hey and welcome to another episode of inside the barrel pints this time a shorter episode as we talked to eric our in-house itam guy who went to uh knowledge this year um so uh yeah let's get into it maybe give a little introduction about yourself yes tell us about what you do yeah absolutely uh my name is eric schuman i'm the director over the itam practice here at cask and that's all things itam so hardware software and now the you know the big announcement at the knowledge this year was enterprise asset management from eric farrington so um you know which handles your non-it uh assets so uh all that's within the practice i've got a combination of uh functionals you know that's actually done asset management in the uh in many corporate environments as well as some really really top talented architects that have been on the platform for a long time so uh we've got a pretty good team here at cask cool i didn't even hear about that like being asked and i was in challenge why did they tell that yeah it was a it was kind of a sell-out session led by eric farrington where standing room only where he was talking about enterprise asset management so you think about the you know the things that don't show up on the network that you still need to still need to track you know biomed devices and you know they kind of referenced you know like the oil and energy sector you know tracking stuff within that so it was uh pretty interesting highly anticipated we get asked all the time how to track um you know how to track assets that you know um that don't have an iep that are you know not on network so yeah i mean i even think of like chairs and buildings and like desks and headphones and you know absolutely yeah absolutely so yeah that's uh that was the big farrington announcement there that uh it's got everybody excited so i was if you uh look on a couple of the pictures where they're showing the standing room only i was right in the back they're standing so so dorian i noticed you have a sweatshirt with some familiar colors there yeah look at that i think it's part of servicenow's also new branding like this green is probably a little bit different but i got this one in the netherlands uh servicenow's conference so it's like the the way the world works with servicenow so i think it's kind of like their new slogan is the world works with and like instantly insert you know you know some sort of thing like your department barrier yeah it's i wasn't lucky enough to go to one this year and it's been what two years since the last one and i don't i wore my shirt but i don't remember when i got it it's like you know created the speed of business that was a while ago maybe like 17 maybe 18 i i'm not i don't remember now it's been forever yeah well they had 18 19 i don't know if they i don't think they had a 20 if i'm not mistake they may have right but i know they didn't have one for sure yeah 20 and 21 i think we're all online weren't they i remember correctly yeah it's interesting right there was a session called swag uh swap i don't know if that was where you could show up you could you could show up with some swag and see if you could swap for for like other ones i heard about that yeah did you did you get into it uh i didn't i didn't have other swag other than i got this free hoodie and i didn't want to give this one up but i did go and like there was like some like unofficial branding that like never kicked off kind of shirts like internal stuff that was kind of cool they were like doing like a jeopardy session before that where you could win you know swag that like never never made it to market um wow so yeah i don't know if i saw that you know i spent a lot of time on the uh within the booth there at knowledge in new york i went to the new york one so every waking minute that i could i was spending some time in the booth to you know to try to you know talk with different people both servicenow clients that type of thing interact with them because jamie and christmas has been forever since we've got to do that so i wanted to scoop it up i could so did you did you know a lot of people come by uh come by the booth like how was yeah we did we yeah we did you know in new york i think it was slightly under 2000 that were in attendance at the job at center there and we had some we had a lot of people uh a lot of people come by both clients you know as well as uh servicenow you know because you know within the itam's face you know that was one of the number one selling products last year for servicenow and there's just been this huge spike and ramp up of clients wanting to find out more you know not only about software asset management but you've got the the paid version of hardware asset management now that you know it came out in paris and it's starting to gain a lot of momentum now and a lot of people starting to follow it so uh of course when they find out there's an itam person there they want to come by talk to us so i definitely had a lot of activity in that space so that that reminds me of the last one in vegas you know you show up and all of a sudden there's a portal guy there everybody wants to talk to the portal guy yeah yeah and the clients the clients want the you know they they really seek out that that that ex that technical side of the house right yeah even even for me you know i uh uh scheduled sir or i made sure that i got out in front of the product development teams that were there you know just to kind of pick their brains a little bit so even even now as a consultant i still seek out a lot of that technical expertise you know the deep down stuff to talk to them while they're you know while they're kind of a captive audience type of thing so yeah yeah for sure so uh eric you since you've been to some older ones and this this new one in new york let's tell us about uh what was good and bad about it compared to the the other ones gotcha gotcha um you know well first off the good is is we're finding able to get out and about again right so that's the main thing at least we got somebody to talk to that's three-dimensional instead of you know black right in front of us right get the shake a hand i know that's probably not good anymore but you know still to be able to shake a hand and talk to him um so i'd say that's definitely a pro you know i would say that um the people that did attend although it was a much smaller a smaller venue the the people that did attend i saw a lot of this is what i really want to talk about so they came there with some specificity and you know to know that they wanted to deep dive in a lot of this stuff so there was a lot of good uh a good questions that were being you know funneled our way um you know the probably a con on it would have been you know we just didn't get the the i would say the um broader uh slice of all the people that could potentially be there for service now because it was just so limited right yeah it was uh you know i had to be scaled back i know that there was some limits on how many they could send from servicenow how many partners could send you know because we really wanted to have more clients than anything else there in attendance and and so that kind of limited you know things a little bit but you know the hopes are is that we get back to the bigger conference you know hopefully next year where we get the thousands of people in there again but um you know i i think i think that's going to happen but either way you know just being able to get out there and talk was just phenomenal plus we had our you know we had our rooftop sessions you know on tuesday night so the the conference was uh actually it was uh wednesday and thursday right so we all flew in on tuesday wednesday night we had a rooftop session there and i think it was wednesday night i get confused on the day so but it was phenomenal right that's where we really got a lot of interaction with clients and uh as well as well as some service now reps too so sure sure um i was gonna ask this is for either any one of any one of you guys considering with this uh knowledge what has been your favorite knowledge that you've been into i'll let you go first dorian i've only been to one so oh one yeah yeah i wasn't uh you know i think it's interesting from like a client so before i worked at a cask i was a clock i was part of a client that implemented servicenow and it's not like you can just send the whole team right and because there's you know a cost to value kind of uh question and so you know i never got to go when when i was on the servicenow team um so mostly snugs before this and then you know then the conference so mine's an easy answer there's only one in europe so yeah i went to that one well i went both 18 and 19 i was a client then i wasn't i wasn't a consultant and you know i'll say john that both of them were equal i mean the the nice thing about us is we were kind of an early client in the company that i was working for and you know every effort was made to get us in front of the contacts that you know that we needed to and you know i kind of hate to drop names here but you know in one of the uh and one of the conferences i went to i got to get out in front of mark bodman you know who had worked with uh together with scott lamb on the csdm you know models and and i think it was 18 was when they first announced um you know the first version of csdm um and it was just that was the talk right it was like finally right we're going to get some structure behind this and some you know um so i would say probably that one was would have been my favorite because it was there's such a buzz on uh you know on how that was being developed was was 18 in florida or was it in vegas i don't remember that both of them i went to were in vegas so i think yeah i'm i'm pretty sure i was 18 and 19 i just know i want to go with the vote you kind of forget a lot in vegas right so what happens in vegas stays in vegas right so i i was just looking up uh the first one i went to so obviously i i've been in the the um how do you want to say it i've been in the uh the servicenow sphere for quite a while so my first one was yeah the ecosystem my first one was 14 in san francisco oh wow and and that was back when i you know we all i'm sure we've all worked for a client but that's back when i worked for a customer um and it was it was kind of neat you know i i'd been to san francisco before but so you get used to being inside a uh you know uh uh a conference center like in vegas where it's all within the hotel you don't have to go anywhere san francisco you had to walk out and around to different conference centers because they couldn't fit it all into one yeah so you had different buildings you had to walk to and there'd be these huge groups of people like crossing the street to get to each conference wow wow and the guy i went with from from our team he would force me to go like normally when i travel i just go do what i'm supposed to do and i don't do anything else right i'm a homebody i don't i don't visit stuff right but he would make me go visit stuff and so in vega or in san francisco we went to muir woods and that was kind of neat yeah it was it was it was pretty cool to go see that stuff but i'm trying to think of what my favorite one was i almost want to say that one was my favorite just because it was so different compared to all the other ones in vegas and uh florida um where those were way more like centered uh conference you know they were way more conferency than san francisco was i i will say that new york the the venue itself right the java center that uh that they had it at and the location of it um you know i've only been to new york a couple of times and it definitely wasn't you know any extended amount of time like i was there for the week uh you know for the knowledge conference but just the venue of being able to do just what you said john of you know we were we were very close to times square um you know my at the end of my stay my my wife flew over and we uh you know we went to a broadway musical so uh you know that was that was an experience for us just you know maybe would probably be sure right but it just it was just the location in the venue of where it was at i really did like yeah so so you've got a chance to be a little touristy exactly new york yeah good good walk around a little bit so [Laughter] fun fun um let's see i know you mentioned something about another con with the new york one about how the sessions were presented yeah um if you want to go into that a little bit more it's really kind of interesting to me that they did it that way i mean maybe was it was related to the space they had in the conference center or whatever but yeah if if you want to talk about that i'd love to hear more yeah absolutely well of course you know within the expo hall we have we had a very limited size uh restriction upon you know the the booth that we were at you know it was a super small space um but around the expo hall there they had sessions set up um you know where uh like in the one that i went to that uh you know that eric fairing presented at you know there was probably i would say at least 150 to 200 seats that were you know right in front of a stage but then next to that or very very close to that was another session that was going on so there was a lot of bleed over you know within you know within that's that confinement of that space there between sessions so it you know you had to really listen very good you know and watch watch the lips move to make sure that you're connecting everything i know that it was you know i you know i think that it was kind of uh i i believe they originally were planning on having a larger conference this year and then they had to split it up for some covert reason so i'm sure that you know they did every effort or they did everything they can to try to make it as um you know as comfortable for people as they could uh but that did present some challenges so if you were not at a session uh you know and you were standing in the booth you just kind of circled around to try to figure out and so okay i'm going to listen to them and then hopefully hopefully only one ear worked better you know an ear worked better than the other one so right right yeah no at least at least where in the netherlands it was like they did have conference rooms um so they had like the keynote and like this big hall and then they had like smaller conference rooms and then like they did have stuff on like the expo floor yeah and there just wasn't enough space from like you couldn't get a seat right so you're kind of like standing and it's just like you're in halfway through the hallway and you're just like i'm trying to listen and see this like small screen yeah there were definitely times where it's harder um but if like you went early and you sat down like you get a seat and you just stay there for like hopefully for like two seconds [Laughter] and they did i think they did have a couple of rooms upstairs in the java center i never did make it up there you know i was like we you know john and dorian and i were talking earlier i tried i tried to stay you know every waking minute you know on uh on the expo floor there because you know that's where we saw that's where i saw the most interaction right sessions were good you know from what i could see from the from the agenda there was uh you know there were some good client sessions that were being presented um you know that definitely i want to go back and listen to later on that i didn't that i didn't get to and that's probably a good thing for anybody that's listening right is that yeah those are recorded so if you did have a difficult time hearing it you know if you go listen to the recorded one i'm sure since they were all mic'd up it's going to be a direct recording so you are going to be able to hear what they say much better than so i would advise people to go download those and listen to them oh let's see uh as we try to wrap this up as a pint what would be a good last question seen as how dorian's only been to one knowledge and i think i think a good question would be like you know what's something you could tell a client or another consultant or anybody if they're going to their knowledge for their first time like you know what is like a big tip that um you feel like you've learned from from your experience yeah so i could say from uh you know from a client perspective right is always you know prepare ahead of time um you know make sure you've got your agenda planned out and i would even say work with your partner um or work with you know your servicenow rep to figure out exactly who's going to be there that you would like to talk to because servicenow i feel does a really good job of reserving places where you can have meetups and so it's good if you can get out in front of that before you get there and then find out well the person that you were hoping is going to be there wasn't really there to to work directly with your with your ae um whether it's you know again partner or service now to find out exactly who's going to be there and line your agenda up would be probably my number one recommendation i think for me oh didn't mean to cut you off dorian go for it um i think one of my big tips especially after going to so many is networking um knowledge turned into more of a networking tool than a learning tool after a few and so i always found much better value in the people i could meet there you know because you spend time in in s and devs and you're like you know what i want to meet these people and you create this community you know and i so i think the networking don't don't overlook talking to people you know i think that's the biggest biggest thing at an in-person conference anyways that's that's really what i've missed for the past few years is is that you know like you said just being in person with people yeah and and i would even add to that john you know i'm i'm old i've been around for a long time i used to i used to go to the ca conferences the computer associates conferences the bmc conferences gartner you know not the throw names but i've been to just about every type that you could imagine the thing i've noticed the most about the service now conferences is the willingness of other people to share their information right so so on top of your what you're saying about the networking it's they're they're all i won't say they're bragging but they're but they're proud of what they've done and as a client i could pick up so much information just by talking to another company and saying how did you do this right and and they're willing to share it with you so that's that's the one thing that i would say that kind of separates the service now conferences from some of the others is just people are genuinely proud to talk about what they've accomplished yeah yeah i would agree 100 with that i feel like i was giving free consultation sometimes when i i wasn't trying to you know get them to be a client they were just telling me about like a problem they're going through and i was like oh like you know when you go home look at these three things and exactly ask your account exec about it and yeah exactly so true so true i i distinctly remember a number of conversations like that at the last one i went to in vegas it was you'd walk down the hall and someone would be like oh hey john yeah come here yeah let's talk about this and you're like okay yeah yeah i think yeah love that you i mean you just can't get that in this type of you know in a zoom or in a you just can't get that right yeah so i guess since you guys talked about networking and then packing your agenda and sometimes i would say over pack it and then don't go to everyone uh prepare to go to yeah be flexible yeah yeah yeah my tip would be talk to servicenow product managers um specifically this is an opportunity for them like i gave you know requests for features that i want to see and you know they they even followed up with me and like hey i submitted this to internal you know product and i was like oh that sounds cool um so i think like you know product managers at these really want feedback from clients and how they're using it or what they want to see to improve so it is a unique opportunity to you know share your experience with with servicenow internal folks yeah you know and i think that's a great point dorian because i think a lot of people shy away from that because it's been my you know now granted i've only been in consulting for just a few years right but in working with our product management team both from a ham and a sam they they really like that that feedback right you know they want you to come to them and say hey it would be nice if it did this right now definitely don't beat them up right and say wow that doesn't work right they you know they want the feedback to try to make the product better and i'd say that's the one thing that extremely positive within within the product management teams within servicenow as they they genuinely do seek that information from both clients and partners yeah yeah uh and one last tip don't miss out on the swag yeah yeah i'm an example of that i have like i have so much like i've had to get rid of backpacks because i have so many of them from all the jealous so jealous i want a backpack i got a tote bag this year and i'm like all right they didn't do backpacks no they did the tote bag and then they did the sweatshirt and i didn't get upstairs and get one again i was so busy downstairs and i should have so for servicenow people listening i'd really like a sweatshirt yeah yeah my tip is always that should be a tip once you check in go to like the sliders go right go right to the desk yeah and i will say that the booths weren't allowed to uh really hand out swag at least i can't say for the one that you were yeah but the the boost now we you know cask had a few little things but uh we were yeah they weren't allowed to really give out a swag it's just the con the small spaces so i actually got a free water bottle from a competitor so i was happy with that there you go but there wasn't a lot of like swag it was kind of like candy things yeah man you know jar mints or yeah that's what swag is what makes the conference yeah yeah what's that i said swag is what makes the conference though i know i know yeah yeah that's too bad [Applause] that's a long got a little nervous there on that i was like oh it's going too long no one's talking all right are we feeling like we had a good conversation about knowledge conferences keep our top points you know talk to product managers um network and uh what was your point door well no pac agendas was with yes pack your agendas and then swag yep all right yeah and hopefully next year uh well okay you know i have one more question real quick do you think they're going to continue to do these global conferences versus having like you know before in in 2018 2019 where they just had it in vegas or orlando or whatever just have these huge conferences do you think they're going to start doing these uh regional ones and like actually doing these for from here on out i i don't think so um i think if you know can't answer for them of course but i would imagine that maybe one north america you know maybe one you know overseas you know kind of like netherlands where dorian was at um you know not sure if they'll go back to the big big one just having one if they'll you know just kind of limit to you know like i said north america whatever um i hope that they get to that right um because i do believe that um you know it did limit you know just because of the the uh like in new york the size of the place and stuff it did limit the number of people that can be there and sure so i would like to see it bigger than what it is so i hope that we at least get to one conference in north america and one overseas yeah yeah i think emea is kind of like a big open market for them right now so i i think this being the first conference i know they'll have more um here and then i agree i think it'll just become one north america one and it has to be in vegas to for size right yeah whether they do the like australia one again i i don't i i don't know right okay yeah i i agree i i hope they do a single north american one because i hate to miss out on you know it's that networking piece i don't want to miss people that i know you know i want to see them and shake their hands all right well i know personally i had clients that were going to new york and then ones that were going to vegas and so i i had to kind of okay i'll go to the new york one i'm gonna miss out on the ones in vegas so it'd be nice if i could have them all in one place to talk to so yeah understandable all right well with that i think we're done awesome okay we'll see [Music]