their creator caught experience at knowledge is nothing short of amazing and we realize there are a lot of people out there that have not been to creatorcon you have questions we have answers join all four servicenow developer Advocates as we discuss what to expect and how to get the most out of Creator con e welcome to breakpoint the servicenow developer podcast [Music] hello servicenow admins Builders developers and all of you curious individuals that I always say with the utmost love and respect welcome to or welcome back to breakpoint the servicenow developer podcast where we bring you the latest tools tips and tradecraft to accelerate your career my name is Chuck tomasi and sitting right across the virtual breakpoint desk for me is of course Lauren McManaman how are you today Lauren you know what I'm doing great I'm starting to feel a little bit of heat though because we have officially only 52 days away from knowledge23 so the crunch has officially begun at least on the back end of operations and the alcohol consumption has gone up and as the intro hinted we are going to be talking about Creator con how it's similar and different from the rest of the knowledge experience and how you can get the most out of it and to make this a little more interesting Earl Lauren and I have all been to knowledge and participated in Creator con up close a few times or more than a few times in the past however ever we're also joined by pranav he has not been there so he'll be asking the questions and we'll do our best to answer them so first let's do some quick introductions for the new listeners Lauren you're still pretty new to the show so give your quick intro uh Hey everybody my name is Laura McManaman I am one of the senior Advocates on our developer Advocate team uh prior to joining servicenow I was a servicenow developer joined uh the big house in in 2017 as a solution consultant and focused on Creator workflows so join this team back last year right around almost I think it was July or August so still still pretty new to it but starting to finally hit the groove welcome welcome and Earl Duque hi everyone My Name is Earl Duque I am a developer advocate here with servicenow and I've been with the team almost two years now it feels like I only really just joined still everything's coming up rapid Pace still uh but before I joined servicenow I was with higher education mostly doing senior development and Engineering with servicenow on different teams leading student developer teams and all the like but jumped around a bunch of companies before joining servicenow and once again we have pranav pagat hey everyone my name is pranab and I'm a senior developer Advocate quite Newton team I can't say I'm very new it's like already four months time flies in service now that's what I can say before joining service now I was working with a client I was working with a customer I also worked with clients in the past I was helping them with all the implementation and all and that's about me all right that's not all about you because you're the one with the questions so let's start with a question and we'll see who can answer this oh yeah so first my first question is like I have heard about this term create a corn a lot from everyone what exactly is create a call all right excellent question and to understand what Creator Cod is I want to back up and explain what knowledge is knowledge has the word now in there k-n-o-w if servicenow at one point they used to be slightly different colors on the logos so it is the creatively named user conference for our platform for our customers for our partners to get together and learn and share and network it is a big event as Andy ho one of our big cheeses in our training department likes to call he says more of a religious event than a Tech conference uh everybody is very passionate everybody is very excited to be there and share and learn uh which is kind of weird from a software standpoint because you know not too long ago I remember software you got kind of angry and aggressive and when are you gonna fix my bugs uh everybody's open and respectful when they have opinions so knowledge is and I physically it's the Expo floor where we have different boots you can see demos you can talk to product managers you can interact with your peers there are activities to be done who knows maybe karaoke and games and and some other stuff that's going on at various times on the Expo floor there are Keynotes there are Hands-On sessions uh excuse me Hands-On Labs breakout sessions a very number of things that you would expect at any Tech conference now what makes Creator con what is Creator called Creator Hunt is the developer event inside of knowledge they happen at the same time once upon a time when it started back in 2015 it was like two days after we said well a lot of people aren't sticking around for that so let's just make it an event in an event who Creator con is the developer section now we say developer in a loving way like I said all skill levels whether you're a freshly minted sysadmin there's something at Creator con for you if you have architect in your title somewhere there's something a Creator con for you so it's the more technical view the more technical content of the platform you will see some very creative stuff we have a hack Zone where people make fun and exciting use cases that connect to or are back end driven by our platform with apis and Metric tracking all kinds of very cool stuff wow that was a long explanation it's a it's a great time what else you got that's that's cool I I love the fact that it is for not only for developer and admins it's for everyone anyone can join it and what kind of activities I can expect then create a call so hinting go back to what Chuck said this is these are events that are more targeting the developer personas whereas a lot of the labs sessions that exist within knowledge maybe Target admins or managers or things like that these are targeting developers so when you're looking at the course catalog a lot of them will start with a specific uh CC abbreviation so that's a clear indicator in the catalog of what indicates something that is in Creator con so we have specific Labs so for example there's the Builder track series which is a series of six Labs that kind of take someone from a non-developer to you know someone that's confident enough to call themselves a developer there are breakout sessions where a lot of our awesome developer MVPs are talking about things things that they and their companies have built and there's even a specific keynote so that's really exciting that we have a dedicated keynote on the final day of the overall knowledge conference um on the Pavilion within the expo hall as well we have our own section where a specific developer uh related content and also just more fun relaxed stuff so keep your eye open for that as well that's awesome like I loved what are the different activities so how I usually explain my experience with Creator con especially since I've been to quite a few now is that I started off my servicenow career as a help desk consultant as a lot of our listeners have similar contexts I was with a help desk and then eventually I became a system administrator for servicenow and then became a developer and then became a senior developer and a team lead and a developer manager and an engineer and senior engineer I grew my career from the ground up in stores now and so from that context whenever I go to knowledge just by nature of what I'm interested in I tend to go to all the things that are creator confocused and that's because Creator con as Chuck and Lauren were alluding to is that it's developer focused it's more technical we're not talking about implementation steps for any application Suite like csdm we're actually going to sessions about the apis and the scripting and the coding and all the best practices for system administrators and for developers it's more about the things that I need in my life to do my job better because I am a developer I'm on the more technical side of things and that's what Creator con really is in a high level it's all the all the fun stuff and all that kind of fun stuff um I'll let somebody else talk about but it's also the same things that keep me in Creator con so I was attracted just by the sessions but then when I got to Creator con my first time there was a lot of things that I was just having fun with over at creator.com I'm gonna yes and that one with special things like the hackathon we've got an event for developers to show their chops and compete to make an application in a certain amount of time I mentioned the hack Zone where we've seen everything from drones to windmills to trains to uh alcohol serving robots that are all based on servicenow we've got meetups so if you're looking to introduce yourself to other people perhaps in your region perhaps in your area of Interest we've got a specific Meetup Pavilion for that we've got a competition if you another different way to do it it's called coffee flows every year we have this big shiny thing on the show floor admission tomorrow hours a few years ago Brew Ops where you compete either against other players or other teams to achieve a number of predefined steps to create a flow create an app whatever it is on the platform those really get some interesting because it's like a game show you've got the leaderboards and everybody is going as fast as they can and cheering people on a lot of a lot of fun stuff there and of course there's after hours activities like games and parties and you know there's some swag that you can earn at the merch store for t-shirts and stickers and who knows what else I was I was just looking at the catalog the online catalog on knowledge.servicenow.com there's a specific category for Creator con and there's things like five things I wish I knew before using custom actions in flow designer that's that's pretty deep and that's the kind of things that you know developers are looking for there's ask the expert session we've got experts there and you can ask them what you want or they they have a topic for you uh when work starts to flow why you should stop using Legacy workflows we have a lot of people out there that are still creating Legacy workflows well I'm not going to get into that because we have a limited amount of time on this particular show perhaps we can talk about it some other time citizen development what does it take to get a citizen development program up and running and continue to run as a developer we're going to be working with these citizen developers so important stuff to know lots and lots of uh great content I invite you to go over to knowledge.servicenow.com and take a look at the catalog that's awesome Chuck thank you for thank you for answering that and I really want to see how the coffee flows work and also I'm super excited about the hacks on things my next question is like nerds yeah I mean I'm joking and I wear that badge proudly I mean I gestured broadly toward myself and I agree well I mean that's the cool part about Creator con the people you're meeting at creatorcon are the same ones you're going to be building Community with and be learning from and contacting later in your day-to-day job that's the beauty the network you build at Creator con is something that you could take with you for the rest of the year when you leave the venue and I mean I've that's where I met Chuck who's now my colleague and I believe Lauren met Chuck also at Creator con yeah a lot of the people that I'm I call friends now are people that I've met at Creator con and especially if you've been to knowledge before you're gonna have fun reuniting with these people again or meeting people that you've only interacted with online and now having a face to put to the name uh and just being able to build that kind of community is something that our team is very proud of and that we focus a lot of our time on because it's something that makes us unique in the industry of technology is that our community is very interpersonal and it's something that attracted me and I've not left ever since I I have to yes and that one as well what are the things that people uh like doing that knowledge is getting a selfie with me and I invite you to also get a selfie with pranav and Earl and Lauren they are celebrities and rock stars as much as everyone else in this ecosystem so but one of the things that I do is say yes can I get a selfie of you too so I've got this collection over the years of selfies with people so they not only have a picture of me but I have a picture it's the same picture it's just whose arm is sticking out further right and uh I I love going back through the years and and looking like oh there's Mark Scott when he was still a partner or a consultant and and now he's an employee there's Lauren from 2016 and now she's on our team so it's like connect the dots and see who you can pick out from this massive collection of selfies and go yeah that you know they've they've changed their path on on their career yeah I can say like I'm totally jealous of Earl and Lauren and they have a selfie with You Chuck and we're gonna fix that yes absolutely and after I think seven years in working in service now I finally will be able to get a selfie with you we'll get a team shot exactly so as a first time what are some of the essential thing I should be aware of regarding meeting new people so one of the things to be aware of is that there are going to be Network opportunities there are going to be uh Lauren and I were just talking about this on our previous meeting before the microphones were hot and said there are people that that will give you job offers be ready for that I've I've seen a lot of people change their career trajectory because of knowledge don't tell your boss they might think you're a Flight Risk but hey your career is your own we're going to get into a whole different discussion about career management bring business cards or as I have upgraded to a digital business card uh I have one business card people will scan that and they get my contact info so we don't lose it and it's in their phone immediately and they can even make notes to go you know got a picture with chuck on Tuesday do your career management as best as you can it's going to be a wild ride but there the present company included a number of times I've gone to knowledge and somebody says hey are you interested in joining my team and I say well tell me more you don't have to make a yes no right there but get some information to consider it and take down some notes it's it is vitally important that you build this network in fact at knowledge 10 when I was a customer I made contacts and I made comments and we had dinner socializing with people not not hourly trying to do that but just doing what you normally do at a conference and it paid the biggest dividend of all because a few days later I was let go from my job and it was those contacts that gave me job offers real job offers within minutes within hours of me being dismissed so it was like wow if I hadn't made a comment about some lady's laptop bag we wouldn't have started a conversation and then a few days later she goes oh what kind of work are you looking for like whoa didn't expect that now turn to my wife and I said what was that about 30 minutes since we just left the office to me saying hey I will consider that as a as an opportunity so things happen at knowledge that can change your life be ready for them and be be respectful be professional I'm going to jump in and now give you a yes and situation and explicitly just tell the listeners now that as much as the knowledge committee and the developer Advocates are going to try to facilitate these opportunities and stuff for you and these networking opportunities remember this is your opportunity and we we want you to know that you need to step up also and so my first Creator con back in 2017 I remember sitting in one of the large breakfast Halls everyone's grabbing breakfast thousands of people I picked a random table to sit at I was by myself and I was eating and I remember hearing from two tables away that someone was talking about an industry that I wanted to get into and I got up from the table and I walked over and I sat down and I introduced myself and one month later on LinkedIn I contacted that person and said hey I'm trying to pursue New servicenow Opportunities uh but I'm not finding any at my current workplace uh is there anyone over there that I can chat with and once that process started and I had my first conversation with them within seven days I had a job offered and acceptance and I had switched to that industry I was interested I was interested in but it wouldn't have happened if I didn't get up and I actually walked over and introduced myself and so as much as we talk about these great opportunities and career changes inside our ecosystem inside service now inside knowledge it's not handed to you I mean for some people maybe but for the most of us you have to stand up and go walk through that door kind of thing and so I just wanted to make sure it's explicit out there that we this is an opportunity for all of us and you have to take that opportunity and I'm gonna yes and that um because because you're right a couple years ago I read a book I think his name is Keith farazi he read a book called Never Eat Alone and it talks about different approaches to networking and career building and taking advantage of opportunities and it might seem a little bit impersonal of advice um but for the timing that you have at knowledge for me I always make a list I actually make a kind of like my own CRM of not only friends but contacts maybe I'm hoping to make I kind of group them by how important they are or maybe how long it's been since I've seen that person and use that to kind of help guide my way because it might seem like you're spending a long time in Vegas right you're like oh I've got a whole week but that time goes away so quickly so whether that is like like what Earl did like taking the advantage of a lunch break to introduce yourself to a new industry or reconnect with someone that lives halfway across the world having a list might seem a bit goofy but but it helps keeps those things at like the top of your mind or at least for me it's always really helped so that's my little my little take from that book awesome thanks I want to Chuck and Lauren about it like and definitely try jumping going to some random table and talking to the people who are there so that that that's that's all the question that I had for you folks thank you very much for answering me I feel like we've only scratched the surface because there's just so much there but thank you for all the questions pranav and thank you for the input from Earl and Lauren our call to action for you dear listener is go to knowledge.servicenow.com browse that catalog discover what you're interested in dig into some of those Creator con sessions there may be other sessions in other places that you want to look at certainly attend the Keynotes and take a notebook it bring business cards do do the diligence to make this valuable because one of the ways to ensure that you get to go back is to have a good report on what you got out of it it will will be talking about a a complete knowledge Survival Guide of of what you should bring and what you should wear and and how best to uh survive that week it's going to go fast but it makes for some long hours we'll be doing an episode on that coming up soon so subscribe to the podcast so you don't miss out on any of that well thank you everybody and thank you dear listener for joining us today don't forget you can find this and many other podcasts from servicenow over at our community at servicenow.com Community under the events menu or go to devlin.sn podcasts you can subscribe to this podcast for free and get it automatically delivered to you so you don't miss that knowledge Survival Guide that we're coming up with find them wherever you find your podcast Apple Amazon Google you know the places breakpoint is brought to you by servicenow executive producer would be me video and captions by Earl Duque find out more about the servicenow developer program you can head over to developer.servicenow.com I'm pretty sure everybody stopped listening unless you're waiting for the creative outtakes at the end thank you Earl Lauren and pranav for joining us thanks for having us Chuck thank you Chad 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 foreign so we take day two and a half of knowledge and then the second half of the third day and the fourth day was Creator time someone's not reading the script closely no knowledge [Music] I'm sorry yup what are you talking about I miss anything anybody want a yes and that in any way I just want to say yes and now it's gold that's gold