2022 has been a mixed up year there have been some really great highs along with some interesting challenges in this episode I'll share some of what I've observed welcome to breakpoint the servicenow developer podcast here's your host Chuck tomasi hello servicenow admins Builders developers and curious individuals and I say that as always with the utmost love and respect welcome to breakpoint the servicenow developer podcast where we bring you the latest tools tips and tradecraft to accelerate your career well this is a bit of a different one though this is my end of year wrap up I do not have a guest with me we're not talking about any tips tricks or trade craft in this case it is my 2022 end of year wrap up just a few things that I've observed things I'm thankful for and just wanted to start out with you listeners thank you very much I just checked the statistics and listenership on this podcast has increased over 33 percent versus 2021. that was the first full year of podcast because we started in mid-2022 so thank you everyone who's made that happen there's been some wonderful talks about uh with our product managers on San Diego and Tokyo content we'll get into a little bit about that later we've got we've had career stories from our community both MVPs and in internal people about how their careers have gone career management various topics to make you a better developer not just technically but soft skills as well and if you didn't notice we also started putting in uh some announcements like where normal ads would go it's Dynamic ad insertion so it's timely you can't listen to an episode from last March and hear something about Creator con because it's been pulled out it it and and the new ad will be put in so hope you don't mind those we're trying to keep you informed without overdoing it staying with one and only one for the time being unless things really get crazy and I've got a whole bunch of announcements to let you know we may do that but I'm gonna I want to make sure that the content of this is is the key Focus but those are timely things to let you know hey the MVP application is open until December 31st 2022 or we've got an award coming up or Creator con time to register that kind of thing just hope it's helpful it's it's another way for us to get that information across to you now turning to the people of the team this is our developer Advocate team and very proud and happy of what we've accomplished and who's accomplished but it is it is with sadness that we had to say goodbye to Brad Tilton as a team member but not as a servicenow employee he was a developer developer advocate for a few years Brad Tilton was uh I've known him for years lots of respect for this guy even before he was a servicenow employee he was a partner made his contributions early on in the community as many of us have and and he's done some wonderful things helped out the team in great way with the uh Meetup program the MVP program a lot of the content that was generated thank you thank you so much to Brad he'll still be around he's still going to be sharing what he's focusing on now around Nick's experience UI Builder that sort of thing running some academies through the community Through the developer program we're still working very closely with him I think we speak almost on a weekly basis so thank you very much for your contributions Brad we all also said hello to Lauren McManaman in July new team member came on board our first female Advocate happy to say that and she is such a wonderful person I've known her since 2016 when we met at knowledge she was in my app Dev course that I was teaching at the precon training and we've just sort of kept in touch she started with servicenow about a year after that did some demos for a while in the demo Center and then came into the pre-sales team and then in July we got her as an advocate so very familiar with doing demos and presentation wonderful personality loads of great ideas we also said hello to pranav bhagat our first non-american our first advocate in India to address that audience and the people and the culture we know that there's this this divide this difference that we're going to really start to Target maybe timely content so you don't have to wake up at 2 A.M in India to go to live coding happy hour and enjoy some of that we will have some of that in a more time zone friendly fashion so looking to pranav and some of the wonderful things that he's going to bring he's been on board for well since mid November so a few weeks and already lots of great discussions lots of great ideas we're we're sort of learning where things go and and how things work on both sides of the uh the pond at this point so welcome aboard pranav great to have you we also had earlier this year of course our knowledge conference and Creator con the servicenow developer event inside of that bit different we fight it was a blessing and a curse we finally got to meet people in person the curse was it was in four locations two of them at the same time on both sides so while I was in New York with Jason McKee and Marcelo our our manager and some others Earl 2K our other Advocate and Brad Tilton we're in The Hague in the Netherlands at the same time we were seeing like their karaoke party a few hours before we had our karaoke party was kind of bizarre but uh that was that was challenging yet very rewarding I feel very honored and blessed to be able to have been the host in MC of the keynote um it was great great seeing people again in person can't tell you how much I loved meeting some of these people even like singing karaoke alongside of them or or poking fun at the Jeopardy game that was fun the karaoke have finally met its purpose because I had started writing that in mid July Late July of 2019. I got the idea and then it was supposed to be at knowledge 20. well that turned digital because of covid and we didn't have a karaoke party at 20 or 21 but hey we got it in 2022 the app is almost three years old at that time very mature so fewer bugs I guess you could say we did find a couple of things that I wanted to enhance it I got that taken care of we also had book signing Brad Tilton and I co-authored low code apps for dummies uh this is like on its second or 30 duration I can't remember which but we had some hard copies on site and we did a book signing it was kind of a fun souvenir for people to take along now I suspect there's a number of you out there that attended one or one of these events very difficult to go to both uh maybe somebody was in New York and Las Vegas and got a rare book with both signatures but hey bring it back and we'll do it again maybe we'll even have the updated version we just completed that in November we've got a sec indentation of low code apps for dummies refreshed with all of the next experience images and some new capabilities like decision Builder so we should have that ready to go at knowledge 23. yeah budget and schedule providing Etc Safe Harbor Safe Harbor I'm allowed to say that here side of knowledge well I should I should get to the second half the the first half of the Hague and New York were May 11th and 12th and then two weeks later 25th and 26th I was in Sydney with some of our team and Brad and Earl were in Las Vegas so again it was hard I feel like I missed some people like oh didn't get to see so and so because they went to Las Vegas made sense geographically didn't make sense as far as relationships and getting FaceTime and singing karaoke or whatever uh thank you to Earl who ran the karaoke parties in Vegas and the Hague too so everybody got a little bit of piece of that and we tried to make as many of these activities as many of these exhibits cross-site a multi-site synchronicity I don't even know what I'm looking for here but happen at the same time so everybody could experience them when I was in Sydney two weeks later uh had a great time to spend a little bit of time beforehand got to get to walk around Sydney and do some things with the rest of the team and then obviously the event happened was a great time thank you everybody for in city for hosting met some of our wonderful Partners wonderful Dev MVPs did the keynote there as well and then uh afterwards my wife and I had a couple of extra vacation days so you know we went to the Blue Mountains and climbed the Sydney Harbor Bridge did some touristy stuff unfortunately I tested positive for covid right before the night before our flight left and at the time you weren't allowed to fly if you tested positive I I won't get into the whole big long story but I I did have to stay 10 extra days she went home she was fine she tested negative and I stayed 10 extra days in a freezing cold Hotel working crazy hours but it we got it done we got it done and it was a interesting like I said an interesting experience for the year the day I got home they dropped that can't travel if you're positive you got to stay an extra 10 days like oh come on really the day after I get home that was that was just cruel uh we did have our San Diego and Tokyo releases two big things out of our calendar year we have two releases a year if you're new to this podcast again apologize for this unusual format we will get to a regular uh or talk to somebody about products and tools and tips and tricks and all that kind of stuff but a lot of our content for q1 was around San Diego and a lot of it in Q3 was around our Tokyo release we do two releases a year named after cities of the world don't ask me what happens after Zurich can't tell you nobody knows at this point but we'll find out we we were told here's the funny part we were told that Tokyo we we should not be looking to produce the same amount of quantity we made a lot of content blogs podcasts videos live streams a whole bunch of stuff in San Diego and and Marcelo said don't worry about quality a quantity focus more on quality and we did our best in Tokyo we had the schedule laid out and I just did the statistics yesterday I was counting up the numbers and uh we did technically meet our Target of less content but only by one artifact it was something 47 for San Diego and 46. some of them crept in I'm not sure how that happened uh but we're we're told keep the bar low in terms of pieces of content for the upcoming Utah which I'll talk about in a little bit so uh we also launched a couple new series did you know started that in July June June late June I've been thinking about this for a few months was waiting until after knowledge so we had the bandwidth to address this coming out roughly once every other week with a new topic just a little tidbit about the platform that you may not have known that can help you be more effective and that's been receiving wonderful responses engagement on social media and and the comments in the YouTube videos and whatnot so if you're looking for any of this all the videos are at devlin.sn YouTube that's our short link that you can find if you're looking for all the short links or or many of them the common ones devlin.sn links l-i-n-k-s this is where you can find that so uh did you know just short little Snippets and then uh Lauren started one looking forward to more of these called get to the point again short format that gets to the point of a common use case maybe an FAQ that you've seen on the community somebody says Hey how do you do this she's going to explain it to you real quickly so looking forward to seeing more of those and uh what Lauren can create for content where was I I'm going out a bullet list in case you can't tell I I did mention that we updated the low code apps for dummies that was done in November so we should have fresh new copies uh at knowledge23 their digital version will be online soon we also had the holiday snow we closed out the year with the snugs and I don't mention our snug stands for servicenow User Group very often difference between the the servicenow user groups and the developer meetups developer meetups we've got chapters all over the world they are community-led we have someone in an ecosystem not a servicenow employee necessarily if there is I want to want to change that for certain chapters uh and and they're they're focused on developer content let's look at what's new in Tokyo let's talk about the script include let's explore how to do an integration with WhatsApp there's lots of different things happening and they are for developers by Developers servicenow user groups or snugs are more general purpose to the larger audience you may have a customer talking about their Journey from new customer to itsm implementation to doing their cmdb or getting hrsd online what did it take and the nice testimonials I love them the great content the uh followed by you know somebody who may be talking from servicenow who may be talking about uh you know how to maximize your artificial intelligence okay so it's it's all over the place and it's it it's scheduled and led by servicenow so different faces on there still wonderful content if you've got the opportunity to go to a servicenow user group or snug Meetup take a look at that there's good information in there and you may meet some other developers as well so let them know hey if you've been to the Meetup what do you think should we start one maybe there isn't a meet up in your area we are uh uh I'll talk about this as I look forward into 2023 but I was uh just to close out the snug thing we did off have a holiday snug this was the second year in a row we did this in late 2021 I went to Santa Clara and we did a live webinar with our snug leader Tracy O'Brien you know we're goofy Santa hats and decorations and whatnot uh it was a great presentation there's a little bit of entertainment we had a a what do you call it a person who reads your minds anyway Mystic magician kind of guy and we also have a customers talking about we had Alan talking about the community this year so wonderful bit of content I think we went an hour 90 minutes 90 minutes I think it was and uh you know Tracy now we're in there just to stitch the segments together and have some fun great attendance uh it was all it was a zoom webinar so it wasn't in person I think we had a like 1500 people or something it was it was crazy numbers uh thank you everybody who attended that and look forward to doing that again hopefully they'll ask me to come back in late 2023. all right flipping the page let's look at what's coming up in 2023 we obviously have more great content around the releases we have two more releases scheduled Utah in q1 and Vancouver in Q3 the only date I know for certain right now off the top of my head said is February 2nd that is early availability date when developers will be able to get access to the Utah release on their personal developer instances which you can get at developer.servicenow.com ding I should be putting a ding in every time I mention a link that's kind of a tradition on another podcast anyway uh we're going to do a one hour webinar where Lauren and pranav and Earl and I are going to go through our Utah content around app engine automation engine and the platform so things that developers care about in fact that's the title of the webinar is Utah features that developers and admins care about that's our Focus we're not talking about CSM we're not talking about itsm we're not talking about a whole bunch of other stuff eats the stuff that developers need across the platform to actually make this work and get their work done so we're diving in right now Big Time focus on what is out there why did we build it what's in it for developers and putting together the content for that webinar that's sort of a table of contents there's no Demos in there we're not going to be talking about licensing it's just here's what it is look I found this new plugin that's new to Utah this is how you can use it and this is what it's for it's free and move on to the next one that kind of thing if you've seen these before you know what you're up for if not go check it out we've got a registration page coming soon we'll have a full catalog calendar what we're going to be covering in the Utah release coming up yeah so February 2nd is Tech now then March excuse me February and March will be additional content podcasts blogs videos live streams Etc on that and again trying to keep that bar lower than it has been traditionally but you know us we like to keep you informed and then in Q3 we'll have our Vancouver release which I'm starting to hear a little Snippets of what we're covering and when it's coming out I it's going to be probably early August again for early availability and then General availability is about six weeks later if six seven weeks of my mind is remembering correctly so that's Utah and Vancouver we've also got a new group of developer MVPs but we have an MVP program if you haven't heard about it it's probably closed by the time you hear this but hey maybe you're hearing this right away and it's before December 31st 2022 you can still apply the MVP program is not a popularity contest it's not about having the most YouTube viewers in fact we've got some people who are MVPs right now that don't even have a YouTube channel or they put out some videos and they've got 100 subscribers or less that's that it's about giving back to the community whether you're a developer Meetup organizer or uh you do some videos or you participate in the slack Channel just some way that you're contributing you're being known in that space and uh there's different ways you can do that this is currently a separate program from the community MVP but we are looking to merge these together this cup next coming year there's an opportunity to make an MVP program I don't know how that's going going to exactly pan out we're still working on the details of that but that's a goal of ours is to have a single MVP so you're a service now MVP regardless of what your discipline is no we I'd still like to recognize the developers but we'll go from there uh if you haven't if you missed the window for application and you think maybe this is for me I I'm at least interested in knowing more you can always go to devlink.sn MVP ding okay that's that's the most valuable player not congratulations my my phone even went ding for me on cue you can go to devlin.sn MVP okay didn't do it again just had to try find out what it what what's involved with this process what are we looking for and are you uh maybe you could start working on those things to become an MVP for next year you can apply and become a 2024 MVP so that's that's that looking forward to the new group of MVPs and our mentorship program Earl duques are men in charge of launching this in 2022 went over brilliantly uh just spectacular a way exceeded expectations by a lot I think he was aiming for maybe 200 people to say I want to be a mentor or I I want a mentor and uh we had like over a thousand it was ridiculous like holy smokes it's sort of like when when people show up and your server gets flooded it's like that was that was incredible but a lot of wonderful things going on I've got a mentee we we discuss uh it's more than just technical it's not hey how can I run integration Hub or what what's my next step it can be career focused it can be uh topical focused uh she and I talk about uh you know just networking and building out her her own personal ecosystem of colleagues and co-workers and getting involved and presentation skills that's what she's looking for and that's what I can offer you may have something else to offer or you may be looking for some something else so whether you want to be a mentee or a mentor check it out the next round in that program is opening up in March if I believe March 2023 so think about that it's a great way to accelerate uh your career to reduce a learning curve especially if you're new to a role say hey I'm a new developer I just started in December I need to find another developer that's been my mode of operation for a successful career for the last I'm not even gonna tell you decades decades people it works very well anytime you're new to a role seek a mentor that's that's a tip you get out of this one so I guess you could say we we got some tradecraft to accelerate your career out of this one uh mentorship program very happy with the way that's going we also have of course upcoming in May one event and one event only for knowledge with Creator con built in May 14th through 18th in Las Vegas so mark your calendars registration will be opening soon while the content calendar up there we are working through the details of what it's going to take to put that on The Familiar things will be back as far as Hands-On labs and breakout sessions and panels and Keynotes but we've also got some new ideas that we're going to launch try out explore whatever you want to call it including an awards ceremony called the devies we're going to be launching the Debbies is like the Oscars or the the Emmys or the you know that kind of thing for entertainers this is for our servicenow developers we'll have a low code a low code award and a pro code award this is a rebirth of something that was uh created back in 2010 I'll tell a story and forgive me if you've heard this before when I was a customer they had this contest called The Innovation of the Year award and I entered twice as a matter of fact and one of them won first prize and I won the first ever innovation of the Year award and unfortunately a few weeks later I was let go from that company of 22 years of employment and service now hired me because I had this piece of paper signed by Fred Luddy and went can I trade this in for a job no that's that's the way I like to tell the story but that's not the way it really happened well that ran 2010 11 12 and I think 13 was the last year we ran that we're bringing it back and rebranding it as the devies we want to know what have you built on the platform what solution have you created it's got to be in production to be applicable uh application will be open February 7th to February 24th you'll hear a promo on this podcast as well if you're a regular listener that runs during that period so think about it if you've got an application to production and you're considering hey maybe this is worthy of an award it could be you it could be a team of up to five could be something you built for your team could be for another department could be for another organization entirely so we we're really curious to see what people are out there building and the creativity and the expansiveness of this to explore what's going on in the ecosystem so it gives us a little visibility it gives you a little bit of recognition for the devies and how cool would it be say to say I won the first ever Devi award just like I'm proud of saying I won the first innovation of the Year award that's pretty slick so look for that also looking forward to more in person meetups we are looking to get some Advocates on site to some of these meetups we've we've we've got a new way of staying in touch helping people get things going because covet really ran through our meetups like a forest fire we've got some chapters that need organizers we've got some chapters that need more organizers we've got some chapters that are doing quite well and have returned to in-person meetups and some that are considering it we are here to help we are here to support as I mentioned earlier developer meetups are run by Developers for developers with our support whether it's content or hey can you come out and meet with us at some point uh or or just having a discussion with the organizers on the phone if you think you are interested in that please reach out to one of our Advocates I'll give you my email and Linkedin at the end so I want to keep that going it is a wonderful wonderful resource I know some people go well gee how do I get more people we only have like four that show up every time we can work with you on that we've got lots of new ideas coming forward in 2023 to to keep the meetups not just reignited but in some cases rebuild very very passionate about that program uh finally I just want to say thank you for allowing me to to do a job that I absolutely love I I say this from the bottom of my heart that I feel truly blessed to be able to a geek out on Tech B create content that I I just love doing that for you and and see org with so many wonderful people in the servicenow ecosystem it it really means a lot to me and I just want to let you know that I don't take that for granted thank you thank you so much for everything you do and I've been podcasting since 2004 and one thing I discovered is the best way to get someone to listen to your podcast is word of mouth so thank you to everybody who has already shared word about the breakpoint podcast with your peers with your colleagues with uh your network but hey there's some good stuff on here whether it's technical or non-technical developers need to know about this we've been getting some great feedback great engagement on social media for this and and many of the other things so thank you thank you so much about this and if you're new again I apologize we're going to go back to the regular format real soon with a career discussion uh if you've got ideas about what you want to hear on this podcast please let me know email us chuck.tomasi at servicenow.com or you can reach out to me on LinkedIn there's pretty much only one Chuck tomasi that works at servicenow find me follow connect we can exchange messages there too if you like if you don't want to share your email address with me I'm not putting it into a database or anything yet if you want to just subscribe to this podcast you can do that automatically you can find this wherever you find podcasts on uh Apple Google Amazon Spotify just look for breakpoint it's the servicenow podcast you'll see it it looks like a bunch of code on the album artwork I think we do have other podcasts too you can find those at servicenow.com Community under the events menu so there are many others whether you're looking for industry specific stuff or Regional specific stuff a lot of great stuff subscribe to any and all of them for totally free and they'll be automatically delivered to you a break point is brought to you by servicenow executive producer is me that'd be Chuck tomasi Earl Duque is our videographer translates these into a post on YouTube and you can find out more about the servicenow developer program at developer.servicenow.com thank you and finally some words of wisdom to live by keep learning keep sharing and keep changing lives take care thanks everybody please let us know what you think about this podcast you can leave feedback or ask questions in the servicenow community for more great information on servicenow development check out the servicenow developer portal at developer.servicenow.com thanks for listening