V-Soft was a Silver Sponsor at Knowledge17 this year in Orlando, Florida. We were proud of the opportunity to take twelve of our staff members to the conference to learn, live, and breathe ServiceNow^® for the week. Here's our rundown of the conference including what we learned, our favorite sessions, and more.

What We Learned at Knowledge17

As its name suggests, Knowledge is a conference that is chock-full of information regarding the ServiceNow platform and how it can improve your operations. We were blown away at some of the discoveries made during the conference, announcements for the future of the platform, and how well-informed the audience was.

A few of our highlights:

• Chatbots and AI are all the rage. Our own chatbot, snowBOT, went over very well.
• Companies are needing Field Services more and more - surpassing HR demand this year.
• T-shirts are a hot commodity. We could barely keep up with the demand!
• People loved to try their hand at a game of mini golf.
• This year, the conference was focused on how to automate your processes with technology.

Knowledge17 Keynotes and Sessions

The best thing I can say in regards to any and all of the keynotes and sessions are that they were powerful. There was a lot of passion behind each presenter's words and a lot of intrigue from the audience. Of all the sessions I attended, the Q&A section was always loaded with (very good) questions, receiving equally as strong answers.

I realized that our job as a company is to listen to our customers, listen to the problems that you're grappling with, and then go build good technology to help us solve these problems."
- Fred Luddy, Founder, ServiceNow

The general tone of the conference was clear. Automate your systems and "Work at Lightspeed". John Donahoe, CEO at ServiceNow said in the Keynote on Tuesday that he sat down with one hundred ServiceNow customers to listen to them. He asked these customers what they thought of the platform, where it could be improved, and what they wanted to see out of it. He said it was almost always one (or all) of these three needs:

• Help me simplify and automate my work
• Help me deliver great experiences
• Help me innovate and stay ahead

This culminated into the theme of Knowledge17 and the rest of the keynotes. But aside from the keynotes, there were several very interesting sessions the V-Soft team were able to enjoy:

The ServiceNow Store

V-Soft's ServiceNow Business Unit Head, Manoj Iragavarapu, attended the session, Ready, Aim... Shop? Using the ServiceNow Store to Accelerate Business Success, presented by David Gatley, Technology Partner Product Manager at ServiceNow.

When asked what his thoughts were on the session, Manoj said he was amazed by the opportunities the App Store offered and was confident in the company's future with new and upcoming apps. He was exceptionally confident of V-Soft's newest addition to the Store, the Expense Tracker App.

Chatbots and Artificial Intelligence with ServiceNow

Several members of the V-Soft team attended ITSM – powered by Analytics & Machine Learning, presented by Abhay Kulkarni, Director of Product Management Data Insights and Darius Koohmarey, Product Manager, ITSM (Express), both from ServiceNow. The presentation was insightful and informative, even bringing a few chuckles from the crowd at the lighthearted nature of the presentation.

Focused on artificial intelligence and its applications in both chatbots along with machine learning, the session provided a live demo of a functional bot that could answer simple questions as well as statistics about automation. Personally, it was probably my favorite session due to both presenters' humor.

Women in Technology

The ladies of V-Soft attended the Women in Tech Luncheon a panel put on by four female rockstars in the IT industry: Avis Yates Rivers, President & CEO at Technology Concepts Group International; Ashley Haynes-Gaspar, Vice President & General Manager Global Support at GE Digital; Heather Pfluger, Director at Microsoft Corporation; and Farrell Hough, GM & VP of ITSM and Production Operations at ServiceNow.

John Donahoe was the moderator, asking the ladies how they navigated their career in a predominantly male industry. Their answers were not only eye-opening, but inspiring. They mentioned startling statistics - such as the amount of minority women in the IT workforce were only 10% in 2016. 

CreatorCon

Prasad Kodumuri, one of V-Soft's ServiceNow Developers, attended many CreatorCon sessions. His favorite? Breaking News for Update Sets. Other sessions he attended and enjoyed were Codeless Integration with Orchestration, Performance Analytics 302, Serving up DevOps with ServiceNow. On top of that, he became Certified at the conference.

In Closing

Having attended both Knowledge16 in Las Vegas, NV and Knowledge17 in Orlando, FL, I can confidently say this year was better than last by at least tenfold. The layout of the Expo area was fantastic and thoughtful, the meals were tasty, the events were full of fun, and we all felt like royalty wielding handfuls of free ice cream and beverages. Can't wait until next year's conference -- have you signed up for updates on it yet?