4 Reasons Why Knowledge17 Will Be Special

[keeshenniphof]

Next week, more than 13,000 Service Management professionals will gather in Orlando for our annual user conference, Knowledge17. During 5 days of keynotes, classes, breakout sessions, labs and networking, they'll experience IT, Customer Service, HR, and Security at lightspeed.

This will be my 5^th Knowledge conference, and it's a special one. I expect K17 to show the new ServiceNow. Bigger, broader and ready for the next chapter in our company's history. Here's why.

1. Customers Everywhere

80% of Knowledge17 content is delivered by customers. For industry standards, that's a crazy percentage — and it is what sets Knowledge apart as a High Tech industry event. The sheer energy created by this exchange of experience and expertise is unprecedented. Its hard to convey if you haven't been there. Without exception, the strongest, most inspiring presentations I've sat in at Knowledge were delivered by customers, like the Coca-Cola presentation at K15 I covered here, just to give an example.

Knowledge is where customers ready themselves for the years ahead. New plans are forged, connections and networks form wherever you look, best practices are just there for the taking. Surely, this is not a free event, but no attendee ever complained about the cost of going to Knowledge.  

2. Goodbye Fred & Frank. Hi John!

This is the first Knowledge without ServiceNow's genius founder, Fred Luddy. He'll be missed. I will never forget the standing ovations the Knowledge audience used to give Fred when he took to the stage. That's a rare thing in enterprise software — and great testament to our customers' passion when it comes to the ServiceNow platform.

And what about Frank Slootman, our CEO who took the company from 375 employees and $93 million in revenue in 2012 to over 5,000 people and $1.4 billion in annual revenue today. In about 5 years. Indeed, that's times 1500.

One Slootman quote I particularly like: "Velocity is just a fancy word for speed." And when one of our sales guys asked Frank during an internal meeting for some guidance on how to best host customers at Knowledge, Frank said: "Well, buy 'em a beer. Hug 'em." Exactly, and that's what we'll do next week.

Frank will be missed, too. He has now moved into the role of Chairman of the Board, and is succeeded by former eBay CEO John Donahoe. John will lead ServiceNow through the next phase of our company's growth — and it will be huge. I am very excited to see his keynote at Knowledge17.

3. We Bring Jakarta To Orlando

Let's not forget about the ServiceNow Platform, the pace at which it is built out, the breadth and depth of its innovation, and how that is impacting the Knowledge17 agenda. At K13, we talked about ITSM, and ITSM, and hosted maybe one or two sessions about our early attempts at ITOM.

Next week, we will have our upcoming Jakarta release on full display in Orlando, Florida. I can't give too many details here, but expect to be blown away by the new technology introduced on all sides of the ServiceNow platform, the platform that is perfectly aligned to help solve some of the massive challenges of our times, including the internet of things, machine learning, service automation and digital security.

K17 features tracks for IT, HR, Security, Customer Service, Business apps and we expect the audience to be representing all corners of the global enterprise, too. That in itself changes the conversation at Knowledge and further drives our innovation agenda.

4. CreatorCon, Where Creators Unite

At the heart of Knowledge17 is the Developer Hub and a long list of sessions dedicated to developing business applications on the ServiceNow platform. For the 4^th consecutive year (2014, 2015, 2016), I will be covering the CreatorCon Hackathon in a Live Blog on Tuesday 9 May. Bookmark this link to follow it.

In addition to the Hackathon, training and certification, workshops and hands-on labs, we added a number of new experiences for our developer community:

• Dedicated Architect Track: Featuring more architect‑centric offerings than ever.
• Unconference: A bring‑your‑own‑content opportunity to create a session on your topic of choice.
• Developer Theater: Bite‑sized Ted‑ish tech talks focused on all things developer.
• DevHub Challenge: Earn points for everything you do at the Developer Hub and win awesome prizes throughout the day.

Just 4 aspects of Knowledge17 I will be focused on. How about you? I look forward to hearing about your Knowledge experience and expectations for next week. We all cherish our K stories, don't we?