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SAP #9 – Mike Prosceno – SAP’s Social Media Guru – A man on a mission to change SAP’s engagement

This is a comment I was going to post on Mike Prosceno’s blog, but decided instead to post it here……

Let’s be honest Mike, 95% (my gut feel) of global businesses do not get web 2.0. Some have never even heard of it. Others think it’s all to do with consumers and not businesses. So, I use you and SAP as a case study when I try to explain to companies why they ought to join the bandwagon. I normally find a way to connect their business with web 2.0 angle. So thank you and SAP for your hard work for creating a great story.

On the other hand, I have been wondering why SAP is involved with social media, a subject I know very little of. My gut feel is that it’s a new trend that SAP does not fully understand. Instead of discarding, SAP has embraced it to learn what it does not know. So here comes Mike and Stacey. As you said, “we?re trying to skate to where the puck will be!”.  

Given that I know nothing about social media, I also use Word Press (started with Blogger then Word Press hosted before this), recently created a profile on Facebook, have been using LinkedIn for number of years and just joined BPX after your suggestion. I cannot find any content on EIPP though. There is few bits of information on SAP Biller Direct.

Whilst you are a Social Media Evangelist, I have recently started to identify myself as an EIPP Evangelist. I actually dislike the word “Evangelist”, but could not think of any other name to highlight my passion, hence starting to use it. We, Brits (I am actually Sri Lankan even though I have lived in the UK for 19 yrs less 3.5 yrs) do not like American acronyms (EIPP being one) or words like “Evangelist” – but as we cannot come up with our own and Americans are so good at it, we nevertheless fully absorb them with bit of winging.

You have raised number of discussion points in your post. Have you ever met Sam Sethi – the man behind Blognation? I highly recommend you meeting him when you are next in the UK. He has so much understanding in this area. During my recent conversation with Sam, he did mention what is after Facebook. Unfortunately, the glass of wine I had has completely erased it from my tiny brain. You might be interested to know David Terrar has joined Blognation as the Editor for UK Enterprise Software. Well done David – especially for your forward thinking and engagement within the software community.

This is the first time I came to know about The SAP Social-Media Global Research Project. What a great idea to do it on-line!

I was discussing the same aspects (web 2.0 and its relevance to businesses) yesterday with two CEOs of medium size UK software vendors. I love to mention their names here, but I do not want other EIPP vendors (Rhys/Ifor – no chance mate! – I picked you guys for a reason) to find out my daily engagements on behalf of Causeway Technologies. Problem with blogging is that sometime what is confidential and what is not become blurry. Over time, I believe you could find a balance, especially if you do not get fired or start to loose assignments. I think, as Evangelists of some sort or other, we have lot more work to do to convince UK businesses of the relevance of web 2.0. With this in mind, I have teamed up with Tony Fisher and Simon Grice of mashup* to hold a web 2.0 event in Manchester in early October 2007. As usual, I expect Sun Microsystems (already committed – thanks Stewart) and perhaps KPMG to support me. My next target is to connect with NWDA. Iain (Bennett), are you listening?

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