UI5 10 year anniversary - what's my story?

[Noel_Hendrikx]

How did I get here from Portals to UI5 and Fiori?

In 2007 I had a project for the Dutch government. There was a IBM Websphere Portal and also a SAP Portal implementation. Decisions to be made at that time. I had experience in Websphere Portal and no one in the team had experience in SAP portal. Websphere portal was up and running fast, but SAP portal not. I was really curious and always willing to learn. I said to my project manager I'd like to try it. This is how I ended up in a SAP Portal consultant.

I wrote several blogs those days, especially on how to make your portal like what customers asked. Their own portal, not the ones out of the box SAP portal. I always had the feeling companies want their own branding. I started my own company 18 years ago and had a lot of fun making something beautiful that days. At some point SAP released the UI Theme Designer for I think SAP portal 6 or 7. I went every year to SAP Teched and spoke with SAP employees. Bertan Ganz asked me to join a beta programm for the new UI theme designer. As a self employed person between all the big companies I was very proud. We are still talking about 2013!

During the beta program I met Margot Wollney, Frederic Berg, Berthran Ganz and Uwe Klinger. We went out eating and enjoyed a lot. It was a nice meeting but never knew we will meet again in a different situation / environment.

Since I was self employed I promised myself to go to SAP Teched every year. Keep on track of all the new stuff is very important. Meanwhile I wrote more blogs for the community (theme designer and some front end tricks). Check out my bio, the posts are still there 😄

Then at SAP Teched (was it Barcelona?) 2015-16 I can't recall, I hear Stefan Beck talking very enthousiastic about UI5... I was really surprised and thought... Noël if you don't do this now, you will miss the boat! Frontend development with Javascript is your thing!

I went on a course in Brussels and finished it. No one had experience, but everyone was very excited. I knew I can do it, always willing to learn and fix the problem. But now, how do I get a project?

I had the opportunity in The Netherlands to go to an IT company that implemented UI5 for themselves. Robin van het Hof developed a SRM UI addon custom application and I was asked to help. I know him from SAP Portal Java development. He had one month to transfer his knowledge, since he had another job. He shared everything he could and even after that he helped me a lot. Robin is also self employed. For me (saying now) the SRM UI Addon was a bit of predecessor for the launchpad. The first launchpad version was implemented and a lot of new stuff was introduced. Also new apps were introduced and I met also Roel van den Berge. We did some apps together and I was really happy that we all shared knowledge together. To be honest, knowledge is NOT power, it's like a marriage. It's give and take, right?

After this I did not do any SAP Portal work anymore for new customers, only helping customers to phase out the SAP portal. I had a problem with my old SCN account since it was connected those days with my old company. I could not access it anymore. I had to start all over again.

Now we are in 2024 and I saw the youtube video of 10 years of UI5 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrsTRdGkAac). I was really happy to see Margot Wollney and Frederic Berg, Jan Penninkhof, Wouter Lemaire, Peter Muessing, Andreas Kunz, DJ Adams, Roel van den Berge passing by in memory. The whole UI5 community did a good job and it's all about sharing knowledge. I am really happy to be part of this community.

I did a lot of UI5 and Fiori projects over time and started 1,5 years ago with introducing TypeScript in my projects (new ones). It's really nice to do something unconfortable at an age of 54, but I am so happy that I have energy and love to pick this up! Never too old to learn!

Hope you get inspired by my story and keep on sharing knowledge! It's the best thing you can do!

Regards,

Noël Hendrikx
Peppie Portals