Knowledge 23 Reflections: The Humanity Driving Generative AI

Connections and Reflections from ServiceNow’s Knowledge 23, Ted Lasso and WarGames?

What do Ted Lasso and ServiceNow’s Knowledge 23 have in common? In addition to both being wildly entertaining and addicting with a loyal fan base, they both demonstrate what all of us are capable of when we are at our best as well as the overall impact of human connections to reach out, empathize, and share our experiences to help one another learn and drive solutions to the common challenges all of us are facing everyday.

I first got into computers and technology on a fateful hot summer day back in 1983 after my mother took my brother and I to see the film WarGames in an ice cold movie theater. In the film, Matthew Broderick plays a young hacker in high school who hacked into the US Department of Defense to play a series of computer strategy games. After seeing that movie, I was hooked. The next day I begged my father to buy me a computer and that is what kicked off and started a lifelong love affair with software and technology.  Attending computer camp that summer, my first programs were written to manage my baseball card collection! I then went on to publish a magazine on the rock band KISS so I could connect and share information with other fans (pre-internet). Since then, I have been continually seeking new software and technology innovation to drive automation and create meaningful connections with people and organizations throughout my life.

With the flood of posts that have literally inundated LinkedIn over the past week, it was hard not to see the incredible energy, excitement, and interest shared by our employees, partners, and customers alike at the draw dropping innovation and thought leadership on display on Knowledge 23 in Las Vegas. Generative AI, Process Automation and Citizen Driven Low Code App Dev was all the rage in the countless product demos, tech sessions delivered and hallway conversations that took place.

The latest in high tech for business automation was clearly on display in the 100s of booths, at CreatorCon, in the Hackathon, in the mainstage Keynotes, in the Hands-on Labs, in Partner booths as well as being showcased front and center in the hundreds of Customer-Led sessions.  Let’s be frank, it was absolutely show stopping to not only see the innovative ways that customers and partners are leveraging ServiceNow’s software, but it was beyond insightful hearing firsthand about the impact and value that is being provided to so many organizations globally.

With all the amazing Gen AI being showcased to demonstrate Text to Code, Text to Incident Resolution, Text to Flow, Text to Deployment and most incredibly Text to App, it is impossible to not agree with the assertion that we are at another great inflection point in society where we are taking a quantum leap forward and nothing will ever quite be the same afterwards (The Telephone, The Television, Web Browsing the Internet, Digital Photography, the iPhone, etc.)

Given all this, and Text to App being THE jaw-dropping talk of the whole conference, the question buzzing throughout the halls among attendees was “With this level of Gen AI, will there even be a need for developers and platforms like ServiceNow in the future?”   Everyone will certainly ponder this question from the overwhelming tech on display. And while many might take away the technology improvements and innovative roadmap of features, functions, and products ServiceNow will be launching, my takeaway from K23 was a bit different and that is what I want to share in this article. For me, what I witnessed and experienced was the very unique and undeniable humanity, empathy and robust ServiceNow community that was on full display between all attendees last week.

This was the first singular global Knowledge Conference under one roof for ServiceNow in 4 years. There was a sense of overwhelming anticipation to get everyone together.   But many questions remained at whether it could be a success again given everyone’s retreat during the pandemic and attending only local/regional events for the past two years.

Well after a record breaking 20,000 attendees showed up in person in droves from all over the planet, I think we can safely say in-person gatherings are all the rage again! There is simply no substitute for the connections and community that comes from getting together at in person gatherings. There is no intelligence or technology that can replace face to face human interactions. No matter how business knowledge, business processes and work in general get automated at our fingertips via Generative AI, there is something very impactful and invigorating about hearing and sharing stories with other customers from different parts of the world face to face. The funny stories, facial expressions, the body language, the anecdotes, the personal interests, the ability to ask pointed questions and share similar struggles and learn how others addressed similar challenges is one of the best parts about Knowledge. Having met directly with over 30 customers in private briefings in a single week, what I found most awe inspiring was connecting other customers, partners and employees with similar issues and letting them share best practices how they successfully (and sometimes not so successfully) addressed these challenges.

The sharing that took place went well beyond the technology, the roadmap of features, what to purchase and how best to implement, but more specifically genuine concerns and interest surfaced regarding how best to address the culture and organization changes needed to adopt completely new operating paradigms like Citizen Driven Low Code App Dev Programs.  Can non-technical people create apps? Sharing stories from the US Navy Chaplain Service where non-technical clergy with no development experience were able to learn App Engine and able to design and build mobile apps for Servicemen to schedule Spiritual sessions with their advisors inspired countless companies.  

Connecting dozens and dozens of customers like NASCAR, US Bank, Pepsi and Nike in attendance with Banco do Brazil and others to learn how they created an amazing culture of innovation and sharing within the bank with their creative Faz.AI (“Just Do It”) citizen dev program. Creatively they launched a Telegram Social Media Channel where citizen developers (that do not have a technical background) throughout the 21 lines of business in the bank are sharing ‘Tik-Tock-like’ videos in short form about the apps they are building. It was a long journey over 2.5 years to get there, but they have one of the most successful Citizen Developer programs in the world that is driven organically via social media. They have also gamified automation and citizen development with a creative series of ‘bronze, silver, and gold badges’ that employees earn the more and more experience they have with low code app dev. They shared how things got so competitive in the bank that employees having apps deployed to prod at 2 AM were contacting them about where their Gold Badge is! Making App Dev FUN!

These types of business and cultural connections of sharing are at the heart of what is the ServiceNow community and what makes it so different and so special from other technologies. I continue to be struck at just how strong of a connection ServiceNow employees, customers and partners alike have even if they have never met before! There is a true underlying common sense of purpose, sharing, and learning driving towards continual progress with software to make work and the world work better for all of us! It’s undeniable and extremely rare in this siloed day and age where people feel more disconnected than ever.   There is something much bigger going on here and there are true connections and empathy that unite ServiceNow employees, partners, and customers no matter what country, line of business or industry they are from. Whether they have been in the ecosystem for 10+ years or discovered ServiceNow last year, there is a common sense of curiosity and purpose in driving automation and innovation together.   While Generative AI can certainly help provide access to more connections and knowledge and drive our ability to innovate and automate more rapidly, it cannot and will never replace this human focused community and sincere empathy and connection.

The sharing that comes from the customer sessions is eye opening and can cause us to rethink our traditional perceptions and strongly held beliefs about automation and governance. I attended a session from one of the most innovative ServiceNow customers, Petrobras. It was titled “A disruptive strategy for Citizen Development for Enterprise Service Management” and it was eloquently delivered by Carlos Eduardo Malta Nascimento and Alexandre Dourado . Questions and concerns were raised at the end of the session from other customers if they were concerned about the sprawl that came from delegating access to Lines of Business to create apps and services so fast that there might be too many apps, perhaps even 100s of new services LoBs are creating.  Carlos responded that they have learned that with trying to lock down or restrict what lines of businesses could do they were holding back innovation. “Who knows better what services these LoBs need than the LoBs themselves. We trust them and do not restrict them and if they build 100s of services – that is a GOOD THING!” You could see all the customers in the audience start to rethink their perceptions about delegated innovation. A new sense of employee empowerment was permeating the room.    Sharing these stories and challenging one another’s firmly held beliefs and experiences will not be replaced by AI anytime soon.

One of the most eye-opening observations for me was during a session on Hyperautomation that I delivered with Steven Lock-Campbell from the USDA Agriculture Marketing Service. We presented how the USDA reimagined their entire Compliance Examination Process with ServiceNow’s low code App Engine taking it from 6 weeks of manual efforts down to a 30 min automated process! Attendees were dumfounded by this dramatic business transformation. We went on to share how they next looked to ServiceNow’s Robotic Process Automation (RPA) capabilities to automate 560 hours of duplicate manual T&E data entry into a legacy system with no API.  What was eye-opening for me was when Steven asked me to go back a slide show to ServiceNow’s Hyperautomation approach that illustrates the 4-stage journey of 1) Digitize Processes, 2) Automate Tasks, 3) Enhance with Intelligence and 4) Discover & Optimize. 

Steven, in his very non-technical and authentic voice, asked everyone “How intimidating does THIS look?” Everyone in the crowd shook their heads laughing. But through all the tech strategy and buzz words being thrown about, Steven was able to empathize and relate this to everyone’s humanity and shared fears across every industry and discipline. He shared he also felt this was intimidating and most likely impossible, especially for the US Federal Government Agency he works for with minimal resources and imagination. But then he shared how ServiceNow, and their ServiceNow partner Veracity, made all this less daunting. By starting slowly with low code, they were able to learn how to Digitize their manual work Processes. Then after that success, with every employee seeing how this was not so insurmountable, the USDA was able to take on the challenge of Automating Tasks with RPA so that employees no longer had to waste time with tasks that literally made them hate their jobs! Next, Steven shared how he plans to leverage Intelligence to enhance his co-workers daily work life and then leverage Process Optimization capabilities to look for new opportunities to eliminate unnecessary work and make their work even more efficient.  Many customers approached us after the session and shared how for the first time they understood Hyperautomation, RPA, Low Code and AI and how it was a journey, and they could apply the different stages to their own situations.

These examples, repeated over 1000s of times last week, reminded me so much of scenes from Ted Lasso’s three seasons where an individual was going through turmoil at work or in their personal lives and how the experiences and the empathy of others helped them rise to their best self to address and conquer those challenges and thrive! That is the ServiceNow Knowledge 23 experience, and more importantly the larger ServiceNow Community experience in a nutshell. People connecting, companies sharing and innovating with this amazing technology that continues to evolve and grow and help so many businesses and institutions around the world.   That is what I love about ServiceNow and its entire ecosystem of customers and partners. The energy, enthusiasm, and selfless purpose to drive innovation via creation, empathy, learning and sharing.  It is the continuation of my own journey that started in 1983 in a movie theater!

While Generative AI certainly has the power to automate app creation and create business efficiencies and perform work on a scale and at a pace never imagined, it will serve to only accelerate and create more meaningful connections, learnings and sharing in the ServiceNow community. While there is legitimate fear of Gen AI replacing the current generation of platforms and software all together one day, it will make way for a whole new evolution of even more innovative technology from ServiceNow! One thing I do believe, is that AI will never replace the empathy, energy, purpose and humanity behind the entire ServiceNow community. See you all at Knowledge 24!