Latest / The DEX Show: A Show for IT Change Makers / Reality Bytes #21 – Building the DEX Community w/ Jon Leighton

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Reality Bytes #21 – Building the DEX Community w/ Jon Leighton · The DEX Show: A Show for IT Change Makers

0:01
Welcome it change makers to the Deck Show with Tim Flower and Tom McGraw Let's
0:07
get into it. Hell, everybody, welcome to the Deck Show, show
0:11
within a show, Reality bites, and indeed this is the show within a
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show within a show wherever Reality by its team takes some time to talk to
0:18
fellow Next thinkers. I'm Tom mcgrawan and I'm joined today by Tim, Dina
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and Meghan and we are joined by one of Next Think's favorite conversationists since having
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to have him on the show and also a source of many of the fantastic
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guest that Tim and I have been lucky enough to host over the last two
0:35
years of the show, and that's John Layton, Head of Community, the
0:39
head of Digital Community and user Groups. Hey John, welcome to the Deck
0:42
Show for the first time. Hello Tom, lovely to be here. Thanks
0:46
having me, and thank you once again for so many of the customers that
0:50
we've been able to have on the show before you know, I know you've
0:52
introduced us, we've facilitated that. So we're very grateful all part of this
0:58
broad community, Tom, that we tap into. Isn't it from the old
1:02
days of service management and of course these days all these same folks coming from
1:07
a service management background, really seeing the vision that we have for decks and
1:11
really wanting to be part of this time it's been brilliant, quite so que
1:14
and having that's a great place to start, actually, John, because maybe
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maybe for listeners who don't know yet there will be a few, maybe start
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with a quick overview of your your role and remit please mate. Yeah sure.
1:26
So I've been here and next thing now for about just over four years,
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and in that time we really felt it was important to develop our customer
1:34
community. Of course, we have some of the best technology on the planet
1:38
for the sort of things we're trying to do here. The support we give
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to our customers, We've got some incredible people. Our customers themselves are brilliant,
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So it's a it's an incredible kind of mixed that we have here,
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and what we wanted to do is compliment that by creating a wealth of opportunity
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for customers get to get connected to one another, to learn, to share,
1:57
to inspire one another. It's a last part of what we're trying to
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do across at both both the digital side of community and all of the events
2:04
that we host as well. Truly and it I'm right, John, this
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is a bit of a change you're taking, kind of this remit on board.
2:10
It's a bit of a change of lame for you. Is that great?
2:14
What was your preceding experience largely? Yeah, So, I mean I
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spent about fifteen years Thomas more of a practitioner in IT service management. So
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I kind of started my career on service their service delivery team, service improvement
2:27
programs, all of that sort of stuff. And just when I moved to
2:30
the States about fourteen years ago, now, I started working with software companies
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variety of roles really from either consulting or running professional services teams, and it
2:40
took me all the way into customer success and from there actually kind of heard
2:45
about next thing, got really interested in what next thing we're trying to do,
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and yeah, this role opened up really to help drive community, and
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you know, I'd long been part of local communities around service management, et
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cetera. So it just seemed like a really good fit and candidly for me,
3:00
it was just really excited to be part of something that I felt would
3:05
really change the way we've always approached service management and just this idea about putting
3:09
the employee back at the heart of the digital experience. Just something I'm really
3:13
passionate about. Very cool. That's awesome. John Hey, Megan, Hey,
3:21
John, thanks for being on the show. Very excited to talk to
3:23
you in this context today. But I really like what you were just saying
3:28
about, Yeah, how you were drawn to this kind of work and how
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you were drawn to the importance of building a community. So I was wondering
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if you could talk a bit more about that, about what this customer community
3:40
is at Next Think, and why you think it's so important. Yeah,
3:44
sure, I think you know what we're trying to do around decks. I
3:49
mean, kind of we live in a little bubbalo at Next Thing, don't
3:52
we, as does you know others in this kind of competitive market space.
3:55
But there's a reality that there's a lot of people outside of our world that
4:00
don't really know what dex is, that don't understand it. And I think
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we've done a phenomenal job at Next Thing, both in delivering some of the
4:06
best sort of technology on the planet, but equally in raising awareness of what
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dex is really about and why people should care. But I think in that
4:14
sense, you know, in some of our customers, it's still a small
4:17
core team or sometimes just a single person that's really driving that DEX message,
4:23
and we really done one of them to feel alone. So I think what
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the community does, it just creates a shared space where people can learn together
4:30
and really feel their part is something bigger than just themselves. And you know,
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often we have people come and join our events and it's the opportunity they
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have to go and interact with other people kind of trying to solve real world
4:41
problems every day in the same way as they are, but perhaps they don't
4:45
have that same kind of emphasis within their own organization. You know, it's
4:48
trying to do a ton of different stuff. I mean, it's such a
4:53
crazy life as an IT professional these days. Trying to stay in touch with
4:56
the technology with the wall of work that's constantly coming your way as really difficult.
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So I just like to think of our community as being a place where
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in a safe place for people to connect with other people really focused on the
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same mission as them. I love that. I love that that seems I
5:12
can see how that would be so necessary, right because like if you are,
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like you say, you're just the one person who's working on this in
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your workplace, but you know, there's all these other people dealing with the
5:20
same problems as your similar problems as you're having. That one place you can
5:25
go to where you can learn from those other people would be like so important
5:29
honestly in your day to day when you're facing that tough stuff. And we
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think about you mentioned a lot events and what you were just saying, So
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could you dig into that a little bit more. What kind of events and
5:40
resources are available on the next thing? Community? Yeah? Sure, well,
5:43
I mean, like I think the thing one of the one of the
5:46
things again in terms of trying to really raise awareness of what decks is our
5:49
experience every events. I've been running these for multiple years now. You know,
5:54
we had to switch to a virtual format during COVID, as did everyone
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else. Last year was just the opportunity to try and get back in person
6:00
and again, you know, whenever we're thinking about community, candidly, the
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best community building is done when people break bread together. You know, when
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you say, actually, when you can relax a little bit, get to
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know one another, that's when kind of the level of sharing just kind of
6:15
ows up a much. So we have our experience everhere. Events coming up
6:17
in the fall this year which we're really excited about. Those are going to
6:20
be tremendous opportunities for people to get connected to one another. Then kind of
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coming down a layer from that, what we've been trying to do this year
6:28
is really get back in person as well and really think about the local communities
6:31
around the world, whether DEX professionals get those folks connected. So be really
6:36
excited this year already to have hosted some of our first user groups. You
6:41
know, we've been back to London, we've been to U Trecked, We've
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been to Amsterdam, We're going to be in Paris and Lasane coming up in
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the next couple of months. We're going to have our first event in a
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couple of weeks here in Madrid, so that's really exciting. Actually Stockholm,
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I'm excited to kind of take the team into Stockholm and do some work with
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our Nordix customers. And then in North America, we've been getting local as
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well, so we've held events in Minneapolis, Atlanta, We've got New Jersey
7:04
coming up, We've been in Boston last week, and we're all over the
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place really just trying to find, you know, anywhere we can find a
7:10
group of next thing because who really want to get together and just have this
7:14
kind of afternoon of sharing and learning together and a little bit of social a
7:17
little bit of fun as well. That's what we're trying to do. And
7:19
an outside of those in person, I think we recognize it's not easy for
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everyone to travel around the world and around the country. So what we've also
7:29
done is created this this tremendous set of resources from which we call our tech
7:33
Cafe. So this is a virtual session every Tuesday, just allows people to
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come and be part of the community. We often have some of our folks
7:43
from our product teams involved and really openly sharing, talking about what challenges customers
7:48
customers are having, showing a little glance ahead at the road maps. All
7:53
of this is really important and in all of these events, none of this
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is about death by PowerPoint, you know, folks. So I always I
8:01
never like it when you join an event and the first thing you get is
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this message that says you've been joined in a listen only mode. That's not
8:05
what we want. We want to be part of a conversation with our customers.
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We want our customers to have a conversation with one another. That really
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is a mechanism. We feel that just accelerates their success. So much going
8:20
on and we're on the community. John, thanks for thanks for sharing on
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that. It's awesome. I'm going to pass them. I cover to Tim
8:26
now, mister Layton, thanks for joining us. Thank everybody else's starts.
8:31
Great to have you here, and it's nice to be I'll give a thanks
8:37
to Tom and I think we reschedule because of other calendars. But it's nice
8:41
to be able to join and not be on an airplane for once. So
8:43
I love being with the crew. And yeah, Tim, I I try
8:48
to join. We were doing I use a group planning session for our friends
8:50
in Australia and New Zealand, and I made the mistake of trying to join
8:54
from the airplane, thinking I'm okay, sell you the signal. I got
8:58
a very stern look for this to it, so I had to shut that
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down pretty great, but there you go. So you and I have similar
9:05
backgrounds enterprise it. I've been in the on the customer side for twenty five
9:11
years before coming to Next thing, so I've been involved in a lot of
9:15
these communities. Microsoft had a very robust end userte compute community around SMS and
9:22
secm Altierists did with their products, set Semantic did with their So it's always
9:28
been great to connect not just with the vendor and the product managers, but
9:31
also other customers. Do you think that next think is a little bit different.
9:37
And the reason why I ask is that we've been in this category creation
9:41
mode for a while. There are some other vendors that are trying their darnist
9:46
to keep up and catch up. But it does it make it even more
9:50
important that we run these events being kind of in that either solo category or
9:56
category creation mode. I think, you know, most of it's interesting.
10:01
It's a question too. I mean, most of the things that I'm involved
10:03
and are really for our customers, with our customers buy our customers, right.
10:07
So now we'll we'll actually have in some of our events sort of late
10:13
stage future customers come along, you know, if we if we know we're
10:16
just to kind of a signature away from them being a customer, we want
10:18
to get involved as early as possible, and we'll have late stage future customers
10:22
come spend time in our communities. You see some of the recordings, you
10:26
know, So I think that's really cool. So I mean, I think
10:28
I think actually what we're doing maybe from the Deck's hub and this podcast and
10:33
things like that, in terms of the market maybe a little bit more effective.
10:37
But you know, what we're all about is enablement of our customers.
10:41
You know, when they choose to come and be part of the next ink
10:43
A community, what can we do, what can we offer to really make
10:48
that an enjoyable experience and help them feel that they're part of something bigger than
10:52
just themselves. Yeah, the way I was looking at it is there aren't
10:56
many other places for them to go, right because the category itself is so
11:01
new. There isn't a broad set of resources out in the in the enterprise,
11:05
in the marketplace to be able to connect with like minded people. So
11:09
in my view, that's it makes it even more important that we really do
11:13
these well and involve as many customers as we can. Yeah, hundred percent,
11:18
Tim, I think I think what we see Actually, I mean,
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you and I both spent a lot of time in the sort of IT service
11:24
management space, and you know we've seen a real shift of that space towards
11:28
experience management over the last couple of years. So I definitely think some of
11:31
our good friends at HDI SDI IT smirking. You know, these are these
11:37
are the folks where if you, if you, if you, and you've
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walked the kind of the rooms in those places as much as I have,
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and you know, there's a real buzz around this, this switch variety professionals,
11:46
you know, starting to maybe push to one side some of the old
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metrics of the past from from you know it and it s we're not saying
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that stuff isn't you know, it doesn't have any value anymore. It's just
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there's there's a new metric, new ways of thinking the world's changed, and
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I think that's what we're part of here, just trying to help people see
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a different way of approaching, you know, a slightly different view of the
12:07
problem we face. So let's drill in a little bit on that. The
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benefit to the customer or the individual IT practitioner who's engaging with the community,
12:18
with our community, what do you see as some of the core primary benefits
12:24
to customers and maybe to new customers as they engage with us and others that
12:30
are already rocking and rolling. Yeah, I think with any sort of new
12:35
domain team, I mean, education is an absolutely crucial piece and even for
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our benefit, you know, we know that. You know, a well
12:43
educated customer will do so much more with their solutions. They'll understand it better,
12:46
They've got a better awareness, and they understand how to apply the way
12:50
we think about decks and next Think in a more effective way. So there's
12:54
a key part of that digitally ecosystem, that community, which is our learned
12:56
platform. We've got some incredible people and next Think run that really trying to
13:01
get this this free training out there, and I think that's a critical step.
13:05
But you know what also comes behind that. I mean, what I
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hear consistently from customers. They want to hear what other customers are doing.
13:11
You know, there are roadblocks there that can sometimes get in the way,
13:16
and I think most of the organizations that we know of and speak too frequently,
13:22
it's not been a seamless journey, and we're here to kind of coach
13:24
people through some of those challenges. But it's equally nice when customers talk about
13:28
it and just you know, in terms of how they drove adoption, how
13:31
they overcame challenges going especially cross function across I'd see. We know that's never
13:37
an easy thing. So I think, you know, it's when our customers
13:39
talk about that they have some real practical experience and it's just as it's another
13:43
great place to learn. Yeah, I could keep I could keep going with
13:48
you, but I think any Dina has a few things she wants to jump
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in with a role. Yes, thanks for joining us today, John.
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It's a big year for the Next Thing in terms of the release of lots
14:03
of new products. Like what's the trickle down effect of the digital community and
14:07
user groups that you observe. Yeah, I think again, there's a lot
14:13
of new things, and you know, I've been on the customer side right
14:16
when I was inundated from vendors and it can be difficult to keep up.
14:20
So I think partly what we're able to do via community is keep you know,
14:24
raising awareness, keep it fresh, what is new and what is going
14:28
on. I had tech cafes are an excellent examplesition. You just invest operationally
14:33
an hour of your week as a kind of a core Next Thing person,
14:37
and you're going to be less to stay in touch with what's new, what's
14:39
coming, as well as deep in your relationship to other customers, but to
14:43
hear directly and be able to give feedback to product as well. Honestly,
14:46
I think it's one of the key things that differentiates. It's I've you know,
14:50
for a long time, I've I've championed in various software organizations proximity of
14:58
our customer experts to add at teams, and I've never worked anywhere that does
15:01
it better than year. You know, there's so many opportunities for customers to
15:05
talk to our product team, to offer feedback, to give that and that's
15:09
that's vital in that two way conversation. So I think that's what our community
15:13
is able to do is just kind of keep creating kind of at the base
15:16
level of place you can ask questions and get answers, but equally a place
15:20
you can kind of come and learn, learn from our product teams, learn
15:24
directly, have a conversation with them, and just keep raising awareness of some
15:30
of the new capabilities that we're releasing this year. True true for any customers
15:39
listening who want to get involved, where should they go? And also is
15:43
there any way the non customers could potentially engage in order to just get the
15:48
feel of the community and next thing customer experience. I think any any non
15:52
customer, if they're in a relationship, whether something they're welcome to reach out
15:56
to me. I mean, anyone's welcome to reach out to me at anytime,
15:58
John dot Laton at next thing Com. And I'm open to any conversations
16:02
around what our customers are doing. I mean, that's you know, unfortunate.
16:04
Most of my time is spent talking to our customers. That's why it
16:10
gives me such a buzz when I come on these things, and because because
16:12
what our customers say about what they're achieving with next Thing is just it's unstoppable
16:15
as brilliant. So at any point folks can reach out to me. I
16:19
think if you're if you're someone in a conversation with next thing right now,
16:22
yeah, we'd be more than welcome to have you come and join our community,
16:26
to be part of that, come along to our user groups, etc.
16:29
So talk to you your you know, your account exec that you're working
16:32
with, or come and talk to me directly and we'll see what we can
16:34
do to get access. And I'd encourage anybody as well. You know,
16:37
we obviously at a product level, we want people you're learning from the product
16:41
in the learned site, on community, etc. But again, some of
16:45
the work you folks are doing around building the decks hub and the content there.
16:49
Anybody can come along and be part of that community and listening to this
16:53
podcast regularly consume some of that content, be an author of you know,
16:59
for content there. So encourage you to kind of spend some time on our
17:02
deck hub as well. Couldn't couldn't ask the better plugs than that job.
17:06
Thanks many. I say it because I believe it, Tom, say how
17:08
I see it you do listen. I believe it when I say you've been
17:12
a fantastic Deck Show guests today. Thanks so much for coming on and just
17:15
to break the old fourth wall for a moment. I know you're not you're
17:18
not feeling at your absolute best, but you've done a fantastic job. And
17:22
I hope, yeah, I hope you continue to be on the men,
17:25
John and and get we'll see me. I appreciate that, Tom, thanks
17:29
so much. I'm on the man. Looking forward to a trip to Saint
17:30
Louis actually this week, going up hosting another user group there. Then we're
17:34
going to be in Dallas, then we'll be in New Jersey and I can't
17:37
remember or else, but all over the place. Looking forward to it.
17:41
You sound like a one man guns and Roses joint. I'm more of off
17:45
rock guy. I think, but there you go. Yeah, I'll take
17:48
it. I think they're soft now, it's been it's been a while since
17:51
they were really scary. Lovely, lovely to have you on me. Thanks
17:55
so much for coming on, and as you have instructed our listeners to do,
17:59
please do check out the Deck show decks Hub mothership, where you can
18:03
find tons of fantastic customer content and customer community content, much of it sourced
18:08
by our guest today. Thanks so much, Mane all right, pleasure,
18:11
folks, take care all Thanks so much, Happy next Thinking. Happy to
18:17
make sure that you never miss an episode, Subscribe to the show in Apple
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