Blog It Forward – The Sequel

Thank you  Katarina  for teasing the community about this little adventure 🙂

Hopefully many of you remember the BlogItForward challenge that was started in about 2012 by the wonderful Moshe Naveh . This was based on ‘Pay it Forward’, where you do a good deed (buy someone a coffee, let someone ahead of you in line, donate to a charity) and good things keep happening.

Anyway, Moshe started the #BIF challenge, which invited members of the Community to tag someone they admired or were curious about. You could ask that person questions, from ‘What flavor ice cream would you be, if you were ice cream, and why?’ to ‘How do you think we contribute the most to the SAP community?’. Any questions will do as long as they are polite.

The person who was tagging someone then filled out an entry in a table, linking their personal #BIF and tagging the person/people  they wanted to hear from. This started quite an interesting set of blogs! People you knew on the SAP Community Network were telling you about their lives and their careers, their countries and their hobbies, as well as what they enjoyed most about the SAP Community – both online and in real life!

As newly minted #SAPChampions, Michelle Crapo and I were reminiscing about how much fun the original #BlogItForward initiative was.  We tossed around some ideas to get people engaged and reignite the Community spirit (I was really ALL IN on reworking a BlogItForward initiative as ‘The Time of My Life’ because, well, Dirty Dancing).  Now December is our time to salute the SAP community as Craig Cmehil mentioned here so… let’s get going!

We honor the community initiatives that came before, and embrace the new one, the Sequel!

We’d like to reboot the #BIF. This is how it will work….(the same as the original)

“Blog It Forward” structure template:

· Your blog title should be “Blog It Forward- Your Name”

. Choose the ‘SAP Community’ topic!

· Mention by whom you were blogged forward by and link to their BIF blog

· Add the #BlogItForward and  #BIF tag to your blog

· Provide an intro of yourself

· Share a fun fact about your country or yourself

· Add a cool picture of yourself or your homeland/town

· Answer specific questions that were “Blog It Forward” to you

· Answer 3-4 optional questions from the bank of questions provided below. Or choose to answer questions you make-up on your own.

· Create 1-2 personalized questions you would like to blog forward

· List at least 2  people who you are blogging it forward to. Share why you choose them. Link to their SCN profile by typing @  and then their name (e.g. @HisName). 

Then, hopefully the people you tagged will also follow along.   And you know, you tag two friends, and they tag two friends, and so on…It’s like that bit from Wayne’s World  or, if you’re a little bit more retro, it was in a shampoo commercial.

And here are some links to the original #BlogitForward for your reading pleasure.

https://archive.sap.com/documents/docs/DOC-30977

https://blogs.sap.com/2012/08/20/blog-it-forward-community-challenge/

Here are some questions you might want to use – but feel free to come up with your own!

• If you were 20 again, what would you study?
• How do you think the way you were raised affects your Career?
• Share a fun fact/story about yourself that people don’t know
• Describe in one short sentence: “what need does your SAP solution meet”
• Which 5 things do you absolutely want to achieve in life?
• What is the best lesson your parents taught you?
• If you could be a super hero (or are in your spare time) who would you be?
• What do you enjoy most in your work and why?
• What is your personal life dream?
• What is your professional life dream?
• Share an interesting/funny story related to your work
• If you were given by your work a full day every week to do whatever you feel like, what would it be?
• Recommend resources of information that helped you in your work
• What do you imagine or predict is the future of your topic? (Mobile, Cloud etc., be creative be daring, be entertaining)
• Do you know any other cool/very unique solutions related to your topic?
• Name the person who affected you most in your career/ way of thinking and why?
• What do you think are the key elements for a successful project?
• What was the most fun project you ever participated in and why?
• If you were not in your current position, what/where would you be and why?
• What do you most enjoy about the SAP Community?

I’m really looking forward to learning about our amazing community members.   I feel that we all have interesting stories to share, and reasons why we participate in the SAP Community – whether it is online or in person.

In order to get the ball rolling, I am going to #blogitforward to a couple of people, in the comments below.

Oh, and while we are having fun with *community*, check out Jim Spath challenge here!

I wonder if people will find videoing themselves more fun than blogging?  Have Jim and I been set up in our own challenge?

[EDIT] including a screen shot for help choosing tags!

[UPDATE Feb. 18, 2020]  Thanks to our amazing Community team (Audrey Stevenson Caroleigh Deneen  to name just two) there is now a badge for #BlogItForward’ers.

It’s lovely …….…. #blogitforward