Blog It Forward - Colleen Lee

[Colleen]

Okay, so I usually have a rubber arm that is easily twisted. As far as the encouragement to do a B.I.F, my arm was less flexible. It has taken the following persuasions (nagging me constantly until I relented):

• It all started with rama.krishna80 back in September 2013  with his BIF
• Being Member of the Month and laure.cetin2 calling me out to a do a blog and me ultimately promising to
• Not-so-new Starter to the SCN team sofie.graham2 mentioned me in her BIF
• alessandr0 commenting in his MoM that no-one has sent a B.I.F to him and hoped I would
• A failure by me and steve.rumsby to get steffi.warneckeon Twitter brought up this BIF
• A continuation regarding pseduo-Twitter-SCN-status-updates banter between Steffi and matt.fraser in which Steffi edited hers and added Matt and me:
• And finally, quite a few status updates from people like marilyn.pratt and  susan.keohan plus a heap of other people through comments in threads over the past year nagging encouraging me to write one.

Yes susan.keohan - BIF is still going strong!!! SCN Lesson Learned: Persistance pays of :wink:

So I would first of all like to apologise to the chance of disappointment of a brilliant BIF after all of the hype and expectation. Let’s get started then….

I was born and live in Australia. I come from a large family – one 5 children and am also a twin. And to answer the common reaction I get from most people when they discover I’m a twin: no there is not two of me! Funnily enough, my partner comes from a small family.

As far as home town goes, that’s Brisbane. Some of the (debatable) interesting facts about Brisbane: it gets nicnamed Brisvegas and people in Sydney and Melbourne joke about it being a small country town (and then they all relocate here). Go figure! There’s a bit of unwritten rule in Brisbane – you grow up and stick to your side of the river. For me, I was the exception and have crossed the bridge. The other part about Brisbane that’ll be cropping up in the news is we’re hosting the G20 this year (I’m avoiding the airport that weekend) - you'll probably see photos like the one below of the City and SouthBank...

My Questions from the optional list

How do you think the way you were raised affects your Career?

I grew up in a family where you work hard for what you want. My parents believe in investing in education as a key to opportunity. Since then, it has led me to invest in my own training and career progress. I don’t sit back and wait for my turn to be promoted. If there is a training course I really want to attend, then I will fund it myself if my employer won’t. I own my career and no-one else.

What do you enjoy most in your work and why?

I love the problem solving and the diversity of what I do. I love the different people I communicate with. I love that I can feed my inner-nerd by writing some dodgy VBA code to analyse data, troubleshoot security incidents and design integrated solutions. I love that I can then translate my tech side to the business and discuss ideas and risk and process. I love that there is still something more to learn each day.

What do you most enjoy on SCN?

I enjoy the intelligent banter and diversity of the people. I love how a status update can become longer than a discussion in coffee-corner or About SCN. I love that SCN is my virtual team - just imagine every question you answer is a potential system design or build that you have contributed to!

Question from Steffi (as the latest one to pester so she wins)

What is the movie or TV series, that describes your life so far the best?

I’m thinking the IT crowd is probably up there with my work life as a Security person. I feel like a hybrid between all of them. Sometimes I’m kept in my box and other times management will invite me upstairs to play. And instead of asking someone to turn it off and on, I’m usually asking them to log-out and back in.

Drum roll for nomination...

So who to target nominate

• alessandr0 – our latest Member of the Month and a great person I collaborate with in GRC space.
• julius.vondembussche – just to hear more about his cat Heidi

Instead of a question, I ask them to complete the sentence: “My SCN is...”

Wine glass is empty so time for me to sign out...

Cheers

Colleen

SCN Moderator, SAP Mentor, @frommikki (recent Twitter member #totallyLost #zeroClue)