Meet Chuck Tomasi | Husband, Father, Sr. Developer Advocate, and content creator

We had the good fortune of connecting with Chuck Tomasi and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Chuck, what habits do you feel helped you succeed?
Having goals. Having a guiding ‘star’ to keep me focused on what’s important and keep me away from distractions is important. I set annual goals and then set monthly goals to make sure I’m moving towards those. I also have daily goals to make sure I’m doing the things that need getting done on time. By doing this I build trust and integrity with my colleagues and customers.

Please tell us more about your work. We’d love to hear what sets you apart from others, what you are most proud of or excited about. How did you get to where you are today professionally. Was it easy? If not, how did you overcome the challenges? What are the lessons you’ve learned along the way. What do you want the world to know about you or your brand and story?
I am currently a Sr. Developer Advocate at ServiceNow, a software platform that “makes work flow”. We help companies be more efficient and effective by digitizing their processes. To do that, there is a whole community of software developers building on our platform. I act as a conduit between those developers and our product development teams. I offer the dev ecosystem content in the form of blogs, podcasts, books, and videos to help them do their jobs better. I also take their feedback to the product teams. I’ve been doing this unofficially since 2011, and officially since 2017.

My role, Developer Advocate, is part of a Developer Relations team. Developer Relations is only about 10-15 years old so many of us have been learning our lessons the hard way – myself included. Until recently, there haven’t been any resources to help you on this journey. I simply started doing what I love – learning and sharing. I started with a few blog articles and later did video and podcasts. The content was well received by the community. In 2013 we got notice that our annual conference was going to enforce a dress code so it would be easy to spot the employees – all black. Black shoes, black trousers, black shirt (with the company logo). I think my inner child (being in a family of nine and always wanting to stand out a little bit) got the better of me one day when I decided to make a custom bow tie for the conference. That single act became a brand identifier. Despite our company changing logos and color schemes a couple of times, I’ve kept up with the latest trend and continue to wear the bow tie. I’ve become known as the “ServiceNow guy with the bow tie” quite by accident.

I love my job in that I get to do what I love and people recognize the value in it. I get to take my 40+ years in tech/IT and combine it with the creativity of making content. I’m still learning and sharing and changing lives. Hardly a week goes by without someone sending me a message how much they love the blogs, videos, books, or podcasts, or how they’ve passed a certification test, or gotten a promotion partly do to my work. That’s a great reason to get out of bed.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
I would first ring up all my local friends and schedule a celebration at our house. I love having people over to laugh, play games, and sing karaoke. After that, I’d recommend horseback riding, a hot air balloon ride, the Musical Instrument Museum, the Phoenix Zoo, and Botanical Gardens. If there happens to be a baseball, hockey, or football game that coincides with their visit (and interests) I’d try working that into the schedule as well.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
A huge shout out to my parents, George and Bettey Tomasi. They raised nine children on a single income. For the most part, we all got along wonderfully (and still do.) They taught us everything from spending within our means to, how to get along with others, to customer service. Every time something didn’t go right, we heard those familiar words “What did we learn from this”. I still carry these with me today. I’m happy to say that they’ve been married 67 years and still going.

Website: https://www.chucktomasi.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chucktomasi/

Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/tomasi

Twitter: @ctomasi

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/chuck.tomasi

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@ChuckTomasi

Other: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Chuck-Tomasi/author/B003B011TK

Image Credits
Photo credits ServiceNow