Video Contestants, Step in Front of the Green Screen

It’s been quite a while since my last video-selfie-elevator speech challenge, though time has not been moving steadily recently compared to pre-pandemic times. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to share a 1 minute (or less) video of yourself, sharing with the SAP community something you might bring up in an elevator chat with someone you know only barely (pretend we can just get into a small space together and act casual).

As with prior community sharing ideas, this effort must have something like the carrot and the stick, where I can provide some incentive (personalized memorabilia aka swag) for just a bit of effort on your part. Recording 60 seconds takes but a minute, and whether you choose to post produce your creation with text/crawls/voice-overs, etc, just keep in mind the standard media sharing rules.

The stick? Well, this time the only significant restriction is the content must be food-related. I’ve created one myself as an example (see below), and my topic was garlic. You can do a simple “ta-da” here’s a morsel I like to consume, to a full menu-driven cooking show extravaganza that would make Martha Stewart proud [reference: https://www.marthastewart.com/1509043/food-cooking ].

If you can keep the length under 1 minute that will assist the judges in reviewing material I’m always optimistic that we’ll have dozens, even hundreds to view, but realistically, everyone has their plates full. Er, pun intended. Think of this as the sherbet course between working courses to socialize. Or like mortar between bricks, or better yet, Smith Island 7-Layer Cake slices LINK.

By Jane Thomas – Flickr: smith island cake, CC BY 2.0, Link

Deadline? Can we see your smiling faces (behind masks if need be) by August 15th? That’d be awesome.

Oh, the carrot serving. We’ve got trophies in the supply chain, which will be customized to your category should your offering be chosen as “best of”. And, also important, you’ll be networking in the peer-to-peer way that builds your reputation, character, notoriety and name recognition.

What else? Tips and tricks would help, and links to earlier fun collaborative efforts.

• I prefer “landscape” aspect ratios over “portrait mode”, which means if you’re going to use your mobile device, turn it sideways and get something in the background. As an aside, I’ve been enjoying the twitter account “ratemyskyperoom” where points are given for light, color, book displays, art and more. Not saying fancy backdrops get higher or lower ratings this time…
• Say your name, and if you would like, where you are from/where you are, and what you do in the SAP sense. Not looking for CV/resume, just a “Hi, I do ABAP”. Or what applies.
• English? Meh, not necessarily. Closed caption or subtitles are optional.
• Video host platform restricted to YouTube and whatever else links correctly on blogs.sap.com.
• Prior video challenge versions:
  • https://blogs.sap.com/?p=904848
  • https://blogs.sap.com/?p=876291

My recipe/ingredient:

Trophies

Potential new award base (“Your Name Here!”)

I won’t delve into any recommendations for video presence etiquette, as no doubt nearly all of us have gone through a steep learning curve to manage so many conferencing apps since early 2020. This isn’t a job interview or dating site, but it’s not a close family chat exactly either. So, casual or business attire is fine. I had my SAP Champions shirt on for my shoot, except at the time it wasn’t as blazing hot as today and I also had a windbreaker. Not swag.

Here’s 2 thumbnails from an earlier episode. The first is Somnath Manna with kids, and second is Shivakumar V [https://people.sap.com/shivakumar.v?] in an exterior shot.

John Astill with the precision timer!

Technicalities

Well, the basic idea is you create a video, then share it. I’m good with seeing a link as a comment. Ten years ago, I’d have said “put it in the wiki,” but now I just say that to myself. The document management silo that is wiki.scn.sap.com sharply contrasts with teh blogging silo (word-press-ish) and the questions-and-answers silo as well. The latter two are better aligned, particularly with the successor to SCN “business cards”, the people.sap.com contacts app.

It’s also fine to send me a message here, or on the multiverse of social media (jspath55 here, /1.0 and 2.0/, and there).

You’ll need to share the video to the world, I expect, in order to have it visible here. So, the usual precautions about private information sharing applies. With Europe typically on holiday for most of July (or is it August, I’ve forgotten?) the entries may be from the Americas and from Asia. I hope.

And… “ACTION!”

and “CUT!”

As of August 2nd, we have several contestants. I’m going to put screenshots of the entries I’ve viewed here. That way, you can put a movie poster image of the episodes in your mind.

I was a little worried about the music rights discussion, then realized maybe I didn’t emphasize this enough. But I think we’re okay, except the last seconds of one of Susan Keohan‘s efforts might be problematic. Hum a few bars and we’ll fake it?

Here are the nominees (so far, with 2 weeks remaining):

59 second limit? Very well managed, all.

And last minute: one more.