To many people, nothing can compare with the excitement of sports. That’s particularly true now that it’s NBA and Stanley Cup playoff time. But to me, there’s nothing more thrilling than a great new app. OK, I’m a techie at heart, I admit. There’s just something uplifting and inspiring about a piece of software that enables people to do things they didn’t do well, couldn’t do at all, or couldn’t even imagine doing. That’s what makes the CreatorCon® Challenge at Knowledge®18 in Las Vegas exciting like nothing else.

As I wrote in my last blog entry, the CreatorCon Challenge is life-changing. When great programmers get an infusion of cash and marketing muscle, it can launch their careers in completely new directions. It can take them from the anonymity of a cubicle farm to the leadership of a startup with unlimited potential. This is what the CreatorCon Challenge is all about. It has happened to CreatorCon contestants in the past and it is happening again this year.

Having begun with over 300 entrants, the 2018 CreatorCon Challenge is now down to three finalists (in alphabetical order): Enable Labs, Recruitlive Pty Ltd, and SalesWon, Inc. All three are winners, and will divide $500,000 in seed funding from ServiceNow® Ventures, plus $500,000 worth of sales, marketing, and business development prizes.

On May 8^th at 6 p.m. Pacific Time, in a topic keynote, in a general session in front of thousands of Knowledge18 attendees, as well as streamed to thousands more at multiple theaters on the ExpoNow show floor during the Knowledge18 go-live party, our “Legends of Tech” judges, Fred Luddy, founder of ServiceNow, Om Malik and BJ Lackland will decide who finishes first, second and third. The three winning apps will be made available to all existing ServiceNow customers and new customers globally on the ServiceNow Store and/or via the OEM channel.  Here’s some more detail on the finalists:

• Enable Labs — Toolbox enables construction companies to manage work sites, assets and projects more efficiently, uses machine learning to improve safety and streamlines communications between staff and subcontractors on-site.
• Recruitlive — EmployeeX implements AI, machine learning and an advanced user experience in an end-to-end employee lifecycle application.
• SalesWon — SalesWon CRM & CPQ accelerates the sales process while bringing complete visibility to management in a suite of sales automation applications.

You’ll hear each of these amazing finalists demo their apps and answer the judges’ questions. If you’re like me, you’ll love hearing people who love technology talk about what they love doing, whether it’s streamlining project management and workflow for construction firms, managing employee lifecycles with AI, or automating and accelerating the sales process. All these applications put technology to work in new ways that make life easier and better. For techies like me, it doesn’t get any better than this.

Oh, almost forgot — I also love giving money away. I’ll be handing out three very large checks to each of these finalists. It will be an exhilarating moment for me, and a life-changing moment for the finalists. And, as I’m sure it will be an inspiring moment for you, I urge you to attend the CreatorCon Challenge Finals – the sessions scheduler will make it very easy to add it to your itinerary. See you there!

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