Blog It Forward – Hendrik Neumann

Thanks to the blogitforward  initiative of xMoshe Naveh (Old Acct) I got asked by Tobias Trapp  to continue the chain and I happily agreed. So I’ll have to thank both for finally pushing me to writing my first blog on SCN, an endeavor long planned. May many follow

About me

Growing up in the Heidelberg area and hence close to SAP HQ, I was familiar with the company itself since my childhood. During my university career as an Information Technology (Wirschaftsinformatik) student at the University of Technology in Darmstadt, I had my first contact with a SAP system as an intern at the IBM SAP International Competence Center in Walldorf. I even walked by “Vadder” Hopp in the hallway of the MPS building on one occasion…

I started my professional life as an #SAPCRM consultant at evivax IT Consulting GmbH, a small company located in Darmstadt. Surprising myself by joining a small company and staying in Darmstadt – two things I did not expect back then. Since then I’ve worked on ABAP development projects, CRM & Solution Manager scenarios and as a trainer both for developers and users. Some time last summer I took it on me to dig deeper into the SCN community and finally find out what that twitter thing really has to offer..  a lot, I soon realized.

By joining the conversation on twitter and visiting conferences like SAP Inside Tracks in Eindhoven and Hamburg I got to know some great members of the community and I’m looking forward to meet them again and many new faces at my first TechEd visit in Madrid in November.

When I’m not sitting in front of a computer screen I’m most likely doing one of the following things: Reading, cooking, sports (Team Handball and sailing that is), going out for a beer or two or watching some TV show – just recently I finished the Season 3 DVDs of “The Good Wife” and the “Battlestar Galactica” BlueRay box is waiting on the shelf…

Provide a fun fact about your country or yourself

Since Bjoern Goerke firmly established in his blogitforward entry: we Germans are not funny. Hence no funny thing to tell you.Instead I’d like to share a fact about the city I moved to this summer. Did you know that by night Germany has four cities with over a million inhabitants (Berlin, Hamburg, Munich and Cologne) and that during the day this number grows to five?

Frankfurt has almost as many jobs (600.000) as inhabitants (690.000) and its size in terms of people within the city limits grows to over a million on work days and Saturdays.

Tobias’ Questions

If you were 20 again, what would you study?

The exact same as I did all those years ago. My secret second choice would have been politics and history but honestly that combination never had a chance against computer science and business.

What gives you inspiration for your professional live?

I’m an avid reader. I read lots of books, blogs and of course my twitter timeline . Confronted with a new challenge I often find myself looking for a book on amazon on the topic or searching on google for a solution. Besides that I’ve become a dedicated podcast listener in the recent years. I’m listening to podcasts while driving, in the gym or when I’m running.. For me podcasts are basically food for thought. Hence, the origins of lots of good ideas can be traced back to something I did read or hear about.

Marilyn’s question: Describe an instance when empathy in a project, development, collaboration, work experience, or community interaction turned a situation around (or should have).

Tough one. One thing I did learn in the recent years is how different we are as individuals but also how much we have in common. Just to understand what motivates people and why they do the one thing and not the other, needs a big amount of empathy. An eye opener in that instance was Thorsten Franz talk at last year’s SitNL who told the audience about the different types of personalities out there and how understanding them can be a great help in life. In that regard, I think by paying attention to the little things, most big crises can be avoided before they grow to be big.

Blog It Forward

Here are my questions for my former colleague Patrick Meurer, who started out to explore the twitterverse together, Peter Langner who’s one of the organizers of SitHH, the great SAP Inside Track event in Hamburg and Uwe Fetzer of SAP Mentor fame who is great guy to have a beer with and talk SAP.

1. If you could be a super hero (or are in your spare time) who would you be?
2. Favorite activity that has nothing to do with SAP?
3. Tobias’ question: What gives you inspiration for your professional live?

Last Word

Take a look at the Blog It Forward Chain for more insightfull blogs. You’ll find more information on the initative in the original blog including on how to join the chain.