It's been a long time since I last voiced my opinion and/or talked about upcoming changes. Therefore I felt it was a good opportunity for this post, which is about adjustments in our points & recognition program.
A few years ago we started with points as some kind of symbolic and global currency to easier show value, contribution & spirit. Parallel we coined 'the active contributor' banknote, representing 250 points. This has enabled you to use this as as a sort of SAP certification and proof of expertise, and many of you have benefitted from this in your careers. 
However, you had to cross this gate only once in your life, so the question start to appear well what if they leave the SAP field for awhile is this still valid? Internally we enjoyed the growing number and included it in our communication, but at the same time we recognized that some of these active contributors have not been active within the last 12 months. In 2008 we / you achieved > 6.500 lifetime with 2.750 annual active contributors.
In 2009 our best category have been Business Solutions and ABAP, which nicely shows the growing contribution from BPX as well our strong base with ABAP. In 2009 we will add new categories for Industries and Sustainability to better show contributions & active contributors in these areas
To be more transparent and accurate with all our communications and numbers and to sustain the evidence / SCN certification aspect we decided to officially replace the lifetime by an annual definition in June 2009, and to only refer to these numbers.
We will show the list of all annual active contributors prominently on SCN up from June/July which should enable you to utilize this better for your future plans. Beyond that we plan to show all the alumnis to honor continued contribution.
As an additional motivation to 'do it again' we will match the number of active contributors with donations to a NGO. Stay tuned and check our communications for details on this.
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