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DouglasCezar
Contributor

This is my first Blog it Forward!


 

I want to start by saying a big thank you to nilpeksen for tagging me to take part in this Blog it Forward series (and also for the very insightful lectures delivered by her on SAP events). Thanks, Nil!

 

Who am I?


 

I was born in Brazil where I lived until 2018. Until 2011 I lived in Sao Paulo, the biggest Portuguese-speaking city in the world. The city was a popular destination for European migration to Brazil and this is the reason why my ancestral family roots are from Italy, Spain, and Germany.

In 2011 I moved to a smaller city called Ribeirao Preto, which is known as the "Brazilian California" because of its virtually endless summer. I can tell you that a typical winter day there is warmer than a typical summer day in Germany. It means more than 40 Celsius on some summer days and lots of 20+ Celsius on winter days!

 









 This is "Popcorn", my wife's rabbit that used to live in our home back in Brazil. He is enjoying a lovable 25 Celsius winter morning with a few carrots for breakfast...

 

In 2018, I decided with my wife to move to Europe and we chose the amazing (but cold) Bavaria region. Germany is an amazing place to live, but the first winter was a totally new world for us and I even questioned my decision because of the unseen (for me) weather and because of some personal challenges we had to overcome during 2018 and 2019. Now, after our second winter, I've already got used to it and I can say I'm pretty happy living here.

I started working as an ABAP developer back in 2005. After a few years, because of my curiosity about the business side of SAP implementations I've undertaken two functional SAP academies (SD and MM) and have got one SAP certification. But I've then learned that my real passion is in developing and architecting systems while I keep always learning new technologies. So I soon decided to focus back on the software engineering side. I learned Workflow, SAP Screen Personas, SAPUI5 and I'm working now to "be fluent" on cloud-native software development and product management.

 

My first "real" contact with the SAP Community was in 2016 when I decided to go to an SAP Inside Track event. I decided to have the most fun and submitted a session proposal to hold a lecture about SAP Screen Personas. Happily, it was accepted and since then I never stopped to collaborate with the community, mainly by joining events as a speaker but also by organizing some of them. These are the SAP Community events I've organized while still living in Brazil:

 

 

Making these events happen was a really amazing way to get closer to the local SAP community members and to learn that it is possible to make it happen. I think most people really enjoyed going to the events because they met lots of other new and interesting people and also learned a lot from all the sessions. I have written about my lessons learned while organizing these events here and here.

 

Now that I consider myself fully comfortable with living in a new country (besides the new language, I'm still working on that) I have plans for some new SAP Community initiatives for the near future, so stay tuned!

 

Now some questions...


... from susan.keohan's list. (Thanks for the amazing question ideas Susan!)

 

How do you think the way you were raised affects your Career?


I am extremely lucky to have been raised in a way that I turned to be a self-starter and self-learner. My father and my mother taught me to love books from an early age and later as an adult I developed the habit of reading at least one non-fiction book a week.

At 11 years old, I asked my father to sell my videogame console and buy a used old computer because I wanted to learn software development. By the same age, I started to study the English language by myself at home. Yes, I was a hardcore nerd!

All of this had and have a profound and positive impact on my career and my life as a whole. I'll be forever grateful to them for this!

Curious fact: when I was a child my father worked a long time for a Swedish company called Sandvik, which is an SAP customer. It makes me think that probably SAP had an impact on my life much earlier than I could realize.

 









That's me around 14 years old (and our curious baby cat) with the computer that had cost my beloved game console... At least I could learn the then-popular "Clipper" programming language which secured my first software developer job when I was 17 yo.

 

What do you enjoy most about your work and why?


The possibility and constant challenges to be always learning. I do not like it when life gets boring.

I absolutely love to learn new things and I actually plan my whole career based on this enjoyment. I think the work in the technology area and particularly with the SAP ecosystem is full of opportunities for constantly learning and growing.

I also enjoy the opportunity we have to know and exchange knowledge and experiences with a lot of people from the whole world.


If you were 20 again, what would you study?


Artificial Intelligence, more specifically Machine Learning applied to business, but from an engineering perspective.

I mean... I'll do it, even not being 20! 🙂


What do you most enjoy about the SAP Community?


I absolutely enjoy all the high-energy people focused on learning and sharing knowledge about everything that has the most impact on SAP projects and also on people's careers and growth.

 

And here one personalized question I wanted to add to the #BIF series: Who in the SAP Community has or had a positive impact on your initial community engagement?


I have had the pleasure of knowing and learning from some amazing people who definitely know how to make the community better and stronger:

First, when I was living in Brazil I was very welcomed by chagas.seinspire who organized the first SAP Inside Track event where I've joined as a speaker. This was back in 2016 at SAP Labs Brazil.

Later still in Brazil, I had amazing support and developed a friendship with raquel.pereiradacunha and bruno.lucattelli, two SAP Mentors who were very active in Brazil and acted as role models for all the SAP Community there.

Also in Brazil, I initiated contact and had lots of insightful support from christian.braukmller4 and graham.robinson, two SAP Mentors who very kindly mentored me with great ideas on how to organize the SAP Community events I started in Brazil.

More recently, gregorw, craig.cmehil, katarina.fischer were superlative making me feel more comfortable and welcomed to the SAP community in Germany and they surely keep inspiring me by their actions.

So if you want to get inspiration, please follow these people. Amongst others, they make the SAP Community a great place to be.

Thanks to you all because I've followed your steps and will keep doing it!


 

 

Some memories from my opportunities to engage with the SAP Community


 











A very special day with the SAP Community in Brazil, with the speakers from the first

SAP Inside Track Ribeirao Preto

 













In 2015 a little bit nervous during my first public speaking session at SAP Forum Brazil In 2019 still a little bit nervous during SAP TechEd Barcelona

 

Finally, let's keep the fun rolling ...


...and close by naming some people from who I would like to see a #BlogItForward:

gregorw

fmotter

majcon

simha.magal

 

Cheers!
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