I never have to do that again… 😉

These days I’m having a blast playing with all things Process Orchestration and getting back into SAP Community Network life. I really enjoy meeting people on the community and am constantly amazed at the depth of insight and talent in the community – so kudos to you all!

I shall now “hand the baton over” (the workflowers among you will get the joke) by blogging it forward to my fellow Practical Workflow for SAP compatriots Alan Rickayzen and Ginger Gatling, and SAP Mentors Graham Robinson and Matt Harding to give us a little of their backstory.   We need all the SAP Mentors we can get!

You can answer any of the prior #Blogitforward questions – I appreciate knowing anything about you that you feel is worth sharing!

P.s.oh the part time luddite? About 3 times a day I want to throw my iPhone out the window. Mind you I feel that way about every other piece of technology in my house that goes “ding”. Strangely I don’t have the same problem with my Samsung Galaxy 2. 😏