My career as an HCL ambassador is at an end and you have to get assistance from someone other than me.
I’ve been an IBM Champion, and then an HCL ambassador, for many years now. But it’s over now. So if you are a customer or business partner who have relied on me for help, assistance, software and contact directly with product managers, you will now have to find help elsewhere. Arne Nielsen at Brainworker is your man here in Norway, as he will still be an ambassador for 2023.
Here is how HCL explains what an HCL Ambassador is:
HCL Ambassador is a distinction that HCL awards select members of the community that are both experts in their field and are passionate about sharing their HCL knowledge with others.
HCL Ambassadors are exactly that, ambassadors. Importantly they are not employees, but their commitment to sharing their expertise has a huge impact on the HCL community. Whether they are blogging, writing books, speaking, running workshops, creating tutorials and classes, offering support in forums, or organizing and contributing to local events – they help make HCL’s mission of making technology play nice, possible.
For some reason I didn’t pass the mustard this year, which I did find a bit surprising. However, looking in my blog, it would seem that my passion about the HCL portfolio hasn’t been as big this year as earlier years. But I did do a lot ot stuff behind the scenes that you guys didn’t see.
I will miss the ambassador community. In addition to receiving much help, and hopefully they have gotten help from me, I’ve become mates with many of them. Some of us are Facebook friends and hopefully they and others will look me up if they come to Norway.
As many of you know, this isn’t even my day job anymore. But I still do a bit of Domino development, and I use Connections for my task management in my consultant business. I’m going to contemplate now what my relationship with these products will be in the future. I haven’t blogged much this autumn, so I don’t know what will happen with the blog. It might change focus to more general collaboration. I don’t know. Another cord has been cut, and it’s time to see what other things life has in store for me.
Sorry to read this message. Perhaps I wowed too early? Please stay on and you will collect sites for the next year.
Even if I do stay on with Domino, I won’t renominate myself next year.
Yeah, it’s a pity, but still he is an important part of the Brainworker network for as long as he want. My friend Hogne is still alive and kicking – as the real northerner he is. As we Brainworker’s say: Winners never quit! Quitters never win!
Sorry to read this and I will miss your blogs
I’m sorry to hear you won’t be continuing as an ambassador. I’ve always found your posts and information very helpful over the years and I appreciate all that you’ve done.
I was never an HCL Ambassador, but I was an original IBM Champion for 7-8 years. My personal philosophy was always that I would share what I wanted, help where I wanted and whatever happened with the nominations happened. Now, I have always been a customer, not a consultant, so maybe my perspective is different. HCL, like IBM is a huge company and we will never know their reasons for doing anything.
I would just suggest that you consider all the information you shared, all the people you helped – many of them you don’t even know about because they just read your blog or content and realize that you don’t need to be in a special group to be a “Champion” or “Ambassador” or “All around expert and good guy” that shares what he knows with those who do not.
Hi David, I could not have said it better. You become an Ambassador, Champion, Microsoft MVP, …. for what you do and who you are, it should not change what you do and who you are. And no longer having that title, should for sure not change that either. It would be a bad thing to let some award program change who you are as a person.
But it does take away your motivation and sense of belonging to a nice community. I doubt I will change much as a person because of this (see my reply to David above). But the main point of this posting was just to let people know that there’s no longer any point in going to me for that extra access to HCL that BPs and customers in Norway (and the Nordics) have become used to. I got 2-3 requests pr week at times. Well, they could, but that I would just have to redirect it to someone who actually is an ambassador. It would be faster for them to just go directly to an ambassador.
Thanks for the kind words, David. There are many reasons why my motivation isn’t what it used to be regarding this. I think this was just the final straw, really. I’m still contemplating if I should finish a couple of Domino and Connections related projects that I have put on the backburner for a while. If not for others, at least for myself. I like to see things finished.
Do the people in HCL have actual friendly relationships with their non-HCL members? Or have the original HCL friends moved on and the new crop aren’t bothered with humanity but just the numbers?