I've felt guilty for around 18 months for not having done this - ever since Blog it Forward - Tim Guest (Updated 9th January 2014) passed me the mantle. There have now been an incredible 271 BIFs, including all kinds of fascinating people. So, here's my overdue submission.
I remember growing up, that writing was the hardest thing for me. When I was around 10, I was once sat at my desk in a classroom and we were all asked to write a piece of creative writing - about anything. I sat there for the full class of 60 minutes, paralyzed by writers block, though I didn't know that such a thing existed. My English teacher took me to one side after the class ended, and told me I had to stay until I'd written it.
Red Smith is generally credited with having said, about writing: "You simply sit down at the typewriter, open your veins, and bleed." - and this is exactly how I felt in that classroom as I poured my imagination onto paper, and how I feel right now.
And since Tim, and the others, who blogged it forward to me, didn't ask me some specific questions to round me, I'll have to make my own way.
How did I get into the SAP?
The short answer is: almost entirely by accident. My brother had started a SAP consultancy called Bluefin Solutions that had IT problems and I came in to fix those. Over the years I found myself consumed into the small space where I started my IT career: performance. I've always been addicted to performance, right the way from my early days with computing and at university. I think that the algorithmics course with Roger Needham was what got me
My Thesis at the University of Cambridge was using advanced algorithms to perform image analysis of 3D ultrasound images for cardiology patients, and it needed an enormous amount of computing power to complete in a reasonable amount of time. I had a DEC AlphaWorkstation under my desk in my room, and I got sufficiently obsessed by the performance that I rewrote all the Linux graphical libraries in C, reading images bit by bit and processing them. My code was 100x faster than ImageMagick at the time and you could analyze a whole artery in 30 seconds. This has a direct correlation on patient care: it means the doctor can do the analysis right there and then, without having to take it away for 2 weeks.
So, the same thing drew me into the SAP world. At this time, SAP BW was relatively new and performance was usually poor. I've worked on performance scenarios for nearly 200 SAP customers, rebuilding models, changing hardware and tuning systems so they are usable by the people who need to extract information.
By this time I was spending all my time at Bluefin customers and so it made sense for me to join them and run their Technology team in 2008. It turns out that I have a knack for being able to explain things to people and so I led the team - creating external marketing content, web content and running the P&L of that team.
And into SCN
At this time I was mentored by Michael Eldridge, who is now Bluefin's UK country leader. Michael has a savvy view of the future and he suggested we focus on Mobile, and that I build my brand by writing content. At this time SAP had started to co-innovate with a database company called Sybase Inc., and so I worked with SAP and Sybase on the original Sybase Unwired Platform and CRM products.
In the midst of this were my first two TechEd conferences, where I got to meet people like harald.reiter, Blog It Forward - Thomas Jung and craig.cmehil2. I believe I actually have Simon Griffiths from Bluefin to thank, because he invited me to Hackers Night - the predecessor to InnoJam. That's where I came to realize that this is where the interesting people were. At around 2am, talking to Harald, I realized that the SAP Mentors were a group of people that were worth getting to know.
So I started to blog and contribute on SCN much more, whilst focussing on Mobile, and I put myself forward as a SAP Mentor for SAPPHIRE 2010. Gladly there was a big push in that year on Mobile and mark.finnern2 called me whilst I was on my way home one evening to give me the good news.
From there I have met many good friends. jon.reed, dennis.howlett, vijay.vijayasankar in particular, but there are too many people to count. Some special thanks have to go to susan.keohan, karin.tillotson and jim.spath, who helped me greatly into the Mentor program at a time where it felt like there were many giants and I was looking up. I remember one night when they made me an honorary BITI member. I'm pretty certain I've since been expelled.
HANA: Back to my roots
The moment I heard hasso.plattner talk about HANA for the first time, on stage, at SAP SAPPHIRE in 2010, I knew the world was about to change. Performance - in case you didn't figure this already - has for some reason always been planted in my core. I knew intuitively that Hasso had seen the future and it was the place we had to be.
This is where I have focussed my energy ever since, and I've got a passion to understand something new every week. I try to focus a few hours every weekend, when the house is quiet and I'm awake, to read something new, build something new, learn something new, about HANA. And since there seems to be an almost infinite supply of things to do with HANA, that's not hard to do!
And so here I am in 2013, much closer to the technology than I have been for many years, enabling Bluefin's regions to run better with SAP HANA and to grow our practice out in the USA.
What do I do when I'm not at a keyboard?
As Haruki Murakami said: “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.” - and that's my motto when I hit the pavement. I find that running is the single best way to clear the mind, keep healthy and be creative. Most of my ideas come from that point in between pain and suffering, on the 10th mile. I'll run on a treadmill if I have to, but I'd rather be out on the sidewalk.
And then there's travel: I have always had a passion for travel. My job helps this to some degree, and when I'm not at work, I make sure I'm away somewhere. Lately I've found that websites like AirBnB mean you can travel much more cheaply and I've become an expert on credit card and frequent flyer points systems, so I can indulge this passion.
Let's not forget writing. My writers block left me critically bad at writing - and my Headmaster, the late http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Jewell, wrote on my school entrance exam "Now let him look to his English". When I won the creative writing prize three years later, I felt some great satisfaction at beating "the man". I suspect however that was David's intent all along, so he won that round. These days, writing is an addiction and I pen at a number of places including my own website, http://www.peopleprocesstech.com/
Blog it Forward
There are two names that are very clearly missing from this list - so I'd like to nominate those two people. vishal.sikka and bill.mcdermott. Bill's movement into social media has been very interesting to watch this year and I know he'll enjoy telling his story. I also notice that jon.reed and vijay.vijayasankar have both been nominated by others, but haven't yet Blogged it Forward, so I'll throw them under the bus too. For you guys, I will be kind and offer up some starter questions:
1) Tell us your story. How did you come to be where you are today?
2) What is the #1 thing that you'd like to do in 2014?
3) Who inspires you? Why?
Final Words
I don't know why but I love to have a "final words" section - perhaps some thoughts don't neatly fit into the structure which I self-impose on my blogs.
The main thing I wanted to put here is that I've missed out people. People who have inspired me, motivated me, made me a better person and picked me up off the floor. I was thinking to try to call out more people in this blog, but there's no point. I've not tried to include everyone here - and if I didn't mention your name, it's just because I didn't :-). All the people I've met in the Bluefin and SAP Community are the people that have made life interesting in the last few years.
