Reaching Out - A Few More Steps

[Former Member]

What Am I Doing?

This is another update in my quest of "Reaching Out" or indeed bursting the bubble, as originally suggested in dj.adams' post here.  Lots of time has passed, as is invariably the way when you are "trying to get stuff done" and it feels like I've not really got a lot done.  The responsibilities and inconvenience of a full time day job and family can often cause that :wink:

I think its fair to say that so far, lots of my efforts haven't quite burst the bubble but have at least stretched it a bit.  Imagine a picture of a human hand trying to stretch out a large balloon from the inside, and you can probably picture what I'm describing.  Normally, I like to add some images to my posts and I assumed finding something I could use along these lines would be ok.  As it turns out, searching for "human hand inside balloon" via Google (potentially NSFW!) is a bit of a minefield and hence you will have to rely on my description and your own imagination.  Anyway, I digress...

Where Were We?

If you cast your mind back to my initial manifesto, I set myself a few key challenges - please see my Reaching Out - My Plan of Attack post for more information but here is a high-level list of my aspirations:

• Engage with tech groups outside of the SAP space
• Engage with more groups within the SAP space
• Get involved with Code Club
• Plan a D-Code presentation

Progress?

Here I am, almost 3 months to the day since my original post and I'm happy to report that actually, lots of good progress has been made.  Not as much as I'd like but when is that ever the case?  I'm now a regular attendee at the Liverpool JavaScript User Group and in fact, on August the 12th I will be presenting "An Introduction to OpenUI5" to that group.  I'm looking forward to this for a few reasons, not least the opportunity to bridge some gaps between SAP and non SAP communities.  I'm a relative noob when it comes to UI5 but I'm hoping I can pique the interest of some of the JavaScript community and get them to engage with the UI kit.

Back inside the SAP bubble, in a few months I'll be attending the SITSheff event being organised by a few of the UK mentors and have proposed to deliver a session on "Mobilising ABAPers" - looking at how traditional SAP development skills can be utilised with the Movilizer platform so ABAPers can be competitive in the mobile world.  I'm hoping my session will be accepted onto the agenda and people will find it interesting and useful.

On top of that, as mentioned previously, DJ and I have started plotting a CodeJam event for later in the year focusing on UI5 and again with a view to bridge the communities of SAP and non-SAP.  I'm starting to build a bit of momentum with this now and hoping to get some initial details boxed off, such as event location and date, very soon.

All in all, pretty good going so far.  D-Code is the one piece of the puzzle that is still eluding me for a few reasons but I'm not losing too much sleep over it - I've got enough on my plate as it is!

In a bit of a whilrlwind of productivity today, I've also registered with Code Club and sent an initial contact over to one of my local primary schools.  I'm really hoping this comes together as I see it as a big way for me to pay something back and do something completely outside of my work/SAP world and more in my local community.  As an aside, I've even managed to just do some socialising - last week steve.rumsby and I had a great day in Hoylake at The Open golf tournament, and DJ and I have managed a good afternoon beer tasting under the thinly veiled premise of planning for our CodeJam.

I've also got a few other secret-squirrel (for now) things being plotted with jocelyn.dart and others closer to home in the UK&I SAP User Group...  Nothing is anywhere near concrete yet but it just feels good to have a few plates spinning on different things and to be doing different "stuff" outside of the normal day job :smile:

What has everyone else been up to? :smile: