100,000 Pay it Forward in 2011! – #SCNis10

Those of you who know me know that I’ve been a part of the professional workforce for a long time – 28 years to be exact! And SAP has been a part of my career for more than 22 of those years. I have been connected to SAP first as a customer, then as a partner, and now as an employee. Looking back through all of those years I can honestly say that working with the community since 2010 is by far the best experience of my professional career. The year after I joined the SCN team, the community reached an amazing milestone of 100,000 active contributors and more than 2,000,000 members, but I didn’t know any of them yet. However, when I joined the team, I had the benefit of great leadership and guidance from Chip Rodgers. I also had great colleagues like Marilyn Pratt, Laure Cetin, Jason Cao, Gali Kling Schneider and xMoshe Naveh (Old Acct) to make introductions, share knowledge and welcome me into my new role. So what makes this my favorite job ever?

The people.

In addition to the those mentioned above and my newer team members – Krysten Gentile Gentile, Sean Yang and Oxana Noa Zubarev – it’s you, the members of the community who welcomed me, listened to me and shared with me. I was fortunate to get to meet many of you face-to-face at SAP TechEd events I attended. And then I met many more of you online.

It’s been a pleasure to get to know you and work with you for the past three years. And I intend to stay engaged with you for the remainder of my career. SCN is a phenomenal community of experts who I am proud to call colleagues – even friends.

There are too many of you to name, but you know who you are. I thank you!

So what’s the big deal about 100,000 contributors in 2011? It’s the motivation. I like to refer to it as “Pay it Forward”, a term made famous by a movie with that phrase as its title. Mark Yolton also used it as a theme for the Topic Leaders recognition over the past two years at SAP TechEds. What it represents is how a single person can take action to make the world a better place. In the movie, it was explained by a young boy at the blackboard.

This image represents the concept well. One person does three random acts of kindness for others. The only “ask” is that the recipient agrees to do the same – three random acts of kindness. It leads to an exponential effect of thousands, even millions, becoming more altruistic.

This “Pay it Forward” mentality has become a mantra for many of the community members, who share knowledge, time and energy to make the SCN a great place to learn, grow and help others. It’s been my pleasure to experience this phenomena in the community over the past 3 years.

Again, thank you to all of you, who make the SAP Community Network one of the best communities on the planet. Happy Birthday SCN!