2023 has been a busy year for everyone in this episode we're joined by our fellow Dev Advocates to share some of our highlights welcome to breakpoint the service now developer [Music] podcast hello service now Edmonds Builders developers and of course all of the Curious individuals out there that I always say with the utmost love and respect welcome to or welcome back to breakpoint the service now developer podcast where we bring you the latest tools tips and tradecraft to accelerate your career my name is CH tamasi senior developer Advocate at service now and I am joined by the one and only the Posh programmer senior developer Advocate Lauren McManaman how are you today Lauren I am doing fantastic we're recording this post Thanksgiving so we got all the good holiday Vibes here in America and are feeling pretty great I'm still feeling the holiday Vibes absolutely we are also joined by our India Cor respondent that makes it sound more like a news show pranav bot how are you pranav hey OD laen I'm doing good how are you all good I always love it when all four of us can get on here it's usually for the releases well I did a a kind of a personal recap last year and it went over pretty well and said why don't all four of us do this and share all the the love we've got but it wouldn't be four of us if we didn't have senior developer advocate for service now Earl du hi Earl who me oh hey it's me hi hello we are recording this bright and early for Earl his caffeine is not yet set in I think it got rescheduled to a Monday morning which I have to coordinate with my family so I'm running around trying to get the girls up the door at the same time hi everyone dedication to the family I love it and apologies for the rescheduling we had some last minute hey uh I've got a conflict which you know happens in corporate life Comm period of the Year all right we had this idea of similar to how we do like the top five things that we love about Vancouver or Utah or previous releases we want we thought we'd get together and share what we loved about 2023 what made an impact what was special what stood out and uh we're going to do this from number five being something we really like to number one to something we really really really really like so we're we're going to take this up with every round so I'm going to start with pravs number five what do you think is your you're really like yeah it's actually it's very hard to tell which to rank these things because I love everything but I'll say like the tech now UTA and content that's something that I really likeed because I just started in service now and you folks asked me can you join us for Tech now so so that made me excited as well as nervous yeah surprise because I've never been to on camera like on this channel before yeah as an MVP I have been but not as a host so that was like that made me excited and there is a small story i' like to share so just before the Techno webinar was getting started my internet dropped and I was like that's my last day for my job because no and but uh that worked fine so I was really nervous and uh people who have heard like the Techno Utah one they might have figured out so that was my excite at number five now you're in the groove and the train is going down the track and it's going to be smooth sailing right yep y hopefully Y and that was my number five i' like to thank ear because at that time I started doing India content around like create like create a toolbox and life coding happy hour so all stayed up like till at what what time it was ear like 2: a.m. for you he stayed up super late to help me out run those shows so thanks ear for that we make you stay up all the time P of like we could do the same for you it's fine well great segue let's go to Earl's number five all right my number five I'm going to kick it off with a hackathon stuff so I I actually have a theme if you've watched or listened to any of our past uh all four developer Advocates breakpoint episodes we do these count up lists and we sometimes have themes on our sides of our countdowns so I have a theme on mine and uh so I'm going to talk about an event and then also a particular person from that event to really tie it to community uh but at knowledge conference this year we had our first return to inperson hackathon and it was a huge Endeavor a lot lot of work went into it but the main thing that was really connecting for me back to what what we're trying to do with all these programs and events is the people that come out of it and uh the hackathon was a huge success it was really fun but it was the first time I really got to interact with ay Anderson who uh was one of the winners for the hackathon did a lot of uh fun stuff there but then from there uh since then she has appeared on un Andi uh Builder live she is a prominent uh attendee for one of our other events that I'll talk about later in my countdown list and it's just it's fun seeing that seeing the start of my interaction with somebody and then it just keeps building and building and building uh throughout the years so shout out to all the people that won hackathon and participated but particular shout out to Ay who has been contributing to the community more and more and more it's amazing how people just sort of pop up and then continue to grow so it's like instant stardom in some cases yeah and especially with uh some people that have been around like ay has been around um the community in some form but my interaction with her started with the hackathon and then suddenly it was like oh now I'm running into you everywhere which is really cool to see all right Lauren's first pick off the list well technically it's my fifth pick off the list but my first one to talk about um I think I will have to say the Builder trap so previously I'd been involved with knowledge as a conference from a variety of different uh hats right I'd been there as a customer I'd been there as someone in sales but I'd never participated in it from a marketing perspective and so when knowledge 23 came around that was my first big uh jump into that pool and one thing that we coordinated last year was called the Builder track we've done it every year which are a series of labs so weirdly enough up until this point I had never built a knowledge lab I'd helped with others but I had never built one and so I really wanted to gain an understanding of how that process went from behind the scenes and also help others achieve that success too so there was a series of five Labs we created like the big theme around them we were coordinating with a variety of other really really talented people to build them uh shout out to the entire Builder track team there's like I think six or seven people um that did a phenomen job and to see how that all goes at the conference itself it's easy as a customer to kind of take for granted and also in sales if you're just guring how many moving Parts there are and getting to work on that Pro process gave me such amazing perspective and do what it takes to really run those events I'm uh really really overwhelmed by how hard everyone works during that period of time I I hear a similar theme to what panov said a lot of learning and growth is this year yeah it was really really awesome to see all that happen so it makes me even more excited for knowledge 24 and now finally for the final number five on the list what about yours Chuck my number five is um unlike Earl who has a theme I was kind of all over the place in fact I I couldn't even narrow it down so I have like bonus tracks at the end in case we have time uh but the one that landed on my number five I I started with the product and I said it's been really really interesting to see how quickly we were able to get generative AI into the platform with now assist know if you think about it a year ago hardly anybody even knew what chat GPT or open AI was even in the tech space it sort of popped up like a mushroom in late 22 early 23 and then boom everybody's got to have it how quickly our product team was able to incorporate that into a very usable product in a number of places whether it's flow designer or uh case summarization or text de code and there's more coming it's it's just going to keep growing and growing I can't wait to see this it was It was kind of interesting to also watch the uh the whole ecosystem you some of our competition and their offerings is too so I was keeping an eye on those seeing what they were doing for their Keynotes in the spring and what we did for our keynote in the spring and just how it got to Vancouver and went there it is who do think that that you could do something like that so massive so fast I'm I'm duly impressed so that rounds out the fives let's go to the fours uh where do we start panov panov what's your number four yeah for my number four I think like there are two things that I love about my job is like engaging with all like developer audience across Globe like wherever they are and also learning because there are a lot of learning components for Advocate job like probably maybe in some other episode I can share those things but um so build with RPA campaign that was run by by our team so that gave me both the things like to interact with the audience as well as to learn something new so the India developer Meetup tour that I did during that time to go to different locations I think it was Pune Bangalore in India and do the build with RPA thing so I was super happy to see a lot of people getting engaged doing learning something new so that was really amazing and I like to give shout out to L and as well as tan from our team they worked really hard in the back end and that's that was like they created all the things all the artifacts base and everything for these meetups to be successful and not only these meetups but the whole campaign itself so shout out to both of them and yeah that was my number four what about Earl what about you ear my number four is all about our MVP Community program and I say specifically because it is now that time of year that time where we are finally sunsetting the developer MVP program and the community MVP program uh to relaunch the MVP Community uh brand new 2.0 MVP program where we're combining everything and addressing a lot of the things that made the the programs different but now unifying under one umbrella but uh all that stuff is really exciting applications are out now and that's a nice plug uh but the thing I remember about the MVP program tying it back to knowledge is that I me all of you remember how overs scheduled our team gets during knowledge and how busy we are barely having time to eat running around but in the midst of that wild time that during knowledge I actually got to stop and have a dinner with two of our MVPs uh Chris helming and astd Sapphire just us three and really just to be able to talk and catch up and meet in person for the first time but also feel like we were friends for a while before that and so it was really nice just connecting with two of our MVPs but also two of our community members but finally two of my friends uh in the midst of all the wildness of knowledge and so I it's again all of it is trying to I'm trying to remember how it connects back to our community and what we're trying to do for them uh and meeting with them and having a meal with them was really nice for me in the midst of all that so thank you to both of you if you're listening to this and to Lauren well it's hard because a couple of might have already been stolen so I might be picking something a little bit higher on the list um but one thing that I always found fascinating as a customer was that service now always makes this big effort to name our releases after really awesome cities we have done this almost Now 26 times but I was always fascinated that we never did something really to honor the cities that were the namesake of these releases so my number four pick will be that we got to participate in doing that for the first time publicly so internally we've done some launch Keynotes to discuss all the amazing features and the people that are behind creating features and finally we got to do a big public inperson event in Vancouver so that was a a true honor that I not only got to participate in that but also get to meet so many awesome people from the community in Vancouver to help kind of celebrate that release it was really great again to kind of echo off of Chuck's point to see how gen is how it's rapidly transformed what we're prioritizing in releases and things like that and also to kind of a craft a mini Creator cones style of conversation around that product so um in person there was 132 customers and people there that represented 66 different companies and there was thousands of people that also got to watch it online so to everyone that participa in that I am truly grateful I hope you had a blast and I hope the reviews were great enough that we get to do it again wow you did your fact checking on that one yeah well I want to make sure I it it meant a lot to me to participate in it so thank you all to all that came that was a lot of fun and now to Mr tamasi for his number four you bet and a huge shout out to Monette and Glenn for for hosting us before that event it was I I think we walked about 17 miles around Vancouver they gave us their own private tour it was amazing I'd never I hadn't even been to Canada before so getting to see it from the perspective of them and like how like being a local perspective it was it was so much fun we we went and went and went for like what five seven hours something like that one was oh I still didn't get you to go here and oh we should have gone there before dark and it was it was crazy so it just means we're going to have to go back at some point maybe we'll have another Vancouver release we can only hope man there's meetups uh my number four is uh really watching and listening others bring their content to life I'm going to go to the the community well on this one there's just been a wealth of information I try to keep on top of who's got a new podcast and who's making videos and my my subscription list in YouTube is probably 90% service now related content at this point it it really is fun watching these things develop and listening to the podcasts and uh you just a few shout outs CJ and the Duke I was on their episode recently a lot of fun there they even made a custom intro theme for me I was like wow that was that was I was blown away by that uh being on kie Alexander's 100 days of service now a couple of times that was fun uh kalicia Moors got a new Discord Channel service now portfolio development um it's not about what you would think for SPM and you know Port project and portfolio management it is about developing your portfolio so shout out to that uh they've got a book club they were doing a book study of low code apps for dummies and said hey you want to come on and just have a discussion so that was a big honor uh beyond the title with frell Wells we met at now Forum in London and she said would you come on our podcast absolutely just not and it's not just being a guest on these that's special it's listening to the content and the discussion whether it's the service ducks or the radio Bros or there's so many of them out there I encourage you to expand your horizon obviously thank you very much for listening to breakpoint there's a lot more service now ecosystem out there and a lot of different voices and perspectives to to listen to that's why I like too so I've been having a lot of fun getting into that Community about all the different types of content it's not even just different people talking about different topics but they all offer like a very unique vibe to it as well so if you're looking for something more ser serious or light-hearted there really seems to be a a good serving of content for whatever you prefer so definitely check out the variety of stuff that exists on YouTube and podcasts and in blogs too there's a lot of great blogs being written as well we need like a master list of all of these somewhere well we do do a good point to advocate for the MVP content that comes out monthly So Soft plug to check that out as well I will put as many links in the show notes to these things I can think of to start that Master list if somebody wants to take up that mantle okay back to prano for his number three yep and just to piggyback on what you and Lauren said about the content like I recently started listening to some of the new podcast that came up lot of learning initially I thought like this is like when you have some experience in service now you feel like oh why should I join this podcast I know this person right but anytime like you watch a podcast like if you listen to a same person on a different podcast you'll find something new out of it so make sure you go ahead and watch it and coming back to my number three so it's again like it's around the engagement theme I love engaging with developers and all so I was invited by my S by the service now sales team to do some like to talk about the vancour features in front of some ad some admins developer Architects from different partners all together so I went there and uh it was a surprise for me because a lot of people I have worked in the past with whom I started my career they were there in the audience and they were like yeah like I be love to hear you and all these things so that's that was kind of a really great experience so I like I talked about the new feature that came up in vancour and gave them some detailing and all so yeah it was good to see them and share knowledge so it was fun so that was my number three and passing it to Earl my number three thanks panov by the way my number three uh just was very recently actually hober Fest every October we come together as a community and contribute to open source projects and we do this little competition of trying to get everybody to participate and submit contributions to some fun repositories that we have and this year I decided hey let's make this a truly run by volunteer event and I recruited a whole slew of volunteers there was at least 10 of us that were helping run the entire event uh look at all the people's contributions and basically make sure everything was running smoothly as I was away during that time and the person I want to shout out to this for my theme uh is Lazlo um Bala he actually is not he's the one person on our volunteer team out of all of us that wasn't an employee was not in a service now employee that was not an MVP uh but was just a person in the community that wanted to step up during my call to action and said hey I want to volunteer and help with everything not only did he step up and help um even though uh it's something new to him but he ended up being the highest contributor he ended up being the highest uh maintainer so he reviewed the most requests and because he was uh across the globe he also helped field all the questions at our nighttime and so laza you did a wonderful job and these small to medium to Big community events would never happen without people like you so I'm so glad that you jumped into the fry and I'm glad that we got to chat and joke every day because some of the people's contributions were ridiculous and so we got to bond over some of that and that was really fun and I'm I'm glad you uh helped out and joined us with all of that fun stuff thanks again I hope somebody nominates him as an MVP or a rising star or something the half of the people I've talked about so far aren't an aren't an MVP or Rising Star so it's already been talked about opportunity I'm doing the Mr Burns right now with my fingers a lot of new developers in India I like to shout out to one girl that I recently talked on LinkedIn her name is chna she has been doing like she just started her career and this hober first gave her an option just to contribute to the service community and there was a lot of learning option for her like she just said like I contributed there but I went into the whole uh list and saw others contribution also and that that helped her Sol lot of queries that he she had and uh it was fun for her so yeah shout out to everyone who were involved and especially ear you were there I know you were not there the whole time because you were on leave but you were the backbone of it so thank you for it yay I'm glad there was so many people participating we we this program grows I think somewhere between 40 to 50% every year and so every year we're seeing more and more people from around the world participate and that's really exciting for us because it ended up it started off with maybe if we got a couple dozen contributions we would be happy with the program but now it's past like 500 contributions this year so that's really cool and Lauren so personally I haven't really discussed this publicly yet so this might be the first time I do so but one of the reasons I was a little bit mute on social media in November was due to the fact that I was Brad so I took a couple weeks of vacation there but I also spent a couple weeks working from our service now office in Tokyo um I have a tremendous amount of interest and passion for internationalization of our content and our business in general and that's something I try really hard to be mindful of when we are creating things right not just focus on them from the American perspective but try to learn and grow from the perspectives of other countries that also consume and create our content and so getting the opportunity to work there for a few weeks and learn from their team learn what advocacy means for their country as well was so phenomenally interesting and I I took away so much from that experience so I want to give a personal thank you to matsan Kayan ukan and hosan and just the general uh Tokyo office for giving me such a unique perspective and including me in so many really awesome experiences while I was there so I hope that we can continue to create these International Bridges and further the internationalization of our content so it's not just for the English speakers or not just for the Americans and North Americans but create something that the whole world can enjoy and learn from as well so huge thank you to them for their hospitality and on to Mr Chuck damasi for his number three this one may sound a little self-serving but my number three is Lauren joining breakpoint it may seem like she's been here forever but she hasn't a year ago uh the the first two and a half years or so we started this podcast in mid 2020 and uh it's been a solo effort talked to some wonderful people had some great conversations and thought it was time to bring in another voice so I think it was February or March we talked about it and made it happen and uh it's it's been a wonderful experience I think the podcast is much the better for your additions oh that makes me that's gonna make me te ey that's so nice you to say thank you I'm so happy to participate it's it was very fun to go from a listener to a to another voice on the channel thank you that's so kind of you say you're welcome back to pranav we're down to the number twos yes I can still count yes yes yeah that number two so I think like this this is from my knowledge 23 experience because knowledge 23 was my first knowledge like I never attended knowledge in person so it was my first knowledge and in my first knowledge I had to go into like life coding happy hour and so I was like what I'll do there so I like to give shout out to Lauren and like they were on the stage and uh they were helping me out like filling all these gaps that I had because it's it's actually very hard to just be on the stage in front of like I think 100 plus audience was there and uh they were there like Earl and Lauren was there to help me out and I still remember like like I asked like Earl like where we'll get the drinks and everything so he said like don't worry about it I'll take care of it so so that that was that that's like boost your confidence when you have a team like this that I have like Chuck is there Lauren ear who helps me out every day because I like I I'll be honest like I make mistakes I I have to learn a lot more and it's kind of a learning curve for me but thanks to the whole team who is here on the call they they have been supporting me throughout and yeah thank you so that was my number two oh you're welcome we gave you a nice low thing to debut you killed it you absolutely killed it you did fantastic you know what PR that really was visible when it came to like the now Forum in London you were much more confident sure of yourself you presented at the same time I was presenting at the same time Mark AB broit you know if you want if you want some you know nervous factor it's like your senior vice president of the department is doing the same content as you are uh thoughts were going through my head I hope I do this as well as he is or I hope we're all consistent in our message you you did great and then and then the creativity started coming out some of those Goofy pictures we were trying to get that was that was a lot of fun you did great yeah you get to watch a nice career trajectory of all the fun things that panov is practicing and getting better at and already showing off his expertise from the get-go from a lot of these things I thank you for reminding me about live coding happy her at knowledge you asked about the drinks and uh I I think I had to run a mile uh through the casino to go find alcohol for us to drink on stage and wait are we allowed to say that on this stream that we were drinking on stage I don't know if that was it's in a in a video game in a video game we did this in a video game okay well thanks ROV you're you're doing great thanks okay so for um we're at number two right okay okay my number two is uh it kind of started at the end of last year but a lot of it has been occurring during this year but my number two is about one of my uh best friends his name is Ben Wong uh late last year uh Ben decided he wanted a career change uh he had been working at the same place for almost a decade or so and he uh started talking about wanting a career change and so I on offhandedly started on and off teaching him service now stuff late last year and late last year he got his first service now developer job and throughout this year so we just passed a year anniversary for him so this is why I'm picking this as one of my uh things this year is to see uh how he has grown in just in a career pivot but also as a developer something that he had never done before and getting to see him in his is uh the work chats CU I'm still seeing their work chats and seeing how much he's grown over time it's been just a really fun thing for me but also a good reminder of how transformational uh being a service now developer or an admin or analyst can be for everybody even if you're never have done development in the first place uh just like me so being reminded that Ben my best friend who was in my wedding was a Grooms man and everything did the same pivot is just always a good reminder for me to know that other people are trying to do the same thing to always keep trying for those people out there that want something better want something new and so that's my number two yay how many yes end on that one because there's been a lot of stories that we've heard in the last year with rise up and the nextg programs that are just simply amazing at how people have transformed their careers I know this sounds like a little bit of self-promotion but the the the the transformation is amazing and we were recently in Charlotte North Carolina and this one lady says y she showed up to the Meetup she finished the next gen program the day before it's it's that level of interest and dedication and she not only sat there while I did my presentation and Dante did his presentation but she was involved because Dante's been doing this a while and you know us old programmers we find ways and we fall into habits and and she's like that you kind of like a kid trying to teach their parent long division that's not the way they do it anymore she was she was into it she was participating as well as Britney who was also there so Olivia and Britney shout out to both of you for your your dedication your participation and your completion of those programs I'm just I could I think I said this on uh somebody's LinkedIn post I will never get tired of hearing people's rise up in nextg stories 100% I think Lauren is next next I am I think at this point we're going to start overlapping a bit I assume on a couple of these as the as the ties so uh in this my last two are pretty much tied so I'd like to for my number two kind of focus on something that also I think really showcases how service now and just the community around it can rally together to kind of showcase and help people grow talent-wise and recognition wise so my number two will be Reviving The devies or I guess kind of debuting the devies in general um formerly there was an app of the Year contest but service now has not done it for many many years and so you know we have one of the former winners of that app contest on this podcast uh as he looks behind him on an auditory only podcast um but so getting to participate so last year all of the devies prep essentially happened at the very beginning of the year so it's nice we're getting a little bit of a head start on the 2024 ones so last year starting I think in late December we as an entire team as a service now Community team participated in designing the contest creating the graphics uh kind of itemizing out how it would be judged creating the application profile judging all the contestants and then also selecting the winners before knowledge 23 getting to see all the amazing applications and all of the effort that goes into creating amazing things on service now gave me a tremendous amount of pause because uh over time right especially when I started on service now back in 2016 custom app development had a lot of potential right and so seeing where things stand on live instances right now was so inspirational to me and it gave me um I was so happy to advocate for the people that were doing that so fantastically even for all the finalists as well this is not just for the winners but to have you know the nice meet and greet for all the finalists so that they could meet and collaborate and that we could also create a better contest too for this year um that was so exciting and so fun and I'm so happy that Talent like that gets recognized in this community it was really really awesome to see so thank you to all the applicants and I'm excited to see what happens in this upcoming year as well and On To You Chuck for your number two yay Debbie I'm happy to see that back too yeah my number two is I kind of hinted at it before but it's really all the meetups uh we had a tough time with pandemic years people switched to zoom people got Zoom fatigue attendance dropped off then Meetup stopped happening and organizers changed roles sometimes we would know sometimes not uh it really got to be kind of tough so as we came out of that in late 22 and early 23 uh we had some rebuilding to do and it's still in progress we're always trying to grow the the Meetup program in doing so Lauren and panov and I got to go to a number of these meetups and those are special times for us really feel fortunate that we a we get to go to these and and meet so many great people some of the ones that I went to this year were um Denver in June these aren in no particular order by the way uh Vancouver in March we had Toronto London Dallas and New York City as part of the world forums in October and November Charlotte I previously mentioned we had a new chapter in Central Illinois in August so thank you Lee for stepping up and saying I'd like to start a new chapter we've got other new chapters that are that are either in the wings or fledgling or people ideating about this so if you've got uh even a a modest interest in in helping or starting one of these chapters please reach out to us this is a great way to do it can't promise that one of us will be at your kickoff or or even a soon meeting but we're going to try There's A Renewed focus and I am very very excited about some of the ideas that have come about and that's going to feed into my number one in a minute so I'm not going to give that away but lots of lots of stuff in 2024 that's being planned so back to Prana for his number one oh this is the real fun stuff I'm so excited so it's it's like Chu all talked about meetups right so I like to bring up like Crea Aon London Meetup that we did so like I've been doing meetups for quite a while now and uh going to London and doing a Meetup there it was a whole together a different experience like like senior VP of our company was also there and for me like the main highlight was to share the stage with Chuck himself because I think like the day one of my job when I started I watched I there was a story around jelly scripting and I think I watched the first episode of tech now which was on Jelly script I believe I just watched the first one then your head exploded I just watched the first episode like to be honest like I never watched the part two and part three because there were three part it's like I I was like I don't want to watch that he's like two's enough yeah just one is enough like that's that's what I thought because that's how coming back to to like from jelly to Meetup so Atlanta Meetup it's like all allog together a different experience when you share the stage with Chuck himself right because like I'm like I always say I'm a fan first then a colleague right so it's it's all together a different experience sharing the stage and speaking because it makes you nervous right when you share the stage so that's kind of my number one like to go there meet with everyone and be on the stage with Chuck and also like I can't forget like Mar Obi because he was also there and when I was like no that's too much he gave me a Mars bar a chocolate bar like PR have it you get some energy and so it was like more about touching experience from his end like coming up and giving all these things to us taking care of us through the event right and yeah so thank you to everyone like Chuck Mark Jason who were there so yeah that was my number one I can say and I don't think like it will break in 24 uh that was that will be always at top so yeah passing it to okay my number one actually was kind of alluded to earlier uh so my the other thing that turned one this year besides my friend's uh career uh my fir my second daughter Jamie she has just turned one years old last month but because of that I had some parental leave that I needed to use up so I took the month of October off which is why I needed a solid volunteer crew for October everything is connected uh but I had a time off during that time and one of the M the most things I'm thankful for this year and uh was a highlight for me was just having time to rest and have time with my family with my two daughters and with my my partner um for us to be able to just spend some time away from work without thinking of meetings and work uh just to have fun with them and just love on them um because I I chose this for my number one because it also is a helpful con reminder for me for everything else that I've done this year because for a lot of us um and I've been thinking about this a lot for a lot of us uh our Legacy isn't the things that we have uh or the these events that I try to put on it's the people I leave behind um in the end it's the relationships that we've built uh over time it's the connections that we've made that will be our lasting Legacy and that's the only things that will survive U myself um over time and so having the time with my family just reminds me so much of all the people that I've got to connect with this year and so that was my theme that was it's the people I've connecting with um from ay to Chris to asid to llo to Ben to my two daughters and my wife um I'm getting like super touchy sorry um I'm just I'm just glad of the relationships I've built here um through service now um on this team with Chuck and Lauren and panov and uh to our bigger team on the community team we have so many people that are doing such great work on our bigger team um and to all of our community members and people I get to call friends now uh thank you way to keep it centered well done okay go someone else go all right Lauren you get to follow that tough act to follow so when I joined service now in 2017 uh I really wanted to become better at public speaking it was something that I always really uh it's something a trait in people I always really looked up to but it was something that I struggled with on a technical level I I I really suffered with bad nerves I would almost I not almost I would get really nauseous beforehand um but it was something that I always prioritize whether that was presenting at snugs or presenting what basically whenever the opportunity arose and so over time I feel like I got better at it and one my number one for this year uh represents kind of all of that um that was holding me back before by getting able to present at the Creator con Kino um I never in a million years when I started learning service now in 2015 would imagine myself to be sharing the stage with the man that taught me the mass majority of what I learned which is Chuck um so uh I I don't I'm not sure if I've talked about it on this podcast before but for my first developer uh certification course Chuck was my teacher I learned from him in 2016 uh he was the the proor on my exam and uh seeing that kind of come full circle by be able share the stage with him and not get sick this time so that's a big win and present to the community that I have such amount a huge amount of respect for and interview people like ebony Aila um it it takes a tremendous amount to not get overly emotional simil on this call thinking about it because of how much that moment meant to me so I want to give a tremendous amount of thanks to Chuck for not only teaching me all the service now stuff that become the backbone of my basically my entire career but also being gracious enough to allow me to share the stage with him for such a large event it meant the world to me um I it's it will be the similar to PR of it'll be the highlight probably of my career so thank you for that opportunity um that was not only hugely uh meaningful to me but also a blast so you made it very very fun and uh yeah I can't think of anything that I would put as number one other than that thank you so much well thank you very much that's it's very touching that all of you this is not what we had in mind listener when we started this none of us had reviewed our list well we just had Thanksgiving we're all being thankful I guess so uh and I'm thankful for this team as well I made an audible at the last minute I crossed off my number one and actually went with one of my bonus ones cuz I thought it was better my number one was previously Creator con and the world forums and getting to meet all the great people which is very very special and the product feedback we get because that's so core to what we do as developer Advocates is to make this connection between the community and the company and you know be that face and voice and Etc uh We've we've heard a lot about those events and I can't we could go on for hours just about those and the the the fun and the value and the lessons and the great people we met some of you probably heard a good number of those voices on on the episode we had just a couple of episodes ago where we talked to and brought some of you the the world Forum recap um but I swapped that out for uh something that happened internally that many of you may not be aware of but you're seeing the evidence of it later in 2023 we had an or change our our team previously reported up through the Creator workflows Team app engine automation engine that kind of thing and and that was fine great team love the leadership they did a number of things very well for us for a few years and uh earlier this year we had a reorg in the larger marketing organization and now we report up through a community team so we merged forces with Mark Obie's team he had Lisa lur and David ha and Dan Brun you probably know a lot of these names from the community or you've got support from them we were also joined by Selena Samora and Sarah Garvey and uh all our existing team memb who did I miss tanvi golay the the the cast of characters you probably already know Jason mcke and Lily Lee we've added a few new names and faces to that but what we have accomplished is is not just it was almost like a merger and acquisition I've been I've been around for decades and I've gone through a number of these it was it was taking processes and identifying programs and tool sets everything you need to build this and we did it quickly and to to make things even more interesting we lost our manager Marcelo uh resigned in early March of 2023 so you know Mark stepped in and and I was doing my best to lead and we we really pulled some internal Miracles and the evidence you're starting to see about this is Earl I think Earl already mentioned it one MVP program it used to be two we've got more of a community presence we're doing things more as a team and frankly the whole world forum and the developer meetups that happened there would not have happened without a larger help base sure I got to go to four events but those were coordinated technically logistically everything behind the scenes by Selena and huge shout out to tanvi she's like my rock star of the year so I couldn't do what I do without the help of that larger team and and just watching this transformation happen in the last year and seeing see the fruits of that and as I hinted earlier we've got big plans for 2024 some of these are coming out and like Selen suggested that that's awesome I wanted to do that but you already Rock I've seen evidence of this go go do this I'll help where I can you know that kind of vibe is starting to permeate that we truly are a unified team we've got similar goals I'm hearing more Echoes of 2024 priorities leaning more into the platform leaning more into Community leading more into the ecosystem this has me fired up I feel like this is our time the last 13 years at this company have have been building towards this it just keeps getting better it's like this hockey stick on the pie chart a bar chart is about to happen I know I have hockey sticks on pie charts by the way but it's it it it's happening now and it's very exciting and to have this team I I really hope we have the opportunity to grow grow and get more Advocates on this team and do more things and and that's that's a distinct possibility as we start to come out of the economic situation that we're in huge Kudos also to our upper management our leadership Bill McDermot for fighting through and no layoffs at this company we grew okay I'm just getting a little preachy here but that's what it takes for us to be successful and for us to help you be successful and recognize what you've done so yeah this may have been a little self-promotional version of the podcast but these all meant a lot to us in 2023 and I can't wait to see what's coming in 2024 does anybody have any other ideas or things that they're looking forward to in 24 let's let's start we'll go same order panov are you off the top of your head we probably didn't even prepare for this part yeah I think I'm like one of the thing that I'm really excited about is knowledge 24 because 23 I mentioned like it was my first knowledge and um I was on a light schedule right but now in knowledge 24 I'll be doing more than what I did in k23 so super excited about it passing it to ear I think I'm excited for 2024 because a lot of our programs that we did this year we made it a lot more um hey let's be creative and plan for next year stuff so during October Fest and during November we came up with ideas on how to make some fun apps that would drive more Community programs for hober Fest or for uh this thing that some of us are participating in for fun called Advent of code where we're doing coding puzzles every day uh we want to make a service now app version of it and so there's a lot of fun little ideas that came out of a bunch of our different programs this year that we're all going to try to build together as a community for fun next year so hopefully these become actual programs or things that we can invite everybody to uh for next year so that's exciting for me Lauren for me I think well just because it's so near on the horizon it's hard not to be excited for Washington DC um I think that we're internally we're going to try a lot of new things when it comes to the content calendar and just the content production in general uh so that has me really excited but also knowing what's coming in the actual release itself uh it's really hard to keep your mouth shut on this team that's that's all to say it's really difficult when you see all this cool stuff you're like oh I want to talk about you're like oh I can't talk about till February man that sucks well it gives you more excite to be excited for as well listener so off to you Chuck what's your most uh thing you're looking forward to for 2024 oh I think I already spilled my guts on all of that stuff but it it's really we're we're maturing internally as an organization as a team um I'm reaching out to the larger devel Community seeing what they're doing reading books listening to podcast and exploring what the possibilities are and how we can be more effective internally as well reaching out to the sales team and saying hey you know the developer contacts at the organizations help us to introduce them to meetups MVP program etc etc and and show value in that so working internally as well as externally to to really take this from the small Scrappy underfunded team we've got recognize the value internally hopefully get some more resources on that so that we can do more for you that's what I'm excited about is is really sinking my teeth into that larger strategy thank you so much Prav and Earl and Lauren for all of your Reflections on 2023 and some prognosticating on 2024 I I absolutely love this team and uh have happy holidays and a Merry Christmas and thank you wonderful listener for sticking with us and for sharing the word about this podcast we truly appreciate it as we watch our subscription numbers go up and the download numbers it's a great time and please continue to do that it is very much appreciated there's no better way to uh advertise a podcast than word of mouth and and we greatly appreciate that so don't forget you can also check out the other service now podcasts over at servicenow.com Community under the events menu you can subscribe to this podcast and get it automatically delivered to you anywhere you find podcasts whether it's apple or Amazon or Google or wherever they're all over the place and we are part of most of those directories if you can't find us let us know no just send us a message breakpoint is brought to you by service now executive producers will be me and Lauren to find out more about the service now developer program head over to developer. servicenow.com and thank you once again so much to pranav Earl and of course Lauren for joining and sharing today thank you Chuck thanks for having us thank you please let us know what you think about this podcast you can leave feedback or ask questions in the service now Community for more great information on service now development check out the service now developer portal at developer. servicenow.com thanks for listening all right let us start that over and Lauren what's your number four no I'll figure that out in editing I will put as many show notes in any as many links in the show notes let me try that again so all of October we had this little uh fun event where we participate in community Source driven pro pro oh and I Lauren I need to keep passing good Lauren ah perfect personally so this is what number three I guess on the list now we're up to no wait we were on number fours no this is yeah good bloopers right there there your blooper for you that takes us to the end we didn't really have a way to wrap that we rehearse an end and cut and we're done this is where I roll into the outro a very Sopranos esque ending to this one just cut it to Black that was big fun