Behind the Scenes: Jason Lax

I’m very happy to be able to share today another sides of a well-known community manager, Jason Lax. Many of you know Jason from his great SEO blogs and daily support in such spaces as the SCN Support but now you can go ‘Behind the Scenes’ and learn more about this professional, service oriented SCN Team member.

Please share some personal details about yourself:  I’m originally from Montreal, Canada and now live with my family just outside of Tel Aviv in Israel. I love being outdoors (hiking, skiing, skating, jogging, climbing) and, when I’m stuck indoors, reading, cooking or fixing something that most people would call a repairman for (this makes my wife incredibly happy). I’ve been lucky enough to live in four countries—so far—picking up more than a little of the local language each time.
Gali: Jason also takes beautiful photos, many from his travels whether local hikes or those from countries he’s lived in like China. I recommend following Jason’s Instagram to see more!

Details regarding your group and role: I’m part of SCN’s Content Strategy team and have been for the past 6 years. I started off in production (uploading documents and videos), which I still help out on from time to time.  Now I’m the lead for SEO (search engine optimization: making sure our members and visitors can find everything on SCN via Google, Bing, Yahoo! and site search), I’m the content strategist for about 90 topic spaces, and I take a lead in helping members in the SCN Support and About SCN spaces.

What do your daily responsibilities entail? My day is usually split between monitoring and optimizing SCN’s search experience, supporting our members in SCN Support and also our Moderators, and then there are Space Editors how reach out with question on best practices and reporting.  I also conduct periodic space audits to make sure SCN has a healthy level of engagement across the community: no one really likes getting my warnings but it’s really important that make sure things are running smoothly everywhere. Lately I’ve been working on a Flipboard magazine called The SCNetizen

What is your favorite SCN space and why? I conduct quarterly audits where I really get to know many of sub-communities we have on SCN. What’s my favorite space? You know what, it’s not the spaces or the content: it’s the people. It’s the diversity of the members with their different roles that are really interesting and are rewarding to interact with.

Please share about an interesting project you’ve worked on: There are really two of them.  I’ve been working on SEO for the last four years and it’s been very rewarding to watch our search traffic grow by at least a tenfold over that time: SEO has  enabled many people to discover and join the community while getting help and guidance on whatever is it they’re working on or interested in. The second project was the launch of the New SCN on the Jive platform last year. Not many people get to take part in a website migration of this size over their career (merge 3 sites with over 20 million URLs into a brand new platform) and, although it was a bumpy ride, I’m confident this was the right move at the right time for the community.

What would the community be surprised to learn about you?  I dream in different languages, handle just about all the cooking at home (I’m slowly building a collection of vintage cookbooks: you know, the ones without pictures), and that started off my career in clothing manufacturing as a production manager for constructed garments (a fancy way of saying jeans and slacks).

Jason sits in the office next to mine and more times than not he’ll have music playing quietly 🙂   I asked him to share a selection of his favorites: Oh boy…between the vinyl stored a my brother’s (I used a record carrying bag to transport my first laptop), CD’s & mix-tapes at my moms and a few thousand tracks stored digitally across devices, where do I start? I’ve been listening to BBC 6 a lot lately and sometimes Radio France’s LeMouv. Radio is great for discovering new music and Shazam has made finding and acquiring those new tunes a lot more easier than it used to be (though I miss the ‘hunt’ sometimes).  Here’s an eclectic list of what I’ve bought on iTunes recently: (Do you think they’ll let me select the SAP TechEd band one day?)
• ‘Afara E Intuneric’ by Dona Dumitru Siminica (Romanian Retro Music)
• ‘Let’s Go Swimming Wild’ by Sweet Baboo (Let’s Go Swimming Wild)
• ‘Sugar Man’ by Rodriguez (Searching for Sugar Man)
• ‘Pyar Ki Ek’ by Nisar Bazmi (A Touch Of Class – Nisar Bazmi Instrumental)
• ‘Got My Mojo Working’ by Muddy Waters (The Very Best of Muddy Waters (Blues Classics and Essentials))
• ‘The Stars (Are Out Tonight)’ by David Bowie (The Next Day)
• ‘A Tooth for an Eye’ by The Knife (Shaking the Habitual)
• ‘Hard Times’ by Baby Huey (The Baby Huey Story – The Living Legend)
• ‘Let’s Wade In the Water’ by Marlena Shaw (Northern Soul Keep The Faith Vol. 6)
• ‘La Foule (Que Nadie Sepa Mi Sufrir)’ by Maria Lerma (Vintage Pop No. 118 – EP) –> Took me 9 years to track this one down after hearing it in a museum in Mexico City
• ‘Merci Bon Dieu (Instrumental)’ by Henri-Pierre Noel (Piano)
• ‘Reflektor’ by The Arcade Fire  You’ll want to experience this one at https://www.justareflektor.com/

Gali: Well Chip Rodgers do you think Jason has a chance to weigh in on our next SAP TechEd band? 😉

Please help us grow from your personal experience; share one tip/resource/guide/experience that you recommend after finding it helpful from personal experience. While it’s important to be able to rely on yourself to get things done, you’re also only as good as the team you’re working with. This means being a good listener, collaborator and having a willingness to be open and accepting of different opinions and ideas.

The next four questions are taken from the Actor Studio interview questions:

What is your favorite word: amour
Least favorite word: I want to say ‘twerk’ but I’ll go with ‘hate’
What sound do you love: rain
What profession other than yours would you love to attempt: something where I’d use my hands more, such as cooking or carpentry

You seem to be everywhere at once and are especially active in the support spaces. How do you manage it? Any tips/best practices for other community members? I’ve been grooming my Activity feed and Communications inbox for quite some time: following importing stuff and tracking whatI don’t want to miss.  I’m pretty religious about reading everything in Communications so I don’t miss anything.  I also use Google Alerts to be notified on important keywords and often browse all new documents and blog post in http://scn.sap.com/content. Through my SEO monitoring I also get to see what are some of the most popular search results generating visits—and there are a ton of those. Then there’s social media (Twitter, Facebook, Google+).

Jason is always there to offer his support in both enhancing the community and helping out his SCN colleagues. I think in all the years I’ve known him I heard him say he couldn’t take something on once (and of course it was due to prior commitments!).  In their own words read what the SCN Team had to say:

• “Jason’s expertise, initiative and can-do attitude are just some of the reasons I really enjoy working with him. It’s impressive to see how many things he’s working on, all dedicated to making sure the community is operating smoothly.” 
• “Jason’s tireless efforts to support the community and keep SCN a smoothly running, well-oiled machine are recognized by members around the globe. And due to his expertise in SEO and the projects that he’s driven to improve it for SCN, new members discover our wonderful site every day.”
• “If we could clone Jason into 10 people, that would be enough to run all of SAP. I’m endlessly impressed with Jason’s dedication – it comes in the form of incredible energy, a desire to improve the things he touches, and the ability to know what will be effective. In any given day, he may work on a dozen different things, but he does them all incredibly well. He makes his entire team look great, and we are so fortunate to have him working with us.”
• “It’s not Jason’s technical, SEO and SCN expertise that will blow you away, it’s in the way he interacts with members and colleagues every day.  He’s thoughtful,  pragmatic and willing to pitch in to help solve issues, big and small.  He provides the perfect balance of handholding, direction to resources, and sass for any situation 🙂 . “

To learn more about Jason read his blog if forward post and follow him on twitter @Jasonlax

I also invite you to visit ‘Behind the Scenes’ with additional SCN Team members.