Robert Fedoruk, ServiceNow Architect for AbbVie, highlighted his experience with this year’s Hackathon, at the ServiceNow Knowledge14 conference in a live interview with theCUBE co-hosts, Jeff Frick and Dave Vellante.

This year there was an “800 percent increase in applicants,” Fedoruk detailed, noting the significant spike in intrest for the hackathon event that was also shortened from 8 hours instead of 12.

Asked how he contributed, Fedoruk said his team “did an app to help quantify and automate social media campaigns.”

The problem big brands have, he explained, is that they count on their marketing teams to push out good material to the largest audience. They cannot really quantify it. The app helps measure reach, automate the campaigns, and curate content.

“We allow people to opt in to the company social network,” Fedoruk said. Employees give their Twitter handle and password, and are trusting the company to tweet on their behalf in an automated fashion. Fedoruk’s team used the Twitter API to build the app, revealing the next step is LinkedIn.
 

 
Asked how the hackathon relates to innovating in one’s day to day job, Fedoruk said “everybody that goes to hackathon is there to try something new and interesting and fun,” but there are also some people who are really trying to solve a big problem.

“You have to enjoy the smell of garbage,” Fedoruk said, detecting problems and solving them. “That’s what innovation is all about, taking something that is BS to deal with, flip it around in your head, and make it easy to deal with.”

ServiceNow’s platform expands the number of people who can do development, yet a company also needs the developers.

“There is just no getting around, you need someone who makes the magic happen, it’s just that the magic is now exposed to the end user,” Fedoruk explained. ServiceNow helps determine where one can find the technology to do something specific instead of developing it.

“ServiceNow is just a way to get all these services collaborating together. Prior to it, it was an IT service management (ITSM) tool. It was all about IT,” Fedoruk noted. What ServiceNow does is really enables people, and not necessarily coders, to start thinking about workflows and how to automate them.

“IT is now a weapon in business,” Fedoruk concluded, saying IT is no longer dead weight. “Facility management is lagging behind now. ServiceNow and IT is the machete that cuts through all the stuff in the way.”