Latest / The DEX Show: A Show for IT Change Makers / Reality Bytes #33: Navigating DEX Hype (w/ Christian Ponce)

Transcript

Reality Bytes #33: Navigating DEX Hype (w/ Christian Ponce) · The DEX Show: A Show for IT Change Makers

0:01
Welcome Item Change Makers to the Deck Show with Tim Flower and Tom McGraw.
0:07
Let's get into it. Hello, everybody, welcome back to Reality Bites.
0:13
And it is not only Reality Bites, it is the Deck Shows, show
0:17
within a show within a show, which is where we get to talk to
0:20
one of our fantastic colleagues and Next thinkers, fellow Next thinkers, and we
0:25
have a wonderful one for you today. He is Christian Punce. He's senior
0:29
director the Technology Alliances and Field Marketing. Tim and I and some of the
0:34
others on the call. We have Dina and Megan with us here today as
0:37
well. We all get to work with Christian quite often and we got to
0:41
see a lot of one another across the still recent Experience Tour, which his
0:46
team were absolutely instrumental in making such a huge success. So just bepose me
0:51
to say, Christian, welcome to the show. Lovely to have you with
0:54
us for the first time. Yeah, Tom, thank you for having me.
0:58
Tim, I appreciate the call, glad to be here, and we
1:02
do we do what we tend to do, Christian, because you know,
1:04
a couple of us for us since our market is you know, we we
1:07
don't like to admit to it too often, but we do often and usually
1:11
almost get colleagues from the technical side of the business and from sides of a
1:17
business which aren't marketing and messaging per se. But you are. You are
1:22
an exception to that. On the one hand, you are a fellow market
1:26
here, but your your role is not. So your your work history is
1:32
not completely consumed with marketing, is it. You have quite a quite a
1:36
rich and diverse background. So I wonder if you could just begin by talking
1:40
talking us through that a little bit, and how you got to this role
1:42
today. Yeah, I would to answer the question easily. I got to
1:47
this role because our fearless leader said hey, can you do this? And
1:49
I was voluntold into it. But I think I got prepared into being successful
1:56
by having that non traditional, non marketers background. So, as I've said,
2:00
I'm a member of marketing, but I'm not of marketing. I grew
2:02
up on the tech side, having done having started my career in it audit
2:07
and a big four accounting firm, learned everything you want to know about starveting,
2:13
zox Ley and controls and talking to people who don't want to talk to
2:15
you on a regular basis, taking that and turning that into a career in
2:21
project and program management, which was also a career of people who don't want
2:23
to talk to you, but you have to come up with a schedule and
2:25
help drive and leveraging that to do things like it security, product management,
2:32
operations, working with gms, and then eventually moving into innovation, which was
2:38
you know, here's a box of toys, go build something that can help
2:42
us make a business. And I did that for a number of years at
2:46
where I was prior to coming to next thing, so log me in helping
2:51
run what we knew as log me in Labs, and that was taking aspects
2:54
of marketing, taking aspects of the technical side of the world, taking access
2:59
to product, and building something new for at new market. All of that,
3:05
I'd say prepared me to come to this side of the house, which
3:07
was a tech alliances at first again and this is how I got to know
3:13
Tim. It was, you know, how do I talk to a company
3:15
about what they're doing? But what are we doing? And where can we
3:19
come up with something new and interesting together to get people excited and get people
3:24
to want to talk to us, not about pipeline but really about the potential
3:29
for what we could do together. All of those things put me in a
3:32
position that once I finally joined marketing officially, as you had a field for
3:38
the US, it was very much from the lens and experience of someone who
3:42
had been on the opposite side. I lived in technology. I brought product,
3:46
I used that product, I complained about it and said, you guys
3:49
are full of nonsense. I'd read those cases and ldholes in it, and
3:53
it drives my wife crazy. When I watch a commercial, I was like,
3:55
Wow, they just set us a lot of stuff without saying anything that.
4:00
That's why I try not to do that on this side now. So
4:03
with your experience kind of on both sides of the divide there, Christian,
4:10
I mean you already you already mentioned, you know, watching commercials with a
4:14
with a with a cynical or shall we say expert, I, what are
4:17
your what are your main gleanings as it were, from that dynamic between marketing
4:24
on the one hand and customers on the other when it comes specifically to technology
4:29
and innovation in general. Yeah, I would say it's and I think this
4:33
comes from my audit side of that experience as well. When you're an auditor,
4:36
you learn how to speak like a lawyer. Right, I'm going to
4:39
answer the question that was asked of me, and I'm going to give you
4:42
nothing more. When you come into marketing, there's a lot more that you
4:46
give. It's there's some fluff, there's some exaggeration, there's some aspiration in
4:51
those answers. And what I've found, definitely from my side on the technical
4:58
world, but just technical people in general, it's not about aspiration. It's
5:01
like, well, what can you do right now? And when you are
5:04
putting something out there, they're looking to read that. And when as a
5:10
result, when we developed EE this year, when we looked at the content
5:14
and we looked at the speakers. When I think of things from the field,
5:17
it's how do I put you in a position where you feel like this
5:20
is legit? Like this this is coming to me from peers who I respect,
5:25
who I know are going to tell me an honest answer. And by
5:29
the way, I understand what you need to do, but I still feel
5:31
like you're giving me some meat there that I can run with. So Christian
5:38
that the average IT person and maybe even the average consumer in general, but
5:44
let's keep it to it doesn't really I don't think understand the mechanics, the
5:49
skill, the process, the back end of marketing. When they're looking at
5:54
consuming something, right, they're not looking at the TV commercial the same way
5:57
that you do. Flip it around though, What what is an average IT
6:00
marketer not quite understand about their audience that they're talking to. Yeah, I
6:06
would say they marketers often forget and we often forget that they IT people are
6:13
people first. They're understanding and dealing with and trying to manage a lot of
6:18
expectations of their world. They're not just the guys who fixed computers and by
6:24
default understand everything technically. Yes, they have a more technical understanding of things,
6:29
but they have expertise in some areas versus others. So you will get
6:32
to one person and they're like, that sounds great, but that's not my
6:34
space. I don't really know how that works. I can connect you or
6:40
yeah, I love this, I'm going to deep dive and get into those
6:43
details. And it's remembering that those different people are going to expect different things
6:47
in the messaging, in the content and how it's positioned. We can't hit
6:51
them with a one size fits all that is not a monolith with an IT.
6:59
So then on the on the IT consumer side of the of the coin,
7:03
what advice would you give to an IT consumer of products or services as
7:12
they navigate that world of vendor marketing? As my career has progressed, as
7:17
the promotions and titles have advanced, I now exponentially get bombarded with more and
7:23
more inbound on average, and I haven't counted in a month or two,
7:26
but I'll get twenty six average unsolicited emails every day and they all want to
7:30
reply even just tell me, no, don't call me anymore. I shouldn't
7:33
have to tell you. Just if I don't respond to you, stop calling
7:36
me. What would your advice be to an IT person that's under this constant
7:42
barrage of vendor marketing? So it's a very visceral response because I have that
7:48
same experience now as well, and I try to be I try to be
7:53
nice, but I actually have a caned BDR response that I will send just
7:57
to acknowledge that that's a person and they have a job to do. So
8:01
I think those are the first things, right, that's a person and they
8:03
have a job to do, and they have metrics that they're trying to be
8:05
successful for. So keep that in mind before you just ignore it. Sometimes
8:09
the content and there's actually pretty good or at least will spark your interests.
8:13
So I say, what is it that you are looking for? It person
8:20
against your specific metrics or goal for the year, and odds are there might
8:24
be something in there that will at least align with where you're trying to go,
8:28
if not perfectly, at least be directionally correct. That might be worth
8:33
a second look or a follow up. The most effective or beneficial engagement points
8:39
are going to be anywhere where a company's reaching out and saying, hey,
8:43
we would love to talk to you or connect you with one of our existing
8:46
customers or partners so you can have a frank conversation anything that they're giving you
8:54
a chance to talk to somebody that's outside of marketing. Don't miss opportunity,
9:01
because that person outside of marketing is going to give you a real answer.
9:03
They aren't coached, they don't care. I going to say, this is
9:05
what it is, so that's what I would be looking for. That's what's
9:09
going to stand out. That's what's going to stand out from an event perspective,
9:13
as well as something that's going to be the most worthwhile if it's just
9:18
a white paper or just a top ten. I almost take those as like
9:22
BuzzFeed lists. That sounds cool, it might be fun to read, but
9:24
I don't know if it's going to help me anyway. So thinking about that,
9:30
it's similar to a conversation we just had on the last podcast we recorded,
9:33
and it was on the topic of AI. Don't fight it, embrace
9:39
it, adopt it right. Use the marketing material maybe as a way to
9:43
stay up on what's happening in the technology marketplace, even if you're not looking
9:46
for something. Use it as a way to educate yourself what's out there,
9:50
and then you can just give a quick note I'm not interested, but try
9:52
to learn something from it. Yeah. I actually heard that in a much
9:56
more morbid way, and it made so much sense. It's very visceral as
10:01
someone who's worked in the industry for a long time, and you see things
10:03
change from how we started and what were the expectations. I mean, we
10:07
live in a post COVID world with a heavy remote focus now. But Tim,
10:13
I'm pretty sure you remember showing up to the office and sitting in that
10:16
cubicle and having the expectation of being there, you know, by the bell
10:20
at nine a m. And you know, don't dare leave before five before
10:24
or before your bosses whenever. That was. It's not the world we live
10:26
in now, and that's fine. But there's a group of people and I
10:31
see this in it a lot, which although we tend to be forward facing
10:35
from a technical standpoint, you're you be your conservative and expectations and it's like,
10:39
oh, I don't you know we had this And I remember when I
10:43
was using i RC and now everybody wants interfaces or they just want to talk
10:46
to it. Why can't people just get you know, hands on keyboard.
10:50
I have this special keyboard that sits in a you know, funny configuration.
10:54
And I someone said to me, it's like, I don't know why people
10:58
argue it's going to go with what the kids, because the kids are going
11:01
to outlive us. So if they think that it's cool and it's what they're
11:03
using, and it's what it's the most interesting. The best thing you could
11:07
do, as to what you said to him, be aware of it,
11:09
understand the high level, be able to have a conversation. Yeah you may
11:13
not be the person using it, but at least it's not flying by you.
11:16
So cool, So when you first came to the next thing, What
11:22
was the main thing that stood out to you about the technology and the community
11:26
and how we present ourselves. Dina, I'm sorry for not saying hello earlier,
11:31
and Megan as well. What really stuck out for the community and the
11:37
technology. I would say it was the first time in a long time where
11:41
I was at a company where the technology was actually really interesting to me.
11:46
I'd been at a number of companies Vista friend that makes business cards and other
11:50
printed products. It was really cool, but once you understand printing printing,
11:54
I was at Akamai and that was the backbone of the Internet. If anybody
11:58
understands how CD works, they invented it. There was a couple of guys
12:03
that I worked with there that were at HP Bell Labs and at cerns,
12:07
or guys whose names are on the patents for what we use. But again,
12:11
it was just so far removed from my day to day. What really
12:16
drew me here was the impact that it makes on an employee's perspective, right,
12:22
and having been someone who's been frustrated with it, who's been frustrated with
12:26
my technology, I was like, Wow, this is real, this will
12:31
make a difference. This will make you much happier, which will keep you
12:35
much more engaged. And as people ask me and how I pitch it,
12:37
it's like, no matter what you do today, you'd likely use a computer
12:41
to do it. And if it's that computer is not working, your coworkers
12:45
and your boss could be amazing, but you're gonna hate your job because the
12:48
tech sucks. And that's how I engage. That was not the case here.
12:52
The tech is great. They make it a point for it to be
12:56
great. They provide a solution that helps you understand how to use that in
13:00
the most effective, beneficial way possible. And that that was impressive. True,
13:09
And what about the decks practitioners specifically, how can next think and should
13:16
best support the community. So the thing with the community for me is that
13:20
the people who are really jumping onto decks are seeing it as a way to
13:24
really accelerate their careers. And it reminds me of people if you take if
13:31
you were wearing the clock and go maybe twenty years ago, and you know
13:35
security was now the big thing. It was always previously a piece of networking
13:39
or a piece of some other part of the tea that everyone had a responsibility
13:43
for but a couple of guys and gals went out and said, no,
13:48
I really loved the Linux stuff. I used to write code. I'm going
13:50
to really understand it security. And they turned that into careers and they really
13:56
ran with it, and it was a leveler for whether you had a degree,
14:01
you didn't have a degree, you just knew the tech you went in
14:03
deep. I'm seeing the same thing with DEX. The practitioners that are really
14:07
jumping on, like what you see at Qualcomm, at Starbucks, at Johnson
14:13
and Johnson, they are turning those into real careers with serious opportunities where they
14:20
get to shape what the message is going to be for the future around DEX.
14:24
And that's amazing. There's nothing better than getting in on the ground floor
14:28
and being able to define what the pathways look like for everyone else. Testy,
14:33
it's impressive. It is. And in the last few years there has
14:39
been a lot of experienced titles coming up and digital experience titles coming up.
14:46
So it's not just some technology in place or a vision that people wants to
14:50
get to. It's about the perspective that has changed over the past few years,
14:54
where people now in it are considering experience, are really looking into the
15:00
end user experience. It's not just a service. It's not just hardware that
15:03
is being provided or application that is being provided, but the overall experience.
15:07
And I think this has been evolving in the last few years and the fact
15:13
that now you're having specific jobs like you mentioned the security cloud, all of
15:18
that that has been the change in the past twenty years. Now the new
15:22
in thing is the experience topersentitles, Yeah, I would agree. I think
15:28
you see it in even in CIO title changes, right. There was chief
15:31
Information Officer and just information was in essence of euphemism for it. That is,
15:39
I've seen that now changed to see CDIOS as chief Digital Information Officer because
15:46
the platform is around our digital presence, not in terms of what we're doing
15:50
from a marketing standpoint to drive demand. It's very much my employees use a
15:56
plethora of tools and platforms to get their job done and maybe hardware, that
16:00
might be software, that might be some mix of the two, and I
16:04
need to understand how all of those pieces and tools come together to allow them
16:10
to deliver for us as a company. And the companies that are jumping in
16:14
that are seeing even the talent profile change, right the person who's filling that
16:18
role is very very often someone that that is in it but not of it,
16:26
that have more of a business sense or did a different piece and understood
16:32
what is the ultimate goal or outcome we're trying to go to, not just
16:34
the technology that's going to help us get there. And again, I think
16:37
this is why the des practitioner space is seeing that booon of people coming in
16:42
and running with it and saying, yeah, I love this, I want
16:45
to go and do it. Maybe I was the HR project manager, but
16:48
I think DEX is, you know, for the future, and I can
16:52
leverage that as my way to go to that space or the other way around.
16:57
Okay, hey, Christian Megan jumping in here. I think all right,
17:02
you've made some really interesting points that this whole conversation, Like you started
17:04
earlier talking to us about how our audience is not a monolith, and now
17:08
here you are saying DEX practitioners. They could be coming from HR and now
17:11
they work in it because they're interested in experience, but they have that technical
17:15
background. So if we're looking at that and from your experience working on the
17:19
technical side and now in field marketing, how do we successfully sell next thing
17:25
when our audience can be so broad, like what's your magic silver bullet?
17:30
Yeah, I will ship right a silver bullet. I would be pedro.
17:33
But the way I think about it is one of the lessons I learned during
17:41
my innovation days. In that space, we used to very much hammer people
17:45
on don't focus on the solution, focus on the problem. What is the
17:49
problem that you have to solve, Because there's a million different ways to solve
17:53
that, and there's you can do it this way, you can do it
17:56
that way. It's irrelevant. It's what is the problem. And if I
18:00
can explain that problem and help you identify that as that it's a migraine,
18:06
it's a major issue for you, then all of a sudden, when I
18:11
come in with that title at all, right, that solution, it's going
18:15
to click. When I as a marketer, I would one hundred percent use
18:22
that same methodology. Focus on the problem when I talk about what is it
18:26
that we are seeing with decks and why we believe it's important and so well,
18:32
what are the problems that we're actually able to solve with this? Where
18:34
where are the issues that companies have been facing and they tried to solve in
18:38
the past, by throwing money at it, by hiring more people, by
18:42
moving to this location, by trying some other tangential platform, and we're seeing,
18:47
yeah, that didn't that didn't solve that just exacerbated it, or it
18:49
changed it or redirected it for a while. But here's when we're coming in
18:55
to solve it. That puts me, the reader of this or the engager
18:59
of this, in a position of being able to identify with Okay, yeah,
19:03
I get that, I've been there. I understand what that is,
19:07
and I see how you're talking about it, and yeah, maybe I can
19:11
I can use this in my space. Hmmm hmm, I've got that resonates
19:17
right. You always have to start first with the with what hurts, and
19:21
then here's how I can help it hurt less, right, And I think
19:22
that that's actually probably part of the reason why our experience event is so successful.
19:27
Obviously, there's many reasons why the Experience event is such a success and
19:30
why our customers come every year, but one reason is they get to watch
19:34
other customers get up on stage and say, this was our pain that we
19:37
had, and this is how we addressed it, and this is what we
19:40
were able to achieve and you know, I've in the two years I've been
19:44
in Next Thing, I think going to experiences as a marketer, what are
19:47
the coolest events I get to go to? Because I really get to hear
19:48
from our customers why Next Thing is so impactful for them? Why dex is
19:53
so impactful for them? From your perspective, your team obviously plays a huge
19:56
role in the success of the experience tour. Can you talk to us about
20:02
why you think that our customers like, why do they get involved? And
20:06
what kind of impact can a customer have when they get involved with experience?
20:11
Why do they get involved in experience? It's an interesting question. I would
20:15
say there are two things that resonated to me, especially this year being so
20:19
hands on with the show. One is that our community and our practitioners are
20:26
very passionate about it because, again, as I alluded to before, it's
20:30
a new space and they are or the people getting involved are those who are
20:36
comfortable in ambiguity, ready to trail blaze and try something new. So when
20:41
you tell those same people, hey, you want to get on the stage
20:42
and talk about it, nine times out of ten they're like, yeah,
20:45
I love talking about it. I love is what this is, and I
20:49
think we saw that in Starbucks and in PayPal right in how they're thinking about
20:56
it different phases in their own journeys, but kind of issues resonating. The
21:02
second to me is looking at that from the perspective of what or I positioned
21:10
it. What kind of shine and reflection does this play for you? Everyone
21:18
does something for some reason, and that reason is important to you the individual.
21:25
And when I think of reaching out and saying, hey, I would
21:26
love for you to speak, the reason for me is I think you have
21:30
a really great story. I think that story will resonate and will align with
21:33
where our prospects or existing customers are, and we should share it for you.
21:38
That might be I've always wanted to get on stage, I've always wanted
21:41
to give a speech. Or maybe I'm uncomfortable with this and this is a
21:45
stretch for me. Or maybe it's going to help me in my job be
21:48
seen as that leader in this space and have someone externally co signed because internally
21:55
I'm doing this but not everybody understands it yet, or I'm still trying to
21:59
figure out the language to get more senior leadership on board. Here's a way
22:03
for me to do that. And I think that's what he provides and that's
22:06
what just kind of any speaking opportunity really gives you. So it's been really
22:11
cool to see Christian not only the evolution of the company and the product since
22:18
being a customer way back in twenty fourteen. Coming here in twenty fifteen just
22:22
hit eight years at Next Think, So I've seen a lot of change the
22:26
conference. Like our products started out being called analytics, I think we had
22:30
a little bit of a tougher time getting the end user compute people to come
22:33
to an analytics show. Changing it up I think really helped. Tom and
22:37
I have had the pleasure of co hosting the show for a couple of years.
22:40
This year we changed it up and we did a couple of podcasts from
22:42
the stage. I want to know what you got out of it. We
22:45
get a lot out of giving to the show and putting content out under your
22:49
guidance and many others. What do you get out of the show in both
22:55
the customer presentations, but more importantly the behind the scenes conversations with folks,
23:00
Where do you think that what kind of information are you seeing and what do
23:04
you think it means? For twenty twenty four Yeah, So for us,
23:08
the biggest thing we really saw out of twenty three and as I said,
23:11
I've been here for two years. I've been in one experience before or two
23:17
of them, one virtual, one in person in New York last year,
23:18
and got a chance to run it this year. What we saw this year
23:23
was the appetite for training on the platform and dex technology is through the roof.
23:30
I mean, we couldn't we couldn't find more space to put more people
23:33
in, and we went into it entirely with a try and test and learn
23:38
model. Let's put something small out there, let's see if people like it,
23:42
and we'll go from there. We put it out there that we're going
23:47
to do training. We sold out every seat within about a day and a
23:49
half, and we kept augmenting and still sold out and had people banging on
23:53
the doors maybe not literally, but actually it literally in some of those rooms.
24:00
So that to me really spoke to Wow, there's a real appetite for
24:03
this. People are looking for where to get it, and that it isn't
24:07
readily available. We have a market that we can capitalize on. How we
24:11
think about this show in the future, and as I think of twenty four,
24:15
it says, we don't move away from top quality content that's engaging and
24:19
entertaining and fun, but we also provide the technical aspects of those solutions.
24:26
I've always said, if I'm going to tell you a story about where we
24:29
came from to where we are on the DEXT platform, I would love a
24:32
follow up session that's, well, technically, how did you do that,
24:36
what was the configuration, who were the people, how did you set up
24:38
your organization? Very hands on with people who care about that. Maybe I
24:42
don't want to present that on stage, but I am going to be able
24:45
to present that in an off session where you can follow up. We can
24:49
now do that, and I think this year gave us that opportunity to verify
24:55
that that's the right way for us. Second, I think we give people
24:59
in this an opportunity to talk to each other. Right as part of a
25:03
show is the hallway conversation. Our goal is to create hallway conversations that can
25:07
build off of the great content we're putting up on stage and that training.
25:11
And just to point out, I think one of the key things about it
25:15
being a great indicator for this coming year and beyond is that the training demand
25:19
wasn't just for next think how do I run the product? It was how
25:23
do I operationalize? How do I run my team? How do I become
25:26
a practitioner. It's not necessarily about technical training on the tool. It's about
25:30
how do I move into this discipline, which is really cool to see.
25:34
Yeah, I saw that. I guess I'm really enjoying the role because a
25:38
lot of parallels to me are what I experience in the innovation side. If
25:42
you keep telling us rewind we did it with security, but rewinding on innovation.
25:48
Five even ten years ago, everybody was talking about companies should have an
25:51
innovation department and they should do cool stuff and they get to, you know,
25:53
really keep that engine flowing because moving a big company is hard. After
25:59
having done that role, I actually think that innovation should be bred into product
26:03
development teams so that they don't feel like they're separate. But there was something
26:10
that I'd taken a course, and it was a really interesting way. It
26:12
said, we have to think beyond the champion. And usually what would happen
26:17
with innovation is there was a champion at the top who said I really care
26:21
about this, and they'd go fund and build that team. People would get
26:23
hired and then go do it, and then that champion left the company or
26:26
moved into a different role, and then all of a sudden those people were
26:30
orphaned or And there's nothing easier to cut than an orphans group. Isn't easily
26:37
alignable with decks. We are making sure with things like accelerate with our CSMs
26:45
with a whole supporting team, that we don't end up with lots of orphaned
26:48
teams. But we have to think of decks beyond the champion. Let's go
26:53
out there and give you what does an organization look like. What are roles
26:57
in that organization look like? What are our career progression paths for people coming
27:03
in where I can say you started as an at the help desk, but
27:07
here's how you moved into two decks and leverage that skill set. If you
27:11
give people the opportunity to have a career on our platform and in our space,
27:18
then they're going to continue to be successful. We're going to be stickier
27:21
and it only ever will never get orphaned. As a former customer and actually
27:27
having heard of this after I left the team, actually took it as a
27:32
badge of honor that the Proactive Services team was shut down. They said,
27:36
no more proactive services. Team were disbanding it because you're making everyone else look
27:40
bad. So they pushed that proactive mantra through the whole organization and kind of
27:48
flip the script. It was pretty cool. Yeah, and that's the right
27:51
way to do it. It's we we use this smaller group to test out
27:55
this model, and once we've proven that it works, we're going to embed
27:59
it into the group. My thought put innovation people together, test out a
28:03
model that works that you can repeat, and then educate everyone else so that
28:06
they're doing it and bleed them in. Amazing. Last question for you,
28:11
Christian, You've been here with us for a couple of years now and obviously
28:15
making a huge impact, obviously very passionate about the technology and what it can
28:18
do for customers. What about the community of Next Thinkers themselves? What about
28:23
Next think as a workplace as a culture? What are your kind of takeaways
28:29
from being here for a couple of years. What's it like to be part
28:32
of the organization? Well, yeah, being a Next Thinker, it's an
28:37
interesting I think this is one of those questions that's loaded because it's depending on
28:40
where you're coming in and who you have So I'm not gonna sit here and
28:45
say next think is the most amazing place where you can have a phenomenal career
28:48
and no matter who you are, everybody cares about you. Well, we're
28:52
going to have to marketers answer, right, But I'm gonna say, from
28:56
a real person's answer, what I find to be really good about next thing,
29:00
And specifically as a person of color, this is the first time in
29:03
my professional career that I've worked for people who's first language is in English.
29:08
I think in a world mindset, I've very often worked for companies that it's
29:14
the US and rest of world that is not us. We're very much aware
29:18
that the world has different locations in different places, and just on this call,
29:22
we're calling him from a number of different continents. But so that that
29:29
bleeds through and how we position our product, and how we do language translation
29:33
and localization, how we think about the show, and how we think about
29:37
our customers, and all of that to me makes me prouder to be part
29:41
of a company who tries to, at least maybe not on purpose, but
29:45
in true practice, reflect the communities and both in which they're located but also
29:52
in whom they serve. So to me, that's a standout and it's been
29:56
great so far. And just a final plug, maybe a final plug of
30:00
for a year for via on demand videos from Experience Everywhere. If you weren't
30:07
able to come to any of the events, or just not able to come
30:11
to all of the events, you can hop over in the show notes to
30:14
check out, watch and consume all of that incredible content that was on the
30:17
stage throughout November, October and November of this year. So just leaves me
30:22
to say, Christian, lovely to have you on the show for the first
30:25
time. I think we have to get you onto the deck show itself.
30:27
Also to delve into a couple of those in the future. But thanks so
30:32
much for coming man, thank you for having me, And if anybody wants
30:36
to watch that replay, you could see me on stage at e Boston with
30:40
not just on stage but in opinion as we say here, Yeah exactly,
30:45
but I know this was great. Thank you for having me, and I
30:48
hope you find it help absolutely, Hey, Christian. To make sure that
30:53
you never miss an episode, subscribe to the show in Apple Podcasts, Spotify
30:57
your favorite podcast player, and if you're listening on Apple podcasts, make sure
31:02
to leave a rating of the show, just tap the number of stars you
31:04
think the podcast deserves. If you'd like to learn more about how next think
31:08
can help me improve your digital employee experience, head over to next think dot
31:12
com. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time.