How not to blog in SAP Community
Just to set the context of this blog right; this blog is more from a personal standpoint and not a general one. The explanation, rather, what I should have done, to all the parts/points is written down further in the blog.
*** The sarcasm throughout the blog is directed on me and on my foolhardiness. ***
So my first blog in the SAP Community… excited??
Excited…I was…Very excited to say the least.
Let me just give you a brief about myself before we probe further.
With more than 7 years of experience in the SAP Technical turf; I thought I could write my first blog post without any road-blocks. Also with some blogging experience behind me (I generally do blog about a lot of other stuffs; like movies/food/restaurants); I was under the impression that writing a technical blog in the SAP Community should be a cakewalk.
Well that is exactly where the game changed. The things that I learned or am still learning about writing a blog in the SAP community are vast. Here, below, am listing down the Don’ts of writing a blog in the SAP community.
- Keep the blog as technical as possible because it is technical community.
- Please don’t do any research about the topic that you are writing.
- What is right/wrong doesn’t matter, what matters is your experience and your knowledge that someone “senior” has imparted to you.
- Think that the moderator is present just to check your grammar/spellings and to make sure that you are not using any SMS language or cuss words.
I planned on writing these points down in the hope that someone benefits from it.
If someone still has not got it yet!! Please consider the above points with a sarcastic tone to it rather, keeping it simple, please don’t follow the above mentioned 4 pointers.
So here I was trying to write a blog about the “Best Practices to be followed while using ABAP in BW”, where I ended up doing all the above mentioned things and got my first draft into the “needs more work” status.
The pointers, I have mentioned here, are my learnings of what not to do while going about blogging in the SAP Community.
Let me just explain, why I zeroed in on the the above points, a little:
Please do note, that the pointers here are sarcastic(directed towards me), but the explanation below them, are my learnings.
- Keep the blog as technical as possible because it is technical community.
- Think real!!! It’s a BLOG. Keeping it technical should not mean like you are giving out pointers or presentation slides.
- Please don’t do any research about the topic that you are writing.
- This is actually of paramount importance. This is where we can falter miserably. And by research, I mean not googling and going through the first two/three search results. Research if someone else, probably more proficient and efficient has written on your topic somewhere. Then you can collate with your hand-held information and make it even more informative. Mind well, no plagiarism.
- What is right/wrong doesn’t matter, what matters is your experience and your knowledge that someone “senior” has imparted to you.
- The solution to this is more or less similar to the 2nd argument, above. But I wanted to keep it as a separate argument because quite often we get into the habit of listening to some of the colleagues or seniors, who we think are very well-informed. And well-informed they would be, because they would have done their bit of research during their time and probably would not have updated themselves. But we need to move ahead with times and research/update ourselves with every word that we hear.
- Think that the moderator is present just to check your grammar/spellings and to make sure that you are not using any SMS language or cuss words.
- For this, I only have one statement – We have google/MS Word/ethics to correct us.
Hence please don’t do the don’ts.
As mentioned earlier, these are all my learnings and I plan to keep updating it with inputs from other members and moderators.
I still have not got my first blog published; because it’s still a work in progress. I sincerely hope that I do it soon.
Hi Anish,
Seems like your first blog did get posted – here.
Sarcasm aside, maybe you can share what actually happened that prompted this post and we (the community team) can look into it. I’ll be honest, I had a little trouble following the details in your post and I want to deal with whatever situation you encountered. If you can help me better understand, please don’t hesitate to send me a DM and let me know what’s going on, I’d appreciate the chance to look into it.
Thanks,
Jamie
I always appreciate fine sarcasm but did not get this at all, sorry. Especially this part: "what matters is your experience and your knowledge that someone “senior” has imparted to you" - where is this coming from? What's the context? Very much confused by this...
Hi,
Just to set the context of this blog right; this blog is more from a personal standpoint and not a general one. The explanation, rather, what I should have done, to all the parts/points is written down further in the blog. The sarcasm throughout the blog is directed on me and on my foolhardiness.
So for the part “what matters is your experience and your knowledge that someone “senior” has imparted to you”…
When I got into the ABAP realm, I had jotted down a few notes/understanding/knowledge from my colleagues who were senior to me. Years after, I am still using/recalling those notes/understanding in my work.
Neither did I ever question their notes nor did I ever did any research on those notes. ‘I got caught up with work’ and got involved in projects after projects, blindly accepting their knowledge and deducing my own from them.
Basically what I wanted to convey is that I should have done some some self-learning and not purely relied on my project/work experience or on the knowledge imparted to me, years ago.
I hope, I was able to answer your query..
This explaination is such a hard lesson many of us have to learn "I should have done some some self-learning and not purely relied on my project/work experience or on the knowledge imparted to me, years ago."
So often we learn on the job and someone more senior shows us the ropes. To us, they are an expert. And why would we question them. At what point in our career do we questoin initial learnings, throw out the past and embrace other ideas and knowledge? What we learned in from our mentor/senior may have been valid back then or it could have been completed wrong. Experience and time is a good guide.
If you get the blogging bug, then a discussion like that over in the Careers tag would be really welcoming 🙂
My argument exactly..!!
When do we hit the refresh button for ourselves..?
With no disrespect to the colleagues/seniors who helped us then; we should always question/research on every learning; be it theirs or ours or anyone's for that matter.
So true. Unfortunately, it's only with time and experience when you can even begin to question what others are telling you.
I remember first time when I made a recipe from a cookbook and it came out really bad. How is this possible?! Someone must have tested this many times and found it good.
Well, it turns out even cookbooks can have typos and many recipes are barely tested or don't account for differences between the home and professional kitchens or are just missing some crucial details that are obvious to an experienced cook, etc. The other day I installed an app that had a buttermilk pancake recipe. It called for only half amount of buttermilk as hundreds of similar recipes and no baking soda. And the reviews were like "this was good but flat / burnt" or "I made these changes <turned into a completely different recipe>" (these "reviews" always crack me up) and such. Oh, those poor schmucks. 🙂 They don't know what a really good pancake should taste or look like. They just think this person knows what they're doing and follow the not-great recipe.
I've been fortunate to have good teachers in the SAP world but still, many mistakes have been made when I just thought I was being told good stuff.
P.S. Hey, now that anything goes on SCN as far as blogging maybe I should write about the pancakes? 🙂
Looks like after the first two comments you updated the blog to make clearer, that you are not writing about a bad experience here as a blogger, but about how you went at blogging here the wrong way and have learned now what not to do.
Maybe you could highlight
bold or something to make it pop out.
.
I liked this blog, content and style alike. So good job this far! 🙂
.
I still remember my thoughts about my first (and still only) technical blog here and not being an experienced blogger, I was more like "I hope they like it and understand, what I want to say" and not like "No sweat". *g*
How did you learn those lessons outlined in the blog? Was your first draft put to "needs more work"? I guess it was the reason for writing this blog, correct? So maybe add it as an explanation?
Regards,
Steffi.
Thanks Steffi, I have updated my blog with your inputs..
Hope, at least now, I would be able to clear up the confusion of other readers..
Regards,
Anish.