Okay, ladies and gentlemen, after a short hiatus, , CJ Anna Duke is back. Corey, why don't you tell him why we had a little pause? Cause this is good news.
Yeah, no doubt Duke. , I was a tad bitt busy over the last, , couple weeks, ? Especially in the last month, , running a, , campaign for election to, , city council. And I am proud to say that I won, not only did I win, but it, it is a pick three race, right? So it's a at large sort of situation. You get to vote for three people, and I got the most votes outta everyone.
so you're the emperor of Oak Park now
I am, I am. And so ba basically, right, like a trustee is like a, , city council member in a larger city, right? And we do all those things. It's, it's more, much more of a, um, policy level kind of government versus like administrative, right? So we're not directly hiring people who are doing the work. We're dictating policy and then we have an employee who then takes our will and, goes and executes it.
Awesome, man. I'm so proud of you.
Thank you, sir.
Well, I tell you what, , in our last episode of CJ and the Duke, we actually took a look at what it would be like to run a campaign in ServiceNow. So if you didn't listen to that episode, we will have a link in the description below that is our podcast motto. Everybody has to take a drink now. all right, Corey, what are we talking about today?
Today we're talking about community, duke.
And we have brought a very special guest, someone I have worked with over years, from across the aisle. Mr. Dan Brun of ServiceNow. Dan, welcome to the show.
Pleasure to be here. It's gonna be tough to, uh, top a an elected official. Newly elected official. So hopefully we can make it.
Yeah, it's, it's, it's nothing serious. You just have to do whatever he says and everything's gonna be fine.
Yeah, or I'll send the cops your way.
All right, Dan, why don't you, why don't you give yourself a short, uh, intro to the audience?
Sure. Absolutely. I've been working with community for over 20 years now, I started my career, , during the.com bubble. And, , the company that I worked for, , we actually built a community product as well as managed communities. , and, , Cisco Systems was my client. , I actually built their first community, their support community at Cisco, , which is now still the most active community that they have.
Nice.
Over years. About eight years ago, I, came over to ServiceNow and have been there ever since. and it's been a, a wonderful experie.
I was gonna say that's, that is, , what I often hear from ServiceNow employees. That is, has been an amazing experience to work there.
Absolutely. I mean, it's been, I guess as they like to say, it's, it's, it's been a rocket ship though, as in particular being here for, eight years, have gone through all the trials and tribulations with a hypergrowth company.
So Dan, duke and I have been around for quite a while , on community, and tell me , what we're seeing with community now that we didn't have. way back weighing in the day, right? Like obviously what we're looking at with community now, the, the community has changed from the perspective of, we've had more people, join the ServiceNow ecosystem.
So tell me how, , what they're able to, get out of community is different than what maybe Duke and I would've gotten out of it when we started, say like 10 years ago.
Sure. Absolutely. so when I first came on the ServiceNow, eight years ago, there was a community in place. of course it was a, team of, one, and. There was a lot of the, the brass hacks of communities, right? Discussion forums and, articles and blogs. , so, the real intent was to bring it sort of to that next level. And, , that would include looking at expert programs, looking at events, right? Looking at. making it a, a holistic community where there's a, a sense of belonging, right?
So, people would typically go there for questions and answers, and now was grown into so much more than that. So from the perspective of, , where it's been and where it's now that the team is, much larger now. So we can cover a lot more ground, and have a, a much more of a wake of approach, which is important with community.
So it sounds like. Made it now into this place where you, hope folks will hang out a little bit more rather than just popping in to find a quick answer and then leaving.
Absolutely. So, yeah, so now it's more of a destination, when I look at communities, , there's a number of things to think about when. You wanna build a successful community? Uh, most importantly, it's starting by looking through the lens of the customer, because there has to be clear intent for them. there needs to be critical mass. because if you don't have enough people to support a community, then it's simply not gonna be successful. and.
Another big aspect of it is giving the, users ownership of the community. I like to see ourselves as the enablers, but we're here to provide, our customers, our partners, our enthusiasts, anyone interested in community, the tools. And the foundation that they need to help them make themselves more successful with ServiceNow, both as an individual as well as a company. You know, you do, you do absolutely need expert programs.
on community, there's traditionally you're passive users, your dabblers, your enthusiasts, and your experts, right? So, the vast majority of your users are gonna be passive, which typically makes up 75%. You have your dabblers. We'll come to the community and, , potentially take a, a few actions and marking something that's helpful. And that tends to be about 15% of your users. Your enthusiasts are, you know, a little more active.
they're interested in badges and some of the artifacts that come along with community. And that'll make up 9% of your users. And then your experts, they are the ones that, really are the lifeline of community. And, they make up, typically 1%, of your user base. and the experts are frankly, , the most important because those are the ones that come with the knowledge and have the ability to. Answer and help others that are sort of on that ServiceNow journey.
So, a key aspect of that is to build a recognition program that is tailored to your experts, but also one that, takes the entire user journey through and encourages them to. Go along. So taking your dabblers, two enthusiasts, two experts. So there has to be a little something for everyone, but it has to be, meaningful. So that's where the whole what's in it for me comes into play because there has to be something in it for our end users, for them to really want to participate on a regular basis.
And. The biggest thing is, allowing our users to build a personal brand on, on the community, right? So our recognition system is based around your peers rating the technical merit of your content on community. So when somebody goes, looks at your community profile or knows you're an MVP, or a rising star, right? They know that was earned based off of your knowledge and you being able to solve real world problems with ServiceNow. and it has to be very clear cut.
So that way, there's no sort of diluting the value of the program, by allowing points to be earned other ways.
for the new community, how are points earned? There's a lot of people who want, who want to give back now are coming up and they wanna make a name for themselves.
absolutely.
they can on the community?
Absolutely. So, it's something that is actually a work in progress, the platform we've recently migrated to, , the points aren't as visible, as we'd like, uh, points are weighted. So for your activities that take a much more significant amount of time, Like your blogs, like your articles, , those are valued much higher than, answering questions correctly, , or, you know, getting things marked as helpful.
so there are various values associated with them because like I said, creating an article and creating a blog is much more complex and has a much farther reach than, simply answering a question. And they're all important, right? But their values are in fact different on c.
So it sounds like to me like , it's a, an admission or an an. Meant that, different types of activities, bring different levels of value to the community. And while we need all of them, we also want to encourage, some of those that take a little bit more time and effort, because those are, um, things that tend to, um, provide a different level of value to folks.
Absolutely. So I mean, Typically what you'll see is you'll see for the people that can, that create excellent blogs and excellent articles, they're, you know, almost at , a next level. because you, they're a lot deeper. with answering a question correctly. you can look at. A very singular, I guess, view of the problem and solve it. typically with a well-written article or a blog, it's much more complex than that.
You know, you're looking at a much bigger picture, you know, and then the case of an article, it, it tends to be sort of a, of a how-to. so it's much more complex and, you know, and it, it drives, I. much broader value to the community because your blog, or article, is relevant to a much wider audience than a, a question slash answer, right? So a question slash answer certainly reaches more than just the individual that had that question.
But a blogger, an article just has a much, a much wider audience.
Yeah, I, I'll tell you what too, what, what I get often from, , blog and articles and, and, uh, we're actually, uh, my co-host here too, this season, uh, uh, a rather, , epic, , content producer, right? Like it inspires me. To want to produce my own content, Like, so when I watch the Duke's YouTube videos, or I go to Community and read some one's like, great, how-to article or, just blog post on something that's really cool and interesting, right?
It, it inspires me to one, want to go and tinker around with the system more, right? And two, it also inspires me to do something similar and give back, right? Which is. You know, a lot of the reason that I'm here talking to you today on this podcast, right? Like, you know, it's that inspiration that I got from the folks who came before me and put that content out there for me to consume and then, , feeling like I, I should be paying it forward as well.
Uh, so I do like that the community does prioritize and focus on those things because I think that's how you continue to build and keep a community vibrant.
I gotta say too, If I was wondering about if I wanted to get into blogging or if I wanted to get into content creation at all, I would probably start with the ServiceNow community. Then I don't know how, I don't have to worry about like, what service do I sign up for and do I need my own website and blah, blah, blah. It's just like, no, you know, just go and start, putting your knowledge on the community and you don't have to be like rocket scientist level.
Because everybody's always coming there to search for even the simplest stuff. So you can basically roll off just learning something, write a blog article about ways you understand it and see if it's helpful, man, like one of my most popular articles on community. , by a long shot. It's first by a long shot I was tinkering around with ACLS one day and I was, I was like, oh, if I just have an incog needle browser, I could be like two different people, And see it on different screens.
And one could be the admin who looks at the ACL log output in real time, and then the other person is just doing their thing. And to me it was like, oh, that's a neat discovery. And I could have held it to myself and I had no idea other people would be interested in it too. But I posted to communities like, you know, tens of thousands of views later, you know, then I put it on my website. I, I made a video out of it years later
Right.
it's one of my highest performing videos too. You just never know. So community's a great place to experiment with content.
Absolutely. I mean, and, what we see is that this is where people's come to start their journey with, ServiceNow, right? It's something you can go to and, start off by being a passive user, right? , and then eventually, you know, turn into that dabbler, turn into that enthusiast, and then turn that expert. So you build your confidence as you go along. And, you know, eventually you work yourself up to, you know, you become that expert. You come there initially to.
And then you work your way into becoming that expert and helping others. And one thing I do have to say that is the most, one of the most amazing things I've learned at ServiceNow is that the people that use ServiceNow, They're rad. I mean, the, individuals are so engaged and they love ServiceNow so much. you know, I came from Cisco where there just wasn't, that wasn't that sense. Uh, the people that use ServiceNow absolutely love it. They love the product.
They want to learn as much as they can, and they also wanna help others. and that's been really refreshing is to see that level of engagement and interest in, learning about the power of the platform, but then also taking in and elevating to that next level of wanting to help others learn the power of the platform. And, really that's what we're here for in community is to give you that sense of belonging. But then beyond that, Give you that sense of accomplishment.
I always love to talk about, people like yourselves have no idea how many people they, you guys touch, when you write a single blog or you answer a single question, , you're helping thousands of people, , not just the individual that, wrote that question. so it's an amazing thing and, you know, and. Our top contributors should really feel accomplished for, for what they've done, and we're extremely grateful at ServiceNow.
That's a really good point, Dan. I mean, so you, you mentioned like, like, top contributors, don't necessarily know how many folks they're touching , when they do something that might consider it simple to them, right? Like as, , small, a short PO post or whatever, right? Like, just whatever their, that, that level of engagement does ServiceNow. Have an understanding of the number of people that aren't that the experts, right?
Is that you, as you qualified it earlier in the podcast at 1%, did the ServiceNow have an understanding of how many people we're touching?
Sure. Absolutely. If you really think about it, the community is, one of the most active. If not the most active site , on ServiceNow. And, we'll do, you know, over 40 million page views a year. We have over 450,000 registered users. we do well north of 400, thousand uniquely monthly users. So that just gives you a, a sense of the. And, , the reach of, community. So, it's helping so many others.
but beyond that, it's also an opportunity to network and to find like-minded people, So, , it's not necessarily just intended for, , an online presence, it gives you the ability To find people that have similar interests and build that relationship, , with those individuals. I know so many, you know, probably including you, Robert, you know, they, they go to knowledge and, people will go up to the MVPs and because they recognize them, right?
And, and ask for pictures, and, it's such a, a great thing to see. When people recognize one another and they're networking , and they're thinking each other for all, what they bring to community.
Dan. What's been the hardest thing that you've had to do for ServiceNow Community?
okay, so the hardest thing that I've had to, Work with at ServiceNow community is the pace of which our product offerings expand. So the wonderful thing about ServiceNow is that you can build anything on it, and it's fast and furious. And when it comes to community, when things are growing that rapidly, There are challenges associated with it.
We, you know, it's, you can simply spin up new forums and new communities, But, if things are being merged, if things are being deprecated, there's a lot of downstreams effects to that. Uh, whether that's through gamification, whether that's, through leaderboards, whether that's, through the content itself. , it makes it challenging.
so I would say that has absolutely been sort of the hardest part is to sort of keeping up with that pace, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, uh, but it just, it makes it, it makes it challenging and, and, and frankly, it also makes it challenging from the taxonomy perspective. A big part of, community, at least, I feel, is building a taxonomy that. Our user base understands, one that they can identify with.
And, growing and expanding your product offerings so quickly and making changes so often, it makes it difficult
Yeah. You guys gotta make whole new menus every release, right?
pretty much.
I, I feel a, I feel a category tree like rant coming out. Another one.
Oh man. Oh man. I, I love that. Uh, that was it a pen you used to wear? Like it says, don't ask me or ask me about categories at, uh, every knowledge. was, it was
Dan, this is way off topic, but you ever see a day where, like through the power of search or ai, we just don't need category trees? We just kind of have an easily navigatable web of related topics.
in a perfect world, absolutely. To be totally honest with you, the vast majority of our traffic comes in through, Google, navigations are certainly useful. people tend to come in , through search engines and, ideally, , through ai, there would be, no need for, taxonomy, but I'm not gonna hold my breath. That's gonna be, in my career lifetime.
Well, what would be something like either a killer feature or just the way people are that you would change if you.
Wow. That's a good question. I would say a killer feature would for us to be much more proactive. Than reactive on community. it seems as if a, everyone should be able to do something like this, but it's not that easy. Right. because when you come to communities just in general, not even necessarily ServiceNow, just in general, you typically have to search and, and dig in. And there's effort involved with, trying to find what your answer is or what you're trying to learn about.
And if we could be, or communities in general could be much smarter and know your intent or an idea of what your intent is before you come. And serve up better content that's related to your intent. it would make a much better user experience, for our end user and, and help ServiceNow.
Holy smokes. We gotta send this to somebody on the docs team.
Okay.
just take a quick tangent here, Dan, but Corey, you ever like, like trying to do searches on docs and it gets you like the right words, but it's on some completely other end of the platform. That has kind of the same name and you're just like, can't I just check a box on my profile that says I'm interested in I T B M and platform and performance analytics force rank, those above the HR stuff, the C s M stuff, right?
So it's like almost allow me to fine tune my search results based off of my preferences rather than just say, You know what I mean? Like, oh, that would be so sweet, especially for docs. Oh my God.
So, can I tell you a secret? Right? you could do that in a service now, right? Like, remember the service grouping, the, what was it called? , so the search customization allowed you to select, what tables, what return results, and allowed you to, have those default groupings and all of that, right? Like, so I would love to see , that sort of thing. , just what you said, like take that and apply it to docs.
So that, you know, I could have like my preferred list of things that, return and then, uh, and then, you know, I have all the rest, right? Like, we don't think you were looking for this stuff, but this also, might be something that you wanna see.
see, now I gotta go back and play with search.
Or I mean, or I mean, or ideally, right? We know what products you, you use, you own, and then, what products that you're interested, interested in. So whether it's based off of, where you land on a page, or based off what content you're writing about on community, based off of what forms you're visiting, what questions you ask, building up. That database of information about you to serve the appropriate content, right?
So if you're asking questions, about, let's say, learning about, about a product and, a different product can, can do what you're trying to do, serving up content that's related to that, right? So, just having a better sense of what you've done in the past to help provide information for the future. versus just blanketly saying and serving up results. so there's a, a, there's a lot that can be done, from that perspective. I think, it's just gonna take some time.
I wonder if there's a case for like more curation features, I'm an expert and I've found lots of different articles that I love about I T B M and then someone could hit my profile and it's like Robert's I T B M playlist, big air quotes. Cause I know it's a YouTube thing, but within, in my playlist it would be like here. here's two links from Mike's, uh, sco. Here's two links from, uh, mark Rudolph, here's two links from Corey and here's three links from me.
It's like you read all that stuff together and now you're basically a beginner i t BM person or something.
Sure. And absolutely. I mean, and there and there's some things that we could even do. It's more of a manual effort, right? But, there is the ability to. Create an article, That has sort of your, your favorites. just , a laundry list of, if you're starting, I, I tbm here's five resources, , whether it's on community or not on community that are my favorite that you should look at. so it's, it's more of a manual effort, but there's still ways to accomplish that, I guess I would say.
yeah. the great thing about this, right, is, that if you're one of those one percenters, right? Like one of those who create a lot of, , content like Mark, right? Like, then you do this stuff for people you know already. Like there's, he has a post that he maintains that has. Like 250 plus articles, blogs, videos, podcasts, et cetera. Right? Like for all, all the content that he's created. And it is amazing. Oh my God, I got a bookmark and I go here all the time.
because he knows all the hidden tricks and tips about virtual agent, which I am, dealing with often, right? So I, I. It would be really amazing. If there was a way just some sort of template or some sort of, uh, you know, when you go and hit the new button, it's like, do you want to build like a curated list of links or something? You know what I mean? And you kind of pop that in there, like, you know, that might be something that I, I could see getting some, some significant
Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. No, I like that.
Well, you've been there since the beginning of tech communities and there. There must have been some pretty shocking changes in that time. If you could guess, what do you think's on the road for communities, not just ServiceNow, but in general?
In general. what's the future of, communities? Probably the virtual world in the real world. Becoming more intertwined. I think traditionally people have looked at communities from the perspective of back in the day, b s boards, right? And, uh, those were very, for lack of a better word, black and white, right? I mean, it's literally just typing on, a screen, right? And, and it's evolved. to more than that, to where it's, online events and networking.
and I think it's gonna come more of, again, that real world matching, coming together with the, the virtual world. So more sort of interactions. You know, whether it be through, virtual reality or whether it be through physical events, it's gonna get closer. I think the, the connections amongst the individuals are gonna get tighter and tighter, from where they're today.
that sounds amazing to me. I'll tell you, um, one of the things that I have a heightened appreciation for after the pandemic is in-person connections, right? I'm a digital native, right? I grew up in the inner era of, starting with, the BBSs going all the way through to where we are now. And I've always been at home, on a computer, but, being forced to be in the house and on a computer versus having that option really does.
Change it a little bit, I think, and I would love to see, c community, online community evolve, To the point where it is not only just, the online, but also encouraging the physical. I actually have a, a buddy who's building a platform that's trying to do just that right now. So I really like, I really like that.
I mean, yeah, just think about it and, , some people may find this a little over the top, but you know what, if there was the ability on the app to say, I'm around here and oh gosh, I see there's, you know, 15 other community members that are right around the. And let's connect, or let's meet up for coffee, and, and talk shop. , taking , that online presence and bringing it to a physical presence and sort of in a, almost in a moment in time presence too.
It doesn't have to be something that is set up in months in advance. it may just be that you are, you know, you're on a business trip and. You know, you find out there's some folks in the area and you connect,
this is tender for conversation.
yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, it's technology tender for conversation,
Yeah, I mean, I, I like it, right? I love the idea that, you can be a member of an online community and then kind of have these spontaneous meetups based on like people who are in that same community, and you guys happen to be in physical proximity to each other.
And I think virtual, virtual reality will eventually also play a role. obviously it's not there right now. but I think that will be a big part of community in the future. You can go to the community, , water cooler literally, versus having to go to a forum. we can actually have a water cooler that everyone's sitting around and you can, and you could.
Yeah, I think that's pretty cool as well.
I would love to have it all fully integrated. So I could just like dump my Zoom information into my ServiceNow community profile and see people who are online but active in that same thread. Blur the lines between like a thread and a chat a little bit,
Uh,
then just like, press a button. Just like, no, here, let's settle this. Let's go and get it done.
Yeah.
Like automatic,
almost have a breakout room, right?
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I mean, we, like all the tech has just been lying around for years, right? It's just, but.
I do think it's just that, that natural evolution, of seeing all of these technologies, be implemented and doing like single purpose tasks and then combining them in ways that make sense so that people get a lot more value out of 'em together.
Absolutely, it's come so far, For when I've started working on communities already. And we have a, we have a lot of, really cool and innovative things in the pipeline. and it'll come. We'll knock your socks off.
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You can't, uh, allude to the pipeline and talk about cool and innovative without dropping us a nugget. Give us something.
Uh, give you something. I think a lot of it are some of the things that, we've been talking about, at a first pass, right? , so more of areas on community that could connect with people that are very similar to yourself. because right now it's still a little. It's disjointed, right? the intent will be there to bring people, like-minded people, together in a place for them to, to collaborate.
I'll take.
So Dan, one last question. communities will self manifest where the demand is. Right? That's why we have the ServiceNow community, I think. Formed around itself. And then, we've got the, ServiceNow developer Discord linking the description below. We've got the SM Dev Slack channel also linking the description below. We've got probably a good amount of Reddit communities, like there's probably sub-communities popping up all over the place.
What would you say is the key advantage of the ServiceNow community Official one.
I mean, you're always going to have offshoots, and some of them have clear purpose, right? , potentially offerings that we can't or aren't currently giving. but one of the key advantages is that, where. We're on top of it. We're we're watching it, right?
We're capturing feedback from the community, from things that you are very overt and from things that aren't so overt that you're seeing, you know, learnings from content that's being created on the community itself, as well as, The expertise, having , a system, a ranking system built around to where, you know, you can identify, and be more confident in users answers.
based off of that, , Events, learning from ServiceNow experts and, and folks like yourself, Robert, and, Steve Bell and I, everyone else that does, live events. so, there is that uniqueness where, it's something that, we're watching, we're paying attention of, and what we build is based around your needs. So, you know, a lot of these, these offshoots, right?
You're, working within the confines of whatever that technology is, and you kind of have no say in what it does or whether it be, you know, discord or slack. It sort of is what it is. Whereas on community, , if there's a really great idea, we'll build it and we'll integrate that into the community. there is also the sense of of we offer evolution. To the product based off of your needs.
That's a point I hadn't considered. I usually think of it in terms of day to day. I participate in all of them and so I feel SN Dev Slack has a certain speed and immediacy. Like if I have a short question that I know could be answered in like one or two or it's a yes no or something like I go to SN devs because it gives me that like really snappy. You can watch it happen, but it's often too fast. And not conducive to longform content.
And I love ServiceNow community because it lets me, like, you know, I maybe have a deep philosophical question on is this thing right in this circumstance? And then we can trade longform ideas like some kind of like old school Greek forum. You know, we can argue the philosophy of it, or, or I can give you a deep explanation like here's, here's the 10 lines of script, but also a hundred lines of explanation about why you do it. That.
Hmm. Plus it's searchable, right? I mean, slack, it's there and then it's gone eventually versus, community content is, is accessible. So when somebody has, when somebody has that same question, you know, hopefully you'll be able to, you can reference it, right?
Oh man. But speaking of searchable, that like I still get likes come up on my feed about posts that are over five years old.
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
And it's like crazy. I'm like, is that actually still useful? Dang.
It's useful to someone.
engine.
Yeah. You know, that's funny because I get those emails, I'll still pop up something like from an API question, like from five years ago. And it's like, what? People are still like liking this thing and it's like, okay. But then I think about it, right? And there's, there's been some times I've, some of this content is just evergreen, right? Like some parts of the platform don't change very rapidly.
And so, you make a post that happened to be very well received, you know, eight years ago, and it sticks around because it's still good eight years later, Because that part of the platform is still working the same exact way and it's still insanely useful to folks to know how to build it.
Absolutely, there's certainly some content that has a long shelf life, and then some that doesn't. And one of our goals in our drivers is to do a good job at hopefully identifying the content that does have the long shelf life. And maintaining it.
, but we also have to do our due diligence , in deprecating content and archiving, things that aren't being used because, it becomes more problematic to find content of value if we have the system bloated with, content from eight years ago that doesn't make.
Yeah, hear that. All right, we are at time. So Dan, any last words for the community?
I would say if you're not a member already, join And if you are, we appreciate it as well as if you ever have feedback about the community, good, the bad, the ugly, please reach out to us. , we're always open to constructive criticism and positive feedback. And there's a lot of good things to come.
Uh, how would they get entire tape with you, by the way?
they can either post the feedback form or reach out to me directly, if they'd like. And my emails, dan bar servicenow.com.
All right folks. We are at time. This is episode number 81. We still don't have an outro. We will see you on the next one.