When it was announced that I was selected as an IBM Champion for 2014 it came as big surprise. For me the prototype of the champions are the “technical” champs who deserve the title because of their deep technical know-how and the attitude of sharing, talking about technology at sessions and blogging hints and tricks regularly. I learned and appreciated that in addition to these IBM Champions there is also a group of people that leads businesses, organise events, is responsible for user groups and do promote the products and the solutions as often as they do have the possibility to do so and are selected as IBM Champions because of this relentless effort.
Just before the announcement of the 2015 IBM ICS Champions class I made a pact with myself: I would start writing blogposts should I be once again amongst these great bunch of people. Well, being an IBM Champion for 2015 again I had no excuse anymore. So, what to do? After a quick research and categorizing the blogs that are listed under “planetlotus” I can confirm that the content of the blogs is mostly technical and I was back at start again. What could be interesting and of value for the community and people out there?
Then I remembered something that Femke Goedhart told me after reading one of my internal blogposts that I was writing for years. Femke told me that I really should write these blogposts in English and publish them externally as well. She encouraged me that I should write about my daily professional life and about the projects that I am involved.
Femke became a dear friend over the years and I have high respect for her both professionally and personally. So I will follow her advice and try not to let her down and hopefully will write interesting blogposts. As her blogposts and tweets are a constant inspiration for me, as well as the affirmation that I am not alone in doing business in our field of work, I will try to follow her example of sharing information, writing about projects and customer cases. There will be blogposts about presentations and events, success stories and of course stories of what went wrong in a first attempt, about errors, failures or work-arounds.
But this first blogpost belongs to Femke and is a thank you for her support, effort and openness. Femke, your friendship means a lot to me and is present even when we see each other only a few times a year. I miss you during the “normal” weeks and I am looking forward to talking to you again at the next community gathering. So, from far away I wave towards the north and hope you are doing well – thank you for being just awesome and a dear friend.
Sandra – As a fellow distant friend of Femke (different country, different technology) – Yay! and great first blogpost!
Congratulations on being an IBM Champion again and good luck with the blogging…
Congratulations, Sandra. Nice first post. Yes, I can also confirm how awesome Femke is professionally. Just a wonderful person to know.
Well done Sandra, and congratulations on stepping out to share your own experiences working with and promoting IBM Collaboration Solutions. Having known you for a number of years, I admire your professionalism and the manner with which you engage with customers. Looking forward to reading about your exploits. Kudos to Femke for getting you to do this in public. Big (hug) to you both 🙂
Sandra thank you but really, I do not deserve this praise! I’ve always admired and respected you both as a person as well as a professional greatly and consider you both a good friend and great collaboration solutions specialist. You have a keen and unique insight into how to do business in this area and I look forward to reading your blogs!