and press report there we go all right Chuck taking away Thanks thank you very much my name is Chuck Tomasi senior developer evangelist at ServiceNow and I am going to share my story in hopes that you can employ some of this information in your career journey but before I get started I'm gonna throw a couple of career tips to you just so you've got something to chew on for the rest of this number one is of course follow your passion as with many of you I suspect its technology and more specifically ServiceNow that's okay we can all play in the same sandbox number two is build your network I was introduced to some amazing people which led to opportunities that I never would have discovered or uncovered by myself so keep those in mind follow your passion and build your network all right let's turn back the clock I'm gonna do a little backstory here going all the way to the time of the dinosaurs before computers were in my life as a child I should have seen the writing on the wall but again ever the hindsight is 20/20 I loved writing and decoding secret messages of my friends so watch for this if you've got kids see if see if they're trending towards something like this there might be a sign that they've got a technical aptitude I discovered computers at the age of 17 I know that seems old for nowadays kids are introduced to it right from the cradle to the crib and everything in between but they were still pretty new when I came along 17 years old and I used to stay after high school I used to stay after school while I was still in high school whatever that was junior senior year and look through the book and type in the programs and modify them and tweak them and and learn and experiment that way so that was that was clearly a passion that I had I didn't know where it would leave me or what I would do with it but it was fun and that's why I liked it I would even go down to the local college computer lab they had a computer science lab made introductions got to know some people some upperclassmen learned a lot from them and again following that passion while I was in college I got hired as a service technician at a local computer store still have the business card for that believe it or not yeah they and hooked up with a good friend of mine from a previous job we were both service technicians we'd go out and repair power supplies and do the computer repair stuff well we weren't doing that we had a pet project and we both co.design and ran a local dial-up bulletin board system if you're old enough to remember modems talking to the Internet this was pre-internet actually the internet was around but it wasn't officially the inner mid 80s we had dial-up bulletin boards and we created our own and we ran it and this I think is where my love of things talking to other things comes from and you'd still see that in the rest api and integrations that we do today it also was an early signal of my love of community this was my early community career because you had users on the bulletin board there were postings that was engaging that was part of the gig it was a lot of fun I eventually got a computer science a bachelor degree in computer science from Northern Michigan University and Marquette Michigan as did my parents as did my daughter not the same degree that same University my first host college job I was hired as a software developer this is way back before Windows was real popular I was writing a DOS application to communicate with pay telephones again things talking to other things and it was a great experience I could go into that story for days but I won't and and I always had a pet programming project on the side I was always doing some sort of software development whether it was the BBS code because I ran that after I got out of college and did that into like the early 90s when the internet kind of became a big thing did I wrote some blog software and and continue to do that today with ServiceNow apps I always have something that I have as a pet project something to keep the skills sharp something to keep going in my previous company I was there for 22 years I had a number of roles so after I did software development I was a UNIX system administrator I was an IT project manager as a systems architect in engineering IT manager and ultimately ended up as the global service desk manager which is when I brought in ServiceNow now as a sidebar while all this was happening long about 2004 I discovered podcast 8 and I might have had a music career because I started learning piano about that time but then podcasting came up and crushed all my desire to practice piano and whatever happened to that I don't know so I started podcasting and that led to other opportunities I've co-authored a couple of books some of you may seen in the background of our videos poster on the back wall podcasting for dummies done a few editions of that currently working on the fourth edition of that with my co-author T Morris we've we've also authored teach yourself WordPress in ten minutes so fun writing books good experience following the passion back to my day job in 2010 I was let go so the takeaways I have from that experience after 22 years at that employer is stay positive and continue to build and maintain your network that's where you're going to get your next connections from that's where your opportunities are going to come from so enough for the career talk on to my service now story so while I was still a customer at attended knowledge tan knowledge 10 500 employees are 500 attendees a little bit different than what we're seeing today online with tens of thousands 500 my personal 1616 I think there were probably about 4,500 or 6000 but it was it was a lot bigger number yeah when I when I think of 500 ploys or 500 attendees I think we get some we get some breakout sessions that are that big it's great it's well I was honored and privileged enough to have won the first innovation of the Year award with the service now had this contest I said show us how you've extended the platform and made an application and I mitad what became my loner request application oddly enough just before this recording started I was working on a new version of happy for a completely different reason but it still exists it's still around and while I was at knowledge tan I was making connections I was talking to people just casually getting business cards staying in touch with them and because of that when I was let go from my day job I hope my previous day job I had a job offer within 3 hours directly linked to the connections I made at knowledge 10 so when you get to a conference hopefully we'll get to another conference in person again make those connections stay in touch with those people an hour after that first out job offer I was pointed to a lead that would eventually get me my service now job that I started in June of 2010 I started as a senior technical consultant doing discovery deployments ITSM implementations moved on to a group called expert services I started the tech now series which still lives on that was in 2013 we've been doing that for over seven years very proud and humbled that everybody's still enjoying that I was brought into our what was called professional services now it's called customer outcomes professional services as an enablement manager so I was sort of an internal trainer helping our technical consultants learn to do that technical consulting stuff like my timesheets are important and how you can help improve the margin and all that good stuff was in pre-sales for a little while as a senior solution consultant probably recognized my previous title is he senior TP mmm not gonna tell you what that spelled but building demos doing a developer evangelist and now today I am a senior developer evangelist happier than ever to be where I am so what have you learned what would have I learned or what have you learned from me sadly I had no plan nobody shared anything like this until late in my career and I often wondered I I still wake up in the morning how did a computer science major end up in product marketing does that make since TI doesn't make sense to me but it turns out that product marketing needed some technical acumen I had a depth in the platform because of my passion because of the experiences because of everything that have done it was really a wonderful opportunity and I am happier than ever so don't discount a physical location or an organizational change as something you don't want to do because it's not in your wheelhouse it very may well be and be a great growth opportunity so it's it's fun to look back and say how did I get here because what I do today making videos doing demos sharing information learning about the platform working with our product managers engaging with the customers it's directly tied to the work I did quote-unquote yesterday you know and and all my yesterday's before you look at community podcasting writing books social media all of that a lot of that a lot of that was actually volunteer work before T Morris approached me for the second edition of podcasting for dummies I was contributing as a writer was totally whatever to a magazine and online publication called podcast user magazine I'd write about microphones and soundproofing and where you should position your chair it's little things about that sound familiar that's kind of what I'm doing for service now right now because just contribute contribute contribute I heard a wise man once a give until it hurts and and you will be greatly rewarded so it's I always try to give until it hurts now imagine what could have happened if I had a plan that's I wish somebody would have come forth and said you know grow your network maintain those connections shake your hands and introduce your people a little sooner than 10 years ago I'm she was more like 12 years ago but it was it was great experience so hopefully if your earlier in your career you can you could start to do that keep track of your accomplishments too because someone's going to ask you at some point what have you done tell me about a time you did this and and it's good to have that record of things because if you ask me what I did when I was 23 24 years old in my career it's a stretch it's very general information so you just ask how do you find the time to keep track of all the new stuff great question I have a document I keep mine in Evernote you can keep it wherever you like Google Drive onedrive whatever I and quarterly I have a recurring task on my to-do list that says go update your career history document this is the basis for your resume so when it comes time to find a new job or somebody asks for your resume you can call out the information from that career history document and have accomplishments real quick tip keep them focused on actions like I delivered this particular project on time under budget things that speak to a manager if your if your resume just says I have experience in JavaScript it doesn't really make you stand out from everybody else so I could I could do a whole nother series on building a resume but I would and it really really works because that's how I got to ServiceNow so quickly and growing your career like that it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to become a manager a director VPS VP you know I'm I am an individual contributor today I am at the bottom of the org chart there are something like seven layers from me to Bill McDermott and you know what I couldn't be happier today I am that you can still be considered a leader in your space without having to move up the org chart if you do I mean obviously that's a great thing for your career if you want to be a manager VP and your vision is somebody to be CEO or you want to break off and start your own company bless you I wish you all the best your career path is different than mine but just keep in mind that when somebody says where do you want to be in five years it doesn't necessarily mean you have to move up that org chart they'd like to many organizations want that because they're growing in they need leadership but you can lead in other ways and I'm very happy and very humbled to be of the ever growing community so I didn't have a plan I advised you to make a plan and and see where you want to go but be general so that you have some flexibility otherwise you'll find that fate intervenes and you'll say hey I wanted to go over here and I was blind to some opportunities that were over there they could have equally been useful so when people ask me this is it's funny because we just asked a question on one of our podcasts we have a question of the week that says what one question do you hate the most and the one that I used to hate the most was when somebody says where do you want to be in five years because the roles I have today didn't exist about six months before I got there I'm sure in somebody's head they were thinking we need a role to do this now when you think about senior enablement manager or senior TPM M or they just didn't exist they weren't there so I couldn't say I want to be a developer evangelist although I think I did for the last few years but that's an exception in trying to trying to pigeonhole yourself into a title it's a great idea to have a direction but don't be specific the reason I didn't like that is because it was too specific I and and throughout my last job at 22 years I'd say where do you want to be in five years I could never really give a succinct answer until I finally broke it down and said you know what I'm going to make this more general and be much happier so when they say where do you want to be in five years if somebody asks that today I say I want to be in a place where I can learn information I can share that information with others to help them be more effective to drive interest to energize and evangelize and that sounds a lot like my current role but I would expand on that for whatever comes next so somebody says where do you see yourself in five years be general and follow that passion follow those dreams and the answer will come out a lot easier then you know I see myself being the product manager of this particular division ok you know it's wrong anonymously just like your own career and all your skills how do you keep those new features in mind and learning about them so quickly sure I've had to increasingly focus my attention there was a time when I knew ITSM pretty well but it is grown I haven't done an eye TSM implementation in about six or seven years it's it's really expanded so as the platform and the products and applications on the platform have grown and grown and grown I I don't have the bandwidth to learn them all I don't know SEC ops or GRC or a lot of these a larger functions I know some about things like performance analytics I know some about you know the item capabilities but I'm certainly not a subject matter expert in that field because there is so much to learn and you know we all only have so much time so what I've done is focused my energies on my interests the platform the development tools the integrations again getting back to my childhood interests of things talking to other things I want to send a REST API and get information back I wanted to create an application that puts records in a table and something happens and I get new information back that's that's where my interests are at how can I make that happen in a fun and engaging way hence the Jeopardy application from last year that was that was all ServiceNow but it was a whole lot of fun and I learn things along the way about record watcher and message passing and events and service portal and it was a lot of great learning that I could then turn around and share I don't know if everyone knows about that the Jeopardy don't well the Jeopardy app is on the share page on the developer site at developer.com 105 and perhaps we'll play it again at knowledge 21 but it's available out there with some sample date if you want to download it and take a look at it so we are we are rounding out our time roughly Lisa I mean should I wrap this up they do they do you know some people who say when do you sleep or you know when do you how do you separate work from your your personal life I I got lucky because I was able to take my personal love of doing development and podcasting and mesh those together to deliver something that service now finds valuable are you're really really lucky I feel very blessed to be able to to engage in that way what I'm doing right here right now is only a few feet away from what I do as a hobby on Sunday night when we do our podcasts it's even using much of the same equipment so it's it's very hard for me to separate especially because I work at home when you ever you really leave work or do you really go home or do you really get to work I'm not sure what's one anymore but I know there are many people I'm also at a time in my life where my children are grown so that changes the dynamics a bit many of you have children at home in a very tough situation right now where the children are home-schooled and I understand that and appreciate that so everybody situation is going to be a little different invest what you can in your career even when I had kids I was doing pod children at home I was doing the podcasts it wasn't the production value we have today it was the equipment it wasn't the budget but it led to bigger things it was I was doing what I loved and that led to other opportunities so again follow your passion it doesn't have to be exactly what I did you may not want my job it's it may not exist in a year I don't know any other questions Lisa talking to other things can you talk a little bit about getting the Internet of Things devices and the makerspace I'll take a stab at that question I'm not sure I understand it 100% but the the the Internet of Things is a rapidly growing market because there are so many sensors and processors and whatnot going around and putting the processing power on the edge is really going to be effective in the future but somebody still has to collect all that information one of our internal skunkworks projects is around the internet of things I can't speak to it even with a safe harbor statement I don't know enough about it to give you full information as a hobby I've done some of this myself I've taken the Amazon IOT - buttons push the button it goes off to Amazon runs a lambda function sends an arrest request to ServiceNow and does something so when I turn on the lights or turn on the studio in my house that's done with an Amazon - button rather than yelling at Alexa to turn off my bedside lamp or the ceiling fan I push a button so that my wife can continue sleeping or I can continue sleeping if she wants the fan on or off so you know again pet projects leading to other things and the customer story in that use case is put a smart button over by the coffee pot or the men's room to say I'm out of paper towels or we need coffee filters or the copy machine is broken or things aren't working right in the conference room great way to open a ticket in ServiceNow so you can do that with just a push of a button we had those in our corporate headquarters in Santa Clara for about a year or so and then placing with QR codes but still a fun project and a great customer use case so I find fun things on my desk and work out from there and say how can our customers benefit from this knowledge no my takeaways I'm gonna wrap this up because we are starting to run a little short on time my takeaways for this are build and maintain your network that's just good career advice take a look at what you enjoy doing today and think how it can help you get to that next position even if that next position doesn't exist today in your organization it may or you may be able to find a company that can value that and absolutely absolutely do what you love and follow your passion that is what led me to the top of the leaderboard on the community posting and sharing and learning and that that's really what I think the bottom line on this is how I got to the top of the leaderboard I followed my passion I did what I love and I shared that passion with other people and as a closing fun fact I mentioned a little bit about this earlier I have a collection of every single business card I've ever had in my career going all the way back to that first service technician job in college which is right the building is still here I don't know the business is long gone but the building is still there I worked at any computer land store which was a computer chain based out of California but our branch that's where I did my bulletin board work and that's where we did the replacing power supplies and whatnot lot of fun and it's sort of like a resume in my pocket but fun to look through the old logos and whatnot thank you very much for attending today I hope you found it a little education a little informational maybe somewhat interesting and got to know me a little bit better you know this is an opportunity I'm yourself and you're asked a question to mr. Chuck Tomasi you know well my favorite things as Chuck is I've always had fun on the community with you doing your events and also helping you with your blog so some of that magic is then that Chuck gets on the communities behind the scenes the somebody like myself I'm here to help when else what to do some of those items on the community as well right it's a lot of fun and I hope other people are inspired to help out on the community as well we'll talk more about that in the session about becoming a subject matter expert segue to the next segment join us back here you know I mean this is being reported and it's going to be chat again it has been placed on the community a little while it's not giving live stream to YouTube but I give me to download it so we'll see what that happens give me about an hour to get that up what is your favorite developer tool good question it's a toss-up I really like studio I find it very useful to do the source control integration switching branches I was doing that a number of times this morning keeping things collected in one place and just being able to see multiple tabs I love studio a second runner up has got to be the REST API Explorer again because of the love of integrations I want to make sure things work right before before I use them in any production capacity so I'll often build up my my applications and use REST API is a lot in my service portal widgets so I've got that to go on and it's been very very helpful it is a great tool I don't use it as much as I should just like I don't use the script debugger as much as I should just like I probably don't put enough comments in as much as I should so yes there are things that I should be doing but often in the interest of time I've got to move from use case to use case and download a demo but things that I do put out on share I try to document and put them in so Explorer is a very wonderful tool thanks to James Neal for putting that out is hugely popular I think it's our most down loading on the share page so take a look at its XP lor II there's no leading e so you can find that very useful it's sort of like scripts background on super steroids wonderful stuff participation on the community side as a sole guy responsible for service now and as organization he's constantly reviewing the community persistence and have learned quite a bit from you taxes that's how I started I was asking questions on the community back in 2008-2009 people names you see in the demo data where asked answering mind back then Don good LIF is a real person he he was he's got one out there there's even a humorous answer that I've lost track of but it was something like I said Don can I give you a call he said well sadly I work in a dark room with no windows and thank you I'm not allowed to take calls but there's something along those lines that we find funny this day but ask questions in the community and then as you start to build your experience certainly paid forward well maybe that dark room is a good segue into the next question is have you ever worked out how many points you get on an effort today there was a time in 2016 when I was full on I think my record was about 2,000 points a day but and I was averaging over a thousand today it's far far less in fact I have sadly been absent most of q2 because of prep for knowledge yes exploring new things we've got the community livestream series has been revamped and is becoming hugely popular thank you very much for all of your viewing on that get to the next sessions any more questions but if not even we always love hearing and seeing things what's the fastest way to get to some of your most content you have a URL that you want to talk about your best content community a great question my ServiceNow community content I really need to start indexing the new stuff but tech now has its own page there's a bitly link you can use bi te ly / ServiceNow - tech now so just spell it out ServiceNow - check now that's - isn't a - and that will take you to the index page of the 75 or so episodes we've got going back to 2016 or 2013 that's the easiest way to find the tech now not currently have an episode list Oh actually there's a playlist on the YouTube channel if you go to if you go to the now community YouTube channel there's a playlist called community livestream I should have thought of that one so there's another link for you thank you so much reckon we'll see you about an hour actually all right thanks thank you all