Behind the scenes in Vegas 2023 – ServiceNow's biggest annual event

ServiceNow's Knowledge 2023?brought together thousands of Now customers and colleagues from all over the globe. Spirits were high as participants enjoyed the biggest Knowledge global event in three years. Over three full days, Vegas’ Venetian Conference halls were filled to the brim with keynote sessions, fireside chats, roundtables, and demonstrations, and the Enable team were excited to lead and contribute to the buzz.

Each year, a few Enablers get together to showcase our unique offerings within the ServiceNow space and to learn about the hottest innovations hitting the market.

?This year, we focused on leveraging our leading position in the APJ market to bring our ServiceNow innovations to North America and Europe as we continue to grow arm-in-arm with Fujitsu. The team had started preparing for the event months ahead; however, as we all know, the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry, and we discovered that a huge amount of work is required behind the scenes to bring events like K23 to life!

Real-world experience from Enable’s presenters ?

Content is king at Knowledge events, and with a diverse and innovative platform like ServiceNow, presenters are eager to share their unique applications and outcomes with the global community. Enable delivered four lab sessions, two of which were interactive, a breakout session on Going with the Flow, and a session on Energy QLD’s CMDB success story to share at K23.

Interactive Lab – Connecting ServiceNow Instances

The session David Liu, Sohaib Mushtaq and Jai Rangam created, which included a Custom Flow and Remote Instance Spoke, also leveraged a ServiceNow product called Instance Data Replication (IDR).

ServiceNow’s Cloud Labs team had so much trouble setting this up for K23 that David and Sohaib recorded their own demo of it and replayed that as part of their presentation to ensure attendees got the full benefit of the solutions they presented.

The consensus? David definitely has TV voice-over talent!

Configuration Management Database Tutorial

Jamie Douglas and Varun Garag’s CMDB session had the biggest audience of our sessions. Jamie was so keen to nail the presentation that instead of sleeping on the flight over, he was handwriting his own palm cards and rewatching previous meeting recordings!

?And it paid off!

?The audience response was amazing; they connected with the presentation's content and reported that the insights into the "how" of implementing a CMDB were invaluable. This was Jamie and Varun’s mission, and it sounds like they hit the nail right on the head! Jamie is keen to have it on official record that he thinks Varun stole the show – and the proof is right in the pudding:

“Thank you so much, Varun! I thoroughly enjoyed your session. I’ve been telling everyone about how great it was. It was my favourite by far. Along with you, CMDB is an area I’m highly passionate about and it’s foundational for many other things” – An attendee

Pop quiz: Did Jamie sleep before he presented or dive in on the interim high before jetlag caught up with him?!

Going with the Flow: A Journey from Scripting to Flow Designer

Bhavisha Keshwala and Jake Gillespie had to push past a crowd wanting to get into their booked-out session as “standbys”. They were so busy with their work schedules in the lead-up to K23 that the first time they practised with a completed slide deck was just a night before the conference. Despite this, Bhavisha smashed it with her confident delivery based on solid knowledge and experience. She even developed a “fan base” with numerous people approaching them later at the conference because they recognised her from the session!

New celebrity alert: Bhavisha (who is also our very first female Certified Technical Architect at Enable!)

Interactive Lab on Integration Design

Jai also joined Bhavisha and Jake to present an interactive lab session on integration design. Although Jai had his “Enabler of the Year” ticket to K23, he called Jake and asked to become a speaker as soon as he knew he was attending. Team Enable quickly put him to work by adding him to their session on integration design and David and Sohaib’s session on connecting ServiceNow instances. A Solution Consultant from ServiceNow in Aulendorf, Germany, Dirk Redeker also worked with our Enablers as a lab guru on this session.

Outside of the rich learning opportunities showcased across the event, the biggest talking point was the announcement of ServiceNow’s recent partnership with NVIDIA. This collaboration is poised to further catapult the power of generative AI for enterprise performance.

That’s a wrap!

Collectively, team Enable reached over 900 attendees across their six sessions, formed new friendships and expanded Enable’s position within the ServiceNow community. However, it’s the feedback from Jason McKee, Director, Developer Evangelism at ServiceNow, or as Team Enable like to call him – “Mr CreatorCon”, that meant the most to our team:

“You guys build totally different labs than the product guys, they're showing off new features, and you're bringing your real-world experience into the room.”

This is in line with the feedback given to several Enablers after their sessions - that their labs taught listeners something useful and, by comparison, were more enjoyable than other labs they attended. This is a testament to the knowledge and experience that each Enabler brings and the ability to communicate with customers in a language they can understand and appreciate.??

Wish you were there?

If you wish you were there, fear not; ServiceNow’s free Digital Experience is now live. Participants can access 150+ content-filled sessions and keynotes to learn how the world works with ServiceNow:

• Watch the livestream: 3 Levels of Integrated Design
• Watch the livestream: 3 Levels of Connected ServiceNow Instances

Want to join the fun?

We are always on the lookout for passionate, curious and eager Enablers who want to be a part of the future of enterprise service management. Browse opportunities.