Jitendra Kansal – SCN Member of the Month February 2014.

For a while, I have wanted to recognize Jitendra Kansal as the SCN Member of the Month. He’s young, talented, connects well with other SCN members, and of course contributes with good content that the community appreciates. Now that I’ve had the opportunity to meet with him virtually, I’m even more convinced that a bright future lies ahead of him. What can I say? He spends time on SCN every day of the week, after a 6:30am gym routine… Don’t they say that “early bird catches the worm”? (or, in French, “L’avenir appartient a ceux qui se levent tot”, i.e. “the future belongs to those who get up early”)

Read more about Jitendra in this blog, his home town close to the Taj Mahal, his recent TechEd Bangalore experience – attending with his company but also helping the SCN Team at the booth, something I know my colleagues were very grateful for. Jitendra was recently appointed SCN Moderator, and usually I don’t recognize moderators as SCN Members of the Month because we have another program to show our gratitude to our moderators, but in this case I felt I had to make an exception since the appointment was very recent. And now Jitendra can be proud of this recognition when he gets to the office next Monday! 😉

Watch the video interview (9 minutes):

Hello Jitendra! Can you tell us a bit about yourself, where you live, who you work for, and other things you would like to share with the community (hobbies, fun facts)?

I am very lucky to be born in a great country called India. More specifically, I am from Bharatpur, a district in Rajasthan State. Bharatpur is a place famous for a bird sanctuary now called Keoladeo National Park. It is 35 miles from Agra (famous for the Taj Mahal, one of the seven wonders of the World) and 120 miles from Jaipur (Pink city of India). This park was declared World Heritage Site by UNESCO. Over 230 species of birds including the rare Siberian Crane are known to have made this park their home. Here you can see large number of birds from Afghanistan, China, Turkmenistan and Siberia. I went to see the Taj Mahal when I was a kid but I forgot about it…

I moved to Thanjavur, Tamilnadu (South India) to get a Bachelor degree in Electronics & Communication from SASTRA University (degree completed in 2010). This place is about 1,460 miles from my native place Bharatpur – almost 45 hours journey by train! Now I live in Bangalore and work for Defiance Technologies.

My hobbies are watching cricket, playing cricket, snookers, foosball, reading current affairs, doing workout (I go to the gym every morning at 6.30 AM and make sure I do this at least 5 days a week), listening to music (I am a diehard fan of Mohit Chauhan’s melody songs, he is a rockstar). People say I have a smiley face 🙂 My friends call me with by my nicknames “Jeetu” and “JK”.

Note from Laure: “snookers” seems to be what we call pool here in the US 😉

You recently changed jobs and relocated. How are things going for you?
My career started in 2010 with Infosys Limited in Mysore and then I moved to Chennai and then Chandigarh and spent around 3.3 years working on different projects based on different modules like SAP ABAP, SAP Netweaver Java, NW DOE, SUP (Sybase Unwired Platform). To be very honest it was really a great and wonderful experience being with Infosys Limited. I moved to Bangalore in September last year (it’s been hardly 5 months as of now) to join Defiance Technologies Ltd (A Hinduja Group Company) as a Senior Consultant in Enterprise Mobility. The company has about 1,400 employees and I’m part of the SAP ERP unit. There I work on different modules such as SAP Mobile Platform, OData, SAP Netweaver Gateway. Everything is going well now.

In your Blog it Forward post (that received 124 comments to date, wow!) you said that you usually ask people you meet how to say “I love you” in their language. Do you know how to say “I love you” in French? 😉
LOL 😉

I don’t want to say why I ask people about it. It’s very clear. 😛

French: Je t’aime (zootam)

Tamil : NAN UNNAI KHADAL LIKERAN

Telgu: Nenu ninnu premisthunnaanu

Punjabi: Main tenu pyar karda haan

Bengali: Ami tomAy bhAlobAshi

Gujarati: Tane Prem Karoo Choo

Kannada: Nanu nimmege preti maditi idini

German: Ich liebe Dich

Hebrew: ani ohev otach

Jason Cao is the one who invited me to write a BIF post, I am grateful to him for that. It took me around 15-20 days to figure out what I would write about, and I published my blog in June 2013.

Note from Laure: It’s interesting how long the sentence can be in certain Indian dialects! Also, I had fun correcting Jitendra’s pronunciation of “je t’aime” in French. I told him to not trust the internet, but instead a French person like me. The accurate pronunciation is ʒə t‿ɛm as you can learn on this Wiktionary page. I hope Jitendra gets the opportunity to travel to France one day and chat up a fine French lady 😉

When did you become a member of SCN and what brought you to this community?

This is a funny story. Back in November 2011 I was assigned to a PoC work based on Sybase Unwired Platform (which was totally new to me at that time and hardly 1-2 folks in my unit had basic knowledge of it). During one application development I got stuck on one issue and tried finding a solution for 2 days. When I told this to one of my friends he said “Why don’t you put your query in SCN?” I had no clue what he was talking about and he had to brief me about SCN and how to create an account. When I clicked on Register and entered my company email ID, I saw one pop-up in the right hand side saying “This e-mail address has already been registered, use Forgot password to access your account”. It turned out I had registered two months before but forgotten about it. After sorting out my access problem I posted my query in SAP Mobile space on November 24 and the same day got the solution. This is how my SCN journey started. I thought this place could be the best platform to learn mobility stuff and I therefore started exploring mobility related documents, blogs and threads. In March, 2012 I was invited by my company (Infosys) to attend a 1-week SUP training in Bangalore. I was amazed at the tremendous knowledge that the trainer had. I have to mention his name: Rupam Bhattacharya (from SAP GDC, we recently met at TechEd 2013 Bangalore). This training itself generated a lot of interest for me to learn about SUP. After coming back I started looking at all possible posts in the mobility forum. I remember when I posted my first blog in the mobility area in July, 2012. It was appreciated by my colleagues, many SCN members, and I got huge response. Recently I came to know that a similar app has been made available in the SAP Store. This blog post gives a basic understanding how to create a simple SUP based application.

How do you find the time to contribute on SCN?

I never say I don’t have time! As soon as I switch on my computer the first thing I do is open SCN and then check mails. If I don’t have any urgent work I will go through a few threads and respond and whenever I get time in-between work stuff, I spend it on SCN by reading blogs and documents. But nowadays I am addicted to SCN and log in even on the weekend! I have the Jive App on my Mobile and get notifications whenever something is posted on the forums I follow.

Some people ask me if I get paid for contributing on SCN! I respond that it’s just a way for me to give back to the community. I found great help in SCN, still do, and I want to contribute to the wealth of content here so that it helps other people. Also, it’s good for me because since the mobility world is changing rapidly it is good to keep track of the trends. It can be the best learning opportunity.

Besides all, I must thank all the contributors on SCN for their valuable efforts and continuous support. I must say this wonderful journey on SCN has helped me get to know many people from different regions (some of them I met at TechEd), to enhance my skills professionally and personally. The best part of this community is that there are people whom I don’t know and they don’t know me either, but they have been helping me without expecting anything in return.

Recently you attended SAP TechEd 2013 Bangalore. Was it your first time there? And how was the experience?

Yes, you are right. It was my first time ever at SAP TechEd. I hope you remember when you contacted me for being the Topic leader and asked if I was coming to TechEd and I said NO. I was not planning to attend but later I was allowed to participate in TechEd. I am really very grateful to my company Defiance Technologies Ltd for giving me this wonderful opportunity. I really had a great time at the event.

Let me share a few interesting moments:

First SCN members whom I met over there were Jeanne Carboni and Moshe Naveh. At that time they were fixing the iPad on the #SCNis10 wall. It was great to see them in REAL. I really appreciate the SCN team believing in me and giving the opportunity to be a part of the Headshot Booth Staff. I had a lot of fun with all the team members Jeanne Carboni, xMoshe Naveh (Old Acct), Jeffrey Mandl and Aniruddha Kole.

On the first day I was rewarded on stage for being the Topic Leader in “SAP Mobile Platform Developer” along with other “extraordinary SCN contributors”. That was a proud moment for me!!!

As most of us know, the Blog It Forward challenge has been running for one year already.  People across the globe have been sharing their life experience through their blogs.

On day 2 I was invited to an SAP TechEd LIVE interview for “A Year of Blog It Forward” and its impact on SAP Community Network with Jeanne and Moshe along with very cool SAP Mentor Kumud Singh. We talked about our journey being part of the BIF family and its future expectations.

You know we had a Virtual Party Celebration in November last year and it was time to make it REAL. On the last day of TechEd we had this great moment being with BIF members and had an awesome BIF Quizz. I would like to thank Moshe for bringing yummy Israeli snacks. A great fun altogether.  Also I attended two workshops that gave me a clear understanding of how to develop a Syclo Agentry app

and how to enable business data for mobile consumption using Netweaver Gateway + OData with SAP Mobile Platform.

I also had a good opportunity to meet SCN members that I have been knowing virtually for a long time: Mark Finnern, Craig Cmehil, Kumar Mayuresh,  Jason Lax, Anshu Lilhori, Vivek Singh Bhoj, Ramakrishna Dadi, Abesh Bhattacharjee, Yariv Zur, Midhun VP, Kiran Kumar Valluru, Jansi Rani Murugesan, Kavindra Joshi, Piyas Kumar Das, Somnath Manna, Harshit Kumar and many others.

If a new member came to you and asked for your advice on how to be an active and respected member of SCN, what would you say?

First of all I would not hesitate to tell them what brought me to this respected community. I would brief them about what SCN is all about. Some people believe SCN is only for troubleshooting but I feel it is much more for learning, contributing and a great place for networking as well. I would advise them to go through the Rules Of Engagement (RoE) and would direct them to Getting Started with SCN. I would suggest them to spend some time on a particular forum of interest to them, go through existing blogs, documents, discussions. Search before they post and respect all community members. To be an active and respected member of SCN it requires determination and commitment towards your involvement on SCN. Be yourself, be honest and I am sure people will appreciate that.

Is there an SCN member you admire (OK… you can name a few)? And for what reason?

This is really a good question. I have been influenced and inspired by many SCN members’ contributions towards this community.

Ravi Sankar Venna: A down-to-earth friend who always motivates and guides members through his blogs specific to SAP Career and SAP Certification.

Moshe Naveh: For a great Blog It Forward Initiative.

In the Mobility Space, there are many intelligent folks whose tremendous knowledge and constant support always amaze me. Midhun VP, Brenton O’Callaghan, Daniel Van Leeuwen David Clavey (a former Member of the Month), Ali Chalhoub, Jan-Gerrit Groeneveld, Michael Appleby, Njål Stabell, Yan Gong, Andrey Lee.

Apart from this there are many SCN friends who have been encouraging and supporting me for my contributions: Anshu Lilhori Gali Kling Schneider, Jason Lax, Laure Cetin, Marssel Vilaça, Ramakrishna Dadi, Suman Chakravarthy K, Susan Keohan,Vivek Singh Bhoj, Marilyn Pratt, Kiran Kumar Valluru.

Can you point us to a couple of contributions you’re most proud of?

Let me point my top 5 contributions that my fellow members really appreciated:

• A Workflow Application to Release a purchase Order
• HWC Application Development Using Hybrid API
• 10 steps to develop SUP101 Android Native Application [Part I]
• How to access SUP CDB (Cache Database)?
• #SCNis10 – You, Me & SCN

#1 and #3 were published in SCN Newsletters. And yes, to answer your question I have been featured on the home page already 🙂

Easy question: Mac/iOS or Windows? Or Android?

I prefer Windows although I have experience on Mac. I do like Mac products, without even owning a single one. I have an Android smartphone and I find it more user-friendly than the iOS smartphone, though.

You recently tweeted an article about the Apple watch that got a lot of people talking. Is this something you’re eagerly waiting for?

Since Apple’s CEO Tim Cook announced that they were interested in wrist-worn devices, most people have assumed that an iWatch is coming. But to be very honest nobody knows exactly, right? There is no official announcement from Apple about an iWatch.

Some people say that the iWatch would serve as an accessory to the iPhone and other iOS devices, giving easy access to common functions without having to take their larger devices out of their pockets or bags. In that it gives you notifications, tells the time and some control functions of your phone. It could read your blood, could be used to detect all kinds of health issues. It could also include wireless charging capabilities, allowing the device’s 100mAh battery to charge from up to a meter away.

Note from Laure: Since we were talking via our webcams I was proud to show Jitendra my latest gadget, a Fitbit Force. It’s what they call here an “activity tracker” and it’s very interesting to see how access to general data about steps, activities, sleep, calories, water intake, etc results in you striving towards a more healthy way of living. It’s a bit gamified, of course, but the motivation also comes from within. I like walking more to score more steps in the day, I gamify myself 😉

Are you on Twitter?

Yes I am active on Twitter: @jkkansal1987. Whenever I come across an interesting post on SCN I share it on Twitter and I have been following some SCN members to get the latest update from them.

I am also on LinkedIn!

Every month, a member of the SAP Community Network is recognized for exemplary behavior: sharing knowledge with peers, being helpful and taking on additional tasks to support community engagement. See the list of previous SCN Members of the Month.