How to submit a standout Adobe Champion Application

Transcript

All right. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to spring. For those in the Northern Hemisphere, fall for those in the southern hemisphere. That’s what all you’ve been talking about this morning before. We’ve gotten kicked off on the recording. So wanted to bring everyone together because we are close to opening up the time for the Adobe Champions applications. And we have a few champions on this call and a few members of the advocacy team to talk to you today about how to submit a standout Adobe Champion application. So let’s dive into the agenda so you guys can get a quick rundown of what to expect on the next hour or so on this call. So we’re going to first do introductions of the advocacy team and our champion speakers. We will then do a little bit of a program overview of what is the Adobe Champion program. We will also get into what is our ideal candidate for the Adobe Champion program. So for those on the call, I’m sure very, very interested. Do I fit in? The answer is most likely yes. We would love to have you apply to our preview the answer for that question for you. But let give you some some tips and tricks on the benefits of joining the Adobe Champion program. What you gain as a member, as a non Adobe employee, and what Adobe gains as you becoming a member of the Adobe Champion program. Then we will also talk about the Adobe Champion community because YouTube champion program has been not a new thing. It’s been going on for a while. So we’ll talk about who is in that community that we’ve built over the last few years. We will also talk about some of our Adobe Champion events because we have some exclusive events that are just for Adobe Champions. We’ll get into that in a little bit. Then obviously, the big question, Steve, for the end, how do you become an Adobe champion? And then we will finish at the end with a little bit of Q&A in case we have any questions. But if you have any questions before we get to the Q&A, we will obviously be answering those in the chat. So feel free to utilize that function there. So from the advocacy team, let’s do a quick round of introductions. Kelsey, go first, please. Hello, everyone. Good morning. Good afternoon. I’m Kelsey, Beyond which I lead the customer advocacy team here at Adobe, and I’ve been with Adobe for five years by way of the Marketo acquisition. So seeing a lot of change and iterations of this program, so excited to share with you a little bit more about that today. Awesome. Hi everyone. My name is Robert Sowerby and I am the Adobe Experience Manager, Champion Program Manager. I’ve been with Adobe for almost three years and helped launch the inaugural AM Champion program last year. And so we’re in year two and next year is going to be year three. So a very exciting time if you’re in a practitioner to get involved in the Champion program. Hello everyone. Brad Bedford I also came through marketing through the Marketo acquisition to Adobe. I left for a little while and did the Boomerang back. So and I am now on year two of my or my second stint and year two with Adobe, but a total of, I’d say three or four years with Marketo and then I’ll be here for with Adobe. Let’s introduce our Adobe Champions here. I’ll let you go first and we’ll go down a lot. Thanks, Fred. Hi, I’m Chiara Rega. I am a senior marketing operations manager at Folio and I have been a champion since 2020. I was champion of the year in 2021 and I’m super passionate about this program. I’ve been on the leadership Committee the last three years, so excited to chat with you all today. Hi everyone. I’m Mandy George. I am a senior digital analyst at Best Buy Canada. This is my second year in the Champions Program and I’ve also been on the Leadership Committee. My role has been the Analytics Office Hours coordinator. So I’m very passionate about those and sign up for office hours. I’m also a community advisor and at Summit this past year, I won the Analytics Rockstars competition. Hi, I’m Mary Alice or VP of Digital Product Management at AllianceBernstein. We’re a financial asset management company. I work on our digital experience client group marketing team. I’ve been a champ just this year, so I’m a newbie but very excited to be a part of this program and part of the B, the committee as well as a social coach socially awesome. All right. Thank you, everybody. Feel free to connect with us on LinkedIn as well. Just want a quick shout out. We’re always open to catching this on there, staying in touch so I wanted to start with that. Don’t feel or feel scared to connect with this group. All right. I’m going to turn it over to Kelsey, who’s going to go over a little bit of the Adobe Customer Advocacy in Champion programs. Awesome things, Brad. So as I mentioned, I lead our advocacy team and I came to Adobe through the Marketo acquisition, so I’ve been judging champion applications since 2019. And I will say for those of you that are not familiar with the Champion program and kind of the history of the program, it did start at Marketo in 2011. So it’s been around for quite some time. And I think the beauty of the program is really that every year it’s a little bit different. We change, we iterate just based on our feedback from the champions that are participating in the program. Also the amazing program managers like Robin, Brad, and we get more involvement from other teams at Adobe. So Marketo was really the blueprint for our Champion program and we’ve since expanded to analytics and, and as was mentioned earlier, but zooming out at kind of our larger advocacy suite of programs at Adobe, we design these programs with every user in mind. So it doesn’t matter if your kind of day one with the products or you’ve been a seasoned veteran. We have different advocacy programs designed for everyone that’s an Adobe product user to really engage, connect and learn with other people in the community. So from left to right, I’m not going to go too far deep into the details of each program, but when we refer to acts of advocacy, this is kind of our baseline of what we’re referring to. There are many, many acts of advocacy that aren’t listed here, and that’s kind of the beauty of the program as well, is that people make it their own and they find other avenues to get engaged and really grow the community. But first we have the user group program, which we have for analytics and and Marketo. These are in-person meet ups and virtual meet ups hosted globally. And if you aren’t aware of like what’s in your area, we can send out some links so you can see which user group programs are near you. But it’s really intended for you guys to connect with other users, talk shop, share best practices and have that face time with one another. We also have a community advisor program on our experience like community Online and also Marketing Nation and the Advisor program. And I know many of our champs are also advisors is really a way to recognize top contributors online. So our advisors are those moderators that are very altruistic. They’re passionate about helping other people, answering questions online, posting blogs or other content on experience, league and marketing nation. So it’s really kind of the heart of the community. We also have our Adobe champions. I know we’re going to be talking a lot about the Champion program, so I’ll just kind of move past that for now. And then lastly, our Experience Maker Awards, which is kind of the Oscars of experience cloud every year we open up submissions for our global awards program and it really recognizes customers that are changing the world through digital experience. So we host a gala at Summit every year and it’s like red carpet. We have celebrity guests. It’s a lot of fun. We really put you guys on the center stage to share your story and your use case with Adobe. To Brad, we can go to the next one. So why we’re all here today. The Adobe Champion program, our champion program recognizes expert customer and partners as well that are thought leaders and product influencers in our community. And at the heart of this program, I think what we’ve really found is that these champions are passionate about sharing their expertise and mentoring others within the broader Adobe product community. So it’s not just that you are an expert, it’s that you use your expertise for the greater good, for sharing with others and for a really kind of expanding your reach and your community through the program. You’ll receive a variety of benefits, which we’ll all touch upon. But a few of those just at a high level are that we really give you a platform to share your own personal brand and thought leadership. So our champs are always given speaking opportunities at events like summit or skill exchanges or webinars. Secondly, we also give you a direct line of communication with our product team. So you’re really shaping the future of Adobe products and like making sure that your voice is heard and you’re able to give that feedback. And then lastly, I would say and I mentioned this earlier, really the heart of this program is just celebrating users that are willing to contribute to the larger community and help out other practitioners and inspire people with their use cases and kind of that mentorship aspect of the program. So excited for you guys to hear from our Adobe Champions themselves because they’re the ones that can really bring this program to life and I’ll pass it over from there. Awesome. All right. Next we’re going to hear, I think, Chiara, right? Right. About what makes it. We’re going to Rob next. I’m sorry, what makes a strong candidate for the Adobe Champion program? So, Rob, let’s hear from you and chat a bit about that. QUESTION. Yeah, absolutely. I’ll keep it generally high level because you’re then going to hear from our three amazing champions on the call. But I wanted to start now that you have a foundation from Kelsey regarding what the Champion program is, you might be asking, okay, like how do I put together a really strong application? How do I stand out and, you know, make my application one that is compelling? And as Kelsey mentioned, everybody who is an Adobe champion, whether you’re a practitioner for Marketo, engage Adobe Analytics or a has a level of product expertise, right? This this program is not necessarily for new or beginner users of these solutions, but rather for folks that have been working with them for some time and have have a certain level of technical acumen. But what we value even more than that solution expertise is really your ability to articulate and demonstrate a passion for sharing your knowledge and expertise with the broader Adobe customer and partner community. And so in your application, there are several questions that give you the opportunity to do just that. It’s, Hey, what would you bring to the Adobe Champion program? How are you passionate about giving back and supporting and engaging with the community so that, you know, rising tides lift all boats? Right? That’s kind of a phrase that we like to use. And so articulating that in your application is the best way to really stand out. Also explaining what your history of engagement with Adobe’s customer advocacy programs have been is also a great way to stand out. But I want to just throw this out there because it’s it’s not feasible for for everybody to be involved historically in our programing. And we want you to know that that’s okay. Right? We don’t necessarily expect you to have five years of experience as a user group leader or having a applied to an experience maker award yet. But we do want to know what you think and how you envision yourself engaging if you do become an Adobe champion. So just wanted to highlight that you don’t necessarily have to have a history of advocacy to be a champion, but sharing your thoughts and ideas in your application I think will go a long way in at least helping our judging panel understand that you are passionate about the community and sharing your expertise with them. So another example of, quote, advocacy is maybe internally at your organization. You host quarterly luncheon learns, right? Or you help on board and train new employees in A or Marketo engage or Adobe Analytics. So while those things may not be official to Adobe, those are still acts of advocacy. You are still helping other customers and partners learn the product and evangelize RDX solution. So anything that you can think of that demonstrates this passion we’d love to see in your application. As I mentioned, Adobe Champions typically have five plus years of experience with the products. That’s not always the case. That’s not a hard and fast rule. This is just something that we typically see. So if you have less than five years of experience, do not let that deter you from submitting an application, because we’d rather have folks in the program who are excited and passionate about giving back to the community. And you don’t always need five years of experience to have that passion. So we recognized that. Just wanted to call it out here in that way. And in terms of certifications, each champion program has a different set of requirements to become an Adobe Champion. For example, Marketo Engage. You need your MCE for an you do not need a certification, John, to become a champion, although it is one great way that you can demonstrate you have that minimum level of expertise. And then finally, we want you to know that we’re doubling down on diversity, inclusion, having diverse perspectives, having global representation in the Adobe Champion program. And so, you know, we want to really open the doors to to all of you, no matter what your function is at your company, right, Whether you’re a developer, whether you’re in marketing operations, whether you’re in reporting optimization for Adobe Analytics, there is no one persona that makes a great champion. We believe that every individual that uses our digital experience, Cloud Solutions, is unique and brings something special to the table, and we want to recognize that. So no matter what your functional area of expertise is with our solutions, you can still apply to be a champion. So note don’t worry if you’re not a developer for a or you’re not a solution, architect Mary Alice is going to speak soon and she is not either of those functions. So no matter what you do, we encourage you to apply and we give equal weight and validation to all of our champion applicants. So just wanted to provide you with some of that, some of those considerations. And I’m sure if you have questions based on this, hopefully they’re answered by our champions or we’ll have time at the end for Q&A. So I’ll go ahead and pass it off now. Awesome. Thank you, Robert Kelsey. All right, let’s get to Chiara next. What are some of the benefits of the Adobe Champion program? Yeah. So if we want to head to the next slide, I could talk your ears off for this entire call about the benefits program, but I’ll keep it to these few things. I think, first of all, and most importantly is the career impact. For me personally, I’ve had kind of several iterations of what this looks like, right? So when I first became a champion, I was a team of one in marketing operations, and I think most marketing ops people on the call right now can understand that sometimes it’s hard for, you know, people to just accept what we say when we’re in the workplace, right? Because oftentimes it goes against what a lot of marketers want to do. We’re trying to keep things to best practices, etc. And I often experienced a lot of pushback on some, you know, things that I would suggest in in meetings and things like that. And when I became a champion, it was a very subtle shift. But almost overnight it seemed to validate the advice that I was giving. And I got less pushback. People understood and trusted my suggestions so much more, and I think that was so huge and just helping me build confidence. And then from there you get all of these incredible opportunities, speaking at various events, you know, getting your name out there with blogs, all kinds of things like that allowed me to really like cement who I was in the community. Right? And then when it was time for me to look for a new role, I had so much that I could put on my resume outside of just what, you know, I did for my day to day. And beyond that, you know, when I was looking for new jobs, it was the first time that I heard back from nearly every company I applied to. And at my current role, I they were about to, you know, move to offer a stage with other candidates when I applied. And because I had the champion note on my resume, they chose to like, bring me through the interview process anyways, even though they were not doing that with any new applicants otherwise. And I’m still here almost two years later. So it has had such a tangible benefit on my career that I don’t think I could have gotten in any other way. And it’s been so, so special. I think another really, really cool way that it’s been a huge benefit to me is the leadership opportunities. I am an individual contributor and I hope to be in management one day. You know, I had a short stint of managing one person for a while, but I had a previous role. But now I’m an I see again and it’s really, really hard to break through from an I see to a leadership role if you don’t have that experience. I think a lot of us on the call can relate to that. Right? And within the Champion program, there are so many opportunities for you to show your leadership. The most obvious one is the Leadership committee. So that is open to any champion, whether you are brand new or you’ve been in the champion program forever. You have some people in the Marketo Champion community who are in the leadership Leadership Committee this year who are brand new to the Champion program, but they’re on leadership. So it doesn’t have to be you know, you’re an established champ, right? It’s open to anyone. And I’ve been able to be social lead where I was the first person ever in that role and got to really define what that looked like and how we you know, how we handled social stuff within the champs. I’ve also been president of the Champion program where I got to really, you know, be the voice of the champion within the leadership committee. And this year I’m serving as secretary. And all of these things are incredible leadership, things that I can put on my resume when I am applying for, you know, a leadership role. I can say here is all of the leadership experience that I have and while the leadership committee is elected positions, we’ve had instances in the Marketo Champion community where someone might not have been elected to leadership, but they had such incredible ideas that would really serve our community and we added them to the leadership Committee, like in mid-year without an election for them to run these programs that they’ve come up with. Right? So you get really just so many opportunities to really lead, take initiative and show that leadership in a really tangible way. If leadership committee is not for you, we also have the opportunity for mentorship. So all I mean, I think MaryAlice is talking about this or maybe Mandy in a future slide, so I won’t go too deep. But you could choose to mentor a new champion and that could look like mentoring through them, through the program or just mentoring them in their work. But that also shows a lot of leadership and can be a really, really awesome thing on a resume or even to kind of help bolster, you know, your your argument for a promotion internally. I think one of the coolest things and one of the ways that I’ve been able to show the benefit of, you know, my spending my time in the champion program to my manager at my actual job is the ability to shape the future of experience cloud solutions. So, you know, at Summit we saw the release of Adobe Journey Optimizer, our B2B edition, and that was something that we as Marketo Champions, got to offer. It was available to all Marketo champions. We had four or five calls about it to kind of give feedback and share, you know, what we felt about it while playing in a dummy instance before it had even been announced yet. That was so cool. But that’s not the only opportunity. We get a run of. You know, just last week I got on a call to, um, you know, give my feedback on what buying group journeys looks like when engagement canvas. Is that what we’re calling it now? Journeys in Marketo Engage came out. I did so many product feedback calls about that and got to really give input. And we have, I believe, twice yearly feedback calls with the with the team, the product team where we get, you know, whiteboarding sessions. They’ll show us the roadmap before it’s live and then we get to talk about what in these products would be impactful. If we could wave a magic wand, what would that look like? And you get to actually know the people on the product team and build a relationship with them. And I think that’s also a really, really cool benefit. And then I think I’m not going to say this is the last benefit, but it’s the last benefit that I’ll talk about is the personal development, the personal brand development and the recognition that you get through sharing your expertise so you can come into the Champion program without people knowing who you are. You probably won’t leave like that right? Because we have once a month champion office hours where members of the community will ask questions when they sign up for this event. And then you get to answer that live and show your expertise while giving tangible help to the community. With Adobe Summit, not anyone can apply to speak at Adobe Summit. It’s a closed application, but champions are open to speak at that and I’ve gotten to speak three times total, twice in person and it’s been so incredible and validating and being able to, you know, share that. I share that knowledge on that stage is kind of a great way to build your brand and show, you know, help your community. Same with Champion Deep dives. Those are you know, essentially just a really deep dive into one specific topic that we do once a month. And it’s open to all champions to apply to speak on one of these deep dives. There’s experience makers, the skill exchange. I’ve spoken on that twice. Always a really, really cool way to give varied technical knowledge and share that with the community, which I love a lot of times. You know, Adobe Summit in particular can be a little bit focused on more high level where the deep dive, the skill exchange, the office hours, you get to get really technical as much as you want to and demonstrate your knowledge. And you know, these are only some of the opportunities that you have. There’s a section on Community for Marketo champions for us to post champion blogs that is not open to anyone else to create a blog, just us, right? There are so many ways that you can show yourself as a leader in your space that open, wide open to you as a champion. So I’ll leave it there for now. But if anyone has any questions about this or anything, I always love singing the praises of this program and community and my DMS are always open to chat about this. As they Chiara I’ll sort of call out for some reason. I don’t know how this happened. I got both boxes from the Marketo program and his picture on the right, so shout out to Max’s and Ricoh’s in the background there too. So all preview who’s in the pictures of all of these in the last and all as we go forward. But we had an Andy in the last one, the Max’s and Ricoh in this one. All right, let’s go to Mary Alice here a little bit about who is in the Adobe Champion community face brand. Before I talk a little bit about my slide, I just want to also mention like if you become a champion, you also get some pretty sweet swag. So you’ll notice I have this wicked awesome bucket hat. We’re all wearing our adobe sweatshirt, so just know that’s a big part of it too. That’s a lot of fun. So that kind of plays into what I’m going to talk about on my side as well. But another thing I just wanted to kind of piggyback off of, I think that Rob was mentioning was around levels of experience. When I applied for this program, I didn’t know anything about the program. I was basically just sort of told about it by my CSM with Adobe and just kind of mentioned it in passing. And I had certification for a and I was doing internal advocacy, but I didn’t even know what a user group was. So at our our firm we had kind of an, an expert who had worked on Adobe products. And so he was kind of our Yoda for everything that we were working on with Adobe. And so some of these outward programs we were just sort of like not aware of in our firm. And so through this program I’ve learned so much about other advocacy opportunities and now I actually started a user group with a chance friend on the AM side. So like there’s if you get involved in this program and you become a champion, you’ll just learn more ways that you can get involved. And maybe it was something that you were hoping to do down the line, but you didn’t know how and this program really helps you to enable that piece for you. So I was looking for ways to kind of grassroots some opportunities for people in national that we’re working on Adobe platforms or people that were in financial services and now, like I have more opportunity to do that kind of stuff through this program. So it’s it’s been really amazing for that as, as well. But I will just say that I think people if you find yourself here and you’re interested in being a part of this, maybe it’s because you want to be a part of this prestigious program with your Adobe Platform Focus. Maybe you want to showcase some of your own expertise, or maybe you want to meet and collaborate with other product owners for Adobe or in your field and you want to have ways to find advocacy, and that’s maybe the reason that you came in that you’re interested in. But the reason that you’ll probably want to stay if you become part of this program is the community aspect of it. 100%. It’s been completely amazing for me and it’s been very much a career high to be a part of this program and to meet these like minded folks. I had no idea the impact that it would have on me personally as well as professionally. But I can remember when I first got to meet a few of the champs at Forum, which I won’t go into very much because I know like maybe I can speak on that a little bit, but it was kind of the first opportunity that we had to to meet each other. For those of us that were new face to face, we had other opportunities to kind of chat through like Slack or email or things like that. But that was kind of our first opportunity to really meet in person. And I think those of us that were new and didn’t know anybody, like you’re going in totally blind, you don’t you don’t know what it’s going to be like. You just sort of have your expectations for the program itself. But quickly, quickly learned that everybody that is there and is a part of this has a very similar mindset. You’re all really passionate about what you do. You’re probably all avid learners and collaborators and you’re excited to just geek out on topics that are relevant to you and your platform, but you’re all just like excited, passionate, hardworking people. And I don’t think I’ve ever had an instance in both career or personally where I’ve met people and become fast friends. So quickly to the point that I feel like I’ve met these people that are probably lifelong friends for me, and I feel like I’ve known them forever and that is absolutely wild to me. Throughout my career. I’ve built a lot of relationships with with people and that’s been great. But it takes a lot of time and this took like no time at all because you’re you’re kind of all in the same mindset. You’re all excited to be there and the support mechanism that you have with this group of people is unmatched in my opinion. I got the pleasure to speak at Summit this year, which again, kind of it’s already been talked about, but like being a part of chance gives you opportunities to do things like that, which was amazing. It was a really great opportunity for me. But one of the coolest parts is I had my own personal team there, like a few people from my team were present, which was great. But I also had a group of friends that attended and were cheering me on and supportive, and that meant the world to have that group of people there supporting me. So community is such a big part of this program and in a way I can’t truly describe the benefits that it has as far as kind of social events that we do. There’s a number or a myriad of ways that you can you can do it. I’m actually a co-chair for the Social Lead, and so I actually get to be a part of some of those social planning opportunities for the leadership Committee. We hosted one at the beginning of January to kind of do like resolutions and introductions because so many of us were new to the program. I can’t remember the number that of AM Chancellor, where for the first year I think it was around like ten and now we have 40. So a lot of new faces and wanting to get an opportunity for everybody to kind of meet for the first time. And so we did rosebuds Dawn where you could share a win or something you’re excited about for the year or something that’s been a pain point within the platform and and sharing that. But we also kind of went around the room and made everybody do kind of a fun fact about themselves, their expertizes. And we did a sheet where you could fill out that information. And so now we know if you have expertise in something like forms or in like the dam or something else, then we know that we can go reach out to that person and have those conversations specifically with them about things that we’re interested in learning or sharing about. But some of the other groups I know is doing like Murder Mystery coming up. And Alex is doing a cookie baking event. So there’s like a lot of social fun events where you get to just be a part of four interesting things. But it’s also, again, just a great way to meet these people and get to know them better in a different way than just kind of the product side of it. And I think from the mentorship Opportunities piece, when we first kind of started, there was already returning champions that were in our Slack channel that we have. And so, you know, Slack has been a really great way to keep in touch with everyone on a consistent basis. And I think some of the returning champs mentioned at form even that you want to make sure that you’re in Slack all the time so that you can you can keep in touch with people and really kind of know what’s going on and you make it what you make it. So you have lots of opportunity. It’s really up to you to be a part of it as much as you want to be. And I think the best advice is to be as involved as you can be because there’s just so many things that you can kind of insert yourself into, whether that’s, again, like channel specifically to feature or troubleshooting product knowledge conversations or just shared pain points within specific industries that you’re in, or just things that clients are dealing with at any given time. It’s like, I don’t know how to solve this problem. Do you guys have a clue? And within our Slack channel, within 10 minutes you’ll get like 50 answers right, of just troubleshooting ideas that people can share. And again, where do you get that kind of opportunity? Outside. We’ve obviously got things like experience, but I don’t think you’ll have the personal element to it that you have with this community. So and then I think I started to say about the mentorship piece within the reason I said that was we got assigned returning champions to be kind of mentors for us that are new. And so we have conversations individually with that and are trying to figure out ways to do consistent meet ups within those smaller groups. So while we have like the big events that we host with everybody, we also have kind of these like little smaller breakdowns. And I think it’s only natural also that when you meet people that become friends in this program, that you might start your own little group channels off to the side as well. So a lot of opportunity for that community and collaboration and that that element of it. And then I guess from the SharePoint side, so I mentioned that document that we were kind of putting together. We have newsletters, we have information from like the demos and stuff that we have seen in presentations or any kind of inside knowledge that we’ve gained from this program because we get, you know, being a part of this, you get invited to certain exclusive kind of invites for information around the product, or you might share just white paper knowledge that you might have individually that you’re doing maybe at your own company and you want to share with the group all of that kind of stuff we host in SharePoint. And then you can go and access that and kind of have your own cataloged library of information that you might not get anywhere else specifically around your platform. And I guess the last thing I’ll kind of just say is the Champion alumni are just absolutely wonderful, amazing people mean the whole group’s amazing but so welcoming and so supportive. There’s none of this antagonistic like I’ve been here and you have it kind of thing that goes on. Everybody is just helpful and supportive and sharing in their knowledge. Even when you take some of the people that are involved in your specific groups, they might in theory be competitors to one another. Like if you’ve got agencies that are competing to work with different clients, they might, in theory on paper, be competitors. Yet you don’t feel any of that within this program. Everybody’s just wants to, wants to help and wants to see people grow in any way possible and I’m so thankful for for them for this program and and just for this opportunity. So I’ll leave it there. Awesome. Thank you, MaryAlice. I was great, great, great. This picture on the right is a whole group of champions. We have champions represented from all three programs here. Adobe Experience Manager, Adobe Analytics and Marketo engage and you can see, Rob, there is a on stilts in the background. He’s standing on top of something tall. Anybody else? That’s a great picture from Forum, which is a great preview into what are some of our Adobe Champion events. So maybe let me turn over to you and have you talk a little bit about those events. Thank you. Yeah. So Mary Alice touched on this briefly, but I just want to reiterate, because it’s so important, but the Champion program is really what you make of it within the program. There are so many different opportunities and ways for you to get involved at. You know, two people can experience the program completely differently based on what you get involved with. So it’s the sort of two main events that we have in the year four champions are Forum and then at Summit. So the Champion forum happens usually in the fall at the Adobe headquarters in San Jose, California, which is an absolutely amazing place to visit. So being able to actually go to Adobe headquarters and, you know, get a tour around and buy awesome bucket hats in the gift shop like the bucket hat that a lot of the analytics people got last year. So it’s a really great way to sort of see more about, you know, what goes into the products. Because at forum there are different sessions that you have with different product teams actually give your feedback. So imagine having a whole group of users of your platform in the same room with the people that build the product. You can tell them exactly what it is that you know, your pain points are where you guys struggle and they listen to our feedback. I know there have been a few changes coming in workspace that are part of what I’ve given feedback on myself. Forum isn’t the only place that we’re able to give feedback. The product teams will often reach out, usually in the Slack channel and ask for feedback when they have new features that they’re developing or new certifications and get our input on those as well. So being able to go to forum is fantastic and because not everybody is able to attend in person, they do also have a virtual option for forum. So we usually have about half of the champions that are able to attend in person and everyone else is able to join online. The second main event that we really have is Adobe Summit, which of course is not specific to champions, but there are a lot of champion and advocate specific experiences that happen at Summit. I’ve been to summit in person twice the last two years, so the only time I’ve gone to Summit is as a champion. But the experience is absolutely remarkable. The main sort of my favorite thing was the peer to peer connection space. So within the large community pavilion there was a booth set up that was specifically for the Adobe Champions, all three groups. And Brad and Robert did great at getting other customers signed up to talk to us to get our expertise. I had a great conversation with a group of analysts from a company that was in a completely different industry than myself, and we spent, you know, a half hour going over all the ins and outs of how beef up their implementation, how to organize their reporting and, you know, all kinds of other other little pieces of advice. So being able to share your knowledge and expertise is an amazing thing. And it’s one of the best parts of the program. And in my. Experience. There is also the advocate specific event. So on the Tuesday night at Summit, they took us all over to Topgolf where, you know, you get relax and spend time and meet up with the other champions. And because we’re all around the world, it’s hard to get everybody in person in the same place. So these are events where we’re able to actually, you know, get to just hang out with each other and do something fun. It’s really special to get involved. There was also the specific champion breakfast as well. So on Thursday morning they gave us all a nice special breakfast again is another great way to have that time carved out to be able to interact with the other champions From your group and from the other groups as well, because that’s one of the things that is is really great at Forum and at Summit is getting it, getting to talk to people from the other products like I’ve met so many people from the A in the Marketo side that I never would have met otherwise. And being able to have that knowledge share between different types of products, different types of users is is really great. It’s great for growing your own knowledge and your own career as well. Also at Summit, we had the VIP keynote seating, so a special section that was blocked off for all of us to be able to sit together. And then of course the speaking opportunities. So one of the big ones is the skill exchange, which there are skill exchanges that happen throughout the year, but then having the skill exchange at Summit as well is a way to give various champions a platform to share their knowledge with a wider audience. And I was lucky enough to be able to speak in the skill exchange this year, also in the analytics rock stars. So these events are really what you make of it. If you choose not to participate in them. That’s, you know, not everybody participates in everything. But I feel that the more that you get involved with the different types of events, the more benefit you’ll get out of it. And there’s more than just these Adobe organized events because these ones here are all obviously organized by Adobe, but events can be organized by champion groups as well. So like I mentioned with the different social events tomorrow our group is having a baking social where we’re all going to make chocolate chip cookies, but there’s also other sessions that we’ve done that are more for, you know, building our own personal career and for giving feedback to Adobe. One of the sessions that we did recently was a resumé and LinkedIn swap where we all got together and, you know, groups of five or six and swapped resumes and gave each other feedback on, you know, how to, you know, improve. And the other event that we’ve done recently that this one was my favorite was we had a sort of feedback event. So all of us champions and the analytics group made lists of the features we wanted to see coming out and workspace, and then met up in an event and had a list of like 100 ideas and people could, you know, promote like, Hey, I think this idea is great. And then we all voted on them. And that list is being sent to the product teams as feedback coming from the champions. So there’s a lot of different ways to get involved and it’s it’s really what you make of it. Awesome. Thank you, Mandy. Great overview of Champion events here. And just for a quick understanding of who’s in this picture, obviously our own Kelsey Bianchi, who used to speak on this call earlier, and also Emma Lockwood, who runs are a Marketo user group program. So just quick look at who’s in that picture. All right. I’m going to round this out over the next few minutes about how do I not me, but how do you become a Adobe champion? So let’s get into it. These are the things that we’re looking for in the applications and kind of an overview of the time frame of what to expect next. So biggest news that we are announcing on this call to the world, the Twittersphere, if you will. Applications are opening next month. We are not sure on the exact date of that yet, but normally expect that towards the beginning of May taking place every year. So mark your calendars. We will be sending out emails to all customers and partners are as many as we can, at least I shouldn’t say all but as many as we can watch. I get an email out to those folks, but also connect with Adobe Champions and also connect with myself, Rob Kelsey or anybody else on the advocacy team because we will obviously be sharing that out on LinkedIn as well. But what can you do to kind of prepare for next month? The things that I would do is what Rob was kind of alluding to and Kelsey was kind of alluding to earlier, is to document your acts of advocacy. What are the things that I’m doing internally to advocate for my Adobe Solution? What are the things that I’m doing inside of my Adobe Experience Cloud solution in my attending user groups? Am I mentoring someone in my answering questions or experience league or marketing Nation? Those are the type of things that we’re looking for. We even have one of our champions who wrote their own educational series of videos. He wrote a written and a video version and posted those on marketing Ofcom. So there are a lot of different ways that you can advocate for yourself and advocate for your experience. Cloud Solution Start a piece those together. So to write those down. Yes, exactly. As because he mentioned attending this webinar definitely counts. Definitely, definitely counts. The next thing we’re looking for is the real answer to a core question of the champion application, which is how will you impact the Adobe community that you’re a part of both locally and globally? We know this is a global program. As we’ve mentioned earlier, We want to make sure that we not only support are people that are located across the world, but also people that are located in city. So as an example, I’m in Denver. I could attend the Denver User Groups or Analytics AGM or Marketo. I, you know, let’s say I live in Newfoundland. Probably not too many of us that have a group of technology folks in that area. So that’s an opportunity to have more of a virtual experience with folks outside of your immediate geography. So those are the things that we’re looking for. But really the the core part of that question is how how do you want to impact that community? Think a lot about, you know, how are you going to step out of your comfort zone or really shine where you are comfortable into the rest of the community and make sure that you as using your expertise, your experience, your knowledge to enrich everyone else around you as we’re talking about, a rising tide makes all the boats lift that Rob had a really great way of saying that earlier. But, you know, I get what I’m saying. We talk a little bit about the judging panel here. In a moment, I’ll come back to that. But we will also be talking about our final selection and announcement process. Let me talk a little bit about what the timeline is for our champion applications, and then I’ll come back and answer those two questions. So next month, our champion applications will be opening early next month. Then we will be closing those applications in early June. So we only have about a 30 day window for you to submit those applications. So do be on the lookout for any communications on LinkedIn, an experienced league on email promoting the Adobe Champion applications. Then over the course of the next few months, we will be doing a judging process. This takes place between June and August. So let me go back to our last slide. I talk a little bit on who is on the judging panel. We have members of the Adobe product team, the Adobe Marketing team, the Adobe Experience Cloud Team, Star Experience League team as well, and then also members of our professional services team. So we have a large group of folks that are looking at this from all different perspectives. I think everybody, even B couple folks of engineering that we actually tap on to through these applications as well. But the thought process on this is, is that we’re not just looking at this from an individual perspective. We are getting perspectives from the entire ecosystem of Adobe that the Adobe Champion program impacts. So think about a little bit this kind of a little bit of a knowledge share there on who your audience will be. All right. Next, when is the Adobe Champion class announced? So as I see here, the judging process is in August we will announce the Adobe Champion program in September. A little bit of a gap there because we have to contact our Adobe Champions, obviously, and let them know who is in the program. There is. A little bit of paperwork that goes along with that because you are considered now an influencer. So if anyone has ever wanted to actually have an influencer on the resume, the Adobe Champion program is a great place to start your career, if you will, in that. But that is kind of the timeframe that we expect is that you would go from made at June applications to the judging window in the summer from June to August, and then we will announce those folks in September. Um, one last thing before we get to Q&A is there’s a lot of resources out there in the world of, you know, hey, I want to learn more. I want to know more about this W Champion program. I will be posting this link. If you are registered for this, you will be getting access to this slide deck where you can click in and view all these different informations about who they are to be advocates who are Adobe champions historically and current, and also learning more about that advisor program that we talked about on Experience League in Marketing Nation and also are more about who are as involved as our champion user groups. So let’s turn it over to Q&A. I know I have muted everybody on access, but I think we had a lot of questions coming in on the Q&A section, but feel free to blow off the chat. Let’s answer some questions there. What we do. So let me ask questions to some of our champs who spoke last. Let’s go with many, many what is your favorite portion of being an Adobe Champion? My favorite portion is getting to share my knowledge. So all of the different skill exchange sessions that I’ve done speaking at Summit, being able to impact not just people at my organization but around the world in a big way, I’ve done that is the user groups are not yet the user group, the Champions Office hours and I will, you know, shout out. We do have an A MIA session tomorrow. It’s an IT time zone for me. Anybody can join, but it’s very early if you’re in America. And you know, I also that back to what Brad and Robert were talking about with the acts of advocacy, participating in those office hours are a great way to get involved. I can only speak for the analytics one here, but we are always looking for more people to be speakers, not just champions, but user group leaders and community advisors as well. So if you’re in analytics and interested, reach out to us because we’re always looking for more people. Yeah, that’s, that’s my favorite part, getting to sort of share my knowledge. Of Let’s go with Chiara, who How many new friends do you have now because of the Adobe Champion program? And has any of those made an impact on your personal or professional life? Oh my God, absolutely. I mean, at least 40% per year, right. But I you know, whoever said that, like you make friends so much faster than you’ve ever have, like that is so accurate. I have a couple of friends that I’ve made through the Champion program who have only met a couple of times in person. But we talk nearly every day and they’re flying out from the East Coast to California for my wedding later this year. You know, like they’re some of the best people that you’ll ever meet. And because we’re all kind of connected by our love of helping others, you’re just kind of in a situation where you like there’s no competition. Everyone just wants to help each other. And like the camaraderie is just there immediately. So I, I would say the community is my favorite part of being a champion. All right. Mary asks, Have you finished off? What is your favorite piece of swag that you have gotten from the champion? Oh, shoes out is so hard. There’s been some really great ones. Obviously, I’m wearing quite a bit today, but probably the shoes. So even though they hurt my feet, they’re killer like. So we got these these sneakers that are basically like converse chucks that they Adobe champion and have like the adobe on the side and they’re awesome. And when I was at Summit the first day I felt like, like a little mini celebrity because I had my bucket hat on and I had my shoes on. And whenever I’d walk anywhere, where did you get all that dope swag? And I was like, Be a part of champions, you know? So like, it was a cool little like intro to tell people about how great the program is. And then I got to do some cool stuff. So yeah, that would be my favorite swag. It’s really cool. Awesome. All right. We are the top of the hour. I want to thank all of our speakers here today. Great question and answers in the chat. Great questions, answers in the Q&A section for those that were not able to make it, we’ll be posting this recording on experience league, also on YouTube, and we’ll also be setting out the in the recordings to all those that are registered as well. That is all for now. I think of you as my hang out for a few more minutes to answer some questions that have been lingering in the chat. But for everybody else, thank you for your time. Look forward to reviewing your application next month and we will see you all very, very soon. Lots later. Thanks, everyone.