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Authentic, Authoritative, Unapologetic ServiceNow commentary by Cory "CJ" Wesley and Robert "The Duke" Fedoruk
Duke: Oh, big time.
Episode today, huh, Laurie.
CJ: Duke, man, I know we've been gone
minute, but man, this is the return
and it is definitely worth the wait.
Duke: Today we have two
very special guests.
We have Mr.
J Benson, the man who needs No
Introduction, and we also have Mr.
Jeff.
Jesse.
Guys, welcome to the.
Jace: Hey, I'm glad to be here, man.
Thanks for having me.
Jeff: Happy to be here.
Thanks.
Duke: Okay.
And what we are going to talk about
today is the Null Edge conference.
Now, I didn't say
knowledge, I said null edge.
, We all see what Jace did there.
and man, I don't wanna take
any of Jace's thunder away.
So, Jace, why don't you tell the
audience what knowledge is all about.
Jace: Knowledge is a virtual
conference that I made to be the
conference I wished I had gone to.
I missed some things at the conference.
, Many of us go to, on the service
style platform and when I get
frustrated, I create and I think,
well, I could probably do that.
Let's try it.
And so I thought, well, I'm
gonna reach out to some folks and
see if they'll do it, and I can
just guide them along the way.
I tried that and they said,
this is your thing, you do it.
Duke: Awesome.
Let's get real brass tacks.
What is it?
Jace: So it's a virtual conference where
we're hitting on topics that you can
take back to your work and bring value
to your, where you work on ServiceNow.
it's not sales pitches,
it's not everything's ai.
It's not Hype cycle stuff.
It's like literally just valuable
content that people can use.
, CJ: So what I'm feeling from this
is, this is what would happen.
It took developer meetups, put
them all in one day, and got
the who's of the ServiceNow
community to come and participate.
, Jace: That's probably
a good way to put it.
It's just like a giant conference
of developer meetups where
they all have different topics.
There is a topic from a developer meetup
that is here, there's 40 sessions, so
I, it's hard to keep 'em all in my head.
I think it's the showcasing team
hub by Roberto Alvarez, a Alonzo.
CJ: Dude, 40 sessions.
You just made a conference like
outta thin air and you're not like,
yeah, no, we got three sessions
and you know, it's 40 sessions.
That's crazy.
Duke: How long did it take you to get
40 speakers to go to the conference?
Jace: Do you remember how long
the call for content was, Jeff?
I think it was, I'm not
sure how long it was.
I think it's on the website still.
Jeff: We had the call for
content open for roughly a month.
a very little push from us, , as
part of the knowledge team.
, We sent it out.
Shared it on socials a few times, but
honestly, the community is really,
they wanted to contribute and we got
quite a few, I think we hit 20 sessions
within like the first two weeks.
So the rest were just kind of, after
a few more shares, we got more.
Duke: And now that you've actually started
talking, Jeff, why don't you give yourself
an intro to our audience and, tell us what
brought you into the Knowledge conference.
Jeff: Like Robert said, I'm Jeff.
Jesse.
I am a ServiceNow developer
lead at Accenture.
I've got about four years of
experience on the platform.
How I got involved in knowledge is
Jay sent me a ping for just regular
conversation and kind of venting.
We connected.
He shared his idea, and
I'm gullible enough.
I said, let's do it, and we
kind of just ran with it.
CJ: I love how, things like this that
you create that are of this magnitude.
And, extensiveness, right?
Like you gotta be a little gullible.
You gotta be a little naive
and a little innocent, right?
Like a little bit of suspend
your disbelief in order to,
you know, to, to actually do.
Because if you step back and
consider it like, I'm gonna build
a conference with 40 events, right?
Like the enormity that might
push you to say no, but you guys,
they just like pushed through
this and got it point anyway.
Jace: I mean, I will say the first person
to reached out to was Chuck Tomasi.
And I know he was, he couldn't
make the event this year and
I felt a little bad for him.
And, . He acknowledged that he was
interested, and so then I just took
that as a green light to just keep PE
begging, not begging, bothering people
to see if this was something that
other people would be interested in.
Duke: Yeah, sometimes it just needs
to get like somebody to push the
boulder up the hill until they
get to the other side of the hill.
Right.
Do you know what I love about this?
What just was just said, Corey, is
that Jeff is coming at this with
four years of experience, right?
Like you don't have to be some, Super
old toothless geezer like me, uh,
to make some stuff happen in
the org, in the ecosystem.
You can come at it like with, um, gosh,
is it bad that I just look at four years
and say That's a little bit of experience.
Jace: Four years is an is is
an eternity in ServiceNow.
Duke: Four years is a
tremendous amount of time.
CJ: It does make me realize how long
we've been doing this, four years is
just the distance from the, pandemic
to now, when you think about it, right?
And right.
Duke: wind right outta my sails, man.
Jace: That's, yeah,
I don't like thinking like that.
CJ: We're.
Duke: Do, do you, do you know
what this all reminds me of.
Fruit devcon, wherever you guys
are around for fruit devcon.
Jace: Oh, I wish I could have gone.
I worked there at the time.
I worked at fruition, but I lived
in Minnesota and so I wasn't able to
attend and I wasn't on a team that
needed to be there, so I wasn't there.
They had two years though.
They had for Defcon 13 and 14.
Duke: I remember I met so many of
my, like OG ServiceNow friends there,
Jace: Is that where you met Matt Barran?
, Duke: No, I met, Matt through,
, LinkedIn chat, but I met James
Neil there and Joel Olives.
a few other people, but man, just
recently somebody posted like an
old video of me speaking at Fruit
Devcon, just some interview stuff
and I'm like, who is that child?
Like, no facial hair,
nothing like Matt Brown hair.
No gray in sight.
Infant.
Stop listening to that.
CJ: Hella idealistic.
Duke: No.
Okay.
But speaking about idealistic, let's get
back to what we're here for knowledge.
, Jace, tell us if you can, , what was
the ' cause, you know what I mean?
Like, we all have the status quo,
like , the developer meetups knowledge.
But what was that one thing that
just, you couldn't put it down.
You had to say, no, I need
to build something different.
Jace: so I ran the developer meetups
in Minneapolis, Minnesota for like.
Four years and they're fine.
Like I thought it was great.
I passed that torch off to another
individual and they've been doing great
with that stuff and that's fantastic.
But the years that I missed
going to the conference, the
network with folks, it really.
That's what really bothered me when I
didn't get to go to those conferences
and it's so hard to like have a good
networking experience with folks.
And I'm not saying a virtual conference
is gonna give you a in-person level
event of type of networking, but I
wanted to bring what I found from
another online conference that was ran
by a company called Netlify who used
a, a test software called Hopin two.
And they had this like speed networking.
And I wanted to bring it to
something I could make eventually.
And then I got frustrated with the
event at the ServiceNow Knowledge event.
And I wanted to make my own
because I'm like, why does
everything feel like a sales pitch?
I had a podcast with, Ty Roach
and Justin Meadows when I was
at Knowledge this last year.
Like the three of us came to
conclusion that like everything
here is just to sell the new stuff.
And like maybe I was naive and I just
didn't realize that knowledge just feels
like a big sales event, but it can't be
the only way to have a good conference.
Duke: Right.
Jace: I wanted to make something
that wasn't just about sales.
So there's no sponsors, there's
no money changing hands.
This is all out of my pocket.
And the individual's times we've
contributed to make this a thing.
All the speaker's times.
there's no bias to like force
this to be a sales event or like
a push for this product event.
This is just people
sharing because they can.
Duke: It's pure.
Jace: Yes, and I wanted the first
year to be that way, and if there is
desire for another year, then I'll
look for sponsorships and see if we
can't make this a self-funded thing
that makes it worthwhile to run.
Duke: Mm-hmm.
CJ: I love the very narrow focus of
it, this is , like you said, dude, this
is a pure thing that is focused only
on this, and we're going to keep it.
We skinny, we're gonna keep it, we're
gonna keep it focused so we deliver
something that's worthwhile attending.
I, I, I really like that so many
Jace: I, I will say that organizing
it has definitely given me a ton more
empathy for the folks who organize any
event that has more than 50 people.
Duke: it's insane, right?
. Not that I've done it myself, but just in
trying to get what small groups of people
talking that I've been able to, like
titans of ServiceNow, CJ and the Duke,
Jace: I mean
Duke: you really do need to chase.
Jace: imagine trying to schedule
a podcast with 40 people speaking.
CJ: Ha.
Jace: You laugh, but like
that's what this is, right?
Jeff: that, that's episode 200.
CJ: maybe
Duke: That sounds like a challenge, Corey.
Like it really does.
CJ: it does.
It does, man,
Jace: You could have a, like a every
guest episode, you ring everybody back.
CJ: all right, man.
J, you, uh, you cooking my gas over there?
Duke: Jason's gonna have, Jason's
gonna have to come three times
in the same episode since,
Jace: Oh man.
Me and me and Andrew Barnes.
Both, I think.
Right.
Duke: um, have, we
CJ: back with a different hat on.
Could leave, come back
with another hat on.
Jace: No, but I mean,
it's, it's been fantastic.
And , the team's been helping out.
There's a list of contributors
on the website, Jeff, Jesse here.
He's the guy behind the website initially,
so like that's been a huge help.
CJ: I love the website.
Duke: Yeah.
I'm just going to it right now.
Don't worry.
, We're gonna have a link in
the description below, so
Jace: And like the design of
the logos, that's like Courtney
Brewster and Carlene Carter.
They work together for like some
of the branding and logoing and
like, I don't have those skills.
CJ: shout out to Carlene.
That's my dog.
Duke: It is a very nice website.
It's very clean and let's just do a
quick look at some of the speakers.
we go to Sarah Tolson, Kevin Clark.
Tim Woodruff.
Chuck Tomasi.
Ty Roach.
Is Chuck still going?
I thought you said he might not be
Jace: No, Chuck is, Chuck is, he
couldn't go to knowledge this last
year, but knowledge, I asked him if
he could be part of it, and then,
yeah, he, he, he was all about it.
So I'm super excited that he
was able to, , to help steer
the direction of some of these
conferences, discussions and choices.
Duke: We got Michael Snick.
I'm just going off the people
that I know by name here.
There's tons of them.
Atto, Grover, Gregory Yu, Al.
Wow.
He got like all ki Han Sho
Jace: James Neil,
Duke: James Neil Aud
Jace: Meg Scow,
Duke: like Chris Chu, like it's just, I'm
not even halfway through the list here.
Jace: Andrew Chuin,
Duke: Mike Scow like.
Jace: Coy, the guy behind
SNU Tills, who literally
Duke: Benson, that guy's
got a thing or two to say.
Jace: don't have any sessions.
I just have opening and closing ceremony.
I figure out they see enough as it is.
Duke: So it's a, it is a who's who.
And then some of people who've
always got valuable stuff to say.
And let's take a look at some of the
topics and sessions like, so James
Neil's gonna talk about explore.
That's super awesome.
pow And Kumar Singh is gonna
talk about performance tooling,
avoiding migration pitfalls.
Jace: is talking about two week upgrades.
Chris?
Duke: oh yeah, that'll be great.
Two week upgrades.
Jace: Yep.
Duke: Wow.
Uh, monitoring integrations like,
Jace: And then we got some people
from like proper ServiceNow there
even, I didn't expect that to like to
actually talk about ServiceNow stuff.
I was, I wasn't sure how I felt
about it when they submitted and
then I was like, well, you know what?
If they wanna talk, let 'em talk.
So there's Elany, I don't know
if I'm saying her name right.
, Elaia Beaver.
She's like a doctorate who's
talking about the accessibility and
localization features and now assist
and some free open source tool.
Duke: Oh,
CJ: man.
That never gets any coverage this.
That's
Duke: Seriously, right?
Like
Jace: Right.
And then Mo, I don't know
if I'm saying the guy's last
name, Mo Moger, Mo, whatever.
He's doing some jumpstart AI thing.
Now.
I did wanna like not emphasize ai.
I think there's like five
or six talks that talk about
ai, but of 40, that's not bad
CJ: Yeah, I think that's a,
I think that's a pretty good
proportion there, you can't miss ai.
And you know, and I, and it is funny how
society's kind of breaking down right now,
you kinda get in , these two camps, right?
As folks who are like, yeah,
AI is great and I'm using it.
And then you've got AI cynics
who are like, yeah, whatever.
And to me, right?
Like, I just think this is one of those
things you're never gonna escape anymore.
And so you can't get rid,
you can't get rid of it.
But I also definitely understand
the need to not have an entire
conference that's devoted to it.
And just to hide the other stuff that
is also traditional ServiceNow that, you
know, folks are using day to day as well.
Jace: Right, like there's a
session just on flow debugging.
I know, Robert, you have a
fantastic video on adding, the
correct way to air out of a flow.
Right.
I'm sure that Selma Shake will
talk about that kind of stuff in
that session, and that's fantastic.
Duke: What I like about this
is the value proposition of
whatever they're talking about.
Like conversations, I'm, always drawn
into, Are ones where it's like, okay,
like let's talk about the benefits
of this and there's always a, primary
point of blah, blah, blah ai, and I'm
like, AI isn't necessarily the point.
You know, I just want value.
If AI gets me that value, then that's
just the vehicle that drove me there,
but I'd have been just as happy if
you improve my life X percent by,
I don't know, something, not ai.
Jace: Like float debugging, right?
Like being able to find
those problems faster.
Duke: Yes.
Jeff: lot of, we wanted to highlight.
Something like Jason mentioned
before, that's useful.
Now, there are a lot of customers out
there that aren't ready for AI and
now assist or aren't going to purchase
it, so we wanted to give people from
those customers, those clients, the
ability to learn something that's not
tied to AI so they can use it now.
CJ: See what you did there.
Jeff: Completely unintentional.
Jace: but like Sessions, I'm
looking forward to probably the
most, this might not seem like it'd
be one, but there's one by Karen.
Kay, who's talking about field
service management at work, that's
all I'm looking into right now.
It's all I'm working on, so any
content I can consume around field
service management is like it.
I haven't had a chance to connect
with that speaker specifically
individually, but I can't wait to
see what she put together and I
can't wait to hear her session.
, CJ: Sorry, a bit, bit of
a little small tangent.
Is Phil management picking up right now?
I mean, I remember when it was first
Introed and I, you know, I kind of got
a little bit, but like the, the, the man
ride out and so I kind of left it alone.
Jace: I think it just depends on who your
clients are and where you work, right?
If you work for a company that
installs hardware at customer
sites, like Field Service Management
is gonna be a, a shoe in, right?
You're gonna have to argue
not to get it in ServiceNow.
CJ: Yeah, I definitely see that.
Jace: there's plenty of
customers that are like that.
So is it gonna be a big customer
base that's gonna have that Maybe?
I don't think it's gonna be huge.
I think it's gonna be much smaller
than any IT service management stuff.
But you could say something similar
around like the HR SD product and
ServiceNow, which there's another talk
by Sabrina Etheridge and I did get a
chance to meet up with her and I did a
whole bunch of HR SD stuff when I was
at a past employer and I learned like.
Five things in that like 20
minute talk that she demoed to me.
So I am super excited if anybody's talk
measures up to what I've seen already.
Duke: That's amazing, dude.
Maybe let's talk a little bit
about what it took to get you here.
I heard you had a meeting with Sabrina,
so she could walk you through her present.
Have you personally
vetted each presentation?
Jace: I was gonna try to, but
there's 40 of them and there's
six of us that are active in like
this, , group that's organizing this.
And when I started to try to do
this, it was like a few weeks ago
and there's only a month and a half
until the session, till October
17th and now there's even less time.
There's like 20 days as of recording.
So to meet with them, I had meet with
one a day or we'd have somebody had
to meet with them like one a day.
that's what I started with.
And then I moved to having office hours.
I need to recommunicate that to all the
speakers in case they have questions.
But I've probably met with like
10 of these people individually.
I've messaged every one of them
either on email or LinkedIn.
Duke: how did you decide
on who gets a spot.
Jace: that was gonna be a whole
thing and I was gonna cut it down,
but then I thought, you know what?
If we just make 'em all 15 minute
sessions, except for the ones that
I've already promised half hours to,
we can just have everybody speak.
So you guys get the whole gamut.
We didn't cut anybody.
Oh, sorry about that.
Duke: That's okay.
That's what D script is for.
Jace: There was, one session that
somebody posted and they had something
come up and they had to cancel.
. There's been a couple like rearrangements
where people are like, oh, I can't do
it at that time for x, y, z reason.
Can you move it?
And we've been, shuffling the
schedule around some and some
others are like, I need 30 minutes.
I can't do it in 15.
that's been really fantastic too.
Duke: So how does it work logistically?
Is it just like one long,
one day long stream or.
Jace: So we're using a
product called RingCentral.
RingCentral acquired hopin two,
I think a year or two years ago.
and RingCentral gives you , a platform,,
where you can have a list of sessions
where people can jump in and out of,
When you RSVP'd, you're added to a list
of people who get the emails, like when
the event's starting to join the event,
there'll be a chat on the right, and
then on the left there'll be sessions
and every hour there'll be two, at
least two sessions that are happening.
and you can pick between them.
You can jump around.
so it isn't like a single
stream, if you will.
CJ: when you were scheduling , the
sessions, were you, looking at,
okay, I, I've got two HR sessions
and I wanna put them in the same
hour, that sort of thing, and.
Jace: I asked some folks for some input
on the schedules and I, didn't necessarily
come up with the whole thing myself,
but this is kind of where things landed.
I definitely put things in a way
that, Sessions that I wouldn't wanna
have competing aren't competing.
And so , I think at the 1230 hour, there's
four sessions unfortunately, but two
of them are very product specific, like
I think the HRSD one is at the time.
And, maybe the sales to
procurement one is at the time.
And then there's an AI talk at the time
and something else at the time, and I'm
not happy about that one situation, but
it's like playing a bad game at Tetris
because like, you don't, you
don't wanna set somebody up so
nobody attends their session.
But at the same time, you want
people to have sessions that
they can do something with.
Right.
Imagine if for the 10 o'clock hour,
there was a session on HRSD and a
session on field service management
and you don't use either HRSD or field
service management, like that'd be
a lost half hour or last 15 minutes.
So, I think we staggered it so
that it's good, but once the
schedules went out, it's more solid.
I don't wanna change it
because then it requires
communication to the speakers and.
People's expectations of when these things
are gonna be, because unfortunately,
some employees won't get the.
, Agency to like just take the day
off and attend to all of them.
They might only be allowed to take off,
you know, an hour or two to see the
sessions that they think are important.
And it would be really unfortunate if they
like said, yeah, between nine and 10, I'm
busy because I'm in attendance conference.
And then that session moved.
Like, wouldn't that be awful?
So I'm trying really hard not to adjust
those schedules as much as I can, but
I'm understanding why the schedules slip.
Even at the bigger
conference we all go to.
Which I didn't realize before, and
now it makes a lot more sense being
on the organizing side of this.
CJ: Nice.
So, , one other thing around that.
So let's say I show up at at 11, right?
And then there's HRSD and
field services and you know, I
don't use either one of those.
I'm not really interested
in either one of those.
You can have like a live.
Hours where folks can hang out and while
those kind of sessions are going on,
Jace: there is this networking thing
that I'm gonna be emphasizing people
do at the noon hour or 11 o'clock,
depending on where you are, right?
you can chat in the whole conference.
There's nothing stopping you from
chatting with everybody in the
conference, in the overarching space.
A but, there will be an expo hall.
I offered every speaker an expo hall
spot where they could put like a project
that they're working on or if they wanted
their employer to operate that expo
hall, they can do that, that expo booth.
And some of them have taken me up on that.
Some of them decided they didn't want
anything to do with it, and that's fine.
But that's another place where people
can go and check out during the event,
if there's a session that doesn't meet
up to what they wanna meet up with.
CJ: Oh, that's.
Jace: But it's just been
a lot of herding cats.
I've got two kids, they're nine and 11.
I was bringing them to
school a couple weeks ago.
'cause in Minnesota, we started school
later than a lot of places, I guess.
And I kept noticing how
organized my kids' teachers were.
Like every table has their name
like taped to it with a folder
of their book stuff, their papers
and pencils and this kind of jazz.
And I was thinking, oh, I wish I had
been that organized for this conference.
CJ: Man, can I tell you I
would love a session on that
Jace: Just to be organized like that,
CJ: just to be organized, dude,
like I am all over the place, right?
I get things done through brute force
Jeff: It, it started out well.
we did start out well with
organization, but the larger we
got, the less organized it got, and
it was, it was more difficult to
Jace: we got?
Jeff: Yeah.
The more sessions, the more speakers.
The more time zone spread that we
got, it got a lot more difficult.
Jace: Yeah, initially there was desire
to have this thing go across the
Atlantic or across the Pacific, like
have speakers in their local time
zones in Britain or Australia, but
that would be a lot longer events.
Be a lot more, I think, difficult.
Like I was open to it, but I'm like,
somebody else is gonna have coordinate
what events those are gonna be
because I don't know who's gonna be
speaking and I don't know how many
people would attend at those hours,
Duke: What was the hardest
part of the whole thing so far?
Jace: I mean, so far it's been just
gathering things and sharing it, I think,
which doesn't sound hard when I say it
out loud, but it's organizing all this
stuff, getting everybody on the same page
this is what we're gonna do, here's how
we're gonna do it, and that kind of stuff.
And thankfully, like, Chuck, he's.
Obviously been a keynote speaker for
large conferences for many years and
organized this podcast and he's like
steering that stuff and Carlene Carter,
she's just as organized in my opinion.
there's been a lot of help with trying
to keep that stuff going pretty smoothly,
but probably my hardest struggle.
Right now has been just getting
better at using the streaming software
that we've decided to go with,
which is the RingCentral platform.
But I think it's gonna be fantastic
'cause I've done a bunch of tests with it.
I've done a bunch of sessions with
it already, and for all the troubles
that I have with it, I think it's just
me picking on the nuance of it now.
Jeff: the hardest part for me, probably
the organization piece, assisting
where possible and, doing my best,
to support Jace he had the idea, I
really wanted to make this happen, so
anytime he came to me and was like,
Hey, do you think we can do this?
I immediately wanted to dive in and
try and make it happen, , just for him,
because he put so much into it, just to
support him on this, journey for this.
Jace: There was that one time,
Jeff, I wasn't in tears, but I was
beat, , I didn't know what to do.
I asked for help from that group
that I had set up on Basecamp,
and it was like a page along and
pretty much plead somebody help me.
I've got these like 17 things that need
doing and I don't know how to do half
of them, but thankfully between Jeff,
Jesse, Andia Moore and other individuals
that I can't think of off the top of my
head, they all stepped up and helped out
and helped me get past that hard part.
Me asking for help is a
hard thing for me to do.
CJ: I totally sympathize,
but how cool is that?
That we put out the call people
answered that's this community.
That's what I love about it.
man, that, that just, that
gives me the warm and fuzzies.
Duke: Now, if you could have
any one outcome of the Knowledge
conference, what would it be?
Jace: I would like to see enough people
express interest into it to make it
its own thing that makes it viable
for me to operate with other people
in a way that makes sense financially.
What I mean by that is it offsets
enough of someone's income that
they can do it part-time, like take
off like a few weeks to operate it.
Right.
That'd be very cool.
In my opinion that or, change maybe
it to, instead of being like a.
Conference about these things.
Maybe there's two of them.
Maybe one is by developers, for developers
to understand what they can do to more
a new talent meets hiring employers.
that'd be very cool to do as well.
L.
CJ: I love the perspective of making.
This self-sustaining, Because if
anything's going to endure, it has
to be that ability for it to exist on
its own and you know, and sometimes
that's entirely volunteer led, right?
And , you just get enough people
who have a passion for it and they
donate the time and things work out.
I'm on the board of a number
of nonprofits here locally.
but then sometimes that is we need someone
who has a particular set of skills.
And that particular set of
skills needs to be hired.
And so how do you get that without
asking for donations and then, hoping
that you meet the goal every year so
the conference can, on one of the local
nonprofits that I, I'm a part of, we put
on a, a local, neighborhood fest, And.
Every year it is hand to mouth trying
to see if we're gonna make it or get
enough money to make sure that we
can do everything that we want to do.
Renting the stage food,
so on and so forth.
So like, there's definitely something
to be said about having an event and
making it self-sustaining so that
you don't have to worry about that
part and you can focus on making the
event better year after year, after.
Jace: Yeah, I mean, self-sustaining would
be the best outcome that this could have.
But that's hard to achieve.
right now we're operating at
super lean because I don't wanna
spend more money than I have to.
We're still at over a thousand dollars
spent already, and that's not including
the people's time that people put
in, and I would love to give money
or give some sort of compensation
to every speaker, to every person.
I'm sorry if that's picking up on the mic.
My dog is.
Duke: That's okay.
He's got something to say.
Jace: He is got something to say.
He's, he's unhappy with the situation of,
of, of non self-sustaining conferences.
but no, I mean, this year, totally
peer intent, no bias, no outside money.
Next year, I'm definitely gonna be
using some of the details that I was
asking when people registered because
like I asked a couple questions like,
what's your relationship to ServiceNow?
Are you new to service?
Are, are you expect, you
know, exploring ServiceNow?
Are you a customer?
Are you a partner?
Do you work at ServiceNow?
Right?
So like those kinds of questions
and like, where do you work?
And that kind of stuff I think is
really gonna be useful if I go to, if
we go to seek sponsorship next year.
Because then it'll tell those people who
would give money what eyeballs would be in
front of whatever it is they wanna share.
Duke: Have you looked into GoFundMe or.
Jace: I haven't,
Duke: a donation platform
and just have itself.
Jace: I, I haven't, I just wanted
to self-fund this first one.
So there wasn't any expectation
of anybody for money stuff.
But I think the biggest cost
is the time that people put in.
Duke: Yeah.
building things definitely costs time,
Jace: Well, right, and then
what is your time worth?
Like right now, I'm putting in
at least four hours a week on
Duke: Mm-hmm.
Jace: Right.
Duke: Yep.
CJ: Yeah, and you've
announced it, way back what?
Beginning of the summer.
So you know, you've probably been
putting in four plus hours a week on
it for several months at this point.
plus everyone else that you have helping
you out and, and, and the amount of
time that they're putting into it and
the speakers to Rob's point, right?
The speakers and getting, polishing
up their, whatever they're building
and whatever their, talking points
are and things of that nature, right?
I, there's a lot of time that goes
into this stuff and as far the,
the benefit of the larger community
and man, I just can't say how.
You know, happy and proud I am of you, of
you, of doing this, something like this.
Like this is major, the give back
dude, and it is, is incredible.
Jace: Thank you.
Wouldn't it be possible without the
people helping me, like Jeff, Jesse,
Kalisha Moore, Chuck Tomasi, Carlene
Carter, Justin Meadows, Slava, SI
can't think of the other names.
Anybody I'm missing there, Jeff?
Jeff: Courtney Brewster.
Jace: Courtney.
Yep.
Wouldn't be possible without her either.
Jeff: Her being able to design all
the social stuff, , with Carlene
really made things realistic.
It gave the speaker something to share for
their sessions, allowed us to share early.
cause I'm like, Jace, I
don't have design skills.
if AI can't create it for
me, it's not happening.
CJ: Huh, me too, man.
you know what would be really interesting?
After the conference wraps, , if
you, , come back together and you do
it behind the scenes that this is what
it took to actually get this going.
these are the people who are involved
and you have, you know, and it doesn't
even have to be a aligning, this
could be just things that you guys
kind of record and stitch together.
But it's like, you know, Jeff, you
just mentioned about the social aspect
and you know, and having someone
who, you know, has that ability.
Jason mentioned like the, the
website and having someone who can
do that and so on and so, right.
All these things that are largely
invisible to folks who show
up and attend a conference.
And you know, just really talking
through like how those things come
to be and the skill sets that they
took and, the evolution of it.
Jace: Yeah, I'd love to have one of
those discussions after the fact.
Like I said, I, I did made a post
a few weeks ago and I tagged, Nick.
TI like the one of.
The top guys at ServiceNow cause
I was looking up something on, was
it 2020 threes conference where he
was speaking and he had, stopped
for a moment to thank all of the
people who made the knowledge event.
I think of 2023 or 2024, what it is, and
she, he had like named names and stuff
and I expressed like I have such a deeper
empathy for that kind of thankfulness
that, gratitude he showed to those
individuals because it takes a village.
CJ: Yeah, absolutely.
I know Nick shout Nick
t uh, Nick's amazing.
the time he puts into
this community is great.
Duke: All right, we're
at 38 minutes of record.
if you're interested in attending
the Null Edge conference, the
website is www.thenulledge.com.
We'll also have a link in
the description free below.
Jace.
Jeff, any final words for those who
are interested in the conference?
Jace: Share with your friends,
share with your coworkers.
Convince your boss.
It's worth taking the day off 'cause
there's so much good content and
there'll be live components that you
won't be able to do after the fact,
even if the sessions are recorded.
Jeff: And even if you're not able to
attend, still share with your friends.
all free.
Attend what you want.
hopefully everybody learns
something new and we're just trying
to give back to the community.
CJ: Love it.
Love it.
Jace.
Jeff, thank you so much for coming on.
It's great having you on the show.
And uh, yeah, I can't wait to attend.
I'm looking forward to it.
I've got my whole day blog.
So,
Duke: Same here.
Can't wait.
CJ: Yeah, it's gonna be awesome.
Duke: All right.
God speed guys.