in greek mythology the muses are the nine daughters zeus had with nemisinae the goddess of memory each of them uses held sway over the various artistic disciplines we often use the term muse as a source of inspiration the spirit that provides the energy and the motivation and the obsession in our artistic pursuits so with knowledge 21 right around the corner i pay tribute to cleo the muse of history and think back on how my first knowledge knowledge11 became my muse for the next 10 years outside of my wedding day and the days my children were born knowledge 11 is one of those pivotal moments where you can only measure what was before and what was after all the threads of past and present conspiring on one day to alter my trajectory a day of fate act one twists of fate it was the early 2000s probably 2003 i'm a couple years into my career as a magic total service desk consultant i'm being mentored by a friend who we'll call ben it's not his real name but he works in the ecosystem and i want to protect his identity after teaching me everything ben knows about tech and consulting we start racking up just insane amounts of consulting days for our mutual employer hard work means hard play so our team rents out a cottage mansion deep in the wilderness of quebec canada now after years of insane business travel i am tired in the bones of my soul drained and empty like a sponge left for a week in the desert i'm flying home after five weeks on the road and i drive straight to the cottage my mood is dark as dark as the cloud that's resting over the cottage threatening to keep us indoors all weekend i can't shake the feeling of hopelessness so instead of socializing i find a room i drop my bag off and i climb into bed i sleep for nearly 48 hours straight i wake up with a deep sense of foreboding and people are shocked to see me they think i'd gone home they think i went home with ben but why would ben go home he's the life of the party well ben and his long time girlfriend broke up that weekend at the cottage and ben went away we just didn't know how far or for how long monday i get a call from work ben didn't show up at the client site and we can't reach him you're heading to chicago so i'm flying to chicago worried sick about why ben would know show for his favorite customer and such an important customer for our company i land do my services and i start the next chapter of my life because my client loved my work and so much so that they hired me directly i moved from ottawa canada to chicago illinois usa and my career really starts moving i'm working for a company that i love with peers who i love i fall in love and i get married but nobody ever found out what happened to ben he went completely missing in action his own family reported him as a missing person it kept me up at night all these blessings flowed into my life because ben's life took a shocking turn for the worse not a day went by where i didn't think about it and while i resolved to make the most of it fate kept me blind for just a little while longer i strove for and achieved nothing greater than that ticketing tool guy for years and years in i.t until we discovered and became an early adopter of servicenow act two reconciliation i arrive at knowledge11 the entire crowd can fit in the tent pavilion they have set up that's right i said tent a big tent but still a tent everyone is remarking about how huge it is compared to knowledge 10. i know nobody there and because i'm shy introverted and weak i feel trepidation instead of excitement i'm standing in a lunch line wondering if i should just grab some food and run back to my hotel room rather than have uncomfortable conversations with strangers but i look across the room and there's ben i'd spent years hoping he was even still alive somewhere and there he was suddenly i'm full of hope and joy service now is going to be the next big thing and ben is alive and well and being part of that blessing too for the first time in years i didn't have that nagging guilt that all of my blessings were manifested only because someone else had to suffer act three reimagining now as i said at this point in my life i'm shy introverted weak and in perpetual self-doubt to avoid embarrassing myself with conversations i'm convinced they're going to be awkward i start reading over the schedule for the umpteenth time while i'm sitting in the pavilion while i'm waiting for the opening keynote to start i notice how many sessions are being led by customers wow i think to myself in my pathetic weakness wouldn't it be amazing to be so good at something that you can talk at a conference about it maybe someday that could be me but again in my pathetic weakness but i'm just a nobody why would anyone want to listen to what i have to say now knowledge 11 was special because it was so small by today's standards servicenow thought the conference needed an icebreaker so they hired this guy who didn't even talk about servicenow he was there to break the ice at the conference his name's tom singer and if you ever get a chance to see this guy do whatever you can travel the ends of the earth to see him he is a special one-of-a-kind speaker anyway i'm minding my own business listening to tom when he asks who here is an introvert and while i'm thinking i'm an introvert everybody laughs was this german guy stands up in the middle of the pavilion wavings his arm saying oh pick me pick me i'm an introvert everybody was laughing so hard and the best good-hearted heckle service now knowledge has ever had in my opinion but then tom says something that just blows my mind he says did you know self-described introverts are consistently better at building powerful people networks hold the phone [Music] introverts are better at building powerful people networks because introverts prefer not to be the center of attention they will deflect and direct attention to other people often asking powerful networking questions to do so other people quite enjoy being the center of attention and will remember favorably those who gave them that attention i'm paraphrasing again but there was something like the introverts store the potential energy of a people network i've never been so fundamentally changed in a single moment in all my 43 years of living in an instant i saw traits that i had relegated to disadvantages and weakness suddenly become advantages in the blink of an eye the crowd around me transformed from cripplingly intimidating to buzzing with potential energy for me to use i can remember hearing my heart pounding my ears from what i can only describe as anti-panic i wasn't the pathetic loser i imagined i was i was made for this i talked to more people immediately after that keynote than in months of real life beforehand i absorbed all i could about the victories and challenges they were experiencing with servicenow i started learning that the stuff i was doing was every bit as awesome i learned i had experiences where other people had gaps and that they were searching for somebody to fill those gaps and i learned that if you had enough conversations you'd meet somebody that was missing a puzzle piece that someone else had and there was power in connecting the two epilogue in 10 years of knowledge events knowledge 11 was my first and my dearest i was so blessed to see the hands of fate move to both bless and redeem to see people i owed so much be brought back from such personal turmoil and to have tom singer literally rewire my mind and transform me from my own unique position in this space there's just nothing like it it's a great sadness to me that knowledge is forced to be virtual this year and last year if conferences ever go back to in person i highly recommend you come to knowledge even at your own expense the networking potential far outweighs the raw technical knowledge available blessings to all the hands who have shaped knowledge over the years and i hope everyone grows immeasurably from knowledge21 if we're not connected and you're motivated by this piece hit me up on linkedin and please let me know how i can help you thanks so much for watching i remain yours truly the duke