By Elizabeth Kelleher
Paul Hawking, senior lecturer in Information Systems at the University of Victoria has been named by the SAP Community Network as an SAP Mentor.
Hawking, who was honoured with the title at SAP TechEd 2010 in Las Vegas, Nevada, is only the fourth Australian chosen by the 65,000 active members of the SAP Community Network to be an SAP Mentor, and is the first from academia.
He joins Tony de Thomasis from Acclimation, Matt Harding from Aurora Energy and Graham Robinson from Yelcho Systems Consulting in a group of just of 98 individuals worldwide.
“Several of the SAP Mentors are product experts, while my expertise is more in knowledge about what universities do in the way of helping with SAP curriculum and working out what can be done to help the students learn more,” said Hawking.
“I am very humbled to be put in this bracket,” he says. “A lot of the Mentors you see in the SAP world are way up there and are gurus in their won right, so to be given the same label is fantastic.”
As an SAP Mentor, Hawking will now be offered unique opportunities for access to SAP senior management, early access to information on products and programs and greater visibility in the online communities as well as at SAP events such as SAP Tech Ed.
He said that he will continue to try to bridge the gap between universities and the SAP industry.
Hawking was also voted as one of Inside SAP’s Top Ten Most Influential People in SAP in both 2009 and 2010.
