Blog it forward – Ohad Yassin

Let’s start with a confession: None of this is natural to me.

If you check my past activity in SCN, you’ll find a lame few points generated by a single blog post and a couple of comments. Go outside of SCN to the web and you’ll not find much either, maybe just my twitter account (@ohadyas). That’s because I’m one of those mythological silent members you always knew are out there but could never prove their existence. You see – us readers, we don’t blog. We don’t comment. Reading – yes (usually not even logged in), Reflecting – sure. But no writing – that’s for others.

It’s been a week since I’ve been asked by SAP Mentor Jan Penninkhof to participate in the blog it forward chain in his post and I think that the combination of this honor with the exciting BIF initiative are more than enough to convince me to get me out of my comfortable ‘guest’ user zone.

So here we go…

A little bit about me

I’m with SAP for 8 years now, which is an incredible amount of time for me at one place. Prior to that I’ve been with many employers – varying in sizes from y’all mighty Microsoft to a back then 3 person startup, but never for so long. I guess there’s something in SAP that makes it different than others. There are many stories to dig out these years – but for now let’s focus on what I’ve been asked about 🙂

Interesting fact about my country

Israel has amazing beaches and sunsets.

Attached is an example of the beach we’ll celebrate the launch of Cloud Portal with Vishal Sikka this week (stay tuned for updates during our upcoming sapportalchat).

Beat that, I dare you.

Other questions

Can you tell about a recent achievement in an area that you are really passionate about

This one is simple. A week ago we did a soft launch for SAP NetWeaver Cloud Portal – a project I’ve been deeply engaged with for the past year and a half, right from the inception phase.

Clarification #1: It’s not the product or the portals market I’m passionate about. It’s the combo of three things – bringing a concept into materialization; leveraging technology to provide a simple answer to a previously complex question; and above all, taking other people along that ride.

Clarification #2: The RTC milestone is not the achievement. The achievement is getting an email from one of the Beta customers we’ve been working with stating that this is the best experience they had with SAP in the past 15 years.

What job did you want when you were little and do you think you are doing something completely different now

As I’ve been writing my first application during the summer vacation of my elementary school (a fancy, mouse enabled, drawing tool with support for lines, rectangles and circle shapes – but I never got to the save capability) and as I’ve sold my first application during my junior high years (library management tool with a very simple analysis capability, that today I know I should not have bundled at the same price ;-)), I guess you can say that this is what I wanted to do since I was little.

The real challenge for that nowadays is my cooking habit. You will not find a facebook account with my name and pictures of my creations (as I’m a reader, remember?) but trust me – I can make mash potatoes that would make Robuchon pale and my stakes can flip a vegetarian).

One day I’ll have the balls to work in the profession that separates the strong from the weak and open my own restaurant (‘singleton’ I shall call it, as there will only be one instance of it 😉 ) – but for now I’ll settle on enterprise software.

Tell us something we don’t know about you and also couldn’t have guessed

Je parle Francais, and that is because I lived for 2 years near Geneva. That is where I learned to ski, eat fondue without losing le pain dans le fromage, recite La Fontaine and write with a fountain pen.

Blogging it forward

I’ve already asked in my previous post Vitaly, Eran and Nir some cloud portal related questions and Moshe suggested I link it to the real BIF chain – so here it is.

On top, I’d also like to forward it to the following people:

1. Alexis Naibo – a real entrepreneur that leads the Paris Innovation Center that and creates very cool stuff
2. Philipp Skogstad – that is providing us guidance regarding the apphaus we’re now building in Israel lab.

And ask them: 

• Name the person who affected you most in your career/ way of thinking and why?
• What do you think are the key elements for a successful project?
• In what SAP event did you had your best experience?

(Just in case this is new for you – follow the challenge and the chain for guidance)