A Teched Speaker – Michelle Crapo – the answer to is she crazy?
Well – a big hello again to anyone brave another to read a blog that I write! My session at Teched is:
DX133 – Personas or Not Really Personas: Old Version Trick to Create a Nice Layout
And yes – I meant to highlight the session name. The actual blog about my session is in – well a different blog. I realized I hadn’t put any information about myself in that blog. I could have updated it. But then I knew I would be too wordy. AND then the blog would have been huge!
Oh boy Teched is approaching fast! I’m very excited! EXCITED! Like jumping up and down in my seat excited. After reading others blogs on their excellent session, I noticed I didn’t really introduce myself. Perhaps it slipped my mind on purpose. One never knows. One meaning – me – I never know. So I will interview myself! I think that’s talking to myself and answering myself. Maybe I should be worried.
I’ll start with the boring questions.
What is your current job?
My official title is SAP Developer. The better question is what do you do? My company is small. The IT staff is small. SO I get to learn even more fun things. There are no functional team leads. There are no configurators. There are no… Oh boy I better just list what I do.
Some Basis support – that one was new at this job
- Designer
- Developer
- Functional expert and I get to play in SPRO
- Project Leader
- Project Member
- Support specialist
- Copywrite person – it’s just a way of saying I design the screens and what is put on them.
- And I’m sure there is more I’m forgetting…
So the best way to talk about my current job is that it is cool! I get to learn EVEN more about the SAP system. And take some time for training during slow times. Not that there are many slow .times.
A side note – I work from home almost full time. Sometimes it’s interesting interacting with others at my company. But technology is a wonderful thing! I love Skype.
What type of business do you work at?
They are special. AHA! I bet your business has things that are different than all other companies’ too! That is why your company has you!
Anyway, I would say it is agriculture – for the most part. They’ve been a personally owned company for over 100 years. The sell innovative products to the swine, beef, and poultry companies.
What is your experience in SAP?
I have worked with SAP since 1997. I believe I started with 3.1H or G or something like that. I’ve been thru one full implementation and several partial implementations of SAP. I have also done a lot (Over 6) of upgrades. I have not upgraded to HANA yet. We are planning that for the end of fall. But our real business may get in the way of that.
I’ve been a developer, project manager, consultant, functional expert, designer… And more. It’s been a lot of fun! My areas of expertise in the old way of speaking not the new way of order to cash, etc. Anyway my areas of expertise are SD, PP, PM, MM, IM and WM. Wow! Look at all the acronyms. Here we go – sales and distribution, Production, plant maintenance, material master, inventory management, and warehouse management. I can work in costing and finance if I HAVE to. And I do from time to time. I had a great time with MII – Manufacturing integration and intelligence. I got to learn HTML and other fun stuff.
I have only been trained in FIORI and UI5. I did a course for Personas. Hence my drive for this session at Teched. I have barely touched HANA.
So I’ve learned a little of everything. And a VERY little, maybe even a thimbleful of knowledge of the new stuff.
How did you get started?
Simple the company I worked for decided to buy and install SAP. But don’t ask me how that went for the first 3 months. Remember it was back in 1997.
So.. I think I might want to visit your session, why should I?
I guess why should I might translate to are you serious about it? Well, yes I am. I want you to leave with just one thing you can apply to your work. My course is set for beginner and that’s what it is. If you are more than a beginner I can’t guarantee you’ll leave with that one think. But I hope you find it entertaining.
I hope the session is interactive. Meaning I allow questions throughout – not just at the end. BUT I do try to allow for questions at the end.
I used to try to do my sessions where my examples where on a live system. Now I don’t. Basically because connection issues just occurred way too much. And then there was the time delay.. So don’t expect live examples. But DO expect taped examples.
Now… To the fun stuff
What do you do for fun?
I was waiting for you to ask that or for myself to ask that, whatever. I have animals! I have 3 dogs that love long walks in my backyard. I have 15 acres for them to walk with me on. When they are not with me or one of my family they are in the house on our furinture or outside in their fence. Outside our youngest dog has taken over my lounge chair. Another thing I do for fun. Lay out there and just watch the world go by.
I have 3 cats. And I… Wait I don’t do anything with them. When the decide to allow me to pet them, I pet them. I’ve also learned the skill of typing with one on my shoulder.
I have 2 horses, 2 miniature horses, and 1 pony. The horses – I love to ride them. The pony and miniatures are retired. A fun fact my mom rides with me – yes I won’t give up her age, but I am 48… So she is a little older than that. Oops I mean I’m 25. I stopped counting at 25. That’s when my car insurance rates went down.
Last but not least, I read. I mostly read romance books. Gasp! Non-Sap books? I also play on Facebook. And trust me that can be a lot of reading. But it’s worth it to learn what is going on with my friends and to read the funny memes. I read them out loud to my husband. Yup, I’m married and have a son. He’s in college. The monster child decided to go to college in a DIFFERENT STATE!!!! We see him on summer, winter breaks and most holidays if they are long enough.
Talking quietly…. I also work on some OpenSAP course material too. Not very often in my free time. But sometimes I have been known to do some of it. From a comment on a different blog, by Peter Inotai have been look at the free courses on the OpenHPI site.
Oh and Yes it is for work but it is for fun too! I get to go to SAP Teched as much as I possibly can. I always learn something.
What is your favorite type of music?
Easy, mostly, everything! If I hear something I like, I try to put it on my player. Right now it is dance and DJ.
Any funny stories?
I have many, many, funny stories. But the best was the day before I gave birth to my son. My midwife had decided I could no longer work. My husband was at work. I looked at my car. It needed to be cleaned up. At least it did in my hormone raging brain. I couldn’t clean it. So I went on a road trip (Not very smart either) to the local car dealership. I decided to buy a car so my baby wouldn’t come home in a dirty car. My husband got a pretty good shock when he came home and I told him he had to sign paperwork at the dealership. The car would be ready for pick up on Monday. On Saturday I had my baby. My husband wouldn’t leave our side. My baby came home in the “dirty” car. It was only dirty in my mind. So we got our son and a brand new car!
No, No Any Funny Work Stories?
Well I have a work story that is fun now but not when it happened. I had just started at the company. REPEAT Just started as in it was probably my first month there. I was programming in CL and RPG at that time. I had this wonderful tested program that printed a report and then deleted it from the spool. Simple right? I tested, and tested it. It worked. It worked great! I was pretty proud of it. It moved to production. I went in the next day to a disheveled systems person, Wayne Kline. And a note on the board with ALL of the spool reports had been deleted. Some were being saved, and had been there for years. People just didn’t want to give up their snapshot in time. So he had been up all night restoring the reports that he could and trying to figure out what caused it. Well, I felt my stomach drop. I felt kind of sick. I went up to him and started with a heart felt apology. Then I explained what my program was supposed to do. And yes, I had used logic that I had never tried before. He was so nice. He said no problem, if you aren’t making errors you aren’t learning. That has stayed with me since then and I will never forget his kindness or those words. It wasn’t funny at the time, but looking back I have to laugh. I a junior programmer had deleted all the spools. Yup even of high managers. They didn’t fire me, they didn’t watch my code closer (that I knew about), they were wonderful. I looked up the quote and it is from Hall of Fame basketball player/coach John Woode.
With that I’ll leave you. I hope you skimmed to parts that interest you! I know this is long, right? But I wasn’t really sure what to write. With no clear guidelines I seem to write a lot. I was going to add pictures. I may edit and add them. BUT there are just too many to add.
Please leave comments – positive, negative or just fun ones. Have I answered the question am I crazy? I’m talking to myself in this blog, perhaps I’ve answered my own question.
I hope to see you at Teched! At my session sure – but just get there! Breathe in the excitement! And above all have fun! Yes, I guess to make your boss happy, learn something to! But you don’t even have to try doing that. Just by going you will learn something whether you want to or not.
I just realized that i had clicked the "like" button before reading the blog, such is the reputation of Michelle & her blogs 🙂
Cheers!
Go ahead and like the blog before reading it! It will make me happy. But reading it even makes me happier. Well - I've been gone fore a while so I didn't think I had much of a reputation at all!
Thank you!
Michelle
Of course i did 😀 ... Happy, happier?
Have a nice day!
Sure am. I'm smiling now!
Thank you!
"If you aren't making errors, you aren't learning." That is a great quote! And it speaks to the value of owning up to your mistakes instead of covering up, which only tends to blow up as an even bigger problem later.
I admit, Michelle, I came away without a clear idea of your TechEd topic, other than Personas for Beginners, but no matter! I came away with a clear idea about you (not that I didn't already know just a little bit about you, but now I know more), and a fun read.
Cheers!
Hi Matt -
So glad you pointed that out. I answered earlier and then thought about it a bit. Really people should be able to get to the session blog as well as this one. Just put a link on this one and am editing the session blog as well.
THANK YOU SO MUCH! (Capitals intended)
MIchelle
HA! That's funny. There isn't much about my session here. My session blog was done earlier. The thing was I missed telling anything about me in the session blog. I was reading other session blogs and remembered I was supposed to do that as well.
In a couple of sentences - SAP Personas are for S/4 or HANA - not really sure which. I really hope to learn about both in teched. When I saw that in one of my OPENSap courses, I thought to myself that I could do many things in SAP GUI. It wouldn't look as pretty, but it would make my users happy. So I decided to share some of the things that I did/do. It's old style SAP GUI. We haven't made the move yet.
Thank you for the nice comment!
They make my day,
Michelle
WHAT? No swine, beef, or poultry as pets???
EXCITED to meet you at TechEd. I don't think I've already had the pleasure! And I also need to talk to you about horses... which is not really a reference to the Godfather.
thank you for sharing more and pumping up the reasons for YOU and for this excellent session.
LOL ---- A dead horse?
Nope - not a true farm. Just a little slice that I call home! I'm excited to see you too! Like I keep saying to myself, it's around the corner...
If I had beef, swine or poultry - they might become indoor animals. OK probably not. But for sure they wouldn't end up as food. I just eat the meat from the stores that I'm sure aren't a part of a real animal. Just a fake one. I do see the need for deer hunting - and enjoy the results of that as well. Again it's not really a deer, just meat right?
So I get off track as usual! I'm so excited this year. I honestly didn't think I'd get to go!
For the session - I hope to see someone there. The more there are - the more will learn. And it will make it "FUN".
Happy road to SAP
MIchelle
"get to see someone there" -- ha! looking forward to joining a few someones.
Ok, right out there: I don't like this style of writing, the overuse of capitals, the write-like-talk sentences... just not my cup of tea.
Having said that, I acknowledge that not everyone has to write like the folks at "Economist" or "NYT" and this is a non-corporate blog post, of which there is too little of in SCN anyhow these days.
So, it's good to have it. And much like Matt Fraser, I really like the story of your spool-deletion-disaster. Very relatable for many, if not all folks working in IT and with complex systems. It's so easy to fall into the trap of assuming a complete understanding of a situation or technical issue and then making very unfortunate decisions based on that.
Even better: reading how well your colleague reacted and how this mistake was turned into a lasting learning experience.
Thanks for sharing this.
Hi Lars,
Yes, it is great the way my colleague reacted. It was one of those moments in time that I will always remember.
I'm amazed you got through the entire blog. Yes, my writing style is not for everyone. I'm glad you commented on it. There are times when I wonder if I should change the style when I'm trying to convey something serious. For example, I am serious about my session. However, you will find that I tend to speak the way I write. I try to talk to an audience. So I decided to write the way I would run my session. That way no one would be surprised if they came to my session.
Thank you for your comments,
Michelle