Personal Insights
Blog It Forward | Philip Engelmartin
When I arrived at the office this morning I saw a mention from Enno Wulff and I was very curious to find out why Enno would mention me. It turned out that he nominated me to participate to the BIF challenge. “What the heck is a BIF challenge?!”, I thought.
I must admit that I usually do not participate in any kind of online challenges but then I saw the questions Enno raised and honestly, I was not able to answer them right off the bat.
Call me haxxbard
Born in a hot summer in 1989, 50 km north-eastern from Hamburg I was raised in a small village, going to school with the kids I played soccer with, went to the youth fire brigade and fooled around on the next big thing – the internet.
After finishing my apprenticeship as a software developer in a medium-sized, familymanaged company I started my journey as a full time developer. In 2012 I was offered to take over a support team at REALTECH Software Products GmbH, this is when the next chapter of my life started: I moved to Walldorf, even when I initially thought they are talking about Möhrfelden-Walldorf. Oops.
In May 2016 I joined SAP as a Customer Success Manager for SAP SuccessFactors, since September 2017 I’m a proud member of SAP’s security organization, SAP Global Security.
“The funny thing about firemen is, night and day, they are always firemen.”
And this, a quote from Gregory Widen, is not only true for me while I am serving as volunteer firefighter in the fire department of Walldorf. This is also true for each and everyone in security. If you are once in security, you are in security for the rest of your life. Security is not a feature, security is not a requirement, security is a mindset. This is what I stand for, this is what I believe in.
Since I am in SAP Global Security I work in Security Testing, delivering the security testing service to all colleagues, improve it, expand it. Besides to this I am also a mentor for our Capture the Flag and act as a Security Evangelist inside of SAP and also outside of SAP.
Photo by Hendrik Neumann @ sitHH 2019 – Thank you!
0x3
In his blog post Enno asked three specific questions to Christian Braukmüller, Dominik Bigl and me. I do my very best to answer all three of them below:
What programming skills or abilities would you like to have in real life?
If there is a possibility to choose whatever ability I could imagine I would choose time traveling. “Why?” you might ask. There are several reasons. Some of them are sentimental and of a private nature. Some of them based on my immense curiosity.
I would love to go back and see my great-grandmother again, ask her questions I never asked because I was too young or too dumb to ask at that time. I would love to go back and breath in the air of the coast side we visited when I was a kid. I would love to travel back to see what happened in Roswell and of course I would go and see some dinosaurs.
What would you do if you had unlimited financial freedom?
Probably I would spend money on research about time traveling. 🙂 But first and foremost I would fight thirst, hunger and infant mortality, fund animal welfare and make the world a better place. That is why I am at SAP. We are here to help the world run better and improve people’s lives.
What is your most favorite book?
One might have recognized that I am at least a little bit geeky, this is also the reason for this choice. It is called “Der Bug: Extraleben Teil 2” from Constantin Gillies and is about elderly computer kids from the 80’s becoming secret agents by accident. It’s about friendship and the exciting time when computers like a C-64 or Amiga were the cool sh*t. I just love the nostalgia, the memories to my very own childhood and this special kind of feeling it creates in me.
BIF
I hope you enjoyed reading some of my personal insights; I do have the pleasure to ask for more insights from:
Hey Philip, that was fast! 😉
thanks for your introduction!
And a new book on my wishlist for 2020...!
Cheers
~Enno
Hey Enno,
I somewhat inhaled the book, read it three times within 2 weeks during my vacation.
Enjoy it!
Philip
Welcome Philip!
I would like to be able to time travel too. Perhaps I would go back to my younger self and tell me to do some applications in a better way 🙂 Having 'the force' wouldn't be too bad either 'These are not the bugs you're looking for'.
All credit to you for being a volunteer fire fighter, and using your unlimited financial freedom for good causes. I think if I had unlimited financial freedom too, you and I could do a lot of good in the world.
Thanks for keeping the #BlogItForward chain moving!
Here's a cute little lamb for you...
Sue
Thanks Susan, I hope you have a nice and warm holiday season!
Philip
Hi Philip,
Its-really interesting.Me too like nostalgia.Thats why i wrote the BIF on this too. https://blogs.sap.com/2019/12/11/blog-it-forward-prasath/
Prasath E
Nice to know about you Philip Engelmartin!!!
I also have this fantasy of travelling back in time, especially the Jurassic period
to know about all those different dinosaurs and how the evolution of those animals came to and how they evolved to the current species
But for that again you need to be an immortal
which again is my another fantasy

this is one of my favorite movie and watched it many times when I was kid.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Time_Machine_(2002_film)
Another great movie, Lucy. It has a scene of time travel and lucy encountering a dinosaur

Time-travel - the theme of the day... I'd love to time travel as long as I was sure that nothing I did would effect this timeline. I wonder how I could do that....
Volunteer fireman - that is awesome! I have a friend who is a volunteer fireman. Both his sons are volunteer firemen as well. They are friends of my son Nathan. We have a very small city. It does not have any full time fireman. Of course there are neighboring cities that do have them. It just makes me feel a bit more safe because I know they live close.
Unlimited funds. Now what you wrote is amazing. I'm afraid I would be much simpler. Fund against animal abuse. Animals can't speak for themselves. Funds for abused children/spouses. Fund for medical research. Probably first on the list would be to make sure my entire family always has a lot of money.